From beginner to professional. How hard is it?

Hello guys,

I started playing chess 2-3 months ago, as a pastime.
I casually follow the Study Plan here on chess.com & lately I play 2 daily games simultaneously with 3 days per move. I am good with the Beginner and Intermediate level, but the advanced level is hard to assimilate.
So, currently, I am reviewing the study plans from the beginning, and I am going through "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" to get some knowledge from another source.

I know there might not be an answer to this, but, how much time would it take for me to reach 2000-2200 elo?
I am around 1000 elo, so pretty much everyone is welcomed to give me some insight.

The fastest people in the world have done it in about 2 years.

These are people who later become strong GMs, world champions, have professional coaches, and they're typically under 10 years old. That kind of thing.

If you're older than that, and play chess for fun, just doing some stuff on chess.com, you'll improve, but it will take longer.

But 2000-2200 is already roughly the top 1% of tournament chess players (not website players, but tournament players). So it shouldn't be a surprise that most likely you'll never be 2000-2200 (because most people aren't).

The two key factors are:
1) enjoying spending hours a day playing and studying (this can't be taught, more of a personality thing)
2) systematic work (one by one you seriously study all key aspects of chess)

If you have those 2, you'll probably get there... but since it takes an almost pathological obsession, most people improve for a while, then stop long before 2000.

Judging from the avatar, he draws chibi hunter x hunter fan fic for a living.

Possibly of interest:
"... the NM title is an honor that only one percent of USCF members attain. ..." - IM John Donaldson (2015)
http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Reaching-the-Top-77p3905.htm
What It Takes to Become a Chess Master by Andrew Soltis
"... going from good at tactics to great at tactics ... doesn't translate into much greater strength. ... You need a relatively good memory to reach average strength. But a much better memory isn't going to make you a master. ... there's a powerful law of diminishing returns in chess calculation, ... Your rating may have been steadily rising when suddenly it stops. ... One explanation for the wall is that most players got to where they are by learning how to not lose. ... Mastering chess ... requires a new set of skills and traits. ... Many of these attributes are kinds of know-how, such as understanding when to change the pawn structure or what a positionally won game looks like and how to deal with it. Some are habits, like always looking for targets. Others are refined senses, like recognizing a critical middlegame moment or feeling when time is on your side and when it isn't. ..." - GM Andrew Soltis (2012)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093409/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review857.pdf
100 Chess Master Trade Secrets by Andrew Soltis
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708094523/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review916.pdf
Reaching the Top?! by Peter Kurzdorfer
"... On the one hand, your play needs to be purposeful much of the time; the ability to navigate through many different types of positions needs to be yours; your ability to calculate variations and find candidate moves needs to be present in at least an embryonic stage. On the other hand, it will be heart-warming and perhaps inspiring to realize that you do not need to give up blunders or misconceptions or a poor memory or sloppy calculating habits; that you do not need to know all the latest opening variations, or even know what they are called. You do not have to memorize hundreds of endgame positions or instantly recognize the proper procedure in a variety of pawn structures.
[To play at a master level consistently] is not an easy task, to be sure ..., but it is a possible one. ..." - NM Peter Kurzdorfer (2015)
http://www.thechessmind.net/blog/2015/11/16/book-notice-kurzdorfers-reaching-the-top.html
http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Reaching-the-Top-77p3905.htm
"Yes, you can easily become a master. All you need to do is some serious, focused work on your play.
That 'chess is 99% tactics and blah-blah' thing is crap. Chess is several things (opening, endgame, middlegame strategy, positional play, tactics, psychology, time management...) which should be treated properly as a whole. getting just one element of lay and working exclusively on it is of very doubtful value, and at worst it may well turn out being a waste of time." - IM pfren (August 21, 2017)
"Every now and then someone advances the idea that one may gain success in chess by using shortcuts. 'Chess is 99% tactics' - proclaims one expert, suggesting that strategic understanding is overrated; 'Improvement in chess is all about opening knowledge' - declares another. A third self-appointed authority asserts that a thorough knowledge of endings is the key to becoming a master; while his expert-friend is puzzled by the mere thought that a player can achieve anything at all without championing pawn structures.
To me, such statements seem futile. You can't hope to gain mastery of any subject by specializing in only parts of it. ..." - FM Amatzia Avni (2008)
https://www.chess.com/article/view/can-anyone-be-an-im-or-gm
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kids-fight-stereotypes-using-chess-in-rural-mississippi/
http://brooklyncastle.com/
https://www.chess.com/article/view/don-t-worry-about-your-rating
https://www.chess.com/article/view/am-i-too-old-for-chess
https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-can-older-players-improve
Train Like a Grandmaster by Kotov
Becoming a Grandmaster by Keene
What It Takes to Become a Grandmaster by GM Andrew Soltis
"BENJAMIN FINEGOLD (born Sep-06-1969 ...) ... Ben became a USCF Life Master at 15, USCF Senior Master at 16, an International Master in 1989, and achieved his final GM norm at the SPICE Cup B Section in September, 2009. ..."
http://www.chessgames.com/player/benjamin_finegold.html
"MARK IZRAILOVICH DVORETSKY (... died Sep-26-2016 ...) ... He was ... awarded the IM title in 1975. Dvoretsky was also a FIDE Senior Trainer and noted author. ... During the 1970s, Mark was widely regarded by the strongest IM in the world, ..."
http://www.chessgames.com/player/mark_izrailovich_dvoretsky.html
"To become a grandmaster is very difficult and can take quite a long time! ... you need to ... solve many exercises, analyse your games, study classic games, modern games, have an opening repertoire and so on. Basically, it is hard work ... It takes a lot more than just reading books to become a grandmaster I am afraid." - GM Artur Yusupov (2013)
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/QandAwithArturYusupovQualityChessAugust2013.pdf
https://www.chess.com/blog/smurfo/book-review-insanity-passion-and-addiction
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/26/books/books-of-the-times-when-the-child-chess-genius-becomes-the-pawn.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2017/05/05/making-a-living-in-chess-is-tough-but-the-internet-is-making-it-easier/#4284e4814850

