Let me go first! 😊 I’m Ayelen Martinez, a chess player from Argentina, now living in Barcelona. Thanks to my dad and brother, I’ve played chess since I was 5. After beating them, I competed in tournaments, reaching a 2271 peak ELO (though that feels like a past life—I don’t play like that anymore, haha). Later, I coached beginners, including blind players, who were my favorites!
Since 2019, I’ve focused on streaming and organizing events for our online chess community. Chess is my lifelong passion, and I’m happy to share it with you all!
For the 2025 Chess Improvement Challenge, I want to level up my bullet, blitz skills, and tactics—my latest obsessions! My goal is to boost my bullet and blitz rating by 100 points and keep a tactics streak all year. Let’s see how it goes! 😂
Introduce Yourself and Your Goals!
This is the 3rd time having to edit this.
Hiya, I'm a young girl who has a special talent for chess, I love the game so much and sometimes I'd have dreams of chess, my goal is to become the youngest female grand master, I also love cats.
I've played chess for about 2 years.
I develop very fast, and I am hoping to become the youngest female grand master, this year I hope I could score the rating of 1500 rapid, though in the past I had some abusive issues, whenever I'd lose a chess game I'd rage, which my parents soon realised how I was treating myself over a game, so they helped me with my problem and explained to me that I'd always lose if I'm playing by force, and that I should just accept the game for what it is.
Anyway let's get to how I was introduced to chess, it was in Africa where the schools shut down due to COVID, where my mother taught me, my brother, and my sister to play chess, afterwards I came out to like it the most, so I was hoping to beat my father, after losing to him 3 times in a row, I developed and finally managed to beat him, and that's when I joined this community to grow.
That's about it.
Hello everyone, my name is Wisdom Oyemi and I aspire to become the best chess player I can possibly be with the time I have available.
I've played chess for several years, and I believe now is the best time for me to kick into a higher gear and take my knowledge up a notch.
For the 2025 Chess Improvement Challenge, I want to set out a clear roadmap to higher tactical understanding (which takes patience!), as well as read some good chess books on the way. My primary rating goals are to reach 1300 blitz and 1300 rapid by the end of the next calendar year.
For me, chess is a metaphor for life in many ways, and I intend on taking chess as seriously as possible.
Hi, I'm Harry and I'm currently a 820 rated blitz and 697 rapid rated player. I started playing chess in January 2023 and have recently gone on a rating rampage, increasing my ratings to the ones listed here. I'm hoping to reach 1000+ in Blitz in 2025 and 800-1000 rapid also. Looking forward to improving with everyone and getting tips from everyone no matter their rating!
Hello everyone. I am a senior in high school and Iv been playing chess for a couple years now. I’m from Florida, USA and starting out with chess I learned how to move the pieces from my older brother. I took a three week class at my school during the first and second semester and both sessions I managed to beat everyone in the groups. Looking back I think everyone in the sessions was new to chess I just somehow came out on top. Starting out it felt amazing to win and since then Iv developed a great passion for the game. Books, courses, videos, any information to chess I seek to learn to get better. I got a year round chess club started at my school and in this club I want to reach 1600 rating across puzzles, rapid, bullet and blitz. I just want to see how far I can go with chess and how many great people I can meet through the game
Hello everyone, I am Keshav Jain aspiring to become a professional chess player and represent my country in top events. Unlike most top players, I started playing chess when I was 14 and currently I am 16. I would like to improve my skills and atleast get FIDE rating this year
Thank you chess. Com
Hi, I’m Jake, and I am a sophomore in high school (Illinois, USA), playing for the school chess team. I’m currently second board in a high-ranking school, and I’ll be team captain next year. I’ve gotten back to serious chess in the last year or two (I started about 8 years ago), increasing my ratings both online and over the board by about 600 points. My goal for 2025 is to reach 2200 blitz, and secondly to reach 1800 USCF (I’m at about 1450). I know that these are very difficult goals, but with coaching and practice I know I can make it. Also, I aim to keep up a puzzle streak every day this coming year.
Hi, I'm TJ and I am trying to improve all of my ratings. I am currently around 1300 in Rapid, 980 in blitz and 600 in Bullet. I'm 43 years old and have played chess most of my life, but just recently began studying and playing more intensely. I started a Chess Club in my home town recently and also play in another chess club when they are available. My daughter and I were able to vacation in St. Louis this year and we had an amazing time at the World Chess HOF and the St. Louis Chess Club. I am hoping to climb my ratings up to 1600 Rapid, 1200 Blitz and 1000 Bullet by next year.
Hello, I'm a mid-30s professional working in healthcare. You can call me Ajay. My goals for chess are to continuously learn. Since I do work full time I prefer to slowly study and learn a little everyday. My goal is that these cumulative little improvements will eventually equate to a gain in my rating.
Hello, name's Flan, and I am one of the best Bird's players in the entire world (because almost nobody plays it haha). I initially learnt chess when I was 6 years old but really took it seriously about a year and a half ago. My journey came from a 400 all the way to a 2000, but I still desire for improvement and there are so many aspects that I can improve. I aim to get a blitz rating of 2200 and a rapid rating of 2100, while completely my opening repertoire and fully study endgames.
