I'm Van. Being an adult with a job, and more than one hobby. I wish to reach back 800 or 900 in OTB national rating.
I am aware I will need to improve by solving tactics puzzle, and try to remember the basic of some openings or the reason it is played, without falling in the trap of fully memorizing a variant.
Hey man im canadian aswell, what province do you live in? id like to know how the chess scene is there!
I'm Van. Being an adult with a job, and more than one hobby. I wish to reach back 800 or 900 in OTB national rating.
I am aware I will need to improve by solving tactics puzzle, and try to remember the basic of some openings or the reason it is played, without falling in the trap of fully memorizing a variant.
Hey man im canadian aswell, what province do you live in? id like to know how the chess scene is there!
From Quebec, my perspective from someone that don't have build a social circle around chess as a child or teenager, it could thrive more.
I am aware I didn't join those events happening around my city in the evening to see what is the crowd. It may help my awareness on a physical board by sharing with better players.
Hi, My initials are IJH and my nickname is Bones. I started playing chess in 2018 and am currently rated 210 in rapid, 541 in blitz and 1126 in bullet (although I've only played one bullet game). I want to get to 3000 elo on blitz and rapid by the end of 2025 and I live in New South Wales.
Hi I’m Noah (or riggy) im only 500 rated but my goal is to get a least 800 I started playing in 2022 I have 300 blitz 500 rapid and 600 bullet Im mostly care about rapid and blitz (bullet is not real chess)
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! 😂
That's really interesting that you coached blind players! You're probably the right person to ask this question: do you have any tips for learning to play blindfolded? Or to rephrase the question: how did you teach blind players? Do you have any step by step method that worked well in the past? Thanks
Hello!
I'm a 12 year old that started playing chess since 2nd Grade but I stopped during the pandemic.
I'm now resuming chess and my goal is to reach 1600 by April because of an OTB tournament where I got crushed last year but I am still joining this year 😅
Hi, fellow people of the improver's club, I am a student in middle school looking to improve my chess. My online rapid rating is 2000 and my USCF rating is about 1940, with my FIDE rating settling around 1500-1600. I am looking to improve chess in many different ways, my favorite one is by playing games and practicing my opening. I also love doing sharp tactics puzzles. I started at the age of 7 and took it seriously when I got my first chess coach at 8 years of age. My favorite part about chess is the tactical plays, making it so exciting and fun to watch. My goal for 2025 is to make it to a min of 2100 USCF rating. Feel free to friend me and play a bunch of games with me!
Hello. My name is Donald, and I'm from the USA.
My current numbers on chess.com are 1039 in daily, 447 in rapid, and 1633 in puzzles. All the rest I haven't played.
My history with playing chess started when I was pretty young. My mom didn't have anyone to play against, so she taught my sister and I to play. When I started winning every game against her, my mom stopped playing chess with me for a bit, but we still have a game every now and then. Other than that, I've played casually and sporadically throughout my life.
My main motivation for getting into online chess is to have something to dump down time into instead of shopping. So, I'm mostly hoping to build good strong daily habits for studying/playing. If my numbers increase as a result of that, it's mostly icing on the cake.
I'm terrible with time management, so most of my games on here have been daily games. Hopefully, by the end of the next year, I'll be a bit better with that. I might even try playing more rapid games at some point.
Good luck to everyone on here. I hope we all have fun!
Hey everyone!
I first got into chess when I was around 11 or 12. Back then, I had a computer with this game called Chess Titans (shoutout to anyone who remembers it!). I used to play against the computer all the time and kept losing until one day, I finally won. That win felt amazing, and it’s what got me hooked on chess. After that, I started playing with friends and family, and I’d usually win pretty easily. Sadly, my family wasn’t really into chess, so I never got to join a club or anything. Eventually, I had to stop playing because of school. Fast forward to late 2022, I got back into chess, and now I’m a 1500-rated player trying to hit 2000 by the end of next year. Super excited to be part of this community and to learn and improve with all of you. Let’s crush it together!
