At the time of writing (11 Sep 2025), the hardest chess puzzle I’ve solved was rated 3257 (Puzzle ID 2616260), and my puzzle solving rank was #1323 out of 499,984 Aussie players. Before they introduced the freedom to turn down the puzzle difficulty in July 2025, which allowed mediocre players to shoot up the leaderboard by doing dozens of really easy puzzles, I achieved a rank of 923rd out of 464,635 Australian players (top 0.2%).

The highest bot I've defeated in a 3-crown game (with no assistance or cheats turned on) is Chess.com's Li-BOT (2000-rated), on 28 May 2024, with white. I also beat it with black on 8 Jun 2024, despite the evaluation bar being down 4.85 points at one point.

My best game with just suggestions enabled (pick one of three), no take-backs, no other assistance was against Komodo 20 (2400-rated) on 22 Jun 2024, with black. 2 mistakes, 2 misses, 1 blunder, but still pulled through.

My best game with multi-level take-backs allowed was a draw against Magnus Carlson Bot (2882-rated) on 14 Jun 2024. With the magic of take-backs, I ended up with 10 "Great Moves" in a single game!

My best 1-crown game fully exploiting the assistance & takebacks was against Komodo 25 (3200-rated) on 18 Jun 2024, with white. I also beat it with black in a fully assisted game on 21 Jun 2024 with an early queen trap.

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of a break from chess.

I just finished competing in the Tasmanian Online Chess Championship where I advanced to the third round (final 6) and finished in 2nd place out of my group of 3 in that round after winning a game with a rook sac, https://www.chess.com/game/daily/819071612?move=73. That game was quite an upset. My opponent’s daily games rating going into it was 1808 (which was in the top 5,000-odd players globally on chess.com), while mine was only 1220. I ended up playing a 1950-rated game according to the review, which I think is a personal best. My daily games rating at the conclusion of that game was in the top 0.8% of players (1337). The tournament was set to ‘# Advance 2’, which one would presume means the top 2 players from each group would advance, but apparently when there are only 3 players in a group, only the top player advances unless there’s a tie, so despite finishing second, I was eliminated. My final points standing was less to write home about, 8th out of 20 players, but the standard was higher than your average Joe, that’s for sure.

MathewMunroTas