Hello everyone. I just completed registration for this site so I thought I'd introduce myself.

I've been playing chess for about a year now. I'm still struggling to play at around 1400 or so and my play sometimes degenerates to 800 or so depending on how my concentration is for that day.

I own ChessMaster GME and Frtiz 11. Also, I regularly go to Chessmagnetschool.com to learn/practice chess strategy and try to play on playchess.com when time allows.

I played several games on playchess.com last night but my play was pitiful I'm afraid.
Almost everyone I played last night was using opening moves that I have rarely seen before. The result was that I usually was off balance from about move 5 on. Additionally, I need more than 10 minutes to play a game and most of the games were 10 minutes or less. I therefore consistently made blunders due to being under time pressure.

My goals, therefore, are:

1. Spend more time learning opening systems.
2. Spend more time on Fritz doing attack and defense drills in order to hopefully speed up my move times.

Best regards,

Waggle (my playchess name also)

welcome

Hello.

Sounds like you need to find a playing site where you can get longer games than 10 minutes. I recommend freechess.org (FICS).

--Fromper