Overview of My Chess Career
I started playing chess at an early age, around 6 or 7 actually, but it was not until October of 2003 that I was introduced to competitive chess. I attended a scholastic tournament up in Hooksett, NH, and I walked in with a high sense of confidence. I realized that day that I was not as good as I thought I was, because I finished with only one win out of three games in the tournament. The next few tournaments that followed were similar in terms of losses, but it wasn't until January that I decided to really start taking chess seriously.
I began studying seriously in January, and it paid off when I played my first non-scholastic tournament and finished with a perfect score of 4/4 and won $150. It was at this point that I realized that my efforts had paid off, and this is what I consider the real start of my chess career. I ended up playing tournaments regularly, having mixed results along the way, but I felt myself improving and becoming more confident with my abilities. I finished big again in July of that year, winning $750 with a score of 4.5/6. In August of 2004, I played at the US Open in Florida and met so many new people from all over the country that I still keep in touch with today.
I would say my career was relatively stable, until I won big in 2005, by winning the New Hampshire High School Chess Championship, qualifying me for the Denker Tournament of High School Champions in Phoenix, AZ. Apart from that, my career has had a few small wins in recent years, and I am still trying to keep up with chess in college, although it is difficult to find the time to play in tournaments. Chess is something that I will always keep as an important hobby in my life.
My Plans for the Future
Since I have not been keeping up with chess as much as I should in college, I am going to try to start a UNH Chess Club in the Fall of 2008, and I hope that I can make this into the club website eventually. By founding the club, I hope to lead a team of students interested in playing chess competitively to great heights, and perhaps defeat some schools with smaller chess programs. If you are interested, feel free to contact me, because I want a list of several students so I can have enough to start a chess club successfully and be recognized by the university.