March, 2021. Jon – 800 ELO. Brandon – 750 ELO. Kinda friends, kinda chess players, where do we go from here? We set a goal. By the end of 2021, we would both hit 1200.

The beginning to any skill is finding out where to learn, and how do we get better? The way I learned, both through highschool and college, was to go to google first. What did I google? “How to learn how to play Chess.” Lucky for me, I came across a YouTuber known as GothamChess. Gotham (Levy Rosman) has an absoltuely incredible channel where he not only creates content for beginners to learn, but makes it entertaining and funny for a general audience, not strictly for traditional chess players. Chess traditionally has this odd elitism, and its rather fun to see players my age, be it Levy on YouTube, or Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, breaking down these barriers. Day after day, I was brought in by Levy’s content, he made chess funny. He made chess fun. I wandered across opening videos, and then I began to learn.

Chess is broken down into three parts: Opening, Middle Game, and the Endgame.

In the Opening, there is traditionally a set of moves that are well known, but you can deviate slightly, to either go into a version that your opponent may not know so you gain a slight advantage, and progress that into the middlegame. This is the art of chess: what do you know vs. what do you think your opponent knows? I decided to follows Levy’s repertorire: As white I would play the Vienna, as black I would play the Caro Kann. From here, my lines would start.

Before I go into my own story, I want to focus on a small part: how do I learn these aspects of chess? Opening, middlegame, endgame? Where can I learn these? Start with Gotham. Here is his How To Play Chess into tro beginners guide. Learn the basics of the game here. My process of learning chess was broken down into the following steps:

• Learn the Rules of The Game
• Learn What Parts of The Game Mean (Opening/Middlegame/Endgame) a
• Learn How to take Advantage of a game (Tactics/Forks/Pins)
• Learn an Opening
• Study Study Study
• Endgame, Endgame, Endgame

Weeks upon weeks would go by. Watch a video – Try to play a game – Lose – Realize where I done goofed – fix it – repeat. This is chess. Every day I would try to play at least three 10-minute games, analyze, then try again the next day. One day in mid-February, I would get a txt at around 9:30pm that read, “Chess?” that day forward, my year was essentially set. Brandon and I would play, talking each other through lines as we played random opponents. When you played you controlled your destiny, but you explained your thought process. You thought of a mistake, the other would correct, so we would start to think of what we thought we should do. After the game, we’d both realize what we should’ve done. We would grind. We climbed, we fell, but we had a bunch of fun. 800 came and went, 900 then followed. I was first to enter the illusive comma club, passing the 1,000 mark while Brandon was down in the 900s. Man oh man did I LOVE letting him have it while he was stuck in three digit land. Alas we progressed, passing 1000 together, then 1100, facing our end goal of 1200. End of November we played our 1200 games. No feedback from the other. Pure Chess. Pure Instinct. You earn your 1200. Jon crossed first, Brandon immediately following that day. Marks hit, and we climbed this ladder together. My personal favorite part: we never played each other online. Our head-to-heads were strictly over the board, in a new Detroit location every time. The Detroit cup between Brandon and I was sacred, and we had our own trophy. It was a fierce battle, but I took 2021. Who knows what is in store for ’22.

Im happy. We hit our goal. If you dont belive me I’m lunchbarker17 on chess.com, challenge me and lets have some fun. What I’ve learned about this skill endeavor is how wonderful it is to have someone to go along in the journey with. I mentioned throughout this chapter that Brandon was a significant part of this journey with me. Brandon pushed me. Brandon has just as big of a curiosity in the game of chess as I do. Brandon wants to beat me as badly as I want to beat him. Having someone to not only hold you accountable, but keep up retained enjoyment in the skill you are pursuing is an amazing thing to have. I rotate my interests frequently, but chess stayed fully constant in 2021, because of Brandon. We will hit 1500 in 2022. Stay tuned for that update.