I started playing chess in December last year (I had played prior to this about once a year!) completely thanks to this excellent site. I play for about 10 hours a week and I have studied a hand full of classic chess games - I wish I could study more but I have an MA course that gets in the way! Since the one year anniversary of my chess.com debut is upon us in a few months I wanted your opinion on what rating you would consider good after 1 year of play? I am finding it difficult to gauge my progress as I don’t know how long other people have been playing for (I assume not everyone’s join date is the same as the date that they actually started playing seriously).

Thanks and best wishes

Mr_karno

Thanks!  At my level what type of study would you suggest?

mr_karno wrote:

Thanks!  At my level what type of study would you suggest?

 tactics, tactics, tactics.

HALLO

I play about one 1 year on this site and only get worse ...

but of course it is here I got ALL the fun...

if u are your self for shore will be bdetter

but if u fallow some kind...

it will be like (shete,...)

Zo

how good u gona be tomorrow

know your self , have joy

and for u ,you are the best

do not matter tomorrow if todaY    U

ARE sad...

may not next year!? ...

love ...

I'm no master, so maybe I shouldn't give advice. But distilling the advice of my betters, I would say:

1. Analyze your own games. Definitely use a computer. If you can find a willing stronger player to help you, do that too.

2. Do lots of find-the-best-move puzzles: mates, other tactics, endgame studies, etc.

I think those two things can be done without cutting too much into your playing time or your non-chess life.

you should be at GM level by now

After a year I say 1300 is about what you should be at. I've been playing 20 months and I'm always around the 1500 mark.

Use the tactics trainer.  It is free for your level of membership I believe.  It basically sets you up in situation after situation where it is necessary to solve what is the best line of play.  It will help you sharpen your skills.  Also it is good to challenge players that are better than you.  It is like what happens in sports.  If you are forced to play someone better than you, sooner or later you will either improve your game or find tools that will help you win given you have the heart and focus to survive the losses you will experience.  Also if you are willing to submit to sometimes rather harsh advice, place finished games for display allowing other chess players to determine why you lost a certain game.  Find a few good books on chess teaching about openings, defenses, attacks, forks, pins, tactics.  Realize that your increased level of play is directly in line with your level of committment to improve.

1430 is on-target for how long you've played and what you've put into it.

feyterman wrote:

you should be at GM level by now

 that's what I was thinking!  Thanks for all the responses!

How good are you at your MA, what's it in?

I'd say 1100-1300 is the normal range.

Look at me! :) I picked up Chessmaster last August and that's when I started seriously studying it. Since then I have gone from being a mere wood pusher to my formidable 1735 ;) (and I expect to get back to my 1800+ again once I have managed to make up for a tournament withdrawal which cost me a lot of points).

I can tell you that I did NOT study a lot of tactics. I would probably have benefitted the most if I did, but I felt that positional play was much more interesting. I thought to my self that why shouldn't I study what I like rather than what I need? So I bought a couple of books (Silman's books were great!) and I sat down in front of my chess board and studied everything I thoght seemed fun deeply.

Nowadays though, I think I have finally reached the limit of how far one can get without proper tactics training. Once you get higher up on the rating ladder loosing even a mere pawn would mean defeat if you don't know the means to win it back through tactics. That's why I have started devoting at least 30 min each day to solving tactics puzzles.

Also I probably spends loads more time than the average user does on this site. Since this is the only way I can compete with other players (haven't started OTB play yet and Chessmaster is no fun at all) I tend to spend at least 2 hours a day on chess.com.

I think that after 12 months if a person reads a few books and consistently has at least 10+ games going on here, and does tactics trainer, then they should be between 1600-1800.

diskamyl wrote:

Checkers4Me wrote:

I think that after 12 months if a person reads a few books and consistently has at least 10+ games going on here, and does tactics trainer, then they should be between 1600-1800.

You need to be more specific there. How many hours a day of that tactics study, for example? 1600-1800 is nevertheless a respectable rating, and I wouldn't expect one to get there in 1 year without at least 2 hours of study per week + decent a amount of games.

 the conventional wisdom/empirical observation says, that it takes roughly 1½-2 years of hard, daily work to get to 1800 level. -now, I'm so new here that I can't really claim I knew what kind of skill level 1800 on chess.com corresponds to, but I'm still inclined to guess that 2h a week isn't enough. 2h a day sounds more like business, but a year is probably still not enough time.

unless 1800 is pretty weak in this rating system, that is?

I think it depends on the quality of the work you put in and whether or not you really do analyse your successes as well as your mistakes. I think with modern support such as Tactics Trainer; working through the analysis of grandmaster games then a really keen will be able to reach 1800.  Most people would be happy to reach that in 2-3 years. I think its the Hare and Turtle scenario. The Turtle will be far more solid in their play than the Hare who would be flashy, but will have exploitable gaps in their game.  Three cheers for all us Turtles!!

I only really started a year ago and I am 1828.  But I have a lot of free time on my hands, so I probably am on track.

mr_karno wrote:

Thanks!  At my level what type of study would you suggest?

That's a much debated question. Most experts say start with the endgame ond move to the opening later. Of course that' not practical. One has to open games and survive to the end. But one has to know a winning endgame to make the right early choices.

IMO study lots of end-game and tactics, some middle-game theory, some opening theory, and some opening memorization.

madpawn wrote:

I think it depends on the quality of the work you put in and whether or not you really do analyse your successes as well as your mistakes. I think with modern support such as Tactics Trainer; working through the analysis of grandmaster games then a really keen will be able to reach 1800.  Most people would be happy to reach that in 2-3 years. I think its the Hare and Turtle scenario. The Turtle will be far more solid in their play than the Hare who would be flashy, but will have exploitable gaps in their game.  Three cheers for all us Turtles!!

 that's very true. I did 100K+ tactics problems in my first two years, and it served me very well ratings-wise. but I was a one trick pony, either crushed or got crushed, and the games never reached the ending. -the past year I've been filling those holes, and suddenly I'm starting to get endgames. even won ones :), where as the only type of endgame I got before was the trying-to-draw-a-lost-game type. which, as we all know, is not much fun. (unless you really like 'leko-porn')

it's a lot of work filling those holes, and there are no immediate returns. but it has to be done at some point, if you ever want to run with the big dogs on even ground. it can't be avoided.

1488-1490, otherwise...failure.