Do you remember...

Do you remember the day, the game, or the moment things just clicked and your rating (or understanding) increased significantly in a matter of a day/days, even a week? Many people have stated that their progress in chess is highlighted by sudden leaps in understanding...chess epiphanies maybe. I just wonder your thoughts and what you think triggered this leap in understanding. For example, I have been studying a chess course (book series) and all of a sudden the moves just popped out to me. Things I would never have seen last week now look somewhat obvious.

hmmm...maybe what I say doesn't make sense...I thought more people would have had this happen, at least to some extent...

Kind of chess satori?...hmmm..no; at least not in a definitive upgrade...the ups and downs haunt me since i can recall.

what i did find here and there is an strange hability srpung out of nothing..a serie of days and games when everything seems natural, and everything woks effortlessly, smooth...that usually happens after some heavy tactics training sessions...and then for i while i feel i am "in the zone"...and after that the magnetic shelter turns off and the beatings come as usual.

btw, your Elo has rocketed lately...is it all Yusupov fault?...

I don't think anything ever just "clicked" (at least not yet) -- so far it's been a long arduous journey of incremental improvements punctuated with frustrating backslides.

This is an excellent question. I know it wasn't a day, or a week for me. It was a time. I would play chess on a hand-held Excaliber computer chess game. I kept doing take-backs on my moves if things weren't going right. After a long time I started to come very close to winning it. When I finally did, I just repeated the moves over and over again until I didn't have to take-back the moves anymore. I found out that I had found a way to win the computer if I just followed certain moves. Then I started to find other moves to win the computer--through taking back moves again. 

So while I was cheating the little computer I was also learning about how to win chess games in real life! That's my story

I am a convert to the school of Yusupov. I don't promote anything, since I have no need to, but his books have revolutionized my thinking about the game. Its almost like a secret...I want to keep it all to myself..lol

I've had a couple of jumps in rating (slow USCF tournaments), and I can point to specific tournamens where things just suddenly fell into place, and I was suddenly playing better. I think this has happened 3 times for me, always accomplanied by a ratings jump of around 200 points in a very short period of time. Then my rating will sit at a plateau for a year or more afterward, as I learn lots of new things, but don't seem to be improving at all until the next big jump.

Yes.  A few times like that, but one in particular when I suddenly "got good" (to use Fischer's phrase) and was seeing things farther and better than I had seen them before.  That was why I only spent about 3 weeks as a 1700 player (USCF). 

Also later on, in my only US Open...where I gained 120 points.

It happened to me in a day. I had read bobby fischer teaches chess and the guy that taught me was beating me like crazy. Then I beat him soundly and he never even came close to beating me again. I could even give him odds.