Becoming A Candidate Master Before Finishing Highschool?

The idea  is to play atleast one class level up at all times, assuming you feel your actual playing strength is already well beyond your  rating on paper.   Unless you break 1400, You may not want to wag your tail too much and sign up for U1600s or Opens unless that's the only option available.

In your example, With a USCF 1093,  playing a U1200 section makes sense but U1400 is actually quite good for you, assuming you've scalped 1300-1400s before.   

It is not impossible to advance in the absence of players stronger than you, but it is very difficult. My city has one FM, two USCF experts, and a whole bunch of A-Class players, including me. For me to advance to expert, I've gotta play the FM and beat the experts. Failing that, achieving perfection against my peers (fellow A-Class players) will suffice.

The FM plays rarely, mostly in the city championship--I played him in 2008, while still a B-Class player, and my preparation and performance in this match did more than just about anything else to propel me into A-Class.

My draw against the FM (with some elementary annotations):

I hadn't really thought about the lack of players there are in some citys, my club alone has a few IM's, FM's and dussins of experts and everything in between there.

Not contributing, just gloating.

To set a goal that is not reasonable can only lead to failure and disappointment imo.  To gain 400 rating points a year ( or more ) is such a goal, very unreasonable. 

There are half a million people in my county and we have two barely over 2000, and one in the mid-2200s. Fifteen years ago, the strogest player in our city's club was a mid-1900s high school student. In college, playing for the then strongest college chess team in the US, he crept into expert class.

To demonstrate how difficualt your task is:

http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/getmostimproved.php

this is a list of the most improved players FOR THE WHOLE OF ENGLAND.

the biggest improvement is 65 pts (which is about 650elo pts) in one year. However, he started out at a rating of 85 (which is very low [making improvement fast], and possibly quite inaccurate)

So lets look at someone who made a big jump but from a decent starting point: 10th on the list is someone who went from 116 to 157 (approx 1500-1900 FIDE)  thats +41 ECF (400 FIDE) in a year.

Now lets look on the list and find the biggest improvement for someone who started out at 150:   there is nobody (with enough games for us to reliably generalise).  There is nobody that was able to increase by more than 23 pts (230FIDE) above this grade. 

So, lets do a little math:

lets say you start out at 1500 and are somehow able to improve by 300pts  (which is quite exceptional growth!) within a year.

next year lets say you manage 200 in the next year (which is likewise exceptional...and is made even more exceptional when we also consider last years performance!).  This means a jump from 1800 to 2000.

so now you are either a CM or need to improve by 200pts in 6 months. (I'm going to call that level of improvement almost impossible), depending on how you define CM.

Thus, do you realise that in order to reach your goal you are probably going to have to be the fastest improving player in the whole of the united states. you might be talented, but are you that talented?

Good luck, all the same.

Look at Blackadder's post, and NM Reb's. Good luck, but starting from your current place you would have to be most talented person and quickest improver in the United States. Is that realistic?

I would recommend having more realistic goals for yourself (see Fezzik's post).

Let's do some math. You're 1093 and you have to reach 2000 rating. That means you have to gain around 1000 rating points. Suppose you play against opponents whose average rating is equal to yours at the moment and that you make 7/9 every time. Your expected result is 4.5/9 so in every tournament you'll win 25 rating points. To win 1000 points you'll have to play in 1000/25= 40 tournaments in 2.5 tears, or 16 per annum. Of course, if your strenght is much higher than your ratin you will have stronger opponents and win more points. So conclusion is PLAY, YOUNG MAN, PLAY.

1 month ago I won against an NM (which is also a WFM).. this doesns't mean very much either.

and GambitKing: I'm longer here then you :p

Ratings are not based on your performance from a single game, rather a collection of them (at least 9, ecf).

You played one good game...so what?

What kinds of skills those it take to become a Chess Expert?

Does it take Opening Memorization?

Chess Tactics?

Pulling out a revolver when your at a losing position?

The one skill (or should I say psychosis) least mentioned is that you need to be an obsessive compulsive nutjob when it comes to making mistakes over the board ... you'd rather die than ever make the same mistake ever again.    I've seen many kids at clubs who demonstrate astonishing progress purely based on this demonic will to not screw up the same way more than once.   

LOL, so what you're saying is that the opening poster is actually currently at a level where they could beat Candidate Masters 7/9 times in tournaments (incidentally, that's 2200 USCF instead of 2000, but that's besides the point) but only his rating is lagging way behind is true strength.

In reality, what you have to assume is that this guy's rating accurately reflects his playing strength, so it is impossible to "do some math" to show how many tournaments he will require to reach the top level, because he is simply not going to continuously score highly or even averagely (forget 7/9) as he reaches the higher levels of play, unless his playing strength improves dramatically as well. What he is asking is not "Is it theoretically possible with any level of skill to jump from 1000 to 2200 in 2.5 years?", although the title does make this unclear; he is asking: "Can I (Moon_Knight) reasonably expect to move up from 1000 to 2200 in 2.5 years if I put in a load of hard work?". The answer, unfortunately, is "No", not unless he is the most talented improver of any age in the United States (and his current rating gives no indication of any such level of ability), but that shouldn't stop him from trying.

I think there is some confusion here. CM is a FIDE title and involves a FIDE rating of 2200 but I believe the OP is referring to 2000 USCF rating which is "expert". Over the years the USCF has changed back and forth between "expert" and " cm ( candidate master ) for the rating from 2000-2199 uscf. Only the OP can clarify.... 

When was this and what were the requirements for this title ? 

Except that in the USCF 2000 is considered Expert, which is also known as Candidate Master.  2200 USCF is Master.

My last comment was in regards to the above.  I didn't realize there were multiple pages...