Reflecting on My Journey to 1000 Elo

Hey everyone! In September, I was 800 Elo (Rapid) on Chess.com, and I set myself the goal of hitting 1000 by the end of the year. I just achieved this today--with no days to spare!

To celebrate, I thought it'd be nice to share a few thoughts about what helped me on my journey. I won't presume to tell you that this is the best path for improvement. Instead, I'll share what worked for me, and you can take from it what you'd like.

This turned out to be a long post. Feel free to skip around and ask for any additional detail!

750-800:

• Paying enough attention to blunder less and (2) spotting and taking advantage of opponents' blunders. You don't have to be perfect--consciously trying not to blunder, and gaining experience, should be enough. At this level, it's almost guaranteed that the opponent will blunder, so I always kept my eyes open, even in losing positions. (Note that paying attention starts before the game! Put your phone away. Open a new browser window on full-screen.)
• Mastering the easiest and most stalemate proof mating patterns for Q+K vs K, R+R vs K, and R vs K. Forget about mating in the fewest moves in a completely winning endgame. When you're winning and emotions are running high, you are very susceptible to blundering. If in doubt, give checks.
• Learning good opening principles by playing solid openings (ex: The Italian). Knowing the openings up through move 5-7 is sufficient.
• Never resigning. Get to a point where your king is the only piece that can move, and you'd be surprised how often stalemates happen because your opponents don't know how to mate.

800-850:

• I committed not to play when I (1) didn't get enough sleep, (2) drank any alcohol, or (3) was not focused.
• I played 1-2 games a day max and spent equal amount of time analyzing my games. What 1-3 move tactics did you miss? (Don't go too deep down the rabbit hole!) How does the engine deviate in the opening on move 3-6, and can you incorporate that into your future opening?
• I solved 0-15 random Chess.com puzzles a day, focusing on accuracy, not speed. I tried to get all of them correct, with an actual target of 60%. Don't guess at the solutions. You can't try a move three times in a real game. Build your calculation skills.
• I developed a white repertoire ~10 moves deep, down multiple lines. I chose GothamChess' e4 course, and specifically focused on the Vienna System and Vienna Gambit. I hate it when people say "just do tactics". I think having a sharp (but solid!) opening is so helpful for learning and moving up the ratings. Do people not know how good it feels to be +2-5 up points on the eval bar and 15-20 seconds ahead, after 6 moves? (Or, just to not lose in the first 10 moves?) Plus, an opening you're comfortable with gives you the proper base to build additional knowledge on. Don't memorize the moves--know why they're good. (Note: I consciously avoided spending time on a black repertoire. Everyone only has so much time, and you don't need to improve everything at once.)
• Playing longer time controls. I moved from 10 min, to 15 min, to 20 min. I realized that I was (1) still losing too much to blunders and (2) missing advantageous tactics and mating nets. However, I just didn't have the time in-game to think deeper than I did. If your weakness is how long it takes you to calculate / find ideas and not the ability to calculate itself, increasing the time control should improve your results. Plus, you practice the crucial skill of calculating more in your games.
• Turn on zen mode (or any equivalent). Play the board, and don't let your opponent's rating distract you.

850-900:

• I got a chess coach. Ah, there it is. Darn. That's the secret. I can't afford a chess coach. There's no need to read further, this stuff is irrelevant to me, right? No! The most helpful part of having a chess coach for me was to have an easy way of getting answers to my questions. You can get the same answers from any social source (like the forums here), just with more effort. At the end of the day, you're the one who has to do the practice and to play the games.
• I started learning the Caro-Kann against 1.e4. Against anything else, I continued to just follow general opening principles.
• I continued following my training and playing routine, and my ranking kept going up. My win rate was around 57-63%.

900-950:

• At this stage, my chess skills were sufficient for my Elo, but I noticed that my mental skills were a weakness. To start: I was scared of losing Elo. I was scared that I was not good enough to keep moving up. Therefore, I sometimes chose not to play when I could have. Not playing meant that my ranking obviously didn't change, providing "proof" and reinforcing the mentality that I was a "900 player" and not a "1000 player". In reality, I had not hit any actual roadblocks (i.e., my win rate did not go below 50%.) Not playing also meant that I couldn't get better with gameplay and post-game analysis experience. To solve all of this, I started playing on Lichess, where I had no ego tied to my rating. (I don't even know what it is, because I have it hidden!) This allowed me to play games without stress. On days where I felt focused, I played a game or two on Chess.com, and my ranking moved up in aggregate. In essence, I was getting better as a player and coming back to Chess.com over-leveled for my Elo.
• I became a master at forgetting my mistakes in-game. If you lose focus after a blunder, you might as well resign. Have the memory of a goldfish. Focus! You need to be alert to catch the potential of your opponent's future blunders and to set up your own tactics. It's not over until it's over. I kid you not--I blundered my queen in the middlegame in the final game I played today to reach 1000 Elo. I got back to equality after I was able to pin my opponent's queen to their king later in the game.
• I started watching a lot more GM tournaments, especially in Rapid and Blitz formats. Whereas I previously couldn't understand anything by watching high level games, now I was able to at least pick up important concepts to bring to my own games (e.g., open file, overloading, pawn structures).
• I started playing 15|10 games instead. I never felt any more true time pressure afterward.
• I started playing more Blitz games. Sure, I wanted to win, but the idea was (1) to practice moving fast when needed in Rapid, and (2) to explore ideas I didn't want to risk playing in a Rapid. You generally play by "instinct" in fast time controls. Post-game analysis was helpful for me to identify where my instincts had potential holes. Losing to relatively complicated tactics in Blitz didn't worry me at all.

950-1000:

• I started paying more attention to rook and pawn endgames. Endgames became more important, as it became more rare to beat my opponents straight out of the opening or through multiple opponent blunders. I don't think it's necessary to know everything perfectly, but it was extremely helpful to know enough to have a strategy instead of playing random moves. Think: king activity, opposition, pawn weaknesses, pawn promotion, forced draws, etc.
• Tactics started become a relative weakness for me. I wasn't finding mate in ~2-3s. I often lost exchanges when the position was too congested. I took too long to calculate. Therefore, I picked up a few Chessable.com tactical courses and started working through those instead of the random Chess.com puzzles. The results within three weeks were quite astounding. It's difficult to describe, except that I started seeing tactics in the middle of my games that I otherwise wouldn't have seen. I was almost scaring myself in the middle of my games.

Other General Advice:

• Improvement, not your rating, should be the goal. If you improve, your rating will increase naturally.
• Understand your relative strengths and weaknesses. Know that you don't have to improve everything at once. Focus on improving an aspect of your game, and take pride when you see that aspect improve.
• It's eventually important to have multiple tools at your disposal, so you always feel like you're in the game and playing for a win in the opening, middlegame, and endgame. Confidence is extremely important, as are all of the other mental aspects of the game.

Well, I hope this was helpful! Feel free to ask questions, or let me know where you agree or disagree. Hopefully, I will make another post when I hit 1200.