How many hours to reach 2000 blitz elo?

I hadn't really played chess before but I started here on chess.com and have been improving pretty quickly.  I started a couple months ago at 650 and am now almost at 1200. I have played about a thousand games but I am worried I will start to palteau against better opponents. I am willing to practice a lot and I would really love to get to 2000 some day for blitz.  Does anyone know how long this takes?

So to gain 500 points, you have spent 300 hours.  You have passed the mass of people who know almost nothing about chess.

The ratings are not linear. The next 1000 will require 300x300 hours.

The more you know, the easier it is to learn.  Going from 500 to 1000 is the hard part.  You'll probably get to a rating of 1500 in half that time, and 2000 in half that.  So a few hours a day and it should only take a couple of months.

In those months it's important to play lots of speed games (the faster the better), change your openings constantly, and post a lot in these forums.

Although my memory is a bit fuzzy... it's either that or go to tournaments and get a coach and work nearly every day for at least 2 years, spending so many hours that that metric becomes impractical.

I thought going from 500 elo to 1000 elo was the easiest part.

it def gets harder the better you are. improvement in most areas follows a tough exponential curve, and chess is no different.

so uh, how many hours will it take? its pretty impossible to answer, but you should expect like at the very least 20 times what you already put in. :D

Naa.  Chess is like most things.

For example swimming.  Hardest part?  Learning to float.  After that getting on the olympic team is just a matter of time and opportunity.

Notice the inverse bell curve for most skills.  Most people are to the far right or left.  Almost no one gets stuck in the middle where improvement is easiest.

You, sir, are spot on.

Of course, 300 x 300 = 90,000 hours. Divide that by prox. 2,000 "work hours" in a year. That would mean 45 years.

Of course, most people are never going to get there, so 45 years or infinity are about the same thing for them.

But, of course, there are some bright lights who...maybe 5 or 6 years, hence (2000hrs/yr) will only require perhaps the magical 10,000 hours? Yes. I think so.

Some people spend 10,000 hours and shuffle the pieces around like a monkey.

It's not just about putting in time.

Indeed. You posted that whilst I was expanding my point. 

I'm pretty sure making the olympics is harder than just floating...

No way?!

Nice posts shell_knight, I'd often wondered why there are hundreds of thousands of active players here rated either 2500 or 600, but hardly anyone rated 1200. Thanks! ;)

Almost feel bad because the OP doesn't see posts like this every day and may have been honestly asking.

Someone should organize one of those fun articles (aimed at beginners) that's broken into:

This is what you should do
and
This is why you wont do it.

For example... you should spend 4 hours a day on chess not counting multiple OTB tournaments each month, and you should do this for years.

You wont do it because you have a job / family / other interests / not a lot of money to spend / it's a lot of hard work for a game.

Shell_knight, getting from 500 to 1000 is much easier than from 1000 to 1500. It's not a matter of skill, but of relative skill. Beating an increasingly sophisticated player becomes increasingly hard and as such it becomes more and more difficult to gain rating, hence it costs more time.

I think that if anyone is going to get to 1,800-2,000, they are not going to let Hell or high water get in the way. Nor would they need to get a quorum of opinions, mostly from those who haven't measured up to the task.

It all sort of reminds me of someone going on an internet finance forum and asking: "Can anyone tell me how long it will take me to become a billionaire?" (Of course, in chess terms, billionaire would be closer to 2,800.)

It took me 2 whole years and about 6,000 games to get to 2000 in blitz.

Well done! 

I don't want to discourage you, but it could take many years of HARD WORK, SACRIFICE, plus some natural chess TALENT, to reach 2000 blitz rating. It's not as simple as abc. I can't view your profile on this new app (and I am posting from the phone), but I am guessing you are very new at chess based on your posts. You need to have a real classical elo of close to or above 2000 to have any hope of getting 2000 in blitz. Strategy, tactics, and endgame need to be very strong. The same reasons why newbies always assume becoming GM is easy, let alone possible.

You will have to give up 10,000 hours of not having sex with women to reach 2000 in blitz.