How I gain 800+ elo in a year

Hi peer improvers, I want to share my journey here about how I improved about 800 elo in around 1 year, my short term goal is to hit 2000 soon, but I want to share some items about what I do right and wrong during the last year.

Some facts about myself: I am 29 this year, have a full time job and family, I don't have the most time on the internet, the success of my elo gain comes from a reasonable study plan, and reasonable resource selection. In this post, I am sharing how I made my improvements. I do believe: If I can make it, there is no reason a younger player, with more time to study shouldn't be able to.

Well then...how'd you do it?

Tactical training

1. Puzzles and puzzle rushes. I do puzzle puzzles almost everyday. All formats are important, daily, ranked puzzles, puzzle rushes (timed, survival).

2. My puzzles elo from start of year is ~2000, and now I am almost 3000.

3. My 3 minutes puzzle rush is from ~20 -> 34, 5 minutes now 39, survival 52.

4. 3 minutes is most important for blitz, if you cannot find the tactics in 3 - 5 seconds, you cannot realistically pull it in blitz, if you cannot spot the tactic in 30 seconds, you cannot find it in 10 min rapid. 5 minutes and survival is important for rapid + time control, and it is really about consistency

5. One of the earliest materials I started with is https://www.chess.com/lessons/how-to-checkmate, great material for beginners.

6. Another fabulous resource on chess.com is https://www.chess.com/lessons/rook-and-other-endgames. Which I found very helpful

7. I worked with chessable book: Wood pecker method, good material overall

8. Learn from your mistake, I always want to review the tactics I got wrong from time to time, it's important to not repeat the mistake, and find the moves faster next time

Thanks a lot!

Opening

Pick your opening.. And know it well..

I have tried a few openings during the year, but starting from May or June, I am sticky to a few real openings:

As white, I am playing 1. d4, London, Jobava London & Queens gambit.

As black, I am playing Caro-Kann against 1. e4, and 1.. Nf6 agains 1. d4.

The choice to make is:

1. Find an opening that fit your style! My style is more slow, positional and solid, and the openings I choices I make are consistent with my style.

-- I tried Vienna and four knights scotch, I got positions I don't like and eventually give it up.

2. Find an opening without too many theory!

-- I tried Sicilian Dragon for 3 months around 1300, I had good chances in online games, but once I played an OTB tournament, I got crushed by a 10 year old, with h4 h5, with -5 evaluation move 20. I even have the game saved.. https://www.chess.com/a/MUubBYCnwD8r?tab=analysis

3. Learn the whole repertoire, instead of a single line.

4. Learn more middle game plans.

For london, I started with a Simon Williams course on chess.com,

For Caro, this is the most amazing resource on chessable (completely free) https://www.chessable.com/course/77954/ The Caro-kann for club players

There are also numerous lichess study which are free.

I know strong players like Carlsen played all openings when young, but realistically, with limited time, amature players like me need to stay with a few with strong confidence

Online Resources:

- I want to make an emphasis on the online resources. Of course I do follow Hikaru and Levy, but as improvements goes, I don't think their channels provides a huge value: They usually provides lines, but not thinking process. It is the thinking process which is most important during improvments.

Some of my favorite video resources are:

- Naroditsky's speed run videos. Despite being a speed monster, he provides extensive thinking process and reasoning for selection of moves and opening, gives detailed lines up to a limit. He might only post monthly videos now, but there is still a huge past collection.

- Chessbrah. Specifically Aman. Aman posts incredible videos on the chessbrah channel, as a london player, his London speed run is easily the most valuable resources ever existed on internet for free. There are also some great content about tips and more positional plays.

Physical resources:

I want to share this great video from Naroditsky about how to select your chessbook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utYiiAb1Ngg&t=657s

What I have been working through so far:

Chess.com:

- A few opening studies and course

-- Checkmate patterns (Simon Williams) https://www.chess.com/lessons/how-to-checkmate

-- Endgame https://www.chess.com/lessons/rook-and-other-endgames

Chessable:

- The Jobava London system (Simon williams), paid

- Sicilian defense side lines (FM Lord_Stronghold), free. When I worked with dragon ~1300 - 1500 elo, this is my favorite material, especially against Bc4 bowder attack, gives me a incredible winrate

- The caro-kann for club players (GLSmyth), free. Incredible resource, many lines are similar to gotham's course. This course gives opening lines for a majority of the moves you might face, (maybe except alien gambit), as well as middle game plans and example games, the author also constantly replies to comments and adds new lines, truly amazing.