https://www.chess.com/news/view/is-there-good-money-in-chess-1838
"... Many aspiring young chess players dream of one day becoming a grandmaster and a professional. ... But ... a profession must bring in at least a certain regular income even if one is not too demanding. ... The usual prize money in Open tournaments is meagre. ... The higher the prizes, the greater the competition. ... With a possibly not very high and irregular income for several decades the amount of money one can save for old age remains really modest. ... Anyone who wants to reach his maximum must concentrate totally on chess. That involves important compromises with or giving up on his education. ... it is a question of personal life planning and when deciding it is necessary to be fully conscious of the various possibilities, limitations and risks. ... a future professional must really love chess and ... be prepared to work very hard for it. ... It is all too frequent that a wrong evaluation is made of what a talented player can achieve. ... Most players have the potential for a certain level; once they have reached it they can only make further progress with a great effort. ... anyone who is unlikely to attain a high playing strength should on no account turn professional. ... Anyone who does not meet these top criteria can only try to earn his living with public appearances, chess publishing or activity as a trainer. But there is a lack of offers and these are not particularly well paid. For jobs which involve appearing in public, moreover, certain non-chess qualities are required. ... a relevant 'stage presence' and required sociability. ... All these jobs and existences, moreover, have hanging above them the sword of Damocles of general economic conditions. ... around [age] 40 chess players ... find that their performances are noticeably tailing off. ..." - from a 12 page chapter on becoming a chess professional in the book, Luther's Chess Reformation by GM Thomas Luther (2016)
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/LuthersChessReformation-excerpt.pdf

Hope he reads all that.

