How to become an average chess player (and enter your villain era)

Fact: People that play chess are better than everyone else.

Ah chess. Game of Kings. The OG game of thrones. Whenever someone plays chess in a movie, you know they’re a tactical mastermind, always one step ahead of everyone else. 

Same as when you see someone eating an apple you know they’re an asshole. Seriously, who eats an apple in the middle of a conversation? And without someone else cutting it up for you first? 

If someone eats an apple while playing chess in a movie, you know your hero is outmatched and you’re in for a sad ending.

I suck at chess. Yes, I was briefly part of the chess club in high school, but I lost every single game. 

Literally. Every. Game. For a year. 

Being that bad at something for that long leaves an emotional scar on one’s psyche that will slowly fester and putrefy throughout adolescence until it drives its host to be the prisoner of a single all-consuming thought: Vengeance.

I would not rest, until I could hold my head up high in public with the knowledge that I had broken the shackles of ineptitude and exchanged them for the shackles of mediocrity.

Yes. I would become an average chess player. 

We interrupt this post to bring you a quick disclaimer: I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post. Because who doesn’t want to get paid for their hobbies? You may now return to your regular scheduled reading.

What is an average chess player?

With this lofty goal in mind, I did some research and learned that ELO does not only refer to Electric Light Orchestra, but also to how good you are at chess. 

Top rated GM’s (Grand Masters) have ELO’s of over 2800, with Magnus Carlson, by many considered to be the GOAT, achieving the highest ever recorded score of 2882.

To put that into perspective, as of September 2023 only 14 players have topped 2800. Ever, in the history of the world.

That’s around 0.00000119% of humans that have ever lived.

0.00000171% of all the humans alive today.

Fun fact: Pro chess players can burn up to 6000 calories a day while playing in a tournament.

Luckily, my own sites were set much lower. All I wanted was to be in the top 50% of chess players today on chess.com (affiliate link).

The nifty stats screen on chess.com puts the current average rating in the “rapid” (10 min) category at 620.56.

So all I had to do was get above 620 ELO, and I would be, technically an “above average” chess player.

How hard could it be?

Starting from the bottom (and then going even lower)

My own ELO, starting out, was a lowly 557. But after a few games I quickly managed to get that down to 424.

A quick google search informed me that “if you’re 400 – pretty much everything you could possibly be doing wrong, you are doing”.

Okay. That hurt. 

But the only way to go was up. Right?

There was only one thing I could do at this low-point. Watch a Youtube video.

And another. And another.

Openings

A quick side note here. One of the coolest things about chess are the names for openings. 

It’s also one of the more frustrating things. But after falling prey to the fried liver attack (yes that’s a real one), the Halloween gambit (also real), and Kolevsky’s titty twister (okay I made that one up) for the umpteenth time, I knew I had some work to do.

So I studied. Several of the highly academic 10 minute Youtube videos I watched recommended picking an opening and sticking to it. One for black, one for white.

My research lead me to these openings:

If I was playing black:

• The Caro-Kann Defense

A very solid defense, but it only works if white plays the Kings Pawn opening (the most common opening move), so I needed a backup plan in case my wily opponent threw a curveball at me.

In comes The King’s Indian Defense. 

This opening works for basically anything the opponent can throw at you, and you can play it as white too if you feel like it.

If I played white I would go for:

• The Italian 

I chose this not only because I got to do a Waluigi laugh every time I won, but because, depending on what my opponent played, I could either go into the Fried Liver Attack (absolutely deadly when it works), or the Evans Gambit. 

Who doesn’t love a good gambit?

I’m adding an honorable mention for the London System here in case anyone was hoping to actually learn something from this post. Like the King’s Indian, it works against just about anything your opponent could throw at you. But it also often leads to formulaic, boring chess, and if I was going to keep myself hyperfixated, this could not get boring.

The Middle Game

Armed with my budding opening knowledge, I played religiously every day. Every free moment I got. I’m not proud of it, but I definitely made a few social faux pas during this time, and my legs died on the toilet more times than I’d like to admit.

Top tip: Don’t play chess (or probably indulge in any hyperfixation) in polite company if that isn’t the express reason for the gathering.

But as I was playing more and more my ELO miraculously stayed the same for the next two months. 

I was really beginning to doubt my intelligence and uncovering a competitive streak that I did not know I had. It’s probably a lot easier to access that side of yourself when you’re playing against faceless strangers on the internet.

But despite this, I was playing better. The AI coach told me so.

Games were lasting longer, and I was no longer losing in the opening. On the contrary, I was usually building up significant advantages in the opening, only to blunder them away in the mid and end game.

I knew I was missing something. Professor Youtube enlightened me to what that was: “Tactics win games.”

End Game

Tactics. Even the word has an air of villainy. 

So does strategy, but where strategy is a long-term game plan to conquer your opponent, tactics are more like brief skirmishes that (hopefully) leave you a little bit ahead and inching ever closer to victory.

And the best way to train tactics is through puzzles.

So if you don’t get enough game in your game you get to play a mini-game that makes you better at gaming your game.

Jokes aside, this is basically like a pro break-dancer working on their individual moves so they can work these into a seamless routine come the Olympics.

And honestly, puzzles are fun. And a lot less time consuming than actual games. My legs and relationships suffered a lot less as I did puzzle after puzzle after puzzle.

Now, the smart thing to do would be to actually study each puzzle and understand the logic behind them. But as my ELO can attest, I’m not a smart man.

Even so, just through the sheer amount of puzzles I did, my pattern recognition did improve.

I began having moments of “Wait, a minute…” (cue sinister mustache twirl) in my games.

And very suddenly, I began winning. It was almost like a switch had flipped.

I began dressing exclusively in black and I contemplated buying a hairless cat as my ELO abruptly rose.

500…

550…

580…

600…

And then, one glorious Tuesday morning (on the toilet) it happened.

622!!

If my legs had been working I would have jumped up in celebration. But my lurching crabwalk of revelry was just as dignified, and certainly a lot more villainous.

Checkmate: Average Chess Player Status Unlocked

I did of course lose the very next game I played, but since then I have kept playing. 

Improving, even.

I can now proudly say that I am in the top 40% of players, firmly an above average chess player.

And I take great joy in reviewing every game with the helpful, if slightly patronizing, AI coach on chess.com.

As far as hyperfixations go, this one seems to be here to stay.

But most importantly, I am one step closer to my ultimate goal: world domination. 

How do you like them apples?