- The club player's 1. d4 repertorie (IM Andras Toth), paid. I learnt many lines there, but I don't especially enjoyed the content and explanations there.

- Woodpecker's method, paid. Great tactical material and training methods.

- Woodpecker's method 2, positional plays, paid. I am only getting started, but very reasonable content so far.

Chessly.

- The monthly membership is definitely more affordable now.

Games:

I do believe quality is more important than quantity.

- As you can see, despite gaining 800 elo in rapid, I only played 200 games in the last year, with a 70% win rate.

How to learn from your game:

- Opening: For every game that I played, If I found lost in the opening, I tried to consult my courses for the line, so next time it is played, I will have more confidence, despite I may have lost the game last time.

- Learn from your mistake. If you keep making the same mistake, then the game you lost is meaningless. I want to share you one example with my latest rapid game. https://www.chess.com/game/live/128221733449. The specific move I wanted to highlight is 9. Ne5. I made mistake before allowing 9.. e5, which 8.. Re8 is seriously hinting. so in this position, even I didn't calculate the whole line too deep, I know this is probably the only move and played it quickly to get a better position.

What should I do better:

- Many of my game hours are spent on bullet, which.. could be arguably hurts more than it helps. I know there is something wrong when I realized I played more bullet than Hikaru in the last year.

- Stay with the same time control.. My coach told me to stay with the same time control in general, which.. I didn't listen quite well.

- Watch the clock.. Which I always do, when I have a equal or winning position

The link doesn't seem to work. What is the name of the course?

Cheers

The Caro-kann for club players. https://www.chessable.com/course/77954/

That worked, thanks

That's about it.

I do have a chess coach (IM, serbia) staring April and we have a weekly schedule about 1 hour. The chess coach generally helps me work on some positional plan and recommendation of directions, and keeps my motivation up for a bit.

I believe everyone in this channel are somewhere serious about making an improvement in 2025, I am happy if anyone ever found this post helpful or inspirational. I will keep working on my journey, and I will be glad to face you at 2000 elo next year.

It doesn't work because you're either not logged in or you don't own it.

Interesting. I would also add that many people underestimate the effectiveness of simply playing chess every day, and then thoroughly analyzing it (not merely switching on game review and admiring all the nice symbols it gives you. I gained 1100 rating points in 2 years where this was my primary means of study. Unfortunately I got bogged down a bit this year due to school commitments this spring, but this next year I hope to get back at it using pretty much the study plan outlined above-glad to hear it worked for someone else.

Same here, I raised from 300 blitz in 2023 march to 1700 (almost 1800) now. What I do is first do daily puzzles since they are usually inspiring along with puzzle rush (Like @MajicMaJik said) play in huge online tournaments that have titled players or over 2000 rated players and get yourself to play against them. It doesnt matter if you lost, I learn from the losses against 2000s. All it matters is practice and remember all the tactics. Also rating is one of the major factors why beginners stay as beginners, they cared about elo too much. I just turn off the setting for revealing elo rating of your opponent and managed to raise skill level pretty quickly. Last thing I found useful is time controls. Play with Rapid first and if you found yourself with winning streak of over 10, start playing blitz. I hope people found all suggestions here helpful, not sure if my experiences is true for everyone here. Thanks to everyone that contributed here!

Thanks for all the relevant topics and sources, I am 2000, and I fully agree with the learning plan/sources. For openings, personally, I like openings where you control the opening, like the Caro-Kahn for black, and thus giving you the advantage. I also agree with knowing 1-2 openings with White and Black really well, as this can take you far.

Another thing that many people leave out is endgame study. Far from being dry and boring, many endgames are some of the most interesting and complicated types of positions you will get in chess (particularly pawn endgames). If you do not believe me, check out Daniel Naroditsky's youtube series on endgames. Some of the ideas that he demonstrates will blow your mind and reinforce your appreciation of the beauty of chess, while also providing plenty of practical guidance to aid in calculation ( I tend to think the amount of raw calculation needed in the endgame is the main reason players our level struggle in that phase; we just aren't good enough at visualizing deep lines in a reasonable amount of time).

I agree. I did find endgames very important. I got a physical copy of Dvoretskys.. But I found the content sometimes dry and hard to follow. I might want to look for something a bit more interactive for my level (maybe silman's on chessable)