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I recently passed 9 years on Chess.com. Those 9 years consisted of a couple months at the end of 2012 and early 2013, and then nothing again until November 2020. Here is what those first few months looked like.

December 2012

My first games on Chess.com were in December 2012. I started my account to play against some coworkers. A couple of them had gotten into chess so I thought I would try it out. I would mostly play on the bus while commuting to and from work.

That December I played a total of 3 daily games against the same opponent. My record against him was 2.5 to 9.5 (2/9/1). I won my first game and my rating went from 400 to 1333, gaining 933 rating points in one game! The next game ended in a stalemate (-56 points) and the third game I won (+57 points).

January 2013

I played more daily games in January 2013, playing 15 games but only winning 3. Considering I never really studied chess, I think this was about the best record I could hope for, especially since I was playing against people who knew more about chess than I did at the time.

I expanded my games beyond my coworkers and got a couple of other friends to sign up and start playing. None of us were very good. I ended the month with a daily rating of 1039.

I also tried a couple of blitz games, losing them all. However, my first loss was against a 1200 player and I was 400 so I still gained 630 points to put me at 1030. But by the end of the month I was back down to 762. Even that was probably too high.

February and March 2013

In February I only played 5 daily games, losing them all. In March I played 2 games, with 1 win and 1 loss. I ended with 1033 for my daily rating.

My last game was a win, and so I thought I would quit chess as a winner.

Summary

I played a total of 25 daily games in late 2012 and early 2013, only winning 6 and drawing 1. I played and lost 3 blitz games.

After March of 2013, the next game I would play on Chess.com would be almost 8 years later when I got back into chess in November of 2020 after The Queen’s Gambit.

Since I never played a rapid game during this time period, my rating stayed at 1200. When I did get back into chess, and quickly lost most of my games, that rating dropped to 776 in February 2021.