Trying to reach 1500.

Hello.

I have always known the basic rules of chess but i had never really played it, i only knew how the pieces moved. My knowledge was so basic that i didn't even know that pawns could queen, or that castling and en passant were legal moves.

Recently i moved from Cape Town in South Africa to the UK permanently and it was during lockdown in April this year that i met a guy here who knows chess and so i played him a lot as we had nothing else to do in lockdown. Now I've become obsessed with chess. He was much better and always won every game we played, but after a few weeks I started winning ocassionally as I improved. After about a month of playing I joined chess.com and I had a rating of about 700-800 elo. Now I range between 1060-1120.

In December I'd like to go visit my family and my dream is to beat my dad at chess when I visit him. I think he has an elo of about 1500. At this rate I will not improve fast enough to reach 1500 in time. So I wanted to know is it possible to move from 1100 to 1500 elo in about 4 and a half months if I practice everyday? If so what is the fastest and best way to improve? I brought a book called "fundamental chess openings" but the problem with the book is that it tells me what to do and not why. I want to understand the logic behind opening theory. Should I continue to focus on openings and tactical puzzles as I have been or should I practice something else? Also I live around the Northern Wales/ Chester region of the UK. Are there any free or very cheap  (I'm broke lol) chess clubs for amateurs in this area? Please let me know if you have any info about clubs in my region and thanks for the help

Hi there. I would love to see yoi improve in such a short period of time but im afraid to say it just takes a lot of time to gain experience it would be like guitar you need practice i would find a local chess club near you so other players will help you as to were you go wrong plus play chess on line but i know that in time you will surley beat your dad as you rating is climbing all the time happy battles in your chess.

Thanks for the advice  so its just a matter of practice. How long did it take you to reach 1600? Just so i have an estimate of how much time i must put in..thanks for the reply man

Hi Tom. Google chess clubs in your area. There are bound to be some. There is an English Chess Federation so may also be a Welsh one. Again, ask google. I'm around 1300 and only started chess in January. If you can study daily and are able to identify and work on your weaknesses I think you could make 1400 in a few months Not sure about 1500. My suggestion is dont over do it on the openings. You should instead aim to develop all areas. So do tactics puzzles daily and solve them in your head to get them right first time. This will improve your calculation and visualisation skills generally as well as tactical vision. Study end game technique, suggest pawn endings first then rook endings. You can do end game puzzles on chess tempo. Play over GM games for the openings that interest you and look at general themes and positional ideas. Also for middle games, Check out hanging pawns on you tube, he has a great set of videos on middlegame ideas and some videos on how to analyse your own games. Play 30 minute rapid (or longer if you have time) and analyse all your losses yourself before using the engine. Structure it all into a study plan that keeps you touching on all areas regularly. Be patient, give it time for the study to start making it through to natural habits.

Which might be more difficult to achieve, reaching 1500 or beating your dad in one game?

Will reaching 1500 guarantee you will beat him?

Study his games. What does he play? What would you say his strengths are? Does he frequently make the same type of mistakes? What openings does he rarely or never play against?

Hi again.  my fide rating is about 1750  as over the years you will reach a certan rating and you will stay aaround that rating as i dont realy put the study requirde in but you will over 1 or 2 or more years you rating will level out so tournament and study couching will be requirde to improve rating . All my life of playing chess im only 1750 but thats because im lazy for study. Enjoy the game we all fall in love with chess.

     400 points in 4 months... Yes, it's possible, but very-very-VERY unlikely. Chance is about 1% i would say...

Thanks. ill take the advice and yea there is a chess club nearby but for semi-pros

interesting approach thanks haha, i can study focus on his games. He is basically a calculating machine...it is impossible to out calculate him so maybe i need positional advantages

thank you very much

thats a bummer  oh well i will get him next year december

I went from your level to 1500 in about 5 months. Check my rating chart in blitz. 
I went from 600 to about 1000 in 3 months, 1000-1200 in maybe another 2 months, then 1200 to 1500 in another 3 months. (8 months total from 0). But I stayed flat at 1500 for the next 8 months!! Only recently am I approaching 1700, just under 1.5 years after learning the game.

I didnt read any books but I did alot of tactical puzzles and studied some endgames. I'd recommend watching John Bartholomew's climbing a rating ladder series too! On youtube. You could always get a coach too, they are pricey but will help you improve the fastest, if its a 'dream' of yours to reach that rating. Coaches start from around £20 per hour.

It took me 1 year between learning the rules of chess to becoming 1600, so it is definitely possible. In this time I mainly played blitz here on chess.com and I read a few books, but not really any structured study.

Chess is a skill, and like any skill to improve you need structured study and practice (in chess "practice" means playing games with long time controls).

Other than that, I think the two most useful things for new players is what I posted here (the video and the article)
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/any-tips-for-trade?page=2

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Basically don't make an equal trade unless that trade does something good for you... and early in the game initiating a trade is often bad (recapturing to keep the material equal is very good of course, but you shouldn't be initiating these trades).

And the article talks about finding all your opponent's forcing moves. New players often look at their pieces but ignore their opponent's.

And... I guess that's advice for what not to do, which isn't necessarily very useful if I don't also talk about what you should do.

I guess I'd say that the fundamental idea of having a better position is piece activity. Early in the game this simply means your pieces influence more squares than your opponent's pieces. Later it means you've used this superior mobility to come into contact with weaknesses... and what are the most important weaknesses? The ones that can't run away very fast  (enemy pawns and the enemy king).

So maybe you see that a trade is not good for you, and maybe you see the threats your opponent can make, but you don't know what to do. Well this is the basic idea... in the first part of the game you're mostly increasing mobility, and in the 2nd part (if you're winning) you're moving into your opponent's position to pressure weak pawns or attack the king.

If you have the free time and a LOT of dedication...sure it’s possible. Come up with a training regime that packs in a rediculous amount of studying time...playing time...analyzing time. You could do it...but you’ll probably get burnt out before you make it lol. If I was you I would study and learn...but enjoy the ride don’t force it. I’m sure your dad will be very impressed and proud regardless of you beating him or his rating so quickly. You’ll get there

Well, everyone else already said it's possible so...

I'm going to go ahead and say 4.5 months is not enough time.

It's not impossible... but neither is an asteroid hitting earth tomorrow and killing everyone.

In other words "not impossible" is an extremely low bar. You should not plan on being able to gain 125 points a month 4 months in a row, just like you shouldn't plan for humans to go extinct tomorrow.

So if you get stuck at the lower ratings and can't improve from there, would you say it's reasonable to just give up?

😂 llama has a pretty good point

I like the idea you want to beat your dad. I offer myself as a Sparring partner in Daily games. At 11 I beat all my uncles. Badly.