Hi! My name's Anthony and I'm a 25 yr old chess enthusiast who's spent the last 8 years of my life learning Chess, competing in amateur competitions and enjoying the thrill of the fight in the battle of strategy. My overall goal is to minimize my weaknesses in my decision making and get a step closer to some of the thrilling rapid events across the internet of Chess. I'll be satisfied crossing 2100 in Rapid rating *from 1920 (+-50) at the time of writing.
The upcoming challenge promoted by the club is just a extra bit of motivation to put more effort into my Chess.
Hi! I am Divyansh, a 16 y/o student from India. I started playing chess in the mid of last years' World Championship, when I was introduced to it by a friend and have played intermittently since then, not really being consistent. I reached 1,000 in just 2 months of playing, and then just stopped playing.
Getting back into chess now with this challenge and hoping to reach 1,750 Rapid rating by the end of the year, learn some openings and strategy and up my game in tactics and endgames, and enjoy this age-old yet timeless classic exercise of the human mind.
Hi everyone my name is Edwin,
I'm from Colombia and I'm approximately for 1450 ish on chess.com rapid. I am really excited about this campaign I look forward to seeing what's on ahead in this initiative. Also, of course, I would like to compete for the prizes and hopefully win one of those.
Hi all, I'm Wind!
I'd love to cross the 1500-1600 ish rating barrier where I've been stuck for over 10 years. 
So I set my 2025 goal to 1800 rating, will embark on this journey and try my best to make it possible. My dream would be to hit 2000, but starting with 1800 for 2025 sounded more realist and something I can put in the effort to achieve!
My two main blockers is firstly that I love numbers, so I get incredibly attached to my rating often not letting it go when I hit a round number! XD
Secondly, I haven't been playing too much live chess or solving puzzles on a regular basis, so this is something to work at in 2025 and the challenge is perfect for that! 
Also appreciate everyone setting and sharing their goals, wishing us all to put in the effort, have some fun and achieve those hopefully! 💪
Hi everyone, I am Hritik, a high school student residing in the northern province of the state of West Bengal, a state were the Britishers claimed their first victory in a war against India and retained in it for almost 200 years. Anyways, I started my chess career at the age of 7 when I joined a chess academy where I took seriously and after joining it, my coach said that I was admitted by him to take part in offline chess tournaments, after which I joined several tournaments and after claiming several positions in the tournaments, I joined a state level tournament and after the score of 4-1-1, I held the 22nd postion and it remained my last offline tournament participated by me.
I am interested in gaining a rating over 1200 in bullet and my first goal of 2025 is to persuade chess.com to create a new section in the chess.com Android app where we can join the club tournaments directly from the app rather than going to the web . I think that here we can have a nice conversation and enrich our knowledge of chess by sharing it with each other and here is where I am quitting.
Hello Everyone!
I hope this post finds you well. I'm excited to have discovered this group! Full transparency: I’ve always struggled with consistency in my chess playing and learning. I find myself coming to the site, playing regularly, reading articles, watching videos, keeping up with the GMs, and seeing my rating slowly increase—only to be distracted by life and have chess fade into the background for a while. Well... I'm back again (hopefully for an extended period of time)!
A little more about my background and chess experience: I’m 34 years old, a husband and father, and an assistant principal at a high school. I’m always on the move! Outside of my time on Chess.com, I have zero tournament or OTB experience. My current ratings on Chess.com are: 645 in Rapid, 370 in Blitz, 844 in Daily, 1690 in Puzzles, 383 in Bullet, and 20 in Puzzle Rush (3:00 minute). My goal for 2025 is to progress my rating into the 1300s and eventually compete in an OTB tournament.
Hello everyone! How are they? Let me introduce myself: My name is Pedro José Griñán Cano, I am from Spain. I started playing chess at the age of 4. My father has been a true reference for me, he is the one who made me enter the world of chess. 2 years after training with my father, I left because I saw that I was not passionate about it at that time. It was not until the time of the pandemic (2020), where that passion for chess reawakened in me, but this time it has been so strong that I will forever be linked to chess. I am 21 years old, I have been federated since 2022, I have 1627 elo fide blitz but I still have to upload the other modalities. My goal is to be able to dedicate myself to chess at some point, to be able to make a living from this, which is already part of my life. I made the mistake of quitting, but it's never too late to shine again. I sincerely hope to learn a lot from you and improve my level. My peak elo is actually in the 1100-1200 elo range on chess.com. My goal is 1600-1800 elo fide and in chess.com in all modalities. Greetings
hello everyone, i am from australia and while being a semi active chess player for the better part of 4 years i am hoping to finally fufill my goals of surpassing 1k elo and becoming a better player, rather than continuing my on and off chess addiction that starts every few months i hope to maintain consistent play and improvement
My name is Manuel and I am a young 14 year old Italian chess player, currently living in Lucca. I started playing chess thanks to my father at 10 years old. Later I went to the club in my city and played against various players, even strong ones. So far I have only played 3 tournaments and I have a FIDE std rating of 1621. My goal is to improve my FIDE rating and also my ability to solve problems.
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Hello everyone! We are so happy to be here for the Chess Improvement Challenge! It’s such a great chance to be part of this amazing community full of Improvers at all levels. We would love to invite you to tell us a little about yourself and your improvement goals here. We can’t wait to get to know you better and to support you on your chess journey! 😊