Reflections on My Chess Improvement
When I was a teen through age 19, I studied chess more or less obsessively and earned the National Master title. While my progress was pretty fast, relatively speaking, I was spending almost all of my time studying chess. In high school this meant 2-5 hours per day, and after I graduated it meant 8-10+ hours for multiple years in a row. What I got from this was a NM rating and roughly 2600 chess.com blitz peak. Then, for the next five years, I hardly studied chess at all. After the first year of an adjustment period to catch my level (2242 USCF peak), I not only didn't peak any more, I substantially dropped my USCF rating, lost my form, and didn't peak my blitz for years. I was playing a lot of chess in person casually, and found next to zero improvement from that, plus losing calculation form from not actually solving puzzles. I've seen plenty of rating graphs of people who stay the same rating as adults from huge number (e.g. 10,000-50,000+) of games, and can relate to that, from when I was not studying. Hard work pays off, but improvement is not automatic from just playing (as an adult), and I have a multi-year stagnated rating graph to show it, unfortunately.
This last year I came back to chess study and rather obsessively read chess books, spending almost all of my time on this, like I used to. I was a bit concerned being around the age 25 that I wouldn't be able to get a lot of progress like before, but this has been shown to be incorrect, as my chess.com blitz peak is now 2800+ (bullet 2773), compared to 2588 from January 2020. I believe this 200 rating point increase was from my two years of immersive study, one in 2020, and the other recent. My USCF is finally climbing back up, but I fell quite a lot when I wasn't studying. We'll see what's possible, but I absolutely believe that near obsession is pretty much required for any real chess ambitions for higher titles, unless done very gradually, or maybe just adjusting to slow chess given my blitz level would do it. I wouldn't count on it, I have a titled friend around my age who only gained ~10 points per year this last seven years and crashed almost 100 points below his peak, and I've seen other cases of dramatic decline too. Immersion works, back to reading, etc.
For context, I'm happy to read chess books 6-12 hours per day, depending on when I have time, which is especially when I'm not playing tournaments or coaching. 37 books finished since late December 2025, and I can do much more than this, seeing results recently is quite motivating. My coach Yaacov emphasizes enjoyment, it’s not essential to work on chess all the time, but it doesn’t necessarily feel like unpleasant work, and it’s nice to see clear results from effort again.
