When I decided to get back into playing competitive chess, I was very conscious of all of the ways I needed to change.

I needed to choose better openings and spend more time studying them. I needed to learn better plans in a wider variety of positions. I needed to spend more time focusing on my flaws and how to address them, rather than just reacting to my problems only by trying to feel better. I needed to adjust to being an older player.

In fact, in a larger sense, going into middle age had involved a lot of adjusting to change, much of it unwelcome. I needed to adjust to feeling physical pain more often, and to getting injured more easily. I needed to get comfortable with forgetting things more often. I needed to get used to the idea that I would only see my parents again in memories and pictures. I had become very accustomed to the need to change at this point in my life, and I knew that playing strong chess again would require more change from me than usual.

As a result, I became very focused on the idea of what I called the “Tal Transformation”. Tal’s early career is highly notable for his commitment to chaotic play, even to the point of winning the world championship using unsound sacrifices. As Tal aged however, he started using a much more solid, sedate style of play, and while he never again won the world championship he played at an extremely high level for much of his later career. I felt like I needed to do this as well in order to achieve my goal, and I very intentionally chose ambitious positional players to emulate and solid openings to learn and employ.

Once I started playing in earnest however, I realized something: I didn’t really enjoy playing some of the positions I was reaching, and I struggled to play them well. The Caro-Kann was an especially difficult opening for me, and while my results were OK I didn’t look forward to learning or playing it. I saw that it was holding me back - that I was choosing to play positions that I didn’t like and didn’t excel at playing in order to try to change more than I needed to.

It’s possible that I would have made master if I had stuck to playing the Caro-Kann. But I’m sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I did playing the Najdorf Sicilian.

Now, I didn’t choose to play the Poisoned Pawn variation of the Najdorf, or other lines that require really good memory and calculation to play well, but even the sedate variations of the Najdorf have more of a dynamic quality than those in the Caro. And, at my heart, I never stopped loving dynamic play. Tal may have changed as he grew older, but I wasn’t finding myself hungering to play over the games from his later life. I realized that honoring that part of myself that enjoyed dynamic, chaotic positions was not incompatible with playing well.

Learning the Najdorf was a ton of work - way more than the Caro - but it was work I enjoyed. It may not have been a fit for the player I had in my mind, but it was a better fit for the player I had in my heart. And, as it turns out, it was a better fit for the results I was looking for as well. There were other changes I made with what I was playing over the course of 2023 - mostly finding more dynamic ways to play the openings I had selected and not being afraid of those types of positions - but the most dramatic and beneficial change was that switch to the Najdorf.

It was still kind a bit of a bumpy ride to actually hit 2200 - I have yet to eliminate time management issues from my play and painful blunders still do crop up despite my best efforts - but I finally made it to a peak rating of 2220 in November of 2023 and received my master’s certificate a few weeks later.

The most important things I learned about chess improvement were expressed previously in the summary, but the most important thing I learned period was this: To thine own self, be true. Find the things that give you joy. Fill your life with those things. You can change lots of things about yourself - and you may need to change some things to achieve some goals that you have - but you can’t easily change your deepest self and you shouldn’t try to. Be yourself, but be the best version of yourself. And then no matter what shape your life takes, it will be filled with things you love.