Introduce Yourself and Your Goals!

I am from the US south. My father taught me to play when I was a child. I never learned to play well. However, I’ve always wanted to play better to play in tournaments (rapid and daily). I’ve played a few daily games here, but I don’t think my rating is accurate yet. So, I want to start at the very beginning with a study plan.

Hi, I'm Melab, 20 year old, my goal is to get to 2000 in rapid and blitz. I'm currently only 1000 in rapid, hopefully I will improve . I love the vienna opening and I'm improving my repertoire against d4. I also do a few puzzles per day to improve my tactics, analyse and study a few of my rapid games every week.

Hey everyone. Today is my one year chess anniversary. I've had slow and steady improvement so far, but hope to break out of the triple digits this year and hopefully participate in a real life meet. I'm trying to get better at studying. It's been a little tough to know where to start and how to study, but keeping a journal has been helpful. Good luck everyone.

Howdy, I'm Jay from Houston Texas, currently stuck around 1100 rapid on chess.com, I plan to improve that a lot.

That's a good selection, and yes, playing against your own opening from the other side can be a different animal

Yo guys .I been playing chess from a past few years . I'm 13 but I think I have room to grow.I am currently an 500 elo player on chess.com In blitz, Rapid and bullet and I'm looking forward to increase my elo to somewhat like 1500 by the end of this year. I hope this project by Chess. Com will help me reach my goals by the end of this year.

Hello there, my name is Michael. I'm a German living in Tyrol, Austria.

I started playing chess at the age of 11, back in 1985. Compared to the vast possibilities available today, that was an entirely different era. As a student, I shifted my focus to mathematics and physics, and my chess activities took a back seat. In 2018, my interest in chess was rekindled, and I signed up on chess.com.

Puzzle Rush immediately caught my attention because, as a mathematician, I am naturally drawn to solving problems. Playing again brought a nostalgic flashback to my youth, and I was amazed by all the new tools and opportunities for learning and improvement. It made me wonder:

“What can I achieve now with all these new opportunities?”

This morning, I solved 55 puzzles in 3 minutes as a streak. My goal is to push that to 56 and beyond.

Let me share a memorable experience from chess.com: I was playing Puzzle Battle against a super-strong prodigy. I fell behind 0–9, and in my frustration, I wrote to my opponent that it felt pointless to continue. He responded - respectfully and tactfully - encouraging me to do my best and finish the match. He was right, of course, so I stuck with it. And guess what? I won the final battle, with both of us achieving scores over 50.

What fascinates me most about chess is how it brings people together on equal ground. It’s also a mirror reflecting our personalities, teaching us valuable lessons about handling setbacks and overcoming weaknesses.

Hello fellow Improvers!
I love chess since my grandfather taught me as a kid.
My overall goal is to make my "chesstime" more productive and less "just play for fun".
I´m excited to be part of this community and hope we can all learn a lot from eachother!
I´m looking forward to share my journey with you.
Hopefully someday I can show chess to my own grandkids.

@Atomic-Arpan why won't you play with me? We can improve together, we have similar ratings and probably similar experiences.

Greetings to everyone.

My name is Peter, and I'm an "old guy" who lives in Canada. I have only been learning (part time) since January 2024. I was basically on my own with this until I came here. I had an account previous to this one in early 2024, but it did not survive -- tuns out I needed to work on my approach towards failing out of things first. Still at it here and there in the end though, as I have this crazy idea that this will help keep my mind from turning into porridge as I continue to age.

EDIT: As far as goals go, I don't expect at this point to become Titled, nor do I expect to gain access to a certain level of numbers. Excercising my brain is a key point, and the rest is just to keep trying to make progress to see how far I can go. I'd also wager my own numbers aren't accurate, as I've mostly just worked with Bots so far.

Hello everyone, I'm Shaun, a homeschooled (which is why I play chess🤣) dude that is finishing school this year. I started my chess career when I was 4, but was pretty trash at it until I started taking it seriously 3 years ago. I've since grinded my rating to 1500 in rapid, 1200 in bullet, 3000 in puzzles, and 50 in puzzle rush(survival). My main goal for this year is try play at a more consistent 'level' (at this point my brain sometimes goes absolutely crazy - in a good way - and other times I miss the most obvious tactics) and thus reach 1900 in rapid (yes, I am aware that it's very ambitious😅😂) and 60 in puzzle rush.

