What’s a decent rating progression for beginners?

Hi folks. Love these forums, always so helpful 🫂

Got into this since Christmas but want an idea of how I ideally should be progressing with experience/games/time. So ultimately I just want to get an idea of rating benchmark as time goes on

I’m on the brink of breaking 700 in Rapid (my favourite format I think). In daily my score seemed to quickly settle around 975, I like this less as I feel rhythm goes but understand it’s essential for trying to actually play the best move and actually plan that out before moving

What should I be aiming for in a month / 3 / 6 / 12. I get everyone is different and all that so I don’t expect clear answers, just some idea!

Obviously lessons, watching others, tutorials, strategy, openings will come into it a bit later. But generally I’m really enjoying it, it’s the best use of phone idling I’ve ever had 😁. Thanks in advance to anyone who replies

Play and analyse. If you see you are using tactical themes well in your games,that is progress in itself. I would suggest you do not pay much attend to rating until you have trained well, continuous for 3-4 months.

Attention*

If you'd break the 1300 barrier (rapid section) in three months then it's decent.

 

Hi!

There's just so much individual variation on this.  Everyone is different.  If you're brand new to chess (or, have, like me, come back to it as an adult after knowing the rules and maybe reading a chess book as a kid but never winning a game) you could wind up just about anywhere in terms of your starting rating depending on how you are at solving visual puzzles.

For example, when I decided to start playing chess online in January of 2021, with basically no chess experience I started out here on chess.com somewhere around 750 rapid (playing exclusively 30 minute games), with my rating bottoming out at 708 in late February.  Of course, there are other people who find themselves starting out at, say, 200.

While I couldn't actually remember having played a complete game of chess with anyone else, and my few forays into playing against computers just led to me losing, I do remember reading a chess book when I was 15 years old or so (in the mid-1980s) that talked about basic opening principles and how to use point values to count the value of pieces, so I wasn't starting at completely zero.  That kind of information can make a big difference in where you start with the game.

I improved rapidly over my first four months and peaked at a rating of about 1014 in late May of 2021.  Then, I stopped studying as much, played less often, and fell somewhat out of practice.  This led to a multiple-month plateau, or maybe a slow decline, that left me in the high 800s by the end of summer.

In late November, I renewed my effort and started playing a lot more, which initially saw my rating tanking to 835, from which point I achieved a new high of 1045 in about three weeks.  My rating has mostly bounced around 1000 since then, although as of this writing I'm back at about 1044, doing as well as I ever have.

So, that's me.  Bottom line:  what should you expect?

1)  There's no way to guess where you'll start rating-wise, except if you've never seriously played chess it will likely be below 1000.

2) You'll probably get a lot better really fast at first.

3)  You'll hit a wall at some point.

4)  Your rating can tank 150 or more points in a week and recover just as fast.  This might happen if you are out of practice or just because you've changed something up in your game.  If it's the latter, it's not necessarily bad, it just means you need more practice with the new thing.

5)  Whether your progress is fast or slow, consistent or punctuated, whether you have plateaus or bad stretches or whatever, it is possible to improve.  It may not necessarily be easy.

Hope that helps a bit in how you think about it.

 

getting a diamond membership & studying lessons, puzzles & endgames every day for a year will do FAR more for your chess skill than playing 10,000 bullet games against other beginners would... slap-boxing with your buddies might be fun, but it will never earn you a black belt.

for real improvement, i suggest several thoughtfully-played daily games at once, striving for the optimal use of & patiently blunder-checking each move.

when each game is OVER, use the analysis feature to spot where you went wrong & try to learn from that.  with puzzles, don't just keep going when you get one wrong:  keep trying until you get it right & then attempt to understand why the solution is correct.

strategies & tactics are APPLIED ideas & patterns.

Avoid 10 min games if you want to improve.

15+10 is a bit better if you want fast game.

30 min games are obviously better.

Daily games are not needed to learn.

One slow game a day is enough to get to 1300 in 6 to 12 months and 1500 in 18 months.

If you analyse your games after you play them it's very good but very few do.

You need to do some tactical puzzles ( like 10 to 20 every day) to learn well the basic and study a few hours on end game and learn an opening that you really love with white.

And think very carefully before each move;just that plus what is above will get you to 1350 here easily in a year or less.

Have fun!

It varies and depends on a series of factors so it is very hard to predict...

