My Chess Story

 I have tried to write to the Chess Journeys podcast a couple of times, but I got no response. I am not sure whether I am going to be on any podcast, but maybe for my own sake I want to tell my chess story.

First some quick highlights

• I am 42 years old, parent of a 5 year old daughter, and hold a full-time job as a software engineer.
• I am currently in Scotland and part of the Edinburgh chess league. I am around 1438 Chess Scotland rating, 1777 FIDE, and 1900 chess.com rapid.
• My chess "career" spans India (where I grew up), USA, and Scotland
• I only started playing classical over the board chess in 2025.
• I attempted to write a chess engine for my Computer Science final project in undergrad. It played quite poorly, had bugs, but was close to 1000 rated on FICS.
• The first tournament I played was in 2024. It had DGT boards for everyone. I assumed that this was the norm. I won a under 1400 grading prize of GBP 8 with which I bought "Simple Chess".
• The only titled players I have played OTB are a WFM: who I surprisingly defeated in a rated rapid game. I faced a FM in a simul, who squeezed me positionally. I was one of the last 3 boards standing though.
• Like my most chess players, I own more chess books than I have finished. Of the ones I have finished include Logical Chess: move by move, Simple Chess, Silman's Endgame Manual, and Chess Tactics by John Nunn.

Origins

I grew up in the late 90s-2000s in New Delhi, India. My mother taught me how to play chess. The rules that I learned initially were of a simpler variety, an Indian version maybe. I didn't initially learn that pawns can move two squares, I didn't know about castling, forget en-passant. I used to mostly play against my uncles, who lived in Bombay, but would comes visit once or twice every year. I would always lose against them, but I always wanted to play again and again. As a kid I was expected to lose to grown-ups. There was no coaching or opportunities to play apart from those instances. While I did get internet eventually, my main focus at that time was in playing computer games, and not chess.

College - Cochin

I moved to a different city Cochin, Kerala for my undergrad. There weren't many opportunities to play chess in-person. But somehow half way through my undergrad, I discovered something called the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS). It wasn't a website, but an internet server that you had download a "client" (a desktop chess program) to connect to. You could play other humans, as well as chess bots. I wasn't that good -- coming in around 700-800. But the idea of being able to build a chess bot, really fascinated me. So in the last year of my college I tried to build one.

I found out very quickly that building a functional chess engine is non-trivial -- forget one that plays well. The rules of chess aren't that straightforward, and to encode all of them in a computer program to make a single legal move is non-trivial. Only after you are able to encode legal moves can you get to the point where you can worry about giving values to pieces, and the king. Here are a few examples of what makes it hard:

• The program must ensure that no moves are made that puts the king in check. To know whether the move is legal for a side, you have to generate all the valid moves, with potentially the king in check. Then you have to generate all moves for the opposite side and see if any of those moves are capturing your king, if yes, then your original move was illegal.
• To ensure that castling is legal, you have to record that
• The king hasn't moved
• The rook towards the castling side hasn't moved
• The squares through which the king moves aren't attacked. This is tricky when you have pawns, because a pawn's legal moves change based on the presence of a piece being present in the squares immediately diagonal to it
• En-passant is tricky because you have to mark en-passant is possible when a pawn moves two squares up, and has neighboring pawns on either side. Their en-passant state then needs to be cleared, if they don't end up capturing en-passant.

This took a long time, and my program was buggy. It would frequently hang. It didn't know openings. But it was an interesting experience.

As far chess improvement went, there wasn't much.

Work - Bangalore

I moved from Cochin to Bangalore in 2006. Chess wasn't a big part of my life back then. I only played with a colleague of mine after work. He would almost always defeat me, although I may have finagled a draw or a singular win. 

I never played online chess.

I do remember a chess tournament being organized at that time. It was a knockout event and I was paired with someone who was known to be a very good chess player, even by the colleague who would keep defeating me. I was in my early twenties and he was in his 40s. Dark-skinned, short hair, and wore spectacles with a string.

Our game was played without a clock as far as I can remember. Our game began, and I like a good chess player prioritized development of my pieces. He on the other hand was only moving pawns. That seemed weird to me. But he kept pushing pawns and my pieces kept moving back and back and back. He moved his kingside pawns, and queenside pawns, and I remember feeling suffocated. In the end I sac-ed a piece, but it was to no avail and I quickly lost.

After the game, I remember him mocking me saying he played like a cheetah that stalks his prey. Whatever dude!

Time in the US

I moved to the US in 2010. Chess wasn't a big part of my life at that time. I finished my masters in LA. Moved to Seattle for work. Then moved to Boulder after getting married. But it wasn't until 2016, that I picked chess back up.

I had joined the big G, and there was a chess group at work which used to meet on Wednesdays. One of my good friend/colleague, James, introduced me to that group. It was a nice bunch. We used to play timed games during our lunch hours. 

James introduced me to lichess.org. I was quite amazed at how far online chess had developed back then. He also introduced me to John Bartholomew's "Chess Fundamentals" series. I really enjoyed it. I would say it was only from 2016, that I really started improving in chess.

