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Today will be my first day adding structure to my chess training. I am hoping to improve over the course of the summer and be adequately prepared to enter a tournament this Fall. I look forward to starting my journey and I am really excited to play some chess! My current ratings are: Blitz: 693 Rapid: 963 Daily: 970

Hi! My study plan will consist of the following: Opening review: Chesstempo, Time: 15m every 4th day. Strategy review: 20m every 3rd day. Woodpecker method: 15m every other day. Endgame review: 15m every 4th day.

Hello, For the rest of the year, since I won't be in school, I want to try to push for USCF expert by the end of the year. Below are some of my starting ratings USCF Classical: 1926 Chess.com Blitz: 2311 Chess.com Rapid: 2303 Chess.com Bullet: 2504 Chess.com Puzzles: 3288 Woodpecker Method: Cycle 1, Puzzle 60 100 Endgames You Must Know: Endgame 5-Imprisoning the Stronger Side's King I also want to try to work on Jacob Aagard's Positional Play and Thinking Inside the Box I've been slowly trying to analyze all of my Classical games, and putting them into Lichess studies, but it's been a slow process.  I know this journey is non-linear, and will take some time, but I hope my goal of expert by the end of the year is reasonable.

Chess.com RatingsBullet: 507Blitz: 678Rapid: 8901351 games and 336 puzzles in the past 30 days. I pretty much started on chess.com 3 weeks ago, so I'm trying to go hard the next week as well to see where the ratings end up at.It's unconventional, but I'm trying to get my bullet rating up because it's fun, to help with my blitz rating and time troubles. 10 days ago I was about 300 bullet rating which was correct imo. ~350 a week ago. The diff from that to 500 was puzzle rush, and I only started doing it 5 days ago. I'm really surprised at the diff, since it doesn't feel that much diff playing from 10 days ago. I'm documenting everything here since it feels like I'm plateaued at puzzle rush, but it could still be helping.I'm still sprinkling in some dailies and 15/10 rapids. I also really like daily and rapid 960. I find it funny that I rarely am ahead in time in 15/10 games, but I really like bullet.

Starting Chess.com ratings:Rapid: 878Bullet: 1311 (across 2 games, I expect this to drop)Blitz: 777Puzzle: 1804 I've been playing chess for years but never seriously tried to improve except for one year that I participated in my high school's chess club. We did one tournament, at which I went 2-3. I started playing again recently and was doing pretty well for a while, but my rating has dropped about 180 over the past couple of months. I think I was playing much more carefully when I started playing again, but I've gotten careless. I'd like to get back to that point first, then get better!

Hi guys, I'm not new in chess, but I would like to compete next year in a local FIDE-rated tournament. Starting ratings: Lichess Rapid: 1229 Chess.com Rapid: 803 (only 6 matches played) Training Tools: Tactics: The Woodpecker Method (on Chessable) Strategy: How to reassess your chess by Jeremy Silman Openings: Courses about Ruy Lopez and French Defense on Chessbase Endgames: 100 Endgames you must know by De La Villa (on Chessable) Tactics, tactics and tactics

These are my goals for 2025 FIDE ratings improvement: 1542 to 1600 Lichess classical: 1900 - 2000 Lichess Rapid: 1850 - 1950 Lichess Blitz: 1650 - 1750 Chesscom Rapid: 1700 - 1800 Chesscom blitz : 1450 - 1550 Complete at least 5 middlegame books Complete at least 2 endgame books  Complete 3 opening repertoire books  Complete at least 1 grandmaster-based book

Greetings everyone,  I found out about ChessGoals while listening to the Perpetual Chess podcast. I downloaded the study plan to improve my chess. My medium-term goal is to get to 1600, and my long-term goal is to be around 2000. Good luck to everyone with their respective goals. 

Hello Everyone!I want to achieve 1800 in rapid. So today I start 12 week plan to be a better player. Please wish me luck and persistence!Current ratings:Blitz 1370Rapid 1618Puzzles 2525Best regards!Brzydok

Hi everyone, I wantd to hit 1800 rapid rating here but I changed my goal to 1600 in 2025.Is there any 1600 player and would you please try this?Go to lichess, do puzzles1 200, 1500,1800 (my current rating),2100,2300 and try 5-10 minutes of each, if you don't have much time, mainly 1800 -2100. Please tell me how many you got right, how many incorrect and in what time - I want to know how good I need to be to reach 1600.