Cheers
Hello everyone, my name's Noah, a 15 year old guy, and I started chess this April of this year (2024 at the time of writing). It's been 9 months since I seriously started chess and started studying it, going from 656 elo to 1950+ today (in rapid, I don't play blitz or bullet for now). Now if you look at this account it will say that I started in June of 2022, but I played almost no games, and when I did, I threw most of them.
This game called chess has become so important in my life, it's one of the only things I like doing when I'm home. I dedicate a lot of time to this game, because I want to go as far as possible, and, of course, to become better everyday. The spirit of competition is what got me into this game : I want to crush everyone, but this is not easy (obviously).
I set my goals for 2025 to become 2000 in blitz and bullet, but also to get to 2300 in rapid, which is the hardest part. Also, I'd like to join a club in the future, because I am not getting anywhere in this world if I am not playing in OTB rated tournaments, but the reason I didn't join one is because I might get demotivated seeing people better than me IRL, but on the other hand won't that make me want to beat them in a more punishing way that they previously would have done to me ???? I really don't know.
Some say I have a special talent for chess, and that my progression is "impressive", but honestly I don't feel like it, and, anyways, starting at 15 years old is way too late to be seen in the chess world. Though, what I am proud of, is that I found the game all by myself ; I taught myself chess.
One thing that is making anxious (why am I getting into this, we don't care about my life, not even sure someone would read this) is the fact that my future is uncertain, but also that I want to pursue chess. Don't know how to word that, so if someone knows the answer, if it doesn't have to be "myself" of course.
Now I'll publish this, after the hundreds of messages in this forum, for it to maybe never be seen.
Thanks for reading if ever.
Hi everyone. My name is Alex, 27 years old and from Montreal, Canada.
I played chess for a brief moment a couple years ago. Then since 3 months i am really loving playing chess it became my main hobby. As a new player i'm excited about wanting to improve and thirlled that chess.com have created this club.
i have set the objective at 1500 elo in rapid and lower in faster game modes. The bar is really high as i feel i don't have a special talent at chess but, really, my goal is to keep learning and get better at chess no matter how fast i improve and keep having fun!
Heyo,
my name is Erik, I am 22 years old and live in Austria, a small country in the center of Europe. I learned chess around the age of 6 from relatives and I started playing in a local chess club at the age of 8. Chess has remained a very old hobby of mine, which has recently begun to interest me more gain. In general, I have experienced chess more over the board, but in the last 4 years, especially during covid pandemic, I began playing chess, solving puzzles, following broadcasts, etc. online too.
While improving, my focus will definitely be over the board, classical chess. I enjoy having a lot of timing, really thinking about my position, and this is what I want to be good at. So, I do want to improve my openings (I do think this is a weakness of mine), reading books and analyzing my games. My FIDE classical rating is 1860, while my ratings in my nations classical Elo system is 1750. I do want to improve both ratings to around 1900 (All of my upcoming classical games will be rated in the national Elo system, while only around 70% will be FIDE rated too).
Nevertheless, faster time controls are still present in my chess live. I do play online, there are several tournaments I like to play in and Blitz especially is a part of the chess clubs weekly meetings. So I will try doing some improvement there, like doing puzzles and simply playing games.
Hello everyone, I am codesquare64, a chess enthusiast from South Africa. My primary goal for 2025 is to deepen my understanding of middlegame strategies. Additionally, I would like to participate in a couple of OTB tournaments, which I have not done for many years, with the goal of improving on my past performances, which were not as successful as I had hoped.
Hi all - I'm Andy, in the UK. I played a little chess in school over 30 years ago and am rediscovering my interest in the game via chess.com.
My primary goal for the year is to get over my anxiety about playing games against real people. I have played against the bots plenty, and have started to play against family in daily games where there is no pressure, but I would like to feel able to play games at faster time controls and not feel too anxious about the results! I have set myself a goal to play at least a couple of games a week in rapid during my lunch breaks at work. I hope that if I can get into a habit, I can find out what my true rating is at the moment (I suspect about 4-500, so I will have to lose a few to drop to that from the chess.com start of 800), and maybe then improve to 800-1000 by the years end.
Hi, I'm a 12 year old boy, and I started playing chess about 3 years ago. My goal is to reach 2000 rapid (I'm 1650 now). I want to find OTB tournaments, but there aren't really any available.