However, if you want to improve, you can "easily" get to 1000 rapid rating simply by not hanging pieces for free (easier said than done, but very much doable)

Play longer time formats.. as mentioned 15|10 is great, 30 min better... 10min not recommended but do-able. I myself never played anything longer than that... It is important you take your time and think before you move. Analyzing your games after you play will help you improve as well

Here are the steps: Learn basic endgames and basic checkmating patterns, then learn opening principles, practice a bit of tactics (especially pins, forks, removing the defender and discovery attacks... there are many others but these are more common) and eventually your opponent will blunder and give you a piece for free... you capture that piece, and then trade all of your other pieces of equal value with your opponent, then use your remaining pieces to capture your opponents pawns and promote one of your owns to a queen, and then checkmate your opponent...

I would also recommend, for improving, maybe watching one (or all) of the following:

-Chess Brah Building Good Chess Habits series on youtube;

-Climbing the Rating Ladder with John Bartholomew on youtube;

-Daniel Naroditsky speed runs on youtube...

They go through every rating explaining concepts, ideas, strategies, common mistakes, etc

 

Other than that, the best thing I can say to you is that no matter what you do with your chess, just have fun with it

I made a post about this very topic when I first started out and posted an update on it last month. It's still floating around on maybe page 2 or 3. One of the top results if you search for "progression" on the search forum feature.

Cool to see this post is still active, 2.5 years after I originally posted it! An update on my progress in blitz, should anyone find it useful, starting out as an adult beginner in 2019:

625 = 3 weeks.
800 = 7 weeks.
1000 = 2.5 months.
1200 = 4 months. (Around the time I posted this very topic 2.5 years ago!)
1400 = 5 months.
1500 = 8 months.
1600 = 1 year, 1 month.
1700 = 1 year, 6 months.
1800 = 2 years, 1 month.
1900 = 2 years, 6 months.
2000 = 2 years, 9 months.
2100 = ??? 

Good luck and set realistic targets, 

Learn some chess by doing lessons, puzzles and if you put some work in then you will improve quickly 

@goatfaced10 - I started (again) recently too, so I was essentially a beginner, but I study as much as I play. For me, although I don't have time/energy to play as many games as you (some here and some on Lichess), improvement has come with a steady (slow!) program of study, mainly from books, but also online videos (especially on openings), some basic endgame knowledge, lots of Tactics (concepts, not just random puzzles), some basic middlegame/positional concepts, and a basic grasp of the ideas behind a few chosen openings. I try to analyse my games and identify weaknesses and learn from my mistakes too.

I have two boards set up at home all the time to support the study. I guess everyone is different but I really enjoy the journey of discovery with study, especially when you see what you've learned reflected in your games, and the depth and richness of this game is gradually revealed to you.

So, I guess my point is that I wouldn't put off doing a bit of study now if you want to accelerate your improvement. I don't really set goals, except to continue improving and enjoying the journey...

I would be beyond suspicious of anyone who goes from rank beginner to 1300 in three months.  Unless they had the luxury of working on chess 8 hours a day and working with a coach, this smacks of engine play. 

He's one of my students. Yes, he's working quite a lot himself. Plus we work together 2-3 a week.

And it's not something unusual. When I started to play here I've improved from 900 to 1300 in 3 months as well. Nothing impressive.

It would be quite unusual.  And only something someone who's devoting a tremendous amount of work to. 

Is this realm of possibility?  Yeah, for someone in a dedicated program treating it like a full-time job. 

It's not impressive if the person has no job and if he/she play all day long and seven days a week non stop +12 hours a day.....and no blitz game and pay attention...

For the above average person who play a few games a day and study a few hours a week From what i saw from many of my friends playing here....10 months from 800 to 1300 and another 8 months to get around 1500 with a total of around 950 games ( not all slow games though).

 

 

You can get to 1500 overnight by just always checking your intended move is no blunder before you play it. It is just mental discipline.
"All games between players rated <1800 are decided on pieces being blundered on almost every move" - Carlsen

You get get to 2000 in 200 hours.
"Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers [who play on a par with a master]."  - Lasker

Some incredible answers and information in here, thank you all. I’m doing 10 mins but can see that 15+10 will stop me rushing which I think is a good thing. I’ll finish my lessons and study tactics a bit more too

i have no idea

Balderdash.  1200 - 1400 players don't blunder on almost every move.  Nonsense.   

In fact the players here from 1100 to 1300 blunder around once in the first 20-25 moves usually against a 1400 player.