Hi! I'm new here, I'd like to know how things work here, how I can increase my knowledge with you. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to answer me!

Just saying hello. Would like to get above 1800 Chess.com Rapid and stay there. I would like a playing partner of a similar level, if anyone is interested.

Game one  Even development in the beginning Good tactic found in the middlegame. Don’t be too greedy   Game two Good opening and fair amount of development Good holding the position together in the end Good win

Excited to get back into studying chess! I did the beginner plan a year or two ago and that helped bring up my rapid rating from like 400 to ~1200. Want to try and lock in for another couple months and see where I can get. I am feeling pretty good about the study plan except for when it comes to openings. I am pretty much only an e4/e5 kind of player and against d4/c4 I go for the KID (although I don't feel like I have a very good idea as to what I am doing there). Would love some advice on how to best study and really learn openings (or if there are good places to look for creating my own personal opening database). I have kind of avoided really learning openings and it's mostly just vibes but I think that is starting to be a little limiting. Lemme know if you have any ideas there. Starting Ratings 2/17/25: Chess.com Blitz: 1201 (Goal 1500) Chess.com Rapid: 1443 (Goal 1800) Chess.com Daily: 1159 USCF Classical: 1167 (Goal 1400) Study Resources: Rapid Games: 15|10 Blitz Games: 3|2 Classical Games: 55|5 Woodpecker Method: https://chesstraining.app/training/tactics/list Strategy/Openings: Chess.com lessons Book: How to Reassess Your Chess 4th Edition

Been playing chess for 5 years now. I feel like i've hit a plateu. I have reached 1800 in rapid on chess.com. But right after that it plummeted down. Haven’t been able to break through to the 1800 level. Do you have any advice for me?

I think these people need help.

After a couple of years of not playing chess (pretty much not at all), I'm quite excited to start playing, learning and improving my chess game once more, so it's time to pick things up. This is where I'm starting from: Puzzles: 1816 Rapid: 946 Daily: 945 Blitz: 1039 I'm going to try and put in the daily work to get these numbers up, and will post updates every week on Wednesday. I'm also looking at joining a local, OTB chess club again, although I've not decided on that yet.

Greetings, everyone. I’m a rusty online player, once 2050-ish USCF OTB, now floored at 1800, and only upper 1500s in blitz here. I’d like to recover a little of my former glitter and show those kids on my lawn what’s what. More seriously, even getting back to 1800 in the company of what seems to be a happy and positive community would be great. Good luck.

I am starting the intermediate studying plan, I have been studying chess for the last few months and would like to try how this organized studying plan can lead me.. Some personal stats as of today: Chess.com blitz: ~1300 Chess.com rapid: 1415 (Somewhere underrated, climbing fast at current win rate) lichess blitz: 1600 - 1700 lichess rapid: ~1900. My goal is to reach ~1800 end of year.

I have heard some talk lately about improvement mindsets. The consensus is that it is better to have a “growth” mindset rather than a “fixed” mindset. The growth mindset has the view that you can grow in your understanding and skill while the fixed mindset believes that you have a certain level of talent and that if you fail it is because you just lacked sufficient talent to succeed. How does this affect goal setting for chess improvement? I think that focusing on rating gains (results) often comes from a fixed mindset while focusing on specific processes that will improve the way you play chess focuses more on growth. If important processes are improved, then rating gain will naturally follow. Bobby Fischer wrote that “Tactics flow from a positionally superior game.” This idea can be transformed into “Rating gains flow from superior game-playing processes.” Some Process to Improve: 1. Improve visualization, calculation, and evaluation.2. Improve candidate move selection.3. Improve time management. I’d like to set goals to improve these game-playing processes. While I think it is possible to have a rating improvement focused goal and still have a growth mindset, I also think it is better to set SMART goals that are based on improving processes so that the rating improvement naturally follows. Thoughts? Oh, another question. Proper goals need to follow the SMART principles.S = SpecificM = MeasurableA = AchievableR = RelevantT = Time-based The process goals I mentioned above are obviously relevant. It is not difficult to set specific, achievable, and time-based process-oriented goals. My problem is ... how can these be measured?