It depends on what you put into it. That can range from 8+ hours a day of intense practice and training to a couple games a week or less.
How long does it take for someone to get good at chess.
Sort:
"Average" within what group?
If you look at USCF rankings, the median is around 1000 [mean 1198] (not counting "scholastic" players, a pool of mostly children - within that group, the median is in the 600s [mean 668] ).
http://archive.uschess.org/ratings/ratedist.php
That's folks with enough interest in chess to go to a USCF-sanctioned event and get a rating. Presumably, your average American is way, way below that.
Here on chess.com, the median for live standard is somewhere between 1200 and 1500 (it's a weirdly flat graph, perhaps partly because the staff recently made some crude adjustments to everybody's score). For turn-based, it's around 1300.
So you're already average.
Concentrate on tactics first and foremost: stop making blunders. You're not as bad as your tactics rating, but you could stand to improve. Don't panic when you're under attack.
Second, look for positional midgame practice. You're letting your opponents set up attacks because your pieces are scattered. You get a pawn or two, your opponent gets a battery. Watch how Ambhoel_srt moves his knight starting at move 14 of your game. It starts out on a useless edge on the far side of the board, so he offers to trade it, and when you don't bite he brings it all the way to the other side to anchor a strong attack. That's the sort of thing you need to be looking for: improve your weak pieces, don't just play with your strong pieces.
Great, great question. I have wondered the same. It seems like I stagnite. I would like to become a respectable player as well. Your advice nartreb is encouraging. Thanks.
It all depends. (On the person) (Learn how to force pawn storms in the middle and end file to win.)
As long as it takes , depends on personal characteristics as blockah says , and not following up with your study will hurt your growth because consistency is important . I took a break due to family issues at one point and got alot worse than I already was lol.
Oct 27, 2014
0
#7
Well there are many people that play for many years and they never become good at chess.
It took me 2.5 years to go from 800 to Expert, doing a small amount of studying to make the jump from 1900 to 2000.
@clunney i'm going to guess you studied tactics quite a bit? or more just self analysis of losses?
When I jumped from 1600 to suddenly beating 2000 level players, I hadn't really been studying or doing a lot of tactics, but I had been playing lots of standard games online and had gone over those games. That strategy is no guarantee of improvement, but it's how I got better. Nowadays, I mostly play blitz online and that's probably why I'm not improving as much.
I agree blitz does not help much , thanks for the answer though.
I'm not expecting to be a grandmaster or anything, I just want to be considered "above average". Right now I'm not that bad at it, but I make so many beginner's mistakes that cost me the game. How long does it take to overcome this? Days, Months, Years?