My Improvers Journey!!!!! (May 2025)

My Improvers Journey!!!!! (May 2025)

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Welcome back to my Improvers Journey! This series is dedicated to following my chess journey through the Chess.com Improvers club, a movement that is helping over 30,000 members find coaching, helpful tips and growth. In this edition of my Improvers Journey, I will be showing you what I have been doing throughout May, what I've been learning, some beautiful games that I played, and some thoughts going forward. 


What's included in this edition:

  • A chess lesson: How to avoid tilt.
  • Incredible games from this month.
  • Accomplishments and overview of this month.
  • What's next?

A chess lesson: How to avoid tilt.

Tilt. That feeling of sinking regret, when you know you should stop but just can't. Let me paint a picture for you, a picture that I'm all too familiar with. You log into chess.com, ready for some blistering chess and decide to play bullet. You win one game, then another. A loss happens, but you shake it off and win your next three games. Next game, you're playing some dude 300 points lower than you and you establish an advantage, slowly pressing until he blunders his queen. He doesn't resign however, and your temper starts rising like a tide. Then it happens. Deep in time trouble, you hang a fork and lose the game. Dang it.

You play another game, determined to get those rating points back and avenge yourself on the next hapless person. But the next hapless person beats you easily. And the next. Now you're going to through all the stages of anger and depression, fighting to win just one more game, to get back those points. But that win never comes...

Does that scenario feel familiar? I think every chess player experiences some form of tilt. Tilt isn't easily pinned on one thing, but it always comes from something that gets into your head, something that messed you up and kicked you out of the zone. The symptoms of tilt include playing tens of games and losing all of them.

The way to avoid tilt is stop it before it begins. The most effective way to do this is to set yourself limits, to control yourself from playing too much. A time limit works well, but you might be tempted to squeeze just one more in. And the cycle continues. 

The best limit is a limit of games. Set yourself a number of games you're going to play -- 10 bullet games or six blitz games for example -- and then stick to it. After you've played your limit, give yourself a break from the screen. Drink some tea, read a book, just unwind from the stress of time trouble and clicky mouses and breathe deep. Then, refreshed and with a clear head, you can venture onto the field of battle and wage war against Martin the Bot or a hapless human once again.


Incredible games from this month.

One of the most impressive things that I've done this month is increase my rating to the point where I get paired against GMs in the pool. I have gotten paired against three GMs so far and while I lost to two 2700 GMs, the result was not the same against the 2500 GM. Time control: 1+0.

Next is a daily game played against one of my friends. A positional start, and a beautiful attack to finish.

Up next we have a rapid game that I played at the beginning of this month. I cooked, to put it bluntly!


Accomplishments and overview of this month.

May 2025 probably saw the best results from online play that I've ever had before. This month I peaked my bullet rating, saw my puzzle battle rating soar, beat some of the best players in the world and didn't tilt from my high horse of 2400+! 

The first thing I'd like to highlight is my history of puzzle battle. I had played puzzle battle before of course, grinding my way up to a 2000 rating and scoring a high of 45 puzzles in a three-minute battle. But this month something had changed in the way I viewed puzzles. Instead of blindly going as fast as I could to solve puzzles and usually failing three before 35, I played with purpose and created some amazing results. The first thing I did with the advice of a friend was to up my goal for each battle to 40+ every single time. 

So I searched for a battle one time, and I played @yosephtaher. That's right, the 3100 IM who has won Bullet Brawl and numerous other accolades in his career. And I beat him.

Screenshot from my phone, I was playing on the app.

I also scored a new high of 46(!) and consistently scored 40 in almost every battle. And I ground my way up the rating chart by farming 1900s all the way to a rating of 2160! The future is bright!

Blitz is one of the most popular time controls in the world, and on chess.com the preferred time is 3+0. I came into May with a blitz rating of 2403, my all-time high. I didn't play much blitz this month, only 60 games, but I played well and focused on the games I played. There were some slight twiddles at the beginning and I lost a few to start, down to 2375. But I had another couple days of sheer brilliance, when I'm fully in the zone and I just play chess with all I've got, all of the lessons I've learned just flow and I don't even have to think. I just play. 

Courtesy of two more late games one day, I have a rating of 2450 blitz. 

Exciting!!

Bullet is the final thing to highlight and this will not disappoint. I have to admit, 90% of the games I played this month were bullet games. And as always with such a large number of games being played -- 822 to be precise! -- there were ups and downs. However, the good far outweighed the bad and the lowest bullet rating I recorded this month was a shocking 2422. It just shows how far I've come in only five months, that at the beginning of this year 2400 was my peak and I would drop down to 2100. And now I'm not going under 2400 on my worst days! 

The most amazing thing that happened this month was a peak of bullet rating on May 11th. That day alone, I played 113 bullet games and got a peak bullet rating of 2596!!!! 

Now unfortunately I let the excitement get to my head and I lost the next few games I played. But 2600 is on the horizon! 

Me trying to get 2600 be like...

 

This month I've competed with some incredibly strong players, beating a 2580 National Master in blitz and a 2758 International Master in bullet. There are many big fish out in the pool of players and I can't wait to play them!


What's next?

In June, I have two main competitions that I'm excited to play in. I'll be playing in the Minnesota State Blitz championship, an open blitz tournament that always promises fun! And then I'll play in the Chess.com Community Hyperbullet championship, a tournament where last year I beat my first Grandmaster. Both of those competitions are fierce and highly competitive and I look forward to testing my newfound knowledge then!

I am really excited about the next few months of my Improvers Journey. I'll spout of some stats real quick, comparing my ratings from the beginning of January when I first embarked on this journey to now.

  • Bullet rating increased by 250+ points! (~2300 on January 1st to a peak of 2596 in May!)
  • Blitz rating increased by 280 points! (2170 on January 20th to a peak of 2450 in May!)
  • Puzzle rating increased by ~200 points! (~3150 on January 1st to a peak of 3333 in May!)
  • Daily 960 rating increased by 300+ points! (~1200 on January 1st to a peak of 1541 in May!)

The future is bright indeed! Join the 2025 Chess.com Improvement Challenge and improve today!


Past Improvers Journey 2025 Blog Posts