My Improvers Journey!!!!! (January 2025)

Hello everyone! I have recently joined the chess.com Improvers movement with a goal of improving my chess game far beyond my current level. As part of this, I will be writing monthly blogs showcasing what I have been working on in that month, showing some of my best games from that month and what's next for me. This was January 2025, let's hit it!

• What is the Improvers club?
• My goals for this month and this year.
• My best games from January.
• What's next?

What is the Improvers club?

A few weeks ago, Chess.com announced the Improvement Challenge 2025, a new movement to help members improve their game, rating and openings. Any member could sign up, join the official club and access courses and videos created by some of the most renowned coaches in the world. And as an extra incentive, everyone also has a chance to win some great prizes like diamond memberships and private lessons! As of this writing, over 30,000 people have signed up! Most people want to complete the goal of gaining rating points, but many others wish to improve opening repertoires or create healthy habits.

My goals for this month and this year. 

I had set some haphazard goals last year, mostly based around getting my rating higher and beating GMs. This year, I'm going to put down some concrete, measurable, achievable goals and I'm going to hit them. While most revolve around a higher rating, there are also some based on tournament wins and understanding the complex areas of chess that I haven't mastered yet. So without further ado, here are my chess goals for 2025:

• Achieve a bullet rating of 2600.
• Achieve a blitz rating of 2500.
• Achieve a rapid rating of 2400.
• Achieve a puzzle rating of 3500.
• Solve 50 puzzles in a three-minute puzzle rush or puzzle battle.
• Achieve a puzzle battle rating of 2200.
• Achieve a USCF rating of 2000.
• Master 1.e4 and 1.Nf3.
• Reach my state's State Championship.
• Compete and win the Chess.com Spell Chess Championship.
• Beat a 2000+ OTB positionally.

This month I had a couple goals. One was to improve my knowledge of the openings I play regularly. (e.g. Modern, Colle, London, and Reti.) The other was to increase my knowledge of a couple variants, notably spell chess and 3 check. After my analysis of this month, I completed both goals without a doubt and played to my potential on multiple occasions. 

My best games from January.

In January I experienced an overall sink in my ratings. As everybody knows, rating is a fickle thing; sometimes it goes up and you feel like the king of the world! -- and then it drops faster than mercury in a thermometer in Antarctica. In December 2024 I had made it my goal to be 2400 bullet, 2300 blitz and 2200 rapid by Christmas. All of those would be my all-time high and after weeks of grinding, I did hit them all by Christmas! 

So that was huge, however if you're at the top, you can only go down. I dropped significantly in all time controls, however, I still played some incredible games this month. Let's look through some of them. 

This first game was a daily game with a three day per move time control. 

A second game which wasn't amazing in terms of the actual moves being played (we both made mistakes), I will put in here because it shows the level of opponents that I can compete against. In this game I beat my best win in blitz in terms of rating, a 2572!!!!!  

One of my favourite things to do on chess.com is playing spell chess. This variant captivates and the combinations you can unleash are out of this world. On the 31st of January, the last day of the month, I defeated the #1 ranked spell chess player in the world, @8chancellor. While I can't put the PGN from a variants game into the format used by this blog, I have put a link to the game below.

https://www.chess.com/variants/spell-chess/game/76195385/54/1

My 3 check strength has improved as well, I'm now rated over 1700! I'm looking forward to the Community Championship next month!

What's next?

February is next. The shortest month of the year, it can be tough to stick with your goals after the initial enthusiasm wears off. However I have big plans for February and one of them includes OTB play with a very important tournament. I plan to focus on rapid games more and test out my fledgling repertoire by playing the Opening Roulette. 

P.S. 

This is the first blog I've ever written on this site, so I'm still testing out my writing style and trademarks. If you have any tips, tricks or cool stuff, feel free to tell me in the comments! (I know this is a short blog, future ones will have much more content) Also if you spot any errors, please let me know. Thank you for reading, and have a blessed day!