About

My name is Matt Hayes, a British-American chess player who now lives in Southern California. I grew up in the UK, playing chess at my local junior club until I lost interest in chess for five or six years. When I was 16-years-old, I was channel surfing and stumbled upon Searching For Bobby Fischer and my love for chess was rekindled.

In 2002, I moved to California and have played in the city of Arcadia since 2005. My first goal was to get to expert, which I achieved in 2010. Despite a brief dip back into the 1900's for a couple of months, my rating has otherwise remained above 2000 ever since and above 2100 since March 2014. My next aim is to get to Master (2200) and this blog is intended to chronicle my struggles on the way there, as well as providing me with a useful means to analyze my games.

Hopefully, this blog will be interesting to some people or perhaps inspiring to others who are class players and want to reach expert or higher; that's where I was for many years!