MY JOURNEY TO BLITZ 2000
When I first joined chess.com on November 26, 2022, I started at the beginner level since I only knew how the pieces move and capture. I wasn't too fixated on playing blitz since my aim was to improve my rapid elo and have fun playing, however after crossing 1000 rapid elo in 2023, I decided to play a 5 minutes blitz for fun and to my surprise, I quickly went from a mere 522 to 1000 in 4 months. After crossing 1000 blitz elo I started to play blitz more often because it's fun and each month I'd cross another milestone by gaining 100 elo until I hit 1500 elo in July 2023, I stopped playing blitz that summer because I was on a mission to grind my rapid rating to 1800. After failing to reach 1800 I went back to playing blitz in October 2023 where I crossed 1600 which is where elo anxiety started to hit me, I didn't wanna play in fear of losing my rating so I went on a hiatus until February 2024 after reaching 1800 rapid previous month I felt that I should apply what I've learned in blitz. During March and May, I trained every day by doing lots of tactical puzzles, analyzing my over the board games, studying grandmaster games and specifically one of my favourite players Mikhail Tal, I went through hundreds of his games to understand his play style and how I can apply them in my games. Mikhail Tal is well known for his brilliant attacking and sacrificial playing style and they're amazing to watch. The game below is my favourite game by Tal where he sacrificed EVERYTHING and won the game, the beauty of this game blew me away:
Going through Tal's games made me curious about my playing style so I analysed some of my games and noticed something, In most of my games I'm usually the one getting attacked and I manage to use my opponent's momentum against them to launch a counter-attack since my opponents attack fail I see opportunities to counter. I've also noticed that the opening I used to play didn't suit my play style, I love e4 but my counter-attacking style requires patience and manoeuvring. In contrast, in e4 positions, I try to attack my opponents but at the 2000 level people study theory and my attack gets quickly neutralized leaving me with a dry middlegame to mess up. At this point, I was at 1900 blitz elo and I knew I wasn't gonna win games with cheap opening tricks, so I started learning d4 openings and practising them and the middlegame plans in those positions after which I forced myself to play d4 in blitz games even though I wasn't comfortable in the closed positions. I learned a lot while climbing the rating ladder and here are some important things I learned:
Knowledge + Practice = Improvement
This is my unpopular opinion but I believe that learning new information about the game of chess is essential for improvement, I thought I knew a lot about chess when I got to 2000 rapid but I was shocked at how many details there are to know about the game. In June 2024 I started reading How To Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman and it taught me a lot I needed to know to improve my games. Before reading the book I had little understanding of imbalances but after reading several chapters I got exposed to different types of imbalances in chess and how to take advantage of them and that's what I did, I practised positions and solved imbalanced puzzles until I grasped the concepts of each. I also watch YouTube lectures on middlegame plans, opening ideas etc. that have aided my improvement at the game.
Speed and Accuracy
Blitz chess or Speed chess in my opinion is mainly about instincts, split second decisions and pattern recognition. I learnt this from watching GM Hikaru's streams where I noticed that he plays good moves fast until a critical moment in the game he pauses to find the best continuation. I used to be a slow player meaning I played 5 min blitz or 3+2 blitz because I would lose on time in 3 min blitz and to improve my speed I knew I needed to learn middlegame plans so that whenever I'm in a middlegame I don't have to spend much time figuring out what to do. So with that in mind, I practised middlegames every day until it's engraved in my subconscious in order to navigate the middlegame with speed and accuracy.
Rating is Relative
Your rating doesn't matter and I learnt this the hard way since I used to be so fixated on my rating, I was scared of losing my rating, I got upset after losing over 100 elo in my quest to 2000 and my rating took many hits along the way which was frustrating sometimes, however after taking some losses I realized that it doesn't matter if my rating went down by any amount because it doesn't define my skill and that goes for my opponents as well, Im guilty of underestimating lower rated players but I get humbled whenever they crush me because their skill isn't reflected in their rating so instead of obsessing on rating I trained myself to not care whether I lose rating or not because at the end of the day, rating goes up and it can fall right down, it happens to everyone and it's a fact that you just gotta accept.
Losses are Opportunities to Learn
Losing is inevitable, even the best players in the world lose, it's frustrating to lose in chess and whenever I go on a losing streak I think I should quit but recently I've been analyzing my losses and although it pains me to look at my losses I gain a lot of insights in how I play. I noticed that in most of my losses, I make horrible blunders under pressure or I get tunnel vision (it happens but it is what it is) so to correct that I identify my weaknesses and try to improve in that area whether it's playing faster because I lose a lot on time, keep calm under pressure, or sharpening my tactical awareness by doing puzzles.
Patience
I know everyone knows that improvement doesn't happen overnight, it's a journey, it takes hard work, dedication and patience to improve at chess even if you're talented it still takes some time to cultivate that talent. so my final words are: just be patient, enjoy the game and enjoy learning and improving at the game of chess.
