Road to 1,000

Hello! I’ve been playing chess on and off for the past 8 years and have recently been trying to get back into it seriously. I have always had the starting goal of reaching 1,000 in rapid. The closest I ever reached was around 850 I think but am now bouncing around in the 700’s as I believe the overall quality of chess played in the 750-1000 range is dramatically improved compared to my previous peak in playing 2018-2019. I would say my biggest struggles right now are overthinking during unusual openings, getting tunnel vision in the middle game (which usually results in me blundering a piece) and king,rook, and pawn endgames. Would love to get some advice for how to push through my slump and finally break into that 1,000 range as I truly believe I have the capability to reach it. Thanks!

I guess keep playing chess for hours a day will make you reach 1000 faster. For me, After playing chess 3-4 hours a day for 2 months, made me climb up 200 to 850. I suppose finding mate in one and forks will help reach 1000 (For both of us) Fingers crossed!

After watching some of your games, I'd recommend switching your rapid games to the 15|10 time controls, and being consistent about the time you use. I saw plenty of blunders where you made a decision after just a couple of seconds. Same goes for lost opportunities to gain material. You're just missing stuff. There aren't really any advanced tactics you need in order to hit 1000. Most of it is consistency and not blundering while taking advantage of your opponent's blunders.

If you are serious about improving, make sure to play at least one rapid game every day.

The other generic suggestions also apply:
Make sure you are reviewing each game. Turn off "show best move" and anytime during your game when stockfish says you made a mistake or blunder, think about what you would do differently, and then try it and see what stockfish says.
Doing puzzles regularly can help with board vision and checkmating patterns. It's not a quick fix but doing them eventually pays off. Low level puzzles often deal with checkmating patterns and simple tactics - these things are really good to know about.

One thing I like to do is turn off the "show best move" in game review. Then, when you're reviewing and it says a certain move by you or your opponent was bad, click "retry." This will take you back to the position before the bad move; now that you're here, you should try to find the best move.

It doesn't matter how easy or hard it is. Just try and see if you can find it yourself. And most importantly, don't randomly guess. Make a real effort to find the correct move, or at least one that's better than what you actually played.

If you can't find it, don't feel bad. Even the very best players have moments where they see the best move in a position and immediately get very confused. Remember that you're only human; you're not a robot dedicated to analyzing chess positions. I think. 👀

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Of course, you can do this without game review as well. In fact, you can even do it on a real life chessboard, if you're into that. It can be a bit time consuming, but you'll get a lot more out of it because you only have your own brain to rely on.

brute force ur way to 1000 like i did to 2000. check my game history i play the same opening. i follow tyler1's teaching.

Stop chasing openings. Start mastering chess principles. I’ve seen players improve faster this way. Reach out anytime if you want guidance on what actually matters in chess.

Next Level Chess and ChessDojo helped me a lot to go over 1000 Rapid. In the end it was all about board vision, opening principles, tactics and basic endgames. Also double checking my moves to avoid blundering.

Thank you all for the help! I turned off “show best move” in the review settings. I definitely have a habit of playing moves quickly (which is probably a result of playing too much blitz lol). I’m focusing on learning two openings and the ideas behind them. Italian as white, carp-Kahn as black.

Good luck on your journey to 1000! But don’t mainly focus on openings. It’s better to focus on the middle game.

I watched you random recent game. Well……you need to get general understanding about opening. I saw some really strange moves unfortunately..

To reach 1000 is possible if you eliminate very basic wrong ideas which are wrong.