Getting closer to 2000!!

Yeah I started on yahoo.com chess in like Feb of 2014.

However, They shut down and closed on like March of 2014.

At which case I thought they was going to reopen.

About a month later after giving up hope on yahoo chess reopening.

I went to seek other chess sites. I eventually found Chess.com in about May after waiting a month or 2 for yahoo chess to reopen. They never did though.

So in a way I been playing since May on chess.com. However, only had about 1-2 months experince in chess prior.

However, they had no helping functions on yahoo chess. Which is why I don't really consider me gaining any improvement there.

Chess.com obviously has alot of different ways of improveing.

From youtube videos, game explorers, articles, blogs, and different forum post the information is out there.

I believe everyone could improve.

It might sound crazy. However, I believe my reason for fast improvement comes from the mentality of understanding the things you hate the most in chess are probably the area's which will improve your game the most.

I use to say stuff like. Oh I hate the Caro-kann its so dull, boring, and lifeless.

I said that for a couple of months than realized I am only hurting myself. That dull, boring, lifeless position is probably something I need to learn to improve my game.

Than after sitting down and realizing my chess ranking was at a stand still. I decided to learn the Caro-Kann. I ended up raising my ranking 200-300 points by a simple line change lol.

Than I fell in love with the Caro-Kann and I do play it every once and a while. Pretty regularly in fact.

I find the people who stay low for so long fail to do that logic. They simply refuse to study or look at the stuff they hate doing and there ranking and lack of progress is a pure reflection of that.

Have you ever heard the phrase "You can't fool chess!"

I see people on different forums who comment how they hate looking at the openings or studying the openings is not required.

They think its not important and try to fool others into believing such things. Yet they are only fooling themselves.

They are not fooling chess."You can't fool chess!"

It is not alive to be fooled.

If you look at there chess games you will see the lack of opening knowledge they have.

An this goes for everything. I myself I hate endgames. I really think they are so boring.

I should be higher but I am not higher because I have not studyed my endgames. My terrible end game play in my games is a pure example of why I am at my current ranking.

At the end of the day I will eventually have to grin and deal with the endgame study. I'm stubborn lol don't get me wrong. I might hold out a little bit but if I ever want to improve. I myself will have to do the thing I hate to do lol study the endgames lol.

"You can't fool chess!"

I am no expection to this phrase. In fact, in one of my games.

I was beating a National Master on a previous thread of mine.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/correspondenceonline-chess-encouragementtips

The second game position was very close to an ending.

Yet I lost the game why? Because pure lack of endgame study.

That is a concrete example of how even I suffer with my own stubborn-ness.

good job

i am sure your friends and people around you will be impressed too.

you probably could go to your local pizza hut now and get a free pizza because you are a local celebrity

Similar to what X_PLAYER said, the secret to my improvement is that I am very critical and I hate losing.  When my oponent does something I hate, instead of getting frustrated, I ask myself how I could have prevented it and why I am not doing it.  I play around an hour of games a day which reinforce all the ideas I have picked up over the last year and help solidify new ideas.  I have not studied any one aspect of the game on its own, but I believe I have attained equal proficiency in the opening, middle game, and end game just from playing lots of games and learning from them.  

the higher you get the harder it is to improve.

i went from 900 to 1600 my first year, and then second year was 1600 to mid 1800s.

You are not going to get any better just from memorizing lines from Fritz.  Consider this novelty: 1.E4 E6 2. F3!!.  You are already out of the book by move 3.  All your preparation would be wasted.  

Congrats to the OP. I don't think it's that unfeasible to improve one's rating by 1000 points in 1 year if coming from the lower levels. But judging by your previous thread, it seems that you may have hit a ceiling. You've been stuck at the 1700s for 3 months after all. Improving considerably from this level will be much more difficult. Analysing your own games (if you don't already) and gaining some OTB experience is a good idea to improve.

I would caution you to not take chess.com ratings too seriously because of the above quote. It has been my observation as well that many 1600/1700s on bullet and blitz aren't much better than 1300/1400s, if at all. So it's kind of difficult to gauge someone's true skill on an online chess server like this where many factors (beyond one's true merits) can influence one's rating. There have been some occasional attempts by a few members to draw correlations between chess.com and FIDE/USCF ratings, and the results have been somewhat inconclusive...

A few years ago, bullet and blitz ratings on chess.com were suposedly underrated compared to those of FIDE and USCF while the TT ratings were very overrated. Not sure if this still stands true today.

