Elo 1000 Accomplished!!

Hi all,

a very important update on my chess journey. I have finally passed 1000 elo after joining chess.com for the last 8 months!

It's actually quite faster than my original plan. When I started this journey on July 2025, I divided my plan into 4-year elo target:
1) Freshman -> 0-1000
2) Sophomore -> 1000-1400
3) Junior -> 1400-1800
4) Senior -> 1800++

I still have 4 months left from my freshman year, so this is a good news. I could spend 1 year + 4 months to accomplish 1400 elo as sophomore!

Unlike some adult players here who claim that they just begin playing chess as adults -yet conveniently not mentioning they used to play chess a lot when they're still kids or teenagers-, I literally did not play chess much as young boy. I just found it not interesting back then. And it showed when I first joined this site. My initial elo bottomed at 200-ish.

Funny how my mid-life crisis completely turned my attitude on chess from simply meh into healthy obsession. Before mid-life crisis, I didn't play chess at all. I played video games from time to time. Now I play video games much less, as chess already occupies most of my free time.

Team chess.com, I owe you a lot. FM Nate Solon, NM Dane Mattson, and NM Robert Ramirez gave me the blueprints to work my ass off from the very bottom. And now? I'm going to work on my sophomore year with WGM Dina Belenkaya. 1000-1400 chess rating, yes? Looks like my sophomore would be very interesting.

And of course, I am grateful to Fred, Ayonk, and Chien. They are great chess mentors from Indonesia who deserve their own recognition. You want to learn chess out there? Just drop them a message. They know what they are doing.

Caissa, be with me. Grant me strength and wisdom through my lifelong chess journey.

William,

Jakarta, 27 March 2026