Back From Russia - Lesson learned, never give up!

I had some business to attend to in Russia and I did not get to study chess at all. It's a huge shame, but on the positive side:

1. I did manage to grab a book in Russian by Mark Dvoretsky, the world famous trainer, and an exercise book for players rated ELO 1700 to 2000. We'll see how I get along with those...
2. I played 2 games of chess in a park against some man with seemingly tons of experience.  
   
   
   
   Every move he made seemed strong to me. I came off better in the opening and middle game of both games but he refused to give up (even 4 points of material down!). He waited for me to blunder my advantage away in the end game, and then overturn the match. Lesson learned, never give up and... study the endgame! (I should have recorded the moves, duh!)

I have kept my on-line (correspondence) chess games going on and I am very surprised that I have won about 5 in a row of them. It looks like me studying is paying off, seeing as I thought I was worse off in most of those games but I ended up winning anyway against skilled opponents.

I will be getting back to studying next week and hopefully make some more progress. I really hope to achieve 99th percentile on 15|10 and On-line chess really soon. Currently I stand on 95.7% and 92.9% respectively. Not too far off, I suppose.

Roller coasters are fun. When you are a kid.

So by now it seems pretty much official that I will not be working on a new start up. That crazy roller coaster ride of emotions, filled with amazing highs and horrifying lows. From making £50,000 a month profit to basically bleeding money. Roller coasters are fun, but maybe I am a little bit too old for that now! After all, 5 years in a start up seems to have accelerated my life by at least 10 years, if not more. Life is too short to do that all over again.

Of course, I have a few little ideas here and there that I may set up at some point. These ideas will be based on the principles outlined in "The E-Myth" and popularised by authors such as Tim Ferris. Principles that basically should free up my time to do whatever the hell it is I really want to do, and at this moment, that is mainly playing chess.

My goal is to have at least 6 months off every year. While I unfortunately do not have any crazy savings from my start up adventures, I am quite confident one of the first ideas I implement will make enough to make this lifestyle choice sustainable. After all, most of the western world's working force, does spend 6 whole months working just to pay their taxes. Meanwhile, for my first 6 months, I have just enough saved up (kind off), my bank balance flirts with £0 all the time. But that's another story.

Okay, so I will have tons of free time, what will I do with it? The plan is I will study chess really hard to hopefully become a chess grandmaster. I realise most grandmasters start as kids, but well, I kinda played a few games back in the day! I will learn languages. I will learn new skills that I do not yet possess. I will climb mountains. I will read books. I will travel. I will rock climb. I will play tons of footie. Lastly, I will definitely try really hard to keep writing this blog, just because I need to get better at writing ;-) (see learning new skills goal above).

To close off my first post, I would like to document where my chess skills are at the moment. I started playing chess seriously about a month ago and in that time frame I've gone from 75th percentile on chess . com to about 88th on timed and non-timed settings. This was achieved mainly by playing a lot of games to get some match fitness! However, that is not the way to become a grandmaster so since last week I started taking it really seriously and studying it properly. At the moment, since I am managing my budget tightly, I am studying solely on chess . com. Once I hit a roadblock there, I will probably study with a coach. I also plan to read some more instructive chess books and have a second read of Philip Ochman's "The Process of Decision Making in Chess".

Wish me luck. (and if you follow me on my journey, I will reciprocate and follow yours!)

PS. Please follow this blog, go on! Thanks :)

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Book I'm currently reading: Jonathan Dimbleby - Russsia