I've read that the blitz tactics ratings at Chesstempo website have a high correlation with FIDE ratings or that the webste actually estimates your FIDE ratings. Maybe it would be worth spending some time training tactics at chesstempo and see where you stand. But this only matters if you really give a damn about ratings...

Anyway, this discussion made me realize how blitz games can help to develop good pattern recognition skills (whether blitz is a good venue to display one's true skill is another matter). I've been neglecting blitz too much.

back to the topic.

having look at over a 100 blitz graphs for my "unofficial ratings survey"... that is an amazing graph!  and there's absolutely no hint that the guy is cheating!

the OP has played 8000! games- that by itself is noteworthy.

----

and just to be clear, I am absolutely against what seems to happen every time someone who is gaining rating posts on the forum. 

Inevitably he is accused of cheating.

... its like excuse me- isn't Winning the Point of the game?  no one should be accused JUST because they are winning. 

@op. congrats.  I wonder- do you do a lot of study? do you review your games meticulously? or do you just play alot?

I'm interested in your improvement.  Most people do not advance past 1300, sometimes even after spending many months trying and playing thousands of games.  

Im talking about Adult players.

People with full time jobs and other obligations which are more important than pushing plastic around/

@BoS I've gone from 1600 at the beginning of this year to 2000 in just 6 months, so I'm not sure what you're so worked up about.

I think that 5 min chess and OTB chess are two different games. But it's not true that being good in blitz is easy.

I just play a lot of games.  I am obssesive about my hobbies.  I used to be a very skilled pianist and I would practice around 2 hours a day.  When I went to college however, I did not have the same access to a piano so I took up chess.  I do not formally study the game but I spend on average one and a half to two hours a day playing blitz chess on 5 minute time controls.  I am very meticulous when it comes to learning from my mistakes and there is nothing that makes me more upset than losing a winning position or missing a chance to get a winning position.  I only anaylze games when I made a mistake or didn't have the time to fully calculate a line I was interested in.

I think one of the reasons people don't progress much past 1300 in blitz is because there is a huge improvement in play from around the 800 mark to the 1300 mark which is very hard to overcome.  Coming from a lower rating, it is easy to just accept the fact that the players are better than you and not really push yourself as hard to get through.  If you look at my graph, you will see that I was stuck in the 1200 range for several months before I jumped up to 1300.  

Another barrier to improvemnt is understanding positional play.  As you progress into the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s, positional play becomes more and more important and games are more often won and lost on strategy rather than players blundering into tactics.  To develop positional understanding, one needs to play a ton of games and get a feel for positions.  It took me about 1000 games to get from 600 to 1200, but it took 2,300 games to go from 1200-1400 and it took 2000 games to get from 1400 to 1500.  Getting from 1500-1600 took another 2000 games.  At 1600 I stopped playing casual games just to pass time and only played games when I was focused.  It took me about 500 focused games to get from 1600-1700 and so far about 100 games to get me to 1750.  I now play casual bullet games on 2/1 time control which is similar to blitz.  

You'll be staying in your house playing chess games and slowly improve, while you could learn much more from a coach. It certainly doesn't take that many games to get from a bad rating to another bad rating. In 2012 I was a complete beginner who knew a couple tactics (let's say I was a 500). I played like 60 games of chess (I think) and I was much better at the end of the year (let's say 1200). In 2013, I got a coach and apparently I played 144 games of chess, but I wasn't too much better in the end. In 2014 I probably moved up to the 1500s, but I didn't play too much chess. This year I consider myself in the 1800s, but I'm not too sure about that. My point is: it doesn't take that much work to get from a 1200 to a 1300 or a 1600 to a 1700. You also will get up to about 2000-2200 if you keep playing chess with no coaching, but you'll stay that way until you grow old and suddenly you'll be another one of those adults at the club. Or maybe you all are talking about adults... Ehhhh nevermind

I would love to get to 2000-2200!

I appreciate the long detailed notes from both the OP and Mass_attacker.

again if I had any doubts as to whether you earned that improvement- they are gone.  I find your description of improvement VERY persuasive and genuine.

thank you

Well I think people are being a little naive in some of there comments on this thread.

I will not mention any names.

However, It is harder to get from 2150 to 2200. Than It would be to go from level 1000 to 2000.

Gaining that extra 50 points would be harder than gaining the 1,000 points.

I personally have not broken 2100. However, I am no fool in thinking it will be an easy chore. People who think they can just snap there fingers and gain 50 or even 100 points in the +2000 section will have a rude awakening.

It is not a piece of cake. They are only fooling themselves.

Do you people realize once you break over 2000 into like 2100 you have a title?

They don't give you any initials at the end of your name but you do have the title of expert.