Hi, there, I am a middle-aged adult seeking some "chess adjacent" goals related to life and learning along with some chess-focused goals. I find chess to be an interesting and powerful metaphor for learning how to manage some of the tougher dimensions of "real life." From dealing with aggressive personalities to managing work-place politics, I want to learn how to better protect myself, internally, when these experiences happen in real life. I have learned lots of life lessons, already, as a new chess player, such as: keeping my cool under pressure, persisting and not giving up, creative problem solving, learning to not overreact to an "attack," learning when to have "hustle" and when to step away from a threat, and learning to fully develop my internal "team," so that I am fully supporting myself in tough situations.
Regarding chess-focused goals, they are modest. . . reaching a ELO of 650 (or whatever ELO represents 51% percentile rank on chess.com, lol). I also want to develop my chess "style" and approach to playing and become really, really good at puzzles because they are fun. 
Lastly, I want to avoid getting hooked by the competitive nature of the game and/or the numbers game, focusing much more on the development of strong, healthy, life-long processes that will serve me in all areas of my life. Chess is a hobby and perhaps a "helpful metaphor," but chess is not life.
Anyways, good luck, everyone, and I hope you have lots of fun!!!
Hi, there, I am a middle-aged adult seeking some "chess adjacent" goals related to life and learning along with some chess-focused goals. I find chess to be an interesting and powerful metaphor for learning how to manage some of the tougher dimensions of "real life." From dealing with aggressive personalities to managing work-place politics, I want to learn how to better protect myself, internally, when these experiences happen in real life. I have learned lots of life lessons, already, as a new chess player, such as: keeping my cool under pressure, persisting and not giving up, creative problem solving, learning to not overreact to an "attack," learning when to have "hustle" and when to step away from a threat, and learning to fully develop my internal "team," so that I am fully supporting myself in tough situations.
Regarding chess-focused goals, they are modest. . . reaching a ELO of 650 (or whatever ELO represents 51% percentile rank on chess.com, lol). I also want to develop my chess "style" and approach to playing and become really, really good at puzzles because they are fun.
Lastly, I want to avoid getting hooked by the competitive nature of the game and/or the numbers game, focusing much more on the development of strong, healthy, life-long processes that will serve me in all areas of my life. Chess is a hobby and perhaps a "helpful metaphor," but chess is not life.
Anyways, good luck, everyone, and I hope you have lots of fun!!!
This has to be the absolute best introduction yet.
Howdy, y'all (I'm southern),
I'm a full-time chess coach (in-person stuff like school classes, tmnts, etc...), but I've competed for myself in tournaments for 13 years. However... since 2018, I haven't regularly competed. I started getting back into the grind of study last June, which is why I'm so excited to be a part of the Improver's community. This past Saturday, I played in my first serious tournament in 2 years, and I'm planning to begin regularly competing again! Here are my goals for 2025:
1. Achieve 2150+ USCF (2073 now).
2. Play in 12+ in-person tournaments (excluding blitz events).
3. Study 500+ lines on Chessable (studied 252 from Jun-Dec last year).
4. Solve 2000+ rated chess puzzles on Chess.com (current account at 927).
5. Complete 5+ strategy lesson studies on chess.com.
6. Thoroughly analyze and annotate each of my tournament games.
I also want to write more! I want to start by at least making a blog post for each tournament this year about what I learned and how what I learned will affect my study plans. This is the first one I made: Rasberry's NM Grind - Ep. 1
Hold my feet to the fire Improvers (plz I always fail these goals)! I can make NM with your support!
Hello, call me Voldermort. I am 14 years old (as of 2025) and started playing chess seriously around 2022. I have played many (unrated) tournaments, so I have some experience in chess. I had been stuck at 1000 elo for a while but since December of last year, I gained over 100 rating points in rapid. My goal is to get a 1500 rapid rating and also a solid FIDE rating by the end of this year.
Good luck everyone with their goals!!
I'm Van. Being an adult with a job, and more than one hobby. I wish to reach back 800 or 900 in OTB national rating.
I am aware I will need to improve by solving tactics puzzle, and try to remember the basic of some openings or the reason it is played, without falling in the trap of fully memorizing a variant.