my first six months

On this day six months ago I started playing chess. After I finished watching Netflix's series Queens gambit I was amazed by the game and wanted to try it myself. By the way if you havent watched it yet, I strongly recommend it. My grandfather loves chess and is a pretty good player but I havent really got atracted to the game so I never played. He only showed me the rules when I was seven or eight years old and that was all my knowledge about chess before December 2020. I didnt even know the en passant rule or understood castling. My first video chess related was on youtube by GMHikaru in which he was teaching xQc how to play. I thought it wont hurt me if I watch it, so why not? It was interesting enough to make account here on chess.com. I played my first game and won! But soon after I started losing and my elo was dropping. I was learning from my mistakes, some yt videos (mostly Gothamchess) and puzzles/lessons from this site. Day by day I got better. Currently I would describe myself as a decent 1500 player. My peak was 1600 rapid and 1500 on both blitz and bullet. This is a great acomplishment for me and I wanted to share it with you. I hope it motivates atleast one person because if a bozo like me could pull it off, Im sure anyone can! My biggest achievement was a draw in blitz game(unrated) against 2000+ rated opponent. I was in a completely winning endgame with an obvious winning move but moving fast and not thinking caused a draw by repetition and I missed my win. Second best achievement was my first win against my grandfather. At first he was crashing me and I didnt have any chance, but now we are equal (he is stilla bit better). I can see myself being a chess coach one day (when I get a lot better). My current goal is to be 1700 by the end of the year, to finish all lessons (unfortunately I dont have membership yet) and maybe to go to my first OTB tournament this year.

I'm no expert but I think that's really impressive as far as your rate of improvement goes. I've only managed to reach 1000+ in rapid and daily in around 8 months. Well done 👏✔👍

Sounds impressive. Congrats. How much time do you spend per day learning / playing?

If he's really crashing you, I think your grandfather should give up driving.

That's really good. How many hours a day do you practice?

Congratulations! That's very exciting!  

congrats.

Nice!!!

It's a miss actually. Thank you all for nice comments. I dont know how much time I spend each day playing chess. I play one rapid game every morning after I check my social media and after that I do the limited amount of puzzles, what non-paying account is allowed to do. I analyze the game I played and if there is something I should learn that cost me a win I check it out. Every monday I finish one lesson here on chess.com. And I have watched a ton of chess related videos. Thats basicly it. I never sat down to study chess or read chess books. Actually I have read only one book, it was a free e-book for beginners I found here on forums written by account laurengoodkindchess. Its short, very good book and I would recommend it to everyone. Right now Im struggling to get and stay at 1600+ and I think its finally time for me to study chess, but I dont know where to start from. But definitely without it I wont improve like I did so far. I spend maybe three hours (maximum) a day doing all the things I mentioned above (half an hour in the morning, and in afternoon on my free time I watch chess related stuff, depends on the day). Also I have app Magnus trainer and there are good lessons which definitely helped me improve.

More than I do... But I just hit 1800 so yay?

yay! Congrats

Shoot we're following each other again...

Shoot. bye then

Congrats ninjaswat! Imagine where would you be if you did all those stuff! :)

Ha I do study tactics a ton... And I play maybe 3 rapid games a day at least now...