Hi, my name is Daniel Johnston, and I’m the author of this blog, DanielChessmanJohnston.com.
In this blog I will be covering and talking about chess.
You obviously won’t just take advice from any random fool on the internet (I know I wouldn’t), so let me tell you a little about myself:
I am twelve years old, and my USCF rating is currently 1824.
I started playing chess about five years ago when I was looking for something to do and happened to stumble upon a chess set that I had been given for my fourth birthday.
It was a match made in heaven.
Immediately, I was hooked on the game, and within a year, I had gotten a coach, started playing in regular tournaments, studied regularly, and my rating was up to around 600.
In fourth grade, I traveled to my first out of city tournament.
In 2009, I beat Grandmaster Alexander Shabalov in a simul; his only defeat the entire day.
According to many IMs and GMs (including Roman Dzindzichashvili, Eugene Perelshteyn Malcom Pine, and Alex Lenderman), I have the potential to be not only a Grandmaster, but a future world champion.
That is my goal, of course, and to do that, I will need to study more than ever before; now around two hours a day.
On this blog, I hope to help you through this complicated journey of the game of chess the best that I can. I will give you analysis of my games, reviews of books I’m reading, and chess tutorials and help.
I understand that I will make mistakes in some of the things that I say here, and you should be, too. I’m not claiming to be all-knowing, but I do feel I can help players of any level under 2000, and maybe even above with my book reviews.
So jump in, and remember (to quote Women’s World Champion Alexandria Kosteniuk): Chess is Cool!
