Goals

What's life without lists? Especially lists of goals to be checked off.

1) Achieve a 1500 ICC rating.  I think this is achievable within a few months.  I need to quit making blunders, become moderately familiar with most of the basic openings, and think with just a little more depth.  Right now, my mindset is to make sure that all of my pieces are covered from immediate capture; to go for vague positional truisms such as "knights toward the center" or "rooks on open files;" and to look for immediate tactical chances such as removing the guard or overwhelming a single piece.

2) Achieve an 1800 rating on the ICC. (This would be the equivalent of roughly a 1550 rating from the United States Chess Federation, which is an average tournament player).  I think to get here, I need to get perfectly comfortable with the full range of common openings, make absolutely no blunders, and become an intermediate-level endgame player and be able to grab more draws from slightly behind positions.  There may be more that I need to do to get there, but we'll see as I get closer. Reaching this level in one year would be amazing. Two would be good. Three would probably be more realistic.

3) Compete in an over-the-board, USCF-rated tournament.  This is going to be tricky if I still live in North Dakota for a few years, especially western North Dakota (six-hour drive from Fargo).  The North Dakota state championship might be my best bet. I'm hoping to play in that by 2011, maybe 2010. It's an open tournament, so all you need is an entry fee, but I'd rather not play until I know I can be competitive. A 1550-level of play, as described in goal 2, would have placed me in the top half in 2009's tournament, which would be lovely.

Over-the-board (OTB) is going to be a challenge, because I play exclusively on the computer, so it might be hard to "see" the board in the same way.  As the time comes, I may begin to try to find some OTB practice.

4) Become an 1800-rated USCF player. This would be a huge step up from No. 2 and 3.  This would put me in USCF Class A, or the highest class of amateur chess. I'd be a threat to finish in the top 5 in the state tournament and probably have a 2000+ rating on the ICC. Five years for this goal would be amazing, and now we are definitely getting into the realm of "may never reach."

5) Let's face it, everybody who has ever picked up a chess board and thought about getting good has dreamed on one thing: The titles. I don't mean championships.  Anyone who has a 2000+ rating in the USCF receives the title of "National Expert" and begins working their way up the title chain.  It goes on (2200+ is a "National Master" and working up to the international chess federation's Grand Master title, of which there are only a few hundred).  Saying you like to play chess and would like to earn a title some day is like saying you like baseball and would like to play in AAA some day, maybe even the majors.  Might as well dream big.