Celebrating A Year Of Chess Improvement

As 2024 was singing its swan song, we invited the community to participate in the 2025 Chess.com Improvement Challenge. Over 40,000 members rose to the challenge to elevate their game in the new year. As an action-packed year comes to a close, let’s look back and celebrate the incredible accomplishments and stories of the improvement community. Whether we focus on the impressive rating gains, crossing swords with living legend GM Judit Polgar, or unknowingly having your beloved canine companion inspire GothamChess to select you as a student for Coach Champs, it was a great and memorable year for chess improvement!

An Auspicious Beginning

The year kicked off with incredible optimism, support, and positive energy as improvers were greeted with Chess.com improvement study guides tailor-made for specific rating categories, from beginner to 1800+ rated, and membership to the Improvers Club, a community space dedicated to supporting fellow travelers on the road to chess improvement. Many improvers took their first step in the Improvers Club by sharing introductions and goals, beginning to share stories and build connections that blossomed throughout the year.

Meet cegalleta: Life happens and you find chess!

On the other hand, sometimes chess finds you, as was the case with hhart10k. A WFM Anna Cramling video came across her feed, reigniting her 64-squared journey.

Improvers of the Month 

The Improvement Challenge was an invitation for self-improvement and growth on the 64-squared canvas, but the path to improvement was far from a solitary journey. The Improvers Club is a dedicated space to connect, learn, and grow together throughout the year. Chess.com titled staff WIM Ayelen Martinez, NM Jeremy Kane, and yours truly were active in the club forums, answering questions, sharing instructive content, and providing encouragement. Club engagement and accomplishments helped us identify Improvers of the Month, recognizing achievements, community activity, as well as highlighting improvement content served to inspire and support fellow travelers on the road to chess improvement. These recognitions included overall "Improvers of the Month," (hhart10k and lib_rl both received the initial honor as January award winners), as well as other awards for posts and videos of the month.

Adult improver PierreLuc won "Post of the Month" twice this year, inspiring fellow improvers with "Your Elo is Lying to You!" and "5 Actionable Tips for Adult Improvers."

Coach Champs

Monthly improvement recognition was one benchmark of success this year, and in addition to selected Improvers of the Month, several members of the Improvers Club and chess streamers/personalities competed in the prestigious Coach Champs tournament, matching improvers with legendary chess coaches. 

Imagine the opportunity to work with GMs Arturs Neiksans and Ben Finegold, IMs Levy Rozman, Andras Toth, and David Pruess, or world-class instructors like WGM Dina Belenkaya, CM Can Kabadayi, or NM Robert Ramirez. This improvers dream came true for 32 passionate chess improvers, including the winner of the U1600 group, KiriyamaKazuo.

KiriyamaKazuo has been an incredibly active and positive influence in the Improvers Club. After winning Coach Champs, he shared the following message in the club:

Individual Victory, Community Togetherness

He continued by generously sharing his training plan guided by his coach, Pruess. His individual accomplishment was quite impressive, but he was also quick to credit community support as another important aspect of his training, playing sparring games with U2000 group participant and fellow Improvers Club member Gothenburgess, David’s U1200 group student kashcarbon, as well as training with his friend lib_rl.

This sense of community support and togetherness radiated throughout the Improvers Club, including in an extraordinary group opportunity to challenge one of the world’s greatest players of all time.

Improvers Club Challenges Judit Polgar! 

Our improvers sharpened their skills and challenged several titled players throughout the year in simultaneous exhibitions, including GM Carlos Matamoros and WIMs Ayelen Martinez and Luciana Morales, as well as NMs Sam Copeland, Jeremy Kane, and Matthew Payne. As memorable and exciting as these events were, three Improvers of the Month with ratings over 2000 (lib_rl, Flan, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz44) joined your author in an unforgettable opportunity of a lifetime, challenging the living legend herself, GM Judit Polgar, in the 2025 Judit Polgar Global Chess Festival. 

Although, just like the other five communities, we ultimately succumbed to Judit’s legendary attacking fireworks in her impressive perfect score in the simultaneous exhibition, we played as a team and demonstrated great fighting spirit. 

Commentating along with IM Tania Sachdev, Rozman was complimentary of the team’s fighting spirit:

This actually looks like a very legitimate game... This one is far from over I feel if Black defends correctly.

