I didn't think I would bother with this, but everyone else seems to be doing it....
How long have you been playing chess? Have you played it consistently since you started, or were there lulls in your play? How did these lulls affect your performance?
I learned the rules of chess in third grade from a friend and throughout middle and high school I would occasionally play with a couple of my friends. The same persisted through college, though I would play no more than a few games per year. I've always been fascinated by the game, though.
Sometime in the spring of 2002, while working at my first job out of college, I got really interested in chess. At this point it more or less became a hobby. I learned about online chess, bought a few books, started reading chesscafe.com and began to actually try to improve.
I played online on and off (usually life would get too busy and I'd put it on hold) for a few years. After moving back to Boston from a sojourn to Texas for grad school I decided it was time to take the leap into full chess geekery and play in a tournament. Slightly less than two years ago, in late July of 2005, I played in my first tournament. I was awful, but I was also hooked. 2 years and 57 games later I feel like I'm finally starting to understand tournament chess, but I'm still addicted.
Aside from playing games, what is your primary mode of training?
I think training would be a strong word for what I do, but I think that I spend most of my non-game playing chess time working on tactics. I'm trying to work through some game collections, but to be honest I've never really found out how to best make use of them. If anyone has advice....
What is the single most helpful method of improvement that you have ever used?
I think that playing slow, serious games has done more for my chess than anything else. There really is no substitute for thinking hard about a single game for 3 to 4 hours. Slow games have done a lot for my recall of positions, my thought process, concentration, patience and nerves. I think there's no substitute for this sort of real world competition experience when it comes to improving.
What is your favorite opening to play as white? As black against e4? As black against d4?
I don't think I've ever opened a chess game as white with anything other than e4. My white openings all come from John Emms' "Attacking with 1 e4." That makes it the Bishop's Opening, the Closed Sicilian, the KIA vs the French, 2. c4 vs the Caro Kann and the 150 attack vs the Pirc and Modern. To be honest though I've only had games vs e5, c5 and e6 since picking this book up.
My black openings aren't nearly as well thought out. Against e4 I play the Qa5 Scandinavian. Against d4....well, I'm not sure. My plan is to play the QGA at some point, but I've never had a good chance to learn it, so I generally end up playing some kind of vanilla QGD with d5, e6, Be7, Nf6 and O-O in whatever order seems appropriate. I usually play a very early c5 in these games, often to my own detriment. Clearly I need to work on my response to d4, but I've seen it in 3/57 tournament games, so there's not much incentive yet.
Who is your favorite chess player and why?
I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I don't know any other players' games well enough to pick a favorite yet.
What is your favorite chess book?
Hmm, a tough question. I have many. Too many (there are definitely days when reading about chess seems much more appealing than actually playing) and I find books about chess just plain fascinating. If pressed I might have to pick "The Amateur's Mind" by Jeremy Silman. I'm not sure I love the style of that book, and a lot of the time he just makes fun of his students, but it has taught me that the basis of any plan I try to formulate will have to be based on differences between my position and structure and that of my opponent. I'm still useless at making plans, but I feel this book has taught me something...
What book would you recommend for a friend who knows only the rules of chess?
I recently had a friend in such a position, and I recommended that he look at Dan Heisman's "Everyone's Second Chess Book" and a book on tactics. He outgrew the Heisman book pretty quickly, but I think a lot of that material, while simplistic, is exactly the kind of stuff that someone who has never seriously studied the game won't have run across.
Do you play in in-person tournaments? What is your favorite tournament experience?
I try. Lately I play in month long swiss tournaments in which there is one 40/90 G/30 game per week. It's a lot easier for me to commit every Tuesday night to chess than it is to set aside an entire weekend for the game. Life just gets in the way. The house needs cleaning, the shopping has to be done, etc. Also, looking over some numbers that I've accumulated (and will post soon) I am a lot worse in weekend tournaments...
Please give us a link to what you consider your best two blog posts (on your own blog).
Meh. I'm not that good a writer, and this blog is really more for my own use than trying to acquire readers....it reminds me to work through my games, comment them and post them. There's only about 40 entries now, so if you want to go look for a favorite, you're welcome to :)
What proportion of total chess time should be spent studying openings for someone at your level?
Well, probably less than I do. I really enjoy openings, and I find it makes me feel very uncomfortable to be in an unfamiliar position before move 8 or so. I know that one of my main problems in unfamiliar opening positions is playing rote developing moves rather than being tactically aware, and I'm not sure that's a cause or an effect of the way I feel about openings in general. That's all I'll say about this for now...I have some ideas lined up for a post about my internal chess psychology and it will touch on this.
