Pretty much exactly one year ago I was working on my very first blog post. At that time, it was more of a "let's give this a try" idea, and I never expected that somebody would actually read this or that I would continue with blogging for more than a few weeks, not to talk about writing 80 posts in the first year and running a website on my own. So, why did I stick with it? Well, first of all I want to thank all chess bloggers and regular visitors of my site! When it comes down to writing another blog post, the chess blogging community is a big motivation factor. Nothing against blogging grandmasters and blogs covering daily news of the professional chess circuit - but knowing that there are other people out there who have similar problems to get better at playing chess, is probably the main thing that keeps me going. Everybody who tries to become a better chess player for more than a couple of months probably knows that playing chess is fun but fighting for improvement is, well, a fight, and this sense of community helps to stay motivated. And aside from motivation, I certainly learnt a lot by reading the blogs of other improving chess players, most noteworthy from the Knights Errant.

But are there other reasons to blog about chess aside from generating just another chess blog and spending time on shameless self-promotion? Yes, I think so. After all, the ultimate goal is to become a better chess player and writing about the process to become a better player helps me to organize my thoughts. Furthermore, blogging about victories and even more about lost games and (seemingly) endless times without clear progress forces me to critically review the things I have done to improve: Will doing another thousand-plus tactical problems actually help me to win more games? Why, oh why, did I lose every single game in the last few weeks? However, critics could say now that the time I have spend writing about chess would have been better spend with practice and/or study. May be that is true. But I believe my journey into the world of chess would have been far less interesting without this blog.

A special thank you goes to all people who played chess against me - writing a chess blog would be pretty pointless without the opportunity to play chess. Moreover, I always enjoy meeting other chess bloggers or (every now-and-then) even readers of my blog on one of the chess servers such as ChessWorld or the Internet Chess Club (ICC). Reading other people's chess blogs is fun but it is even better to play chess against you! Having said that, everybody is invited for a special anniversary game of correspondence chess against me! If you are interested, just sign up for free and challenge me (Sciurus) for a game. I am looking forward to meeting you!

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