The Blind Knight Project Begins

I’m 47 years old, and about a month ago I started taking chess seriously.

My current rapid rating on Lichess is around 1100. Like many adults who discover chess later in life, I’ve been wondering something that a lot of people quietly ask themselves:

Is it too late to get really good at chess?

I’ve decided to try to find out.

My long-term goal is ambitious: I want to see if I can reach master-level strength (around 2000–2200). I have no idea if I’ll succeed, but I plan to document the entire journey. I’m calling the project The Blight Knight. The idea is simple. Instead of just playing games and hoping to improve, I’m going to treat my chess improvement like an experiment. I have a background in statistics and software development, and I’m building a system that tracks how I train, how I play, and what mistakes I make. Over time I hope to identify patterns in my own improvement and share those insights with other adult learners.

Every day I’ll be tracking things like:

• time spent solving tactics
• games played and analyzed
• common mistake types
• rating changes over time
• training habits that seem to help (or hurt)

Eventually I want to build a website where players can track their own training and improvement in a similar way.

For now, I’m starting with a simple routine:

Solve tactics
Play one serious rapid game
Review that game carefully
Study a small amount each day

I’ll be sharing regular updates about what I’m learning, what mistakes I’m making, and what the data shows as the journey unfolds. If you’re an adult who has ever wondered whether it’s too late to improve at chess, you’re exactly the person I’m hoping to reach.

Let’s find out together.