How I went from Beginner to Master level in 3 years
Hello, everyone! Welcome back to another blog post. Today's blog will be different from my usual content. I've decided to share my accomplishments in chess up to this point. Let's rewind to April 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
April 2020
This is when everyone started going into lockdown, at the beginning of the COVID era. I was at home with nothing to do, browsing on Twitch. That's when I stumbled upon the chess category! I knew the rules of chess as a kid but never really learned how to play it. It looked fun, so I decided to give it a try. The first streamers I found were the Botez sisters and Hikaru, so naturally, I started with blitz. My initial rating was 900. Unfortunately, I mostly played on other sites early on, so I can't show you the progress. But from April to September 2020, I played blitz game after blitz game – about six thousand games in that timespan! I managed to reach a rating of 2000 in online blitz, which I was quite proud of.
At this point, I started to plateau. It made sense, after all – how far can one get by playing the London System and trying to flag the opponent every game? I got burnt out from blitz and transitioned to my bullet phase.
November 2020
At this point, I prioritized bullet and played very little blitz. Playing blitz before bullet was helpful, though. I started off with a 1500 bullet rating because of my flagging skills from blitz. From November 2020 to March 2021, I managed to reach a bullet rating of 2400! I still played blitz from time to time, so in that 5-month period, I gained 200 points and went up to 2200. I definitely preferred bullet over blitz because my rating was higher. This was the point when I decided to switch mainly to chess.com.
April 2021
From April 2020 to March 2021, I managed to reach 2200 in blitz and 2400 in bullet, which was pretty good. But I wasn't done yet! I was still in my bullet phase at this point, so I started playing on chess.com. This was when I discovered 30-second chess, which was a complete game-changer for me. My specialty was flagging, but I struggled with outplaying my opponents. Playing 30-second chess made it much easier for me to win games on time. My bullet rating shot up to 2600 by May and crept into the 2700s by June. When September came around, I was at my absolute peak and made it to 2882 in bullet at some point, but that's the highest I ever got. I kept playing hundreds of bullet games per day for a little while, but I saw no further improvement, so I got burnt out. It was a good year, though. I had the opportunity to play countless titled players and many matches against extremely strong players. My most memorable wins were against GM Oleksandr Bortnyk, GM Abhimanyu Mishra, GM Pranav Venkatesh, and GM Andrew Tang!
January 2022
This was the point when I wanted to get serious about chess. My aim was to become a strong player in classical chess. At that time, I had a Blitz rating of 2500 and a Bullet rating of 2800, but my primary focus was on longer time control chess. I began training in calculation, endgames, middlegames, openings, and everything I needed to study in order to improve. A couple of months passed, and it was March when I signed up for my first over-the-board tournament. You can check out my previous blogs for the complete story of my OTB journey, though I haven't written blogs about my 2023 tournaments yet. I finished my first OTB tournament with a 3.5/5 score and obtained a National rating of 1864, and it only went up from there. Over the next seven tournaments, I gained a lot of rating points and reached a rating of 2131 National to close out the year. I also earned one norm for Canadian National Master in 2022 (The requirements for National Master in Canada are a rating of 2200 and three NM norms, with a norm being a performance of 2300 in a tournament). I rarely lost rating and felt confident that I was on the path to earning a title soon.
January 2023
I was more determined than ever to earn a title, attending as many tournaments as I possibly could. In 2022, I participated in eight tournaments, and in the first three months of 2023, I had already played in five tournaments! Unfortunately, none of these tournaments went well, and I was in a bit of a slump. Tournament after tournament, I started to burn out from chess, with rare wins. Most of my results were either losses or draws. In April, I had another disappointing tournament, and that's when my confidence hit its lowest point. My rating had dropped from 2131 to 1972 in just six tournaments. I hadn't blogged about any of these tournaments (except one) because I was too embarrassed. I took May off from in-person tournaments and focused on playing online again. During this time, I managed to reach 2600 in online blitz, and my confidence and love for the game returned. I decided to return to over-the-board tournaments in June and had a great tournament! The break really helped me regain everything I had lost, and from there, I only went up.
The Present (October 2023)
From June 2023 to September 2023, I managed to return to my 2100 OTB rating and also picked up my second NM norm along the way. Currently, I'm playing quite a bit of online chess and trying to participate in one OTB tournament per month. These days, I'm averaging around 2650 in bullet and blitz online. Still, after all of this, I haven't been able to achieve a title! That's my next goal, and I really hope to earn it before the end of this year, but I'll let my chess speak for itself.
Thank you for reading this blog to the end; I appreciate it. I wrote this partly as a personal record for myself to track my journey, but it's nice to share it with all of you as well. If you have any chess stories or experiences you'd like to share, please feel free to do so in the comments below! Until next time!
