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From 200-1700 elo (my journey)

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TheMathmage
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Disclaimer: This is my personal experience as a relatively new chess player and my journey only! However I hope I can offer you tips!

As a chess player we aim to reach our max elo, and play as well as we can in rapid, blitz, or bullet. When I was introduced to chess I dreamed of being 1300 elo on rapid, however 2023 me wouldn't believe the peak of my elo now. In 2023 chess boomed with the tv shows such as queen's gambit and other documentaries. I only started because my friends did, and I was horrible. I lost basically every game I played, and went down to 250 elo. Then I took a break from chess for 2 years, and came back in september 2025 at 450 elo. After only 2 weeks or so, I went up to 1k elo and was still on the rise. 

I think there are only 2 main things that you need to understand to surpass the 200-1000 elo range in chess, which are basic tactics and a solid opening.

Opening

As you can see from this position white has a dominant position because of the center control and better development. Usually these principals are good to remember for low elo chess since most players don't think about things like this. However if you can't remember these principles then just pick a solid and basic opening like the scotch, Italian, or even the London.

Basic tactics

Most low elo players lose because they miss free pieces or they are the ones blundering free pieces. For example:

 Most players that are low elo here would think "My pawn on f7 is hanging so I have to defend it" which is actually good because they have prophylactic thinking which is essential in the intermediate stage however most players with black forget that the knight on g5 is just hanging.
Conclusion
The overall conclusion from my perspective is for players to look at any of the opponents pieces and think "Are any of my pieces attacking any of my opponent's pieces and if so what is defending that piece?". Another important point is the opening which truly helped me speed through 400-1000 because most of my opponent's openings were all pawn moves and no development. So for all my friends out there who need to get to 1k this is the plan!