Finally reached 1000. Took around 6 months. How about you?

I finally got to the 1000 rating. I was just curious how others are progressing and how you went about it. For me the first two months was really just creating an account, learning the game and playing. I didn't study anything. Then, I decided I would make an effort to actually learn the game and attempt to improve. For that I still didn't have a great plan. I used YouTube mostly, along with the chess.com lessons and tactics training. It was all a bit haphazard . Now I have a few books and have created somewhat of a study plan to try to keep me on track. I'm hoping the progress will continue but would definitely like to be more efficient if I can. I feel like given the amount of time I spent playing and studying chess over the last 4 months I should be further along. I'm not in any hurry but just genuinely interested in the process of learning the game of chess. I'd like to hear from others about their experiences when starting out as a beginner and how the learning process went for them. I've been documenting my progress via YouTube. I put a link below of the game where I finally broke the 1000 mark. Good luck to all the beginners out there!

Reaching 1000 rating on Chess.com

Congrats Publicipo
Like other beginners, i am also struggling 2 go 1000+ with in 6 months.

My experience has been similar to yours. I started playing chess in August last year and reached the 1000 mark after around six months. To be honest, I envy those who manage to keep their initial rating of 1000 or 1200. They must be very talented because when I registered on this site I had no intuition of where the good squares are or how to protect my pieces, had no knowledge of tactics or strategy. I guess that's why it is said that you should start learning the game at an early age - kids have better intuition and are fast thinkers. 

Agreed 100%

All it took me was signing up and i was 1200!

started playing in november 2018. about 6 months ago. i just passed 1100 in rapid.

edit: i JUST started playing chess entirely in november for the first time in my life. im happy with my progress.

That's about what it took me.  It's taken me another year and a half to finally reach 1200 and inch my way toward 1300.  I am currently reading Jeremy Silman's book, "How to Reassess Your Chess." It is extremely enlightening and offers a completely different way to look at the game.  I'm only at the second chapter, but already it has made a many things clear to me that I had been ignorant to in games.  I highly recommend it. 

I was about to write this until I realised that this post was already written five days ago.

In my own opinion, 6 months is already a good time frame for breaking that 1000 mark. I was still moving pieces randomly after 6 months of playing chess.

Congratulations on reaching 1000! That's definitely a big milestone and shows that you're progressing out of the beginner stage of your chess career.

I have a favor to ask. Could you check out the "Getting started" videos on my website, https://chesspathways.com ? As someone who was recently a beginner, I'd love to get your feedback as to how effective these videos are in helping beginners turbo-charge their chess improvement. I'm working on putting together a comprehensive "Getting started" video series, and have some Game Analysis videos up for some more advanced players!

I'm rated over 2000, and I keep discovering new and amazing things in "How to Reassess your Chess". The book is really written for a variety of levels. 

Hey Guys, thanks for the feedback. It's great to hear from others and their experiences as well. The book "How to Reassess your Chess" was mentioned a couple times in this thread so I'm going to go ahead and get it. Although, I was thinking at this point with the lessons I've done, and just getting a better grasp on the concepts I've already "learned", or maybe not learned yet, but at least heard/been exposed to, I should be able to continue to progress quite a bit. <--How's that for a run on sentence!

@BlakeyBChess I watched one of your videos and enjoyed it. Endgame essentials I think it was. What I liked the most about the video was when you were explaining how beginners will often have a sizable material advantage but still not be able to convert the win. I talk a lot about that in my beginner videos (Youtube Chess Folly) as well. I'm playing and struggling with that exact thing. It's perplexing but I've improved in that area significantly already and I have some theories on why that happens to all beginners. I won't go into it now as that will be a little long winded but basically has to do with attention span; or lack of attention due to all the things a beginner is trying to think about when just starting out. I will check out some more of your videos over the coming weeks and explore your website more when I get a chance. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm always looking for new avenues that will help me improve. Thanks again to everyone for sharing and for the recommendations. Best of luck to you all on your chess journeys.

It took me about 8 months or so. Fast forward half a year and i'm still going back and forward from above to below 1000. I never really studied chess and just played casually all that time though. I only recently got platinum for unlimited puzzles to see if that'll improve my play. 

I think for me It took about a month to get up to 1200-1300 than another 2 months to get up to 1400 and it took me about a year to break 1500 rating than another  year to reach my peak where I was around 1600 and than I didn't played the great chess game for around 2 years so my rating right now is just under 1500, but I am getting back up thinking to start reading few books as well. The other thing you have to be aware that progress slows down quite a bit once you reach a certain point it takes more time to get better the more you go up the ladder, but being that said that's one of the best things about chess never ending learning journey.

i started when i was 7

I give up!

I started playing chess online and improved fast, (not even joking my first 5 games I lost to the 2 move checkmate, (I played 1.g4 2.f4), played about 4-5 months and played my first USCF tourney. My first rating was 1300, it dropped after that first tourney to 1100 I eventually brought it back to 1200ish and hovered about there until another player gave me this advice, (he was 1800), "literally just wait for them to blunder", my rating jumped 300 points after that. I then started doing tactics and learning openings and jumped up another 300 points, at this point I had been playing about 2 1/2 years and was 1798, I had a bad tournament due to getting sloppy, (making bad moves and depending on them to blunder before making any kind of progress), and dropped quite a bit so I took a break of about 6 months, I am the strongest I've ever been now and will resume tournament play soon.

In my opinion, if you can stop gifting pieces, (moving your queen to an attacked square where their bishop can take it), and take advantage of it when they blunder, you will go from 1000 to 1300 instantly.

It took me 4 months to reach 1000, but I had some experience playing with friends and family periodically but without understanding much more than just how to move the pieces, until I started playing daily here on chess.com in the beginning of November 2018.

I'm starting to realize that the players at my level suck really terribly at Chess, just like I do, and the advice from the person right above me here about "literally just wait for them to blunder" sounds like really sound advice, because even though my opponents or me seem to really know what we are doing for large parts of the game eventually one of us will make a really nasty blunder, and I'm always surprised when that happens, but it seems pretty consistent that it happens. I guess at this level I'm at between 1000 and 1100 none of us really have the ability to keep it all together for very long, so really it just seems like a competition between who can avoid ones own collapse the longest.

Thanks for the compliments regarding https://chesspathways.com ! I'm glad you liked the video. Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help or any suggestions you have for me.

Hey @jbent02, I just played a game using your recommendation of "just wait for your opponent to blunder" and I got what was probably my best win to date. I didn't try to mount any crazy attacks or over extend myself. Just played slow diligent moves until he made a mistake, and it worked. We will see if I can keep it up. Thanks for the tip!