I topped around 1000 OTB when I stopped playing competitively at the age of 15. That would have been sometime around the 1996-97 time frame. I had zero opening knowledge other than the first few moves of the Ruy Lopez. My response to e4 and d4 was e5 and d5 respectively with no concrete plan afterward. So, yeah zero opening knowledge. I pretty much followed the typical scholastic opening plan of moving out the king and queen pawns followed by knights to c6 and f6. I recall reading Winning Chess Tactics by Yassar Seiriwan and My System by Aaron Nimzovitch the summer before I started high school. I also read Winning Chess Strategies at some point, but I’m not sure about the timeframe. Other than that, my only training was weekly games at the school chess club and occasional club games at the local mall food court. Either way, 1000 was as good as it got at that point. Like most kids of the time, I relied solely on my tactical vision.
I had a few solid tournament results, but I nothing to write home about. I didn’t play my first tournament until my freshmen year in high school. I still remember most of the tournaments I played and a few of the games generally, but unfortunately, I lost all of my game notations. I was hooked after my first tournament. In my first tournament, I ended up coming in 9th overall out of 17 total players and got top unrated. My first game was against the guy who came in third in the state championship the year prior. He was only 1300 at the time, which is interesting given the ratings of current scholastic players. We ended up going to an endgame, but I came apart from nerves when a crowd formed. I eventually got used to crowds watching my games, but the first time was terrifying. I also qualified for the state championship after placing 9th in the regional qualifier my sophomore year but finished 22nd in the state championship. Those are probably the two high points and not exactly earth-shattering by any means.
In a nutshell, I was self-taught and had no opening knowledge. I essentially started and finished every game looking for tactics and relied on weak positional understanding. For the time, I did okay for a kid in rural Tennessee self-learning before the internet chess really took off. I considered myself a good player, but certainly not a great player or particularly gifted by any means. Looking back though, I’ve always been curious as to how far I could have gone had I devoted more time or had more learning resources. Seeking the answer to that question has much to do with my current inspiration to get better. I could write more about my scholastic history, but I think this covers the high points, not that anyone is particularly interested in the first place.
As to why I stopped playing when I was 15, that will be the topic of another post since it’s a story in itself.