About two years ago, a friend destroyed me at chess. I don't remember the specific position. I remember the feeling. I'd always thought chess was boring, why would anyone sit there for an hour moving little pieces around? But getting beaten that badly flipped something. I needed to understand what he knew that I didn't.

That's how it started.

I learned the basics first. Rules I thought I knew but didn't really. Castling. En passant. Why you don't move your queen out early. The usual.

Then came the obsession. I played everywhere, at every hour. I read openings I couldn't remember the next day. I watched YouTube explainers I didn't understand. And slowly, really slowly, I stopped being terrible.

It took me almost a full year to hit 1000 rapid on Chess.com. Which sounds unremarkable now. At the time it felt like a summit.

But by then the goal had moved. Two of my friends were at 1400 and 1600. I wanted to beat them. The gap seemed impossible. I kept grinding anyway.

About half a year after that, I hit 1400. Started beating both of them. It was the best chess feeling I've had. The "you can't be serious" look on their faces when I won. I don't think I'll ever get tired of that.

And then progress just... stopped.

I plateaued hard at around 1400. I'd play, I'd study, I'd work, and my rating wouldn't move. I tried everything. Every chess app. Every book I could get my hands on. Different openings, different training regimens, different time controls. None of it was really doing anything. I'd gain 20 points, lose 20 points, sit there.

Around this time someone introduced me to indie dev, the world of people building small, focused software on their own. And something clicked. I was looking for a tool that didn't seem to exist. Maybe I could just build it.

So I started building Chessy. At first it was just for me. A personal app where I could test ideas I thought might actually help me improve. Puzzles from my own games, not random ones. Analysis of where I was actually losing, not generic tips. A way to track what was moving my rating vs. what was just busywork.

Then a friend asked if he could have access to it.

That was the moment it stopped being just for me.

From there it snowballed. How do we make this work for more than one person. How do we host it. How do we charge for it. How do we put it on the App Store. Every question opened into ten more. I kept building anyway.

By the time I published the app, my rapid rating was 1700.

I'm not saying I'm a great chess player. 1700 is the middle of the pack, and there are people reading this who'll be past it in their first year. But I'm proud of it because it came from the work I did building Chessy, using what I was shipping on myself first, fixing what didn't work, doubling down on what did. The thing that finally broke me out of the plateau was the thing I built to break myself out of the plateau.

Chessy is live now. It's early. It's going to get better. If you're stuck where I was, playing a lot, studying a lot, and not moving, I hope it helps you the way it helped me.

Either way, thanks for reading.

Stef