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100Hour Challenge — Chess
Inspired by fellow Norwegian, Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion and world number one since January 2010, I decided to improve my chess skills.
Background
When I was younger, I played a bit of chess. Not a lot, but enough to know the rules, and how the pieces move. I had no tactical or strategic knowledge and had not done any form of serious study or reading about chess. Playing was quite frustrating, as it would seem like nothing was happening, and then I suddenly ended up losing a piece or getting checkmated. I lost interest pretty quickly.
But five years ago, when I started to get more interested in skill development, I began to study and play chess. In total, I spent about 400 hours on chess. These hours were spread out in time and not as organised as this challenge. And yes, I’ve been counting the hours of all my activities for the last five years :D
When I started the 100hour challenge in chess, I had a rating of 1500+ in daily games (max one day per move) and 1200+ in blitz games (max 3–10 minutes per move) on chess.com. To find my baseline, I played 100 games and had an average rating of 1209 (10-minute games). My goal was to improve play in these 10-minute games.
In comparison, Magnus Carlsen has a rating of about 2800–2900. I thought it would be too ambitious to catch up…
