When I went to grad school, I pretty much stopped studying and playing chess. Frankly, I probably should have picked it back up at some point, there's an active university chess club and no need to play rated games if I did not want to risk things while not in shape. It would've been a good social outlet.
At some point during the pandemic, I picked chess up again to play casually, then I decided to join the lichess 45 45 league, then I started studying again, and finally hopped back into tournament play. I think I started by watching Naroditsky's speed run series around December 2020. After that, I was watching other streamers playing chess, mostly smaller ones and not the big ones like Levy or Hikaru, but I quickly realized that... streaming isn't educational. I still hang out in these smaller streams occasionally, but it's more background noise in the evening and parasocial entertainment.
In the summer of 2021, being fully vaccinated and optimistic about how things were going, I got back into tournament play. My first two tournaments, I had mediocre results but gained rating, sitting in the upper 1400s, though I felt like I was on the cusp of doing better. Still, I was hoping to crack 1500, which I thought might be my skill level. In my third tournament, in December, I "popped off": 4/4, gained over 130 points, landing at a 1627 rating. I thought at this point that I had surely overshot my skill level. I beat a floored 1600, two 1500s, and a 1400 to get there, which may be consistent with a 1600 level performance, but it's odd to end up at a higher rating than anybody you beat. My goal for 2022, then: stay above 1600, hopefully get to 1700! I used the prize money to buy some courses on Chessable, picking up a d4 repertoire and some courses by Andras Toth.
My first tournament of 2022, I struggled a bit: I blew a win against an 1100 (taking a draw), completely blew a game against a 1470 who graciously offered a draw (wow!), swindled a 1300 who was stomping me in time trouble, and then stumbled into a draw against an underrated player who had me tricked in the opening. I ended up at 1601, so at least I had that going for me. My next tournament was a bit better: easy win against a 1300, winning position against an 1850 that I allowed to draw by repetition because of time trouble, dumb loss in a pawn endgame against a 1770 kid, weird tactical victory against an 1400. Gained a few points, 1700 performance rating, so maybe I really am at a 1600 level.
I went into the tournament this weekend with modest goals: play good games, play against some higher-rated opponents, stay above 1600. It was a U1801 section and I was the 9th seed out of 24, so there was a good shot of that. The result was only partially true: I did not play anybody higher rated than me. Because of upsets and draws, even though I was the 9th seed, I ended up being paired down each round while going 4/4. Final rating: 1730. Here I think I definitely overshot my mark. I'm not going to avoid playing to protect my rating or anything, but I definitely think this shows that, okay, I'm definitely at least a 1600 if I can dispatch people rated around 1600 reliably.
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