Goals and achievements

When I started this blog about 4 years ago, I set a goal to reach a playing strength of 2000 before my 40th birthday. And now that I have passed that day, it is time to follow up on my goal. So how did it go?

When I started this blog, I had never played a rated game over the board (OTB) in my entire life, I had no good indication of my initial playing strength. In my first post, I estimated that my playing strength was between 1600 and 1700, which was mostly based on my online rating (daily chess). At the time of my first blog post, my rating was around 1600. I managed to cross the 2000 mark a few months ago, but I have dropped a few rating points since then. At the moment, my rating is 1992, which I am quite pleased with.

My tactics rating has also increased significantly. This must have been around 1500 when I started the blog (I reset the score a couple of years ago), and now it too is above 2000. It has danced around the 2000 level for quite some time, which indicates that I have reached a plateau in terms of tactics. I definitely do not take this as an indication of my playing strength, since chess.com seems to have changed something with the rating levels, which gave me a 'free' boost of points a while back. Probably, the rating is inflated by about 300 points, which would indicate that my tactical ability corresponds more to a 1700 level.

However, my FIDE rating is nowhere near 2000. Rather, it's around 1500. This being said, I have never seen it as part of the goal to get a 2000 rating, at least not within this time period. But a corresponding playing strength (which was my goal) would allow me to draw frequently and win occasionally against players of that level. I have managed to get winning positions against such players, and I've also beaten a couple of them in blitz. But for the most part, they wipe me off the board. Instead, I tend to play quite evenly against players around 1700, and have beaten a few around that rating. So this is my best estimation of my playing strength in terms of Elo points. Ironically, this is the same as my initial estimate. Maybe I am just suffering from delusions of grandeur mediocrity.

So did I reach my goal? Well, to be honest, I have to say no.

One reason, which is clear to me now, is that I did not have a fair grasp of the true challenge of my goal. In hindsight, I understand that my initial estimation of playing strength was an overly optimistic. Based on what I know now, I would estimate my playing strength of 2014 to be between 1300 and 1400. In other words, I have improved, but not to the extent I set out to. Also, a playing strength of 2000 is much higher than I thought, which makes the goal that much more difficult to reach. But I will persist. My goal remains to get beyond 2000, but it will probably take another couple of years.

In order to reach my goal, I will need to improve my training. I am therefore working on a new training program, which I will present in my next post.

To be continued...