There are few things about chess that I can claim to be better at than Magnus Carlson. While speed chess isn’t exactly one of them, setting up a chessboard quickly may be.

I’m a fan of chess and learned how to play in second grade. I made the Maple Grove Chess club in 5th grade. I then became the highest-rated player in Maple Grove Chess club history and held that title until it ended nearly 2 decades later. (I probably wasn’t the best player ever, but later in the club, they didn’t have as many players or as many tournaments so getting a higher rating was harder for later players).

In high school, I placed a few times at the state chess championships and I was going to say this was my crowing chess achievement, but I probably worked harder to place 5th in the state at speed chess in 2002 than I did to break this record.

I have had this application open for a couple of years and practiced it for quite a while a year and a half ago. The problem was I didn’t get fast enough. I kept dropping pieces, knocking them over, or misplacing them (they have to be fully within their square). I top of that I didn’t go fast enough. I recently watched the popular Netflix series, The Queen’s Gambit, and it got me thinking about chess again. It was time to go after this record. I practiced time after time after time.

I finally got a run of 30.31 seconds knocking over a second off the previous record of 31.55 seconds.

My wife and I also broke the 2-person version of this record.