Hi there, its me Cassidy, I’ve been the writer and voice of this podcast for a couple of years now. I have enjoyed doing the podcast, but life is starting to creep up so this will be my last episode before taking a hiatus.

I appreciate each and every one of you who download and listen to me. The listenership has been so far beyond what I could imagine for.

I was hoping to hold off on making an episode until I hit Master level myself, but that isn’t happening any time soon - in fact, I haven’t played in a tournament in over a year at this point and the thought of playing in one is quite a daunting effort.

A bit about me: my mum taught me to play when I was in kindergarten. I didn’t really take much of an interest in it until I reached high school.

I joined my local high school club and began playing in tournaments. My initial rating was 595. I found a lot of friends including my first coach - NM Tim McEntee - a 5 time Iowa state champion.

It was also around this time that I started playing blindfold chess. In trigonometry class, a friend of mine started playing chess on a keychain chess board that I’d brought. We piled our books around the board to hide it and played during class… until we were caught. We put the board away and started passing a note back and forth with notations on it, and we kept doing that for the rest of the year.

I finished high school and college with my rating in the mid 1600’s.

After college, I joined a local university’s club that had great chemistry. A group of us would travel to local tournaments in various states. I made a challenge to jump from the 1600’s to 2000 in one year - I was studying 4-6 hours a day, I won my first Classical game against a Master, and finished close to my goal!

By the end of the year I made it to 1975 and qualified for the Iowa State Championship in 2018. With months of prep, training, and studying - I finished dead last - half a point in 5 rounds. That was good learning, but brutal for confidence.

It was about this point that I started to doubt just about everything I knew about the game, the tricks I could get away with at lower ratings didn’t work, the base level of knowledge I had in openings and middle games showed major cracks - it felt like I had to tear down everything I knew.

I got a new coach who focused on overhauling my openings, and I started putting so much pressure on myself to perform.

My rating fell back into the 1800’s until I started to get my footing. I fought my way back up including jumping 60 rating points at the Minnesota Open to qualify for the 2022 U2200 Minnesota State Championship.

At the state championship, I performed well - scoring 3.5 / 5, a tie for first, and my rating crossed the 2000 barrier!

Since then, I’ve reached a peak of 2031 before falling back into the 1900’s.

That is where we are now. I’m going to take a break - I’m trying to re-love the game, trying to re-learn who I am, and discover what is out there.

In today’s game - I want to go back to a blitz game I played back in 2019 that has always been one of my favorites.

Cassidy Noble versus Jimmy Fuller from chess.com

Now, if we’re ready - let’s begin.

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 a6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e5 6. Nf3 Bb4 7. Bd3 d6 8. O-O O-O 9. Nd5 Nxd5 10. exd5 f5 11. Bc4 Kh8 12. Bg5 Qe8 13. c3 Ba5 14. Re1 Qg6 15. Be7 Re8 16. Rxe5 dxe5 17. Nxe5 Qb6 18. Nf7+ Kg8 19. d6 h6 20. Ng5+ Kh8 21. Qh5 Bd7 22. Qxh6+ gxh6 23. Bf6# 1-0

https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/3374579633

http://cassidynoble.com/