We are talking about expert players and title players in this section.

Players who have enough skill in there line to exploit 1 inaccuracy and drive that 1 inaccuracy into a win.

Some of these comments are the most ridiculous comments I have ever read.

Stuff like I plan to be 2200 in a year?

I mean really are you that naive to believe you can snap your figures and be 2200 in a year.

Very well put,Some of these people think it is easy to just get to 2000 or 2200 They think a Chess .com rating of 2000 is equal to an OTB rating of 2000 For some maybe it is but for most it is not, One thing for sure the higher you get OTB the harder to rating points are to get going from 1200 to 1300 is not the same as going from 1900 to 2000. It takes a lot of work to reach 2000 OTB and a lot more to maintain it Right now i am at 1905 OTB and i know it will ke a lot of work to reach 2000 One day maybe i will make it to 2200 but i am smart enough to know that will take a while not just 6 months to a year.

The OP of the forum is very genuine and reaching 2,000 online or even offline is cause for celebration for sure. Which I don't blame him at all.

However, Some of the other commenters really do sound so oblivious its sad. Yeah they talk a big game of getting to 2200 so fast.

Yet I highly doubt any of them have actually faced competition in such sections.

I have not gone to any OTB tournements. However, I do love playing long games online and I do like facing higher end opponents. I have faced some 2100 OTB ranked players in long time controls and can be the first one to say there skill level was a force.

It wasn't the OTB time control;however, the time control it was did demonstrate how dangerious they were. They don't mess around.

I reviewed a few games and when I looked at the games. I just starred into the game wondering were I went wrong. It was not obvious or apparent at all. Eventually I had to look on an engine because I couldn't even find the mistake myself.

You could look at the game and think nothing went wrong and yet one side was completely crushed. I had no counter play no chance.

1 move inaccuracy which was all they needed. That is all they were waiting for that 1 slip up to crush you. 1 bad knight maneuver. 1 bad piece placement. 1 failed pawn push which had to be pushed at the exact time. That was all it took for them to win.

You look back at the game and you start to think they are an engine because all there moves were engine recommended choices. However, You have to remember they prepare there lines with engines to make sure there game play is very accurate.

People think they can just memorize a line and study with an engine against these people. It makes me laugh so hard. I mean what on earth do they think there opponent is doing?

There opponent is doing the same d*m thing? They are looking at engines as well. Some even review there games with multiple engines. Some of them there job is chess. They don't go to an office or to work like other people. There job is to go to a computer 8-10 hours a day if not more with multiple engines and programmers running improving there chess.

Than one commenter came along and said he was going to get 2200 by memorizing fritz?

I mean WTF Fritz is not even the top engine anymore. Isn't it ranked like number 5 or something?

Stockfish and Komodo are crushing Fritz like no tomorrow. You are learning from an outdated engine.

You know this thread was such a joyful and happy place celebrating about reaching 2000, but when you get commentors who say stupid stuff like this it sure does spoil a persons mood.

Yeah I'm going to snap my fingers and magically be 2200 in 6 months.

Why stop there go for the record!  Get to 2200 in 1 day!  Stupid moron.

You know Markle you are one of the only few with common sense on this thread. There are a few others but the majority who think they can just get to 2200 so easy are completely out it. There mind is off the rails.

I'm gonna do some serious memorising this weekend and be 2350 come monday morning.

Good deal man in a couple of weeks i expect to see you Beating Carlsen, Aronian and the rest of the top GM's

I'm pretty sure you're trying to start an argument, xplayerxxwhatever. I never said that it took a couple days to shift from 2000-2200. An OTB rating is also much different from an internet rating, I agree. However, OTB ratings aren't a big deal at all. It seems as if you idiots treat some child who's played in an OTB tournament as a god. Silly fools, it didn't take me long to get my OTB rating up by hundreds of points after playing some adults. Also, if you are a 2000 rated player, you shouldn't be making such inaccuracies. I know that expert players are strong, but even the biggest fish are vulnerable to the sharks, which supports your statement about needing a lot of work to get stronger once you're above 2000. Anyway, I was talking about how people may become 2000-2200s if they just play chess for a long time. I have beaten 1800/1900s who used to be better and that is the result of their playing and no coaching. Even if you analyze games, it will still be hard to pick up some endgame/positional ideas, but a coach can teach you them much faster. Sorry if you get offended by this comment, but my point is that one reason why many people don't improve as well is because they don't have coaches (if you don't have a coach, you'd most likely stay a club level player), I certainly don't disagree with x_playerxxwhatever's statement about the work needed to get from 2150-2200.