My Week In Chess: Community Makes The Journey Better

Jessi Shakarian
3 min readJun 13, 2021

This week was kind of a mixed bag. I had a tough week, I got sick, but really what made it a good week was the online chess community.

100 Days Of Chess

I passed the 30% mark this week, I’m on day 34 of 100 days. While I was sick on Thursday, I was feeling so crappy, I posted that I got nothing done. TJ Murphy had me play a game with him. I lost, but I couldn’t have showed up for that day without him.

This week, the #chesspunks community showed up for 100 days of chess, and it makes my heart so happy to look at how the 100 days hashtag has grown this week!!

I really just started this as a way to stay accountable for myself as I prep for the tournament but seeing how many people are doing this with me, it’s so, so cool! 100 days of chess is about showing up to work on something you love and doing it in a way that works for you.

It’s been motivating me to see other people participate. The end of November is still a long ways away! I love the #chesspunks community so much, I don’t think I’d be as passionate about chess if I hadn’t found it. They are so nice and supportive.

So, if you’re interested in chess, come hang out with us on twitter!

Making Space For Chess

I’ve talked in recent blog posts about how I am playing OTB (over the board) instead of strictly digital. I still use some digital tools. I’ve seen a marked improvement in thinking in 3D (example: chess notation is coming to me A LOT quicker now, board visualization is getting much better). I decided to make the space in my tiny apartment for studying.

My chess study area.

However, I realized that I have another 2 sets, and I could be using that to play my online correspondence games. Basically I just use the notification to move their piece to the spot on the board, think, respond on the board, and then reply on the app. I set those up as well, where things can go starts to get a little dicey. I put my travel one set next to the chess set you see, I’m playing with my coach on that one. But my other set it’s a bit bigger, so that’s currently on the floor next to my desk. I’m playing against Matt on that one. Interested to see if there’s a marked improvement in my game play.

I’m embracing my ADHD brain. Chess feels like one of the few places where the chaos can be harnessed for good.

Club Match

This weekend I got to participate in my first online club match!! We played against a team in Guadalarjara. There were 3 on each team for rapid. I was paired up against a 1750 player, and I played analog — on the board you see on my desk, and then making the moves on the app. The first game was rough going. But the second I think I held my own (as much as a triple digit player can hold their own against a 1750 player), I made them fight for that win a little bit. I’ll take that victory. Obviously, I lost both games, but I had a lot of fun.

I want to start doing game analysis, so I will be doing that with this club season. I’ll probably pick one of the two games each week. Going to shoot for maybe Tuesday? We’ll see how the week goes.

Conclusion

So yeah, it was a good week all in all even though being sick sucks. I feel like I made a lot of good progress this week that wasn’t directly related to my studying. Progress is progress, it shows up in many forms.

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Jessi Shakarian

Jessi is a UX Designer at DIA Design Guild. She lives in Los Angeles and can be found on twitter @jessishakarian.