How to play with purpose, and how I discovered Anastasia's mate.

I'll start of by highlighting a very important point, which is that I've never had a coach and that I've never played the nationals or any prestigious tournaments when I was young, and that's because I started playing Chess when I was already 19.
This obviously did not stop me from moving up the ranks and becoming a notable player as the years progressed. However, after doing some introspection, I bring to memory a time when we were disputing whether the position was winning or losing with my friend, and it was through the analysis of that game on the big Chess board that I made a pretty sweet discovery.
I discovered Anastasia's mate.

You're probably thinking to yourself: 'that wasn't much of a discovery because all the mating patters are readily available on lichess', but then I will remind you that I never really studied Chess nor did I have a coach.
To me that was fantastic to come across, and it would only be after many years that I would come to realize that mating patterns could actually be learned.
This tells me that if I had the following, I would have progressed quicker:

* A Chess coach
If I had someone guiding me from that time, I would have reached my current level a lot faster. I know this because what I teach my students, I had to figure out myself, but if I had someone to show me the way, that would have sped up the process.

* Studied Chess
Prior to 2019, when I won the KZN open, I had been exposed to many books such as Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, Aaron Nimzowitsch's My System, Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course but I never studied any of them, only skimmed through some pages.

These are the books that I opened, some to a greater degree than others:
- The Chess Players handbook
This was the first book that I picked up in 2011, and it had the notation P-K4, which sounds like a German weapon of some sort.
- Arthur Yusupov- The Build Up Your Chess series
I was very sporadic in my study of this book and am not really sure how many I finished (if any), but I discovered a lot from going through them, and it made Chess exciting again.

All this information was enough to get my rating above 2000+ but then I discovered that there's a lot more going on when you get to mastery level and I'll highlight those things below in order to make things easier for you.

* Opening preparation
You HAVE to make opening preparation your friend, because if you don't, you'll fall victim to your opponent's preparation, particularly if your games and playing style are freely available. Let me demonstrate this by showing you a game that I played recently against an acquaintance I know to be an attacking player. I played the Ne7 Albin countergambit, which I will teach on a different post.

The preparation that I have on this line is pretty extensive but I'm not going to go into the details in this one, just wanted you to understand that by move 3. Ne7, he was already in the dark about the manner of opening he was facing, but it was all prepared.

Another game that I played against a candidate master, Benjamin Hercules was all prep two moves before he offered me a draw with 99% accuracy and a 4 average centipawn loss. See the game below.

* Endgame Study

Studying endgames gives you that extra kick you need to convert the position or avoid losing one. Nowadays you hardly see games end in the middlegame or the opening, therefore this knowledge becomes crucial if you ever want to reach higher levels.

* Analysis

Very crucial if you desire to get very far. Analysis becomes preparation for your next game, that way if you have a solid opening repertoire, you can just keep refining it by analyzing the typical positions that arise, the pawn structures and relevant maneuvers in the position.

So in conclusion. If you follow the above guidelines, learn the mating patterns, prepare your openings more intentionally, analyze your games frequently and always be on the lookout for new theory and ideas, you'll go very far as a Chess player.

Strive for mastery.