Hooked on Chess

Eighteen days ago my brother proposed to play one game of chess online. We played one game and something clicked. I’ve played every day since. It is not that I didn’t know this game at all. I tried playing it like 8 years ago but it did not resonate with me. This time, I somehow got hooked. I started reading about it, studying basic principles, solving puzzles and watching live tournaments. I think I’m obsessed.

How it started

It started on Chess.com , the way it probably does for most people. Played a couple of casual games, blundering my queen right away and getting checkmated in ways I didn’t see coming. But I did not want to just play blindly. I wanted to learn the game properly so that I can actually improve.

The Dr. Wolf  app helped me a lot in those first days - it showcases the basic principle of the game pretty well. Then I found Lichess  (it turns out I already had an account, which I created like 8-9 years ago), which is completely free and open source, and has surprisingly good analysis tools and puzzles.

I use both Chess.com and Lichess now. I like the Coach games and learning materials on Chess.com, but prefer the puzzles and analysis tools on Lichess.

Playing more ≠ getting better

One thing I picked up pretty quickly: just playing more games doesn’t automatically make you better. It feels like you’re improving — you’re focused, you’re thinking, you’re making decisions. But from what I’ve read, if you’re just repeating the same patterns (bad ones included), you’re kind of running in circles.

I noticed that after just a couple of games. I kept making the same kinds of mistakes. So I figured I should probably be more deliberate about this and put together some kind of plan.

What I’m focusing on

From everything I’ve read and watched so far, it seems like chess skill comes down to roughly three things:

Pattern recognition — basically, how many positions and tactical motifs your brain has seen before. Apparently you build this through lots of exposure and repetition over time.

Calculation — being able to think several moves ahead without losing the thread. From what I can tell, this is trained through puzzle solving and analyzing your own games, not just by playing fast games.

Positional understanding — knowing which moves are even worth thinking about. Stuff like why certain squares matter, why piece activity matters more than material sometimes. I barely have a feel for this yet, but from what I gather it becomes increasingly important as you get stronger.

At my stage, the consensus seems pretty clear: focus on tactics first, everything else later. Apparently the biggest difference between a total beginner and someone a few steps ahead is just… not giving away pieces for free. That’s a humbling bar, but it’s where I am.

What my days look like

I’m trying to stick to about 1-2 hours a day, split roughly like this:

Tactics — 20 to 30 minutes of rated puzzles on Lichess. I’m trying to resist the urge to rush through them. Taking the time to understand why a solution works seems to matter a lot more than just getting through as many as possible.

Some kind of study — 20 to 30 minutes. A book chapter, a video, a specific topic. I try to actually engage with it — set up positions, guess the move before looking at the answer — rather than just passively watching.

One slow game + review — 30 to 60 minutes. I want to play a game at a longer time control, then try to analyze it myself before letting the engine tell me where I went wrong. The gap between what I thought happened and what actually happened is… usually large. But that’s the point, I think. Playing Blitz or Rapid games seems more appealing, since everyone seems to be doing it instead of playing Classical games. But I think that starting with quick games before having mastered some basic could be a huge mistake.

What I try to stick to

Show up every day. Forty-five minutes daily apparently beats a four-hour session on Saturday. I’m trying to not skip days.

Don’t obsess over ratings. They go up and down. A better question is: am I noticing things I wouldn’t have noticed last week?

Look at every loss. This one’s hard. My instinct after losing is to just queue up another game. But sitting with the loss and figuring out what actually happened is probably where most of the learning is.

Have fun with it. If this starts feeling like a chore, it won’t last. Luckily, eighteen days in, it still feels like I just found a new world.

1. e4

There’s a Chinese proverb: “A journey of a thousand li begins with a single step.”

Here’s mine.

I will try to follow this plan and write about my progress here, one blunder at a time.