—IM Levy Rozman

We’ve only scratched the surface of this action-packed improvement year, without even mentioning the weekly Improvers' Sunday Rapid events and the currently ongoing Improvers Club End-of-Year Marathon tournament organized by IA Judit Sztaray. All of these incredible events helped inspire and sharpen the skill set of the improvers—how did this translate into potential rating gains?

Rating Gains

How well did the improvement community do this year? Let's take a look!

Collectively, the improvers community gained 4,305,861 Rapid, 2,936,323 Blitz, and 2,445,850 Bullet rating points in 2025, for a combined rating gain in these three playing formats of 9,688,034.

Hard Work Pays Off

9,688,034 community improvement rating points didn’t just fall out of the sky. Hard work, dedication, and concentrated study are some of the not-so-secret recipes for chess improvement. What sort of work did the improvement community do on Chess.com in 2025? Playing and analyzing games, sharpening their skills with puzzles, and exploring/practicing new concepts through interactive lessons took center stage. 

The average member of the 2025 Improvement Challenge gained 85 Blitz, 116 Rapid, and 85 Bullet rating points. A nice collection of points in itself! If we zoom in, there are several notable improvement stories to share, and we are merely scratching the surface of these incredible community members and stories. 

Life Adversity Inspires Chess Growth

At the beginning of this article we met cegalleta, who was inspired to explore chess after a challenging life circumstance.

What a year it has been! In March, he was the “Up to 1200” rated Improver of the Month, participated in Coach Champs, and brought home several hundred rating points per category as a wonderful 2025 Improvers Challenge memento.

Building the "Best Experience"

lib_rl had quite a bit to positively summarize in his "year in review." He was, along with hhart10k, the first "Improver of the Month" in January 2025, reached new rating milestones, grew his instructional chess content creation endeavors, and was a member of the Improvers team that faced Judit Polgar. He concluded his review of 2025 as follows: 

"In conclusion, if I had to name my chess year, I would call it “The Best Experience” and it became the best thanks to our club. <3"

If I had to name my chess year, I would call it 'The Best Experience'; and it became the best thanks to our club.

—lib_rl

It's great to hear him describe his chess year as "the best experience," and he has helped build the "best experience" in the Improvers Club by sharing his insights and encouragement as an advanced player, including playing training games with fellow club members ranging from beginners to advanced tournament players.

You Are Not Your Elo

hhart10k mentioned her goal was to reach a 650 rating, and her 488 Rapid rating point climb to 802 certainly accomplished that aspiration. Despite this impressive and inspiring rating climb, she, like the profile message displayed on Coach Champs draft day, would be the first to emphasize, "You are not your Elo." 

Little did she know, a fun photo of her canine companion would inspire Rozman to draft her in Coach Champs.

I’m going to go with the person with the dog in their profile picture, which is hhart10k.

—IM Levy Rozman

The attention of being Levy's student certainly can take some time to adjust to, especially with every move, brilliancy, and blunder alike being made visible to millions of chess fans. As became typical of her Improvers Club engagement, she turned the challenging experience of Coach Champs into a positive, forward-thinking message: 

"This was my first ever high stakes tournament, so the story arc of my games was all about learning how to handle the nerves of playing in my first tournament in front of a live audience. It wasn’t always pretty, but I’m proud of my perseverance after a huge first game loss. I hope my games give hope to others in my Elo range that improvement is always possible. "

It wasn't always pretty, but I'm proud of my perseverance after a huge first game loss. I hope my games give hope to others in my elo range that improvement is always possible.

—hhart10k

As she looks toward 2026, her focus very much goes beyond rating and the 64 squares in isolation: 

"Regarding chess specific goals, I want to continue to develop chess as a meditation practice, using chess to help with living a meaningful life. On the board, I will be focusing on turning a weakness exposed in CoachChamps, endgames, into a strength over the next year. And, using endgames as a metaphor, I will really be focusing on living a life well lived off the board."

2026 Here We Come!

It's been a remarkable year for chess improvement—congratulations to everyone who participated in the 2025 Improvement Challenge! Stay tuned for details and registration for our 2026 Chess.com Improvement Challenge. 

In the meantime, please consider joining our Improvers Club. This club is open 24 hours, 365 days a year and dedicated to supporting your chess improvement. Hopefully, the improvement stories in this article will inspire you to take the next step in your own chess improvement journey. We're here for you every pawn push of the way. Thanks to all who made 2025 such a special year for chess improvement, and let's prepare to write an incredible improvement story together in the new year! 

How was your 2025 chess journey? Let us know in the comments!