I started watching the St Louis Chess Club's lectures, and especially enjoyed Ben Finegold's lectures in that. I got introduced to all the major chess personalities (like Eric Rosen, Daniel Naroditsky, etc) before they became stars.

I don't think I worked much on my chess though. I don't think I had a study routine. I was improving mainly through play. I did improve though.

I remember Ben, who was the main organizer of the chess club. His style of play was to trade down to a rook endgame and then beat you in that. I found that quite boring at that time. But his approach was very practical. I remember him telling me that, when there are so many pieces it's very hard to know what's happening. But once you trade down, things become simpler.  I find that to be true now. But didn't see the wisdom then.

Back then, I was interested in playing trappy openings, and then losing.

There were two chess books that picked up and went through a bit. 

• One was Jeremy Silman's Amateur's Mind. I did read that a bit, but I don't think I gained much from it back then. 

• The second was "Forcing Chess Moves" by Charles Hertan. That was a tactics related chess book, and quite good from memory. I did read a good chunk of it, but never finished it. I also purchased Silman's Reassess your Chess, but never really opened it.

Between 2016 to 2020, I was playing chess in spurts. I would get really hooked to it. And then that would eventually lead to some domestic argument around how I wasn't playing attention. Which was true. Especially when I started playing bullett to squeeze any 2 minute gap. Eventually I stopped playing, but wouldn't mind watching Chess on YouTube.

Edinburgh

I moved to Edinburgh in 2022. It was a rough first 8-9 months. I had a hard time getting adjusted to work, it was cold, and I wasn't sure that I liked this place more than the US. I really wanted to hit the undo button. I wasn't really playing chess at that time, but it was maybe in my mind in the background.

Then it was early 2023, when Ding Liren beat Nepomaniatchi in emphatic fashion when it seemed like the game was going for a draw. That made me want to go back to chess again.

But my playing was limited to online chess on lichess.org.

I was seeking out some over the board game play and I asked the only remote colleague that was in Edinburgh if he played chess. He said he didn't, but he had a friend who was serious about it. That's how I met Billy.

My colleague gave me Billy's number and he coincidentally lived very close to where I lived. I ended up walking over to his place and playing a few games. We were close to equal strength when it came to rapid play.

Billy would keep inviting me over to the Sandy Bell's club night and also to see if I wanted to play in the league. But every time I would refuse. My work would only get over by 7 PM, and after that there was dinner and putting my daughter to bed. I was also still mentally drained from the move and the way my job was going, that I didn't think I could go to these club nights. 

In the autumn of 2024 we moved houses. The new house was much better for us. It was warm and I finally started feeling a bit normal again. But it still took me a good 6 months (in December, 2024) to finally accept Billy's invitation to come to a club night that he organized in his own house. I played a few games against the players, and impressed the right people that they were willing to give me a go on Team 2 of the Sandy Bells club.

So it was that on Jan 28, 2025 at aged 40, that I played my first ever classical game of my life. I played board 6 on team 2, and it was a hard fought game, where it took the full 3 hours for me to secure my first win.

It was a nice feeling out of that game. My 2nd ever game was also a win. But then I had the dreaded classical game losses. Losing a classical game is so hard on the mind. You invest so much effort into this game, only for one error to cause so much regret. Sleep becomes an issue; you keep replaying the moves in the game in your head.

But I overall I had such great experiences in 2025:

• Once I started I played the full chess league season. In the summer cup league in 2025, I had a game with an opponent who was 300 points higher and I managed to defeat him.
• I played my first ever classical weekend tournament, and had a reasonable score of 2/5. Despite my score, I got a grading prize for under 1400 and got GBP 8, with which I bought "Simple Chess"
• In my second classical tournament, I had a score of 3.5/5 and almost had a shot and playing the final board in the final round. 
• I played two rapid tournaments. I came ungraded in the first one but ended up winning a number of games, resulting in my rapid rating coming up to over 1800 FIDE. My 2nd rapid tournament didn't go as well, and my rating came back down. But I did end up playing my first titled player a WFM, who I beat!

This was also the year, when I bought, started to read, and finished various chess books. I finished or read to a reasonable degree 

• Simple Chess by Michael Stean
• Silman's Endgame Manual
• Chess Tactics by John Nunn
• Logical Chess by Irving Chernev

I also bought and partially read various others, but they aren't all worth listing. 

2026 I haven't been as active in OTB play. I did finish the Edinburgh Chess League season, and also played a few summer league games. But I haven't kept much up with tournament play.

Most recently I attempted one set of the Woodpecker Method and solved close to 300 puzzles in the 4 weeks -- my first set. I haven't attempted the second set yet, but I definitely see an improvement in my overall calculation because of that effort.

At this point, I don't have a concrete chess goal. I am not chasing a rating or wanting to play in a particular tournament. As long as I feel I am improving and enjoying the game, that's sufficient.