Breaking Boundaries; How I Achieved the "Impossible"
Recently, I had a break from school. Not just any break, but spring break. It is one of the most relieving times in a person's life. During this period, I achieved what I never dreamt was possible (at least a year or so ago), breaking 1700 bullet, 1500 rapid, and 1600 blitz. This story starts back in November of 2024. Here's how It went;
November 2024:
The first thing I recognized was that my bullet was astonishingly low compared to my other ratings. I realized that I could improve my bullet rating by a lot. As my friend bragged about being higher rated than me, little did he know that I had improved. I did a one-day bullet grind to break 1000 bullet (this was quite easy considering that my ratings were 1000 blitz and 1100 rapid). After a while, I started to forget about this time control and started focusing on rapid and blitz. I kept playing these time controls but showed little to no improvement in my rating.
December 2024:
I decided to take a slightly different approach to how I was going to improve my rating. I was quite frustrated that I was stuck at the annoying 1100 barrier. I started absolutely GRINDING puzzles. Though my puzzle rating mostly stayed the same (due to my correct and incorrect ratio) little did I know that I was REALLY improving. I played puzzles throughout the month alongside rapid and blitz, eventually reaching a rapid of 1200 and a blitz of 1100 (and completely forgetting about bullet).
January 2025 (Puzzle Grind):
To ring in the New Year, I did something most people in this world wouldn't dream of, I grinded Chess till 1 am (Just kidding, but I played a lot of chess that week). Sadly January was one of my slow months in rating grind. I showed little to no progress, but I did play over 2500 puzzles that month, which set up for what I call my "February Incline".
February 2025:
By the end of February, I had increased my bullet rating by +100, and my rapid by +200 but nothing much in my blitz. I thought this was a great development in my rapid game, this was where I started to gain my confidence. I played stronger opponents to practice and learn from the games. I also started studying openings such as the Caro-Kann, which helped me improve my play.
March 2025:
BANG! +100 BLITZ and +200 BULLET!!! From here it was just UP UP UP. I made sure to play solid openings when I was playing blitz and play decently fast, essentially following a common opening pattern every game to ensure comfortable play throughout the game. For bullet, I made sure to play fast, but not premove since many people fall for "dumb" opening traps due to premoving. I made sure to play fast (with a mouse) but with accuracy and as much as possible. I limited my bullet play only to times I had access to a mouse.
April 2025:
Ladies and Gentlemen; Behold, My Holy Grail of rating improvement. April was the best rating increase in my life so far. +400 Bullet, +300 Blitz, and +100 rapid. This was the month I went for it. At the peak of my confidence, I achieved the impossible. During April 2025 all my hard work had paid off. I followed all the Chess principles I knew, all the lessons I had learned from the lessons on Chess.com, all the opening prep, and every piece of advice I had gotten. I limited my tilted play (Tilt is essentially when your brain is so tired from playing chess you just can't play) and played an insane amount of games to get this massive rating increase (1000+ games played).
What I learned/Overview:
- Limit Tilted Play
- Limit Premoving
- Play with a mouse just in case you enter time pressure
- DO PUZZLES (they help)
- Opening Prep helps as well
- Have a game plan (know what type of position you are comfortable playing in)
