Rate of Progress: One Rating Point per Book

Hi! I turn 25 tomorrow and have been tracking my blitz progress as it relates to my book study. Last August, I peaked with 2741. Since then I have read 30-50 chess books to peak by 41 points to 2782. My bullet hasn't peaked this last year, but my average rating went up recently.

Not a bad deal, especially because with "reading all day" I can read a book in 3-5 days usually. Who knows if this continues to scale. It might be a too optimistic pace, honestly, time will tell. Some people might find this too slow to be worth it, but since I like studying, I might as well. Honestly, something like "one hundred points per year" of "nonstop chess reading" is fast, imo. I think I'm getting less than 100 since I'm not actually reading nonstop, but 50-70 is still good.

At some point I might run out of chess books, hopefully well on the way to 3000+ blitz by then.

It feels like a good deal to me because this rate of progress looks like I'm capable of reaching pretty high, even if it takes "reading libraries for years" or tens of thousands of games/analysis.

obviously my rate of progress was much faster as a teen but you take what you can get

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday! I wish you well on your endeavor to hit 3000.

Happy birthday in advance

Roughly 1 point per book, yes. Quite a good deal at my rating/age, imo. I expected less for a while, as I was rereading David Milliern's posts of "adult improver" examples from age 30+, and I'm not quite there yet, and I think they had hardly any study prior to age 25, so my earlier study set me up for success and probably a rather substantially faster rate of progress than them.

I remember being 14 too! (1000 to 1700 USCF in 1 year) This is age 25-ish rate of progress.

You bet! It was great peaking 2741 to 2782 blitz just in time for my birthday, showing that my books still do something. Also scored 4/6 against GM Yermolinsky at OTB blitz recently

Considering I own something like 150-200 more chess books that I haven't read yet, and I'm currently roughly on pace for ~100 books per year going by my refocusing starting late December, plus recent peaks suggesting roughly 1 point per book is realistic, it sure feels possible for me to get there, without "unreasonable" amounts of study/practice to do so. I'm also encouraged seeing people with GM titles who 'barely' broke 3000 after tens of thousands of games, for example, which implies to me that I can focus on blitz and then refocus on FIDE standard to play for titles up to GM, later down the line, if I want to. Dipping my toes in earlier.

Nice! what is the fastest time it took for you to finish a chess book?

Some easy books take less than a day.

One point per book sounds about right. So much of chess improvement is praxis.

Are you rereading books also or only focusing on initial reads? How much are you studying the books vs more superficially reading?

Happy Bday!

Usually just reading once, I used to do spaced repetition of some, mostly on Chessable. I think reading a chess book cover to cover isn't necessarily superficial, although a lot of the ideas in the books I've read I'm already familiar with, and I'm getting more exposure to application.