MY CHESS JOURNEY is a story and I've been waiting for the right time to say it here.
I knew about Chess when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, when I went to my cousin's house and played on their system. I won buh with the help of computer. I didn't even bother about the game anymore cuz I was young.
Then in 2022 around June, I went into a supermarket to get some items and I saw a board. It was those plastic pocket size board and I bought it for #1,500. The board really look cute and all my siblings loved it even tho we could not play the game(we didn't even know how they moved). It was that bad that we even killed the King during the game πππ we just enjoyed playing. It was after some weeks before we read the manual they put inside the board and then we knew how the pieces moved.
I took the board to school and played with some of my friends buh they were not any better, only one or two could play and they were not better than me. I started playing with my Mom's phone, I did not care about ratings, I didn't even know what an opening mean talk more of tactics. I just wanted to move pieces.
I kept on playing until I graduated from secondary school in 2023, wrote jamb and weac and got into Uni. It was in uni I realized people took Chess seriously. We even had a tournament in school buh I was too scared to play. So after my 100lvl in November 2024 I opened another Chessdotcom account started from 500, read a book about some tactics and I pushed to 700.
In January 2025 I had a goal to hit 1500 in rapid.
I hit 1000 around April and kept on playing and watch more videos. I hit 1400 in November 2025 and for some reasons I couldn't just pass 1400. I was too scared to play and I took a break. It was so sad that I didn't hit my goal.
In January 2026 I set another goal to hit 1000 in both blitz and bullet, then 2000 for rapid, buh I dropped from 1400 to 1100. I stopped playing rapid and pushed my blitz rating from 700 to 1200 in only January thereby hitting my goal for the year.
I also pushed bullet from 500 to 800.
Slowly I came back to rapid and in April when I was on holidays I wanted to look back and see how far I've come and then I started documenting my journey on X. I met a lot of wonderful people. I pushed back to 1200 and then 1300 in May. I set another goal to hit 1500 before May ended but I couldn't reach it. Buh finally on the first week of June I hit 1500 ratings on Rapid after all the struggles and help from
@NCbassey and
@voltronsworld
I'm currently on the road to 1600 and I hope I hit it before June ends.
So looking back from where I started, I will say my Chess journey has been hectic buh there have been a lot of improvements and I'm a fan of little improvement.
I might not be where I want to be now, buh I'm certainly not where I was when I started.
The is my Chess story and if you were patient enough to read till the end you must really love Chess.
Hi Chess players, coaches and enthusiasts, looking back from where you started and where you are now with chess, how would you define your journey?