I've always been fascinated by board games, Chess was perhaps the first I obsessed over, and I wasn't bad at playing it... When I was around 10 we had a wooden chess set at home, and I'd spend hours looking at positions, but was never encouraged that this was a worth while thing to do.
When I was in my early twenties, I came back to Chess and had a few books and bits and bobs for it, spent ages analysing positions once. It's sort of part of me.
Anyway, I recently came across en.lichess.org, and signed up... I had played a few games and got totally thrashed whilst anonymous... But I did a bunch of their training puzzles (some of which I think I saw better options or at least equivalent options for) and then signed up... Ironically when you sign up their capta check is a chess puzzle, and I kept getting it wrong!
But soon sorted and I started my first game, no pressure, so I went for classic 20 minute (plenty of time) game style. I have this speed chess, I'm not practised enough for it.
Here's my ending board, did I win... I think I did, but the opponent just left :(
(I'm playing white)
Great post — really enjoyed the honest breakdown of what worked and what didn’t. I’ve had a similar experience trying to use bots to review my games — quick and sometimes helpful, but ultimately not that insightful for actual learning. Still, for casual players like us, it's better than nothing. If anyone’s curious about tools for other strategy games, I write a bit about that on my site chesshustleonline too.
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