I'm honestly not very good. Someone posted in this thread earlier saying they were a 1900 rated player? Obviously I didn't verify that, but if that's true I don't expect to reach that level... maybe for another 5 to 10 years.

Uhh... in terms of how I stumbled upon Chess - I've played E-Sports most my life. Started playing DotA at age like 11, in high school I was playing Toribash, World of Warcraft Arenas, and Starcraft II. In college I was pretty solely focused on Toribash, Pokemon, League of Legends, Hearthstone, and CS:GO.

I just decided for myself one day that I don't really like team games. I like being able to quantifiably measure whether or not I'm playing better, and relying on others is hard to do just that. Like did you play bad? Or did one of your opponents play really well? Did one of your teammates play really bad and make the situation unwinnable? Yadda yadda.

I also decided for myself I don't really enjoy games with large luck components for anything other than a way to pass the time. I mean I enjoy Monopoly but I also don't want to try to get "good" at monopoly. So... games where factors that weren't skill decided a lot really got to frustrate me. Hearthstone in particular, since card games are super luck based, and I worked really hard to become a good Hearthstone player.

So yeah, Chess was my new choice. It's free to play, there's a ton of resources out there, it's mildly social (I can go to places and play chess with people), when people ask me what I like at work or in class or whatever, I can explain it super easily. I don't know, there's just so many resources out there to get good at Chess, and the results of Chess players tend to be so consistent, I guess that's the appeal. Like I've played 50,000 games of Toribash almost and if I seriously sat down and taught an IRL friend how to play, they'd probably be able to take like... idk, 1 out of every 5 wins off me? Which is ludicrous. If I were even a 1400 rated player over the board, I doubt it'd be realistic to drop even more than 1 out of 100 games to someone who doesn't actually study the game.


How do I learn Chess now?

I use a couple of resources. First off - Chess players below master level usually are defined by their ability to solve for, find, and create Tactics. Like knowing openings and all of that is fine, but being able to just identify tactics and set your opponent up for them is pretty much all of Chess at my level of play. Or at least it can be. So I spend the far majority of my studying practicing tactical puzzles. I started playing Chess seriously about 6 months ago, and in those 6 months, outside of using books I've purchased, only using Chess.com, I've attempted 1,643 tactical puzzles, with a 59% success rate, with a little under 21 hours solely doing tactics.

Outside of that, I read, watch YouTube videos, experiment, and then also compete in tournaments.

I read highly reviewed beginner level books. I watch YouTube videos on topics that interest me. I experiment with new ideas, usually first in bullet games, then blitz games, then rapid games, then 30 minute time controls, and if I really like what I've got, I'll use what I've learned at my next rated tournament. After every game I play seriously, I always bust out a computer engine and analyze each move and see what I could've done better.

Just... experience, learning from past mistakes, trying new things, being able to memorize and calculate as much as possible, slowly but surely adds up. Or at least I hope it does.