My chess journey: From 1000 to 1800 in 12 months

My chess.com account was created in November 2022, but I started playing regularly in June 2023, soon 2 years ago. Today is my 17th birthday so I thought it would be the perfect time to check back on where I was in April 2024.  

When I started playing chess in June 2023 I was a complete beginner, only playing rapid and only having a rating of 300, but I have been playing almost every day since then and today I would consider myself relatively strong, although I am far from my goal of a FIDE title. As of my last birthday, April 26th 2024, 10 months after starting to play chess, I was already at 1000+ in rapid, in fact a week after my birthday i had gone from 1000 to 1300, but I had also started playing blitz and some bullet. My blitz rating exactly a year ago was 900 and in bullet I had already reached 1200 and already considered it my best time format, that is true to this day. In the last 12 months, my rapid rating has gone up by 800, I am now 1800. In blitz I have gone up from 900 to currently being at 1728, but peaking just a week ago just over 1800. Bullet though, there I have reached my highest heights, last year I was 1200, now I 1800, but in a slump, a month ago i was only 2 rating away from hitting 2000. But the question now is HOW, how exactly have I improved so much in this last year, from being the average chess.com player, to being in the 99th percentile?

I am obsessed with chess, that is the short answer, I play A LOT of chess in my spare time, and if I am not playing it, odds are I am watching it, either on YouTube or Twitch, with my favorite on both being Daniel Naroditsky. But more than just playing and watching chess, I've also been analyzing a lot, and that is not just chess.com game review, its about evaluating and analyzing positions without an evaluation bar and not just finding the absolute best moves, but also about evaluating the position as accurately as possible, and then compare to the actual eval, and if you are far off the actual evaluation, you try to find out why. Its also about doing puzzles, about building pattern recognition, I have done 8.000 puzzles on chess.com, peaking at over 3100, but that does not include puzzle rush where i have played 3581 times, and with an average score of 18.3, that is over 65.000 puzzles. Those puzzles are the reason my pattern recognition is able to find brilliant ideas in seconds in a bullet game, one example of that from a game I played earlier today is in the position below, where i found the brilliant Bxf5. My opponent played Kxh5 taking my knight, I instantly played Rh1+, sacrificing my Rook, because once my other rook recaptures the bishop, I have checkmate. If my opponent were to instead play Kxf5 avoiding checkmate, I would play Ng7+ winning the game through a fork on the king and rook on e8, which is also attacked by my e1 rook, and as my opponent only has one defender in the c8 rook, I would win the rook for the exchange of my bishop.

All of the puzzles I've done is one of the major reasons I almost hit 2000 in bullet and have beaten several 2500+ players in it, including WIM Anna-Maja Kazarian in hyper bullet twice, and FM James Canty once, and I have even drawn a 2800 in bullet who immediately blocked me for obvious reasons. In recent months I've also been studying chess, especially my favorite openings on Chessable, the openings I mainly play are Ruy Lopez, Sicilian, and the Grünfeld, and I have studied all three on Chessable, but with the Grünfled especially the thing that taught me most was Daniel Naroditsky's educational speed runs, where he occasionally plays the opening with black.

However, despite my progress, I am still far from perfect. Just yesterday I lost to a 900 in blitz, but no regular 900, but Frank, well known for his work with Levy Rozman (GothamChess), and that game is now his highest rated win in blitz, ever. While that loss did hurt, and it was humbling losing to someone 1000 rating points below me, but also reminded me that everyone has setbacks, even those who are rapidly improving. Every loss is a huge opportunity to improve, that is how I approach moments like these. 

Looking ahead, I know that reaching my dream of a FIDE title will take even more work, patience, and passion. But if the last year has taught me anything, it's that I can achieve huge things when I stay obsessed and consistent but not to an unhealthy extent. I don't know exactly where I'll be by my next birthday, but if it's anything like this year, I know I'll be even closer to my goals.

Thank you for reading about my journey so far. I’m excited to see what comes next.