Just hit 2000 blitz rating today!

I finally did it, after years of trying. I'm so happy! Kind of in shock too.

This is the game that got me there: https://www.chess.com/live/game/5406124422

For a while, I really felt like a hit a brick wall. I just wasn't improving. I was playing heaps, watching videos, training tactics puzzles, learning endgame theory, learning openings, etc. But I wasn't seeing results. And it was so frustrating.

Then one day, out of nowhere, I started going on a bit of a winning streak. It's like everything suddenly started to click in my brain. I was blundering less and my intuition was just correct way more often. And this continued for a few days, until today.

It's weird how fast it happened. Like I made no progress for months, then suddenly I just jumped up to a new peak, when I least expected it.

I think I've improved basically every aspect of my game since I was about 1700 rating, but the two biggest things were probably endgames and tactics. Studying endgames by watching lots of YouTube videos and training tactics by solving lots of puzzles on this site made the biggest difference imo.

Anyway, I'm going to take a break from blitz games for a while, since I've achieved my goal now. I'll play a bunch of rapid games instead. They're meant to be better for improvement anyway.

Feels good to be 2000 now.

Here's the game that got me there, if anyone is interested. It was a 5|0 blitz game:

Thank you!

You've shown a lot of improvement recently too. I remember you were in the 1400's just a few weeks ago, and now you're in the 1600's.

Nice work progressing so fast!

Thank you! It really does feel like a dream come true lol.

I know the feeling. I'm probably not going to play any blitz games for the next month or so, cause I'm scared of losing this rating.

I plan to play a bunch of rapid instead.

What time control do you play?

I've never had any issues getting a game at 5/0 blitz. I've played a few 10/0 and 3/0 blitz and that wasn't too difficult to find games either.

Congrats @Deranged 2K is a huge achievement 

A very clean game that game. A blunder by your opponent and then you finished the game. I wouldn't have given up the bishop pair though. Overall, solid play.

Btw I only play 3 min

Play. If you never do, you'll never achieve anything.

I feel like sometimes I have good days and bad days you know. And sometimes, rarely you have a super good day and you just blast off. The only thing now is keeping that rating. If you feel angry that you dropped, calm yourself down, and don't play for the rest of the day. That's how I tilted from 2331

Oh my goodness!! That's amazing!! I reached 1000 today, what a coincidence haha, except I'm at 1000, lol, it's been 3 months since I was active and I'm really proud of my progress, you should too, keep going!! Congratulations. 

Thanks Kracker and fizzyband! 

My logic for giving up the bishop pair was 2 reasons:

1. I thought that this was a typical "good knight vs bad bishop" Sicilian structure where my knight outpost was actually stronger than a bishop. I've seen Bxf6 played a lot in the Sicilian, sacrificing white's bishop for the knight.

2. It gave me the tempo I needed to play f5. Otherwise, after I retreat my bishop, black has time to play exf4 and that seems to reduce the strength of my kingside attack.

I'm not sure if my decision was correct or not, but this is just what was going through my head at the time.

If you don't mind me asking @Deranged how long did it take you? I'm kind of at 1700 blitz right now which is where you started it seems.

Haha, I was looking at all these comments and reconsidered myself being a good chess player, lol. I think if you put the effort into chess, you can do it. In like 3 months I came from around 300 I came to around 1000 blitz. I thought you can become an FM or GM or something in a few years, right? Okay, well it depends on how much time you put in every day I guess. 

Congrats! That's a huge milestone.

I think the lockdown is making so many of us grind online chess pretty hard.

And thank you!

Well it took me about 2 years, except I wasn't playing consistently throughout that time. I'd say I put in about 1000 hours of playing/study total to get from 1700 to 2000 blitz.