Unfortunately, haven't played in any OTB tournaments yet - but I am hoping that I can start taking part sometime this year.

idk what else to say lol

Hi guys i'm an italian guy, i play regional tournaments 1h 30m | 30 in Italy. You can think i'm so strong but the true thing is that online you can't even play 1h 30m so i start playing rapid online. Now i'm rated 1144 but the thing is in quite all revisions Stockfish rate me 1600-1900 so mi goal for this year is reach 1800 elo on rapid and first national live. I'm so young, i'm only 13-year-old. Don't forget that i have a CM coach, he is about 2100 points elo so i can improve very fast

For people in the U.S, this is where you can find tournaments: https://new.uschess.org/upcoming-tournaments

Hi Guys , I'm Mayank from India

I'm one of the people who one or two times played chess at like 5-6 but they quit because I don't really know the reason but in this past 1 year I've played chess like a maniac I've improved so much I can't imagine and I'm trying to do the same this year . For this year I want to reach a rapid rating of 2000 I'm currently at 1200+ and I'll improve in blitz and bullet with same speed. Chess has been became an addiction for me . Which is kind of bad and good at the same time . If I improve till a certain rating this year I'll think of OTB also. Anyways I think that's all let's all of us improve, Improvers.

Hello, I am Sisir, a chess player from India.

I am at the rating of 623 in rapid(Chess.com).

I am playing chess from a few years and my goal is to get a fide rating and play some tournaments.

This year's rating goal is 2000(Chess.com)

I don't think that the addiction at chess can be a bad thing. If you think at Magnus Carlsen he plays a lot too but he got a life over chess world

Hello everybody, I am Lukas from Bonn in Germany. I am 16 years old on and chess is one of my biggest hobbys next to football/soccer. I first started playing the game at the end of 2022 but only really picked it up in spring 2023 before excessively playing mostly bullet games in every free minute of my summer holidays.

I am 1809 rapid, 1615 blitz and currently only about 1550 bullet but I don't really care about bullet anymore, I just play it for fun whenever I don't have enough time for a longer game which is why I didn't even set a rating goal for bullet.

My goal for rapid was initially 1900 in December when I was only 1730 after not playing rapid for half a year. Right at the beginning of 2025 I got to 1809 with only one loss along the way so now I am confident that I can get higher than 1900. I am currently aiming for 2000 by the end of 2025.

My blitz rating goal is 1800.

I really like the idea of an improvers club, thank you very much, I appreciate your work and effort. I am also looking forward a lot to the improvers tournaments you will potentially be hosting in the future.

Hi everyone from Scotland. My Dad taught me to play as a kid but I've only recently come back to chess as a in the last couple of years. I'm 42 now and needed a fun hobby. I've been playing intermittently over the last two years but this is the year I want to improve. I've started chessly courses and I'm going to work on openings. I'm rated 845 on daily which is my preferred game time. Hit me up for some friendly or competitive matches.

Hello fellow chess improvers! It's so lovely to read through all of these introductions. I'm not usually someone who chimes in to forums or the chat or even uses social media lol but as part of my commitment to be more engaged in the chess world, I’m going to be brave and introduce myself.

You can call me oona. I started playing chess when I was in my late 30s. It had intrigued me for a long time but no one ever taught me when I was young and it wasn’t ever around me when I was growing up. Now I’m 45 and I’ve mostly played online but in the last year have been trying to go out and play OTB. I really appreciate this Improvers challenge and shout out to Sam Copeland - I took your advice and wrote out my chess goals for the year.

I won’t put them all here but mostly I want to play OTB more; I even just joined USCF. I also want to improve my ratings online, complete some courses and books, focus on endgames and tactics. I’m starting by going through every section in Dina Belenkaya’s Study Plan. Thank you, Dina!

I live a very full and active life in wonderful Minneapolis, MN, USA, but I want to make time for chess and chess study and really learn and improve. So thanks for this group and looking forward to collaborating with all of you over the next year!

Hi! I'm Francisco from Uruguay, and I started playing chess around the time I created this account. It was something I always wanted to do, but delayed for one reason or another. I like reading chess books and doing puzzles, and I'm fond of sound, perennial chess openings, the Ruy Lopez being my favorite. My chess goal this year is very ambitious: 2K ELO on both rapid and blitz. Willing to help those below 1K rapid ELO, and open to studying with those above.