Music Philosophy Art Math Chess Programming and much more ...
So, Marek and I have finally got ourselves a whole department. Unfortunately, our moves aren't always the best, but our mood definitely follows the ups and downs of our games. Marek and I have been on a long journey together, but we’ve never quite managed to cross that final hurdle and establish ourselves as 2000-rated players. I'm talking about the FIDE rating, even though we mostly play online. I’ve been a club player for so many years that I can’t even count that high, and Marek has played in events in Krakow, so we’ve both got a bit of experience under our belts, you could say.
I’d argue that besides our inherent laziness (and, let’s be honest, a bit of cowardice in crucial moments), our experience—what should be our advantage—is actually our number one enemy.
I won't speak for Marek, as he can definitely write his own take on this, but I want to shed some light on why I think experience is our biggest enemy.
We both tend to play rather than analyze, so it's become a habit to just play. Wouldn't you agree, Marek?
We don’t regularly review our games after we play them, whether it's Teamleague games online or less serious practice matches. Am I wrong, Mr. Marek? ;)
We started out solving chess problems enthusiastically, but now the urge to mindlessly play has taken over again, hasn't it?
So, what should we do?
What we need, I think, is another motivating factor besides chess itself, because honestly, chess is so much fun that there's no real need to improve much once you hit the 1800 mark (and, let's face it, whatever level you play at, chess is more than enough, which is something it shares with many of our cultural pursuits).
To keep ourselves motivated to continue the training we started so well, why not share our journey towards reaching the 2000+ mark in chess here with personal reflections and musings?
I'm pretty sure Marek will jump at the idea because he's super creative when it comes to doing things he likes (and I think he’s just as creative when it comes to avoiding things he doesn’t like, but I’ll let him answer that one himself...).
We've got our little collection of chess problems we couldn’t solve on the first try, so hopefully, we can finally get off our butts and present some of our analyses here in the future.
/Lars, aka LNO on FICS