Mahjong Life and Living

I got to 1000 games (correction 1002 games) of chess under the rapid format in Lichess.  Chess has served as a secondary game for not-so-serious ranking purposes.  So, upon reaching this point, how did I do? Sept 18: Peak rating (1561) Win rate: 50% Best streak: 10 wins Worst streak: 8 losses Strongest win: vs rated 1613 I had crossed the 1400 line back in June and have not looked back since.  In general, I'm hovering around the 1500 line.  Now, with these numbers, am I playing for rank?  To some degree yes, however, I'm better off putting rank out of mind in order to concentrate (or not) with each game one at a time.  Do I really care about ranking?  Yes, but only to some degree, because I don't expect myself to get anywhere at a strong level with chess.  I just to play it for fun. The game serves as a way to off-balance myself away from mahjong.  For now, I'm enjoying chess and growing into the game steadily. Here's to th...

Plenty of things are happening around me. I am using many distractions around me right now to divert my attention to a number of different directions. Even mahjong itself can be considered a distraction at this point. Given everything that is happening this month, it is necessary. Sure, I have a ton of draft entries in my collection at the moment, but they are generally not being filled. As far as these entries are concerned, I have plenty of material to write about.  If there is one thing perfectly clear here, time moves very fast.  Regardless of the year, once the month of September starts, the remainder of the year appears to zip by to me.  Any month seems to go by quickly, but the autumn months are particularly fast.  The weekly mahjong sessions with my club accelerates time even more. That's my perception.

Once upon a time, I did dabble with chess a long while back in Yahoo! Games.  However, I did not go far; and the ranking play somewhat discouraged me.  Yet, for some reason, I bought a Judit Polgar book of chess puzzles but never went into it.  I still have it collecting dust. Fast forward to my A4 years and eventually Facebook, I played some more via Facebook chess.  Then here and there, I occassionally looked at Chessgames  to think about the puzzle of the day.  Most of the time, I failed to think them through but it was still amusing looking at them.  Just once in Facebook, I managed to pull the bishop sacrifice into the king side to set up an attack towards mate.  Doubtfully, I may not be able to pull that game out; but it was a good memory. Then to the present, I have been watching Agadmator's channel .  He has an approach of telling a chess game in somewhat of a story mode fashion, while explaining the different lines.  That go...