The Network Nightmare Returns

The past few months have been a chess marathon for me. A chessathon? Had a nice ring to it. Arguably, I’ve played more chess games in this period than in any other year. Well, more “serious” chess. Last month and the previous one, I dedicated a huge time into building my openings and upgrading my chess skills. I also improved my chess ratings. For instance, I crossed 2000 elo on Bullet and 1700 on Blitz. I also improved my puzzle rating. Now, you may want to know what sparked my determination to take my chess skills to the next level. Well, I'll give you a run down.

As a university student schooling in a “not-so-great” environment, I face so many challenges playing chess online. Unfortunately, one of 102 reasons why this place is not ideal for playing chess (or anything at all that requires the internet) is that the network is very bad and as you know, you need a very stable network to play chess (online). This reminds me of my match against @masterswatch . That day, he played against me while on a train. His unstable network made him lose two games. Who knows if he'd have won those games if his network was good? Despite these challenges, I still kept playing chess. Why? Because I love chess. I tried as much as I could to make things better. I would often go to a place with a slightly better network, but that still didn't work for long. I lost more than half of the games I played on a bad network. My bullet rating dropped to 1700 and my Blitz rating also dropped to 1500.

During the break (that ended yesterday), I had just one goal; play chess, more chess and more chess. Improving my rating and learning new things. And that is exactly what I did. I significantly improved my chess rating from 1700 to 2000 (actually, I almost crossed 2000) and 1500 to 1800. Blitz and bullet respectively. I learnt how to play Chess960; a variation of chess which I once considered extremely weird. I found Chess960 to be very interesting and I anticipate playing it again in the Hive Chess tournament. I realized that the importance of the environment in playing chess cannot be overemphasized. Good network comes first and every other thing like serenity must be in place. While some people can play chess regardless of how lousy their environment is, others cannot. They require their environment to be as silent as a graveyard.

To Summarize, a few months ago, I was in school and lost so many games to a poor network. 2 months ago, I got home to a better environment where I was determined to get back what I had lost. Now, what’s more interesting is that I am back to school- to the place where I have to turn on and turn off airplane mode before my messages can be delivered. It'd have been way better if I could complete the Hive chess tournament in an environment with a good network. Sadly, we have only played 5 rounds out of the 10 rounds of the tournament. I have been so engrossed with the tournament since it started. Now that I'm in this place, I'm not sure I’d be able to participate well. At least not as well as I did when I was at home.

What’s the plan? Well, regardless of my environment, the plan is to complete the Hove chess season 19 tourney however I can. I’ll try to put in my best. Let’s see how it goes.

Thumbnail is mine.
Thanks for reading.