Hi everyone. I just recently ran across this site and definitely like it. Many of the videos are instructive and I hope will help me better m chess. Let me give you my chess background. I've always known how to play, ever since I can remember, maybe 3 or 4 years old. Well, I'm 19 now and have just taken up chess seriously. I started in February of this year, 2007. I play USCF rated games at a local club just about every week. My initial rating was something like 968, but I didn't stick there for very long. I had several monster weeks and broke 1150 the next week and in the middle of August I broke 1550!! I'm slowly rising up, but I understand that my chess needs more work than I can possibly imagine. hopefully this journal will help me to track my progress and motivate me to study more.

First task, continue working through "Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual"

Hi stockton

good see another training journal
Hey, I'm also 19 looks like there are lots of nineteen year olds on this forum . You've found the right place! I've definetaly improved since I joined, I also learned lots of english since I am from europe. Forum members are very helpful giving advice. And Dvoretsky's endgame manual, endgames is a great way to start improving! Join the Endgame analysis thread where we analyse a monthly ending, we should learn a lot

cheers

Glad to see another training journal! Dvoretsky's book is great, so I'm sure you'll see a lot of improvement from working through it.

I've decided that I will annotate my games here. If I use videos to annotate them I'll place them in the proper sections. I will first annotate two games I just played against Life Master Joel Johnson. Joel is a good friend of mine and just recently became the 2007 U.S. Senior Champion. I have played Joel plenty of times (probably 20 times or so) and I have managed a single draw. Both of the games I played tonight were very interesting.

http://beta.uschess.org/frontend/news_7_512.php

Great! Can't wait to see them

I just posted the first game I played against Joel in the Game Analysis forum.

Haven't posted here in a while. This past weekend I was in Mexico so I didn't play at my local club. However, the week before I did play and had a great day going 3-0. Lately I've been playing a lot of pure 15-minute on ICC and my rating has reached its highest ever at 1673.

grr. make that 1699!! soooo close to 1700.

Congrats! Next stop, 1700+

Well, today I had one of those days where I couldn't buy a victory. I went 0-5 at my club today. ugh, unbelievable. I threw away my queen in CONSECUTIVE games.....ugh. That'll teach me to take a week off chess and come back cold.

Yeah, I have similar problems when I take a break. You'll get back into the swing of things in no time.

I'm Starting Mark Dvoretsky's School of Chess Excellence Series. I hope it's good.

I've heard very good things. Petrovitch absolutely loves it...see his post in the thread I've linked.

did some CTS today. I haven't done it for a long time but I had great success. Very Nice!!

i moved my rating up from 1429 to 1503. My first time ever being over 1500

Alright. Played at the club yesterday. Valley chess now meets 3 times a week, so I can play G/30 OTB 3 times a week!!!!! It is looking like I will play roughly 10-16 games a week OTB.

so yesterday I played 4 games. I won 3 of them with the only loss coming to the Current U.S. Senior Champion. (Saying it that way helps me sleep at night). I lost to him, but I outplayed him all the way into the endgame where we played a Rook+Bishop vs. Rook +knight ending. I had the Rook and Bishop and was up 2 pawns!!! My endings need a lot of work. Oh well, still a successful day.

I kind of had a successful day today. Kinda hard to say. I played 5 games and managed to drop at least 1 piece in 3 different games, ugh. I wasn't playing well tactically. The good news is that I only lost 1 of those games and I managed to hold on for a draw in the other two. Overall I finished with 1 win, 1 loss, and 3 draws against an average rating of about 1650 or so.