Week 1 Summary

Last week I began my experiment: documenting my attempt to become a strong chess player starting at age 47.

My current rapid rating on Lichess is around 1100, and my long-term goal is to see whether I can eventually reach master-level strength (around 2000–2200). I don’t know if that’s realistic—but that’s part of the experiment.

Because I have a background in statistics and software development, I’m treating this as a data project as well as a learning journey. I spent the majority of time last week building the website. I can record training sessions, import games, and track patterns.

Week 1 Training Summary

Total training time: 9.5 hours.
Tactics: 6.5 hours
Playing games: 2 hours
Game review: 1 hour

Most of the time went into solving tactical puzzles (besides time spent doing web development), which is generally considered the most important skill for players around my level (the puzzles, not the web development 😉).

Puzzle Performance

My puzzle performance varied dramatically depending on focus. Each training session includes a set of notes. For example:

  {
    "session_id": "c7d71925-2569-4252-926b-8df5ae0f3025",
    "user_id": "410544b2-4001-4271-9855-fec4b6a6442a",
    "session_date": "2026-03-09T00:00:00.000Z",
    "activity_type": "TACTICS",
    "duration_minutes": 180,
    "source": "Lichess",
    "notes": "Attempted 88 tactical puzzles. 32 wins, 56 losses. -202 rating to 1828. Tired, distracted, impatient.",
    "created_at": "2026-03-14T21:37:30.067Z"
  }

In this session I solved only 32 out of 88 puzzles correctly and actually lost rating on the puzzle ladder. I noted that I felt tired, distracted, and impatient. It was also way late at night! I might start nothing time of day. In another session I solved 17 out of 25 puzzles correctly and gained rating.

The interesting part isn’t the rating swing. It’s that my tactical performance seems highly sensitive to mental state. When I’m focused, results improve immediately. When I’m distracted, they collapse.

Games

I played four rated rapid games (15+10).

Results:
1 win
3 losses

My rating moved slightly from 1098 to 1088. At this stage, rating changes don’t mean much. Small sample sizes and early volatility are expected. One pattern I noticed: both of my games as Black were losses, while my games as White were split between a win and a loss. That’s far too little data to draw conclusions, but it’s something I’ll continue tracking.

A Lesson About Game Review

One thing became clear this week: if I’m only playing a small number of serious games each week, those games become extremely valuable learning opportunities. Right now I’m probably not spending enough time reviewing them. Strong players often say that improvement comes less from the number of games you play and more from how deeply you analyze them. If that’s true, then each of my weekly games should probably get a much more careful review.

Going forward, I’m planning to slow down and analyze each game more thoroughly. That means:

First reviewing the game without an engine
Trying to identify the moment where the evaluation changed
Only then checking the engine to see what I missed

I also plan to record my games with voice-over explaining my reasoning behind each move. The goal is to capture my thinking process in real time—what I noticed on the board, what I was worried about, and why I chose a particular move.

Those recordings will (eventually...) be posted on my YouTube channel, The Blight Knight, where I’ll share the full game along with my thought process move by move.

Once I start doing that, I’ll be able to refer back to those recordings during analysis. Instead of guessing what I was thinking during a move, I’ll be able to hear exactly what my thought process was at the time. That should make the post-game analysis much more accurate and useful.

Because I’m tracking all of this in my training system, I’ll also start logging the key mistake and tactical theme for each game. My hope is that over time patterns will emerge in the data.

A New Feature Coming Next Week: Game of the Week

Starting next week, I’m planning to include a Game of the Week section in these updates.
The idea is simple: pick the most interesting or instructive game from the week and walk through a few key moments—what I was thinking during the game, what I missed, and what stronger players would likely see.

However, in order to do that well I need to review my games much more carefully than I did this week. So instead of forcing a rushed analysis, I’m treating this first week as a reminder that good improvement requires good reflection. Beginning next week, I’ll be spending more time analyzing each game so that I can highlight one of them in detail.

Week 2 Plan

For Week 2 I’m going to keep a similar training structure but add one specific improvement goal: reducing simple tactical mistakes during games.

The daily routine will look like this:

Solve tactical puzzles (about 20–25 minutes)
Play one serious rapid game (15+10)
Analyze the game carefully before using an engine
Log the key mistake and tactical theme

I’m also adding a new habit: before every move I’ll ask three questions.

What is my opponent threatening?
What checks, captures, or attacks exist?
Is any piece hanging?

It’s simple, but strong players rely on these checks constantly. I’m also starting to track a new metric: how many games contain a decisive blunder. Reducing that number is likely one of the fastest ways to improve at this level.

The experiment continues...

If you’re an adult who started chess later in life and wonder whether improvement is still possible, you’re exactly the kind of person I hope this project helps.

Let’s see what happens next!