possibly of interest

• It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a
plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king
with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the
throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than
crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and
fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven
hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were
conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this.
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Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-andtwentieth
blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in
the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by
announcing that arrangements were made for the
swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the
Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of
years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this
very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality)
rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of
events had lately come to the English Crown and People,
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sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of
France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that
sufferer was put to death, already marked by the
Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards,
to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a
knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the
rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent
to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very
day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about
by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer,
Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the
Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though
they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard
them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather,
forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were
awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and
protection to justify much national boasting. Daring
burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took
place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly
cautioned not to go out of town without removing their
furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the
highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light,
and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-
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tradesman whom he stopped in his character of ‘the
Captain,’ gallantly shot him through the head and rode
away; the mall was waylaid by seven robbers, and the
guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by
the other four, ‘in consequence of the failure of his
ammunition:’ after which the mall was robbed in peace;
that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London,
was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one
highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in
sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought
battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired
blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot
and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the
necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers
went into St. Giles’s, to search for contraband goods, and
the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired
on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences
much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the
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day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and tomorrow
of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer’s
boy of sixpence.
All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass
in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven
hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the
Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two
of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the
fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine
rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand
seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses,
and myriads of small creatures—the creatures of this
chronicle among the rest—along the roads that lay before
them.
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II
The Mail
It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in
November, before the first of the persons with whom this
history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him,
beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter’s Hill.
He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as
the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the
least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances,
but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the
mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times
already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach
across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back
to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard,
however, in combination, had read that article of war
which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of
the argument, that some brute animals are endued with
Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to
their duty.
With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed
their way through the thick mud, floundering and
stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces
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at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and
brought them to a stand, with a wary ‘Wo-ho! so-hothen!’
the near leader violently shook his head and
everything upon it—like an unusually emphatic horse,
denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever
the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a
nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.
There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had
roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit,
seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely
cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples
that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the
waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense
enough to shut out everything from the light of the
coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards
of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into
it, as if they had made it all.
Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding
up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped
to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots.
Not one of the three could have said, from anything he
saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was
hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of
the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two
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companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of
being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the
road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to
the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could
produce somebody in ‘the Captain’s’ pay, ranging from
the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript, it was the
likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover
mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November,
one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering
up Shooter’s Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch
behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a
hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded
blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horsepistols,
deposited on a substratum of cutlass.
The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the
guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected
one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody
else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses;
as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have
taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not
fit for the journey.
‘Wo-ho!’ said the coachman. ‘So, then! One more pull
and you’re at the top and be damned to you, for I have
had trouble enough to get you to it!—Joe!’
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‘Halloa!’ the guard replied.
‘What o’clock do you make it, Joe?’
‘Ten minutes, good, past eleven.’
‘My blood!’ ejaculated the vexed coachman, ‘and not
atop of Shooter’s yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you! ‘
The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most
decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the
three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover
mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers
squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the
coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If
any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to
another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and
darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of
getting shot instantly as a highwayman.
The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill.
The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got
down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the
coach-door to let the passengers in.
‘Tst! Joe!’ cried the coachman in a warning voice,
looking down from his box.
‘What do you say, Tom?’
They both listened.
‘I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.’
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‘I say a horse at a gallop, Tom,’ returned the guard,
leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his
place. ‘Gentlemen! In the kings name, all of you!’
With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his
blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive.
The passenger booked by this history, was on the
coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close
behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the
step, half in the coach and half out of; they re-mained in
the road below him. They all looked from the coachman
to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and
listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked
back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and
looked back, without contradicting.
The stillness consequent on the cessation of the
rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness
of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the
horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as
if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the
passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at
any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people
out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the
pulses quickened by expectation.
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The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously
up the hill.
‘So-ho!’ the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar.
‘Yo there! Stand! I shall fire!’
The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much
splashing and floundering, a man’s voice called from the
mist, ‘Is that the Dover mail?’
‘Never you mind what it is!’ the guard retorted. ‘What
are you?’
‘IS that the Dover mail?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I want a passenger, if it is.’
‘What passenger?’
‘Mr. Jarvis Lorry.’
Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was
his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other
passengers eyed him distrustfully.
‘Keep where you are,’ the guard called to the voice in
the mist, ‘because, if I should make a mistake, it could
never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name
of Lorry answer straight.’
‘What is the matter?’ asked the passenger, then, with
mildly quavering speech. ‘Who wants me? Is it Jerry?’
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("I don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry,’ growled the
guard to himself. ‘He’s hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.’)
‘Yes, Mr. Lorry.’
‘What is the matter?’
‘A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and
Co.’
‘I know this messenger, guard,’ said Mr. Lorry, getting
down into the road—assisted from behind more swiftly
than politely by the other two passengers, who
immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and
pulled up the window. ‘He may come close; there’s
nothing wrong.’
‘I hope there ain’t, but I can’t make so ‘Nation sure of
that,’ said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. ‘Hallo you!’
‘Well! And hallo you!’ said Jerry, more hoarsely than
before.
‘Come on at a footpace! d’ye mind me? And if you’ve
got holsters to that saddle o’ yourn, don’t let me see your
hand go nigh ‘em. For I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and
when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let’s
look at you.’
The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through
the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where
the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his
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eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded
paper. The rider’s horse was blown, and both horse and
rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse
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With those words the passenger opened the coach-door
and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who
had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in
their boots, and were now making a general pretence of
being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to
escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action.
The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of
mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard
soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and,
having looked to the rest of its contents, and having
looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his
belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which
there were a few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a
tinder-box. For he was furnished with that completeness
that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out,
which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut
himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off
the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if
he were lucky) in five minutes.
‘Tom!’ softly over the coach roof.
‘Hallo, Joe.’
‘Did you hear the message?’
‘I did, Joe.’
‘What did you make of it, Tom?’
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‘Nothing at all, Joe.’
‘That’s a coincidence, too,’ the guard mused, ‘for I
made the same of it myself.’
Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted
meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe
the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hatbrim,
which might be capable of holding about half a
gallon. After standing with the bridle over his heavilysplashed
arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer
within hearing and the night was quite still again, he
turned to walk down the hill.
‘After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I
won’t trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level,’ said
this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. ‘‘Recalled to
life.’ That’s a Blazing strange message. Much of that
wouldn’t do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You’d be in a
Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into
fashion, Jerry!’
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III
The Night Shadows
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human
creature is constituted to be that profound secret and
mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I
enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly
clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room
in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every
beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there,
is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is
referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear
book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all.
No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable
water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have
had glimpses of buried treasure and other things
submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut
with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a
page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in
an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface,
and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead,
my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is
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dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of
the secret that was always in that individuality, and which
I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burialplaces
of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper
more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their
innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?
As to this, his natural and not to be alienated
inheritance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the
same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or
the richest merchant in London. So with the three
passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one
lumbering old mail coach; they were mysteries to one
another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach
and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a
county between him and the next.
The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping
pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but
evincing a tendency to keep his own counsel, and to keep
his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted
very well with that decoration, being of a surface black,
with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near
together—as if they were afraid of being found out in
something, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a
sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-
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cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin
and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer’s knees.
When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with
his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his
right; as soon as that was done, he muffled again.
‘No, Jerry, no!’ said the messenger, harping on one
theme as he rode. ‘It wouldn’t do for you, Jerry. Jerry,
you honest tradesman, it wouldn’t suit YOUR line of
business! Recalled—! Bust me if I don’t think he’d been a
drinking!’
His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he
was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his
head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he
had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and
growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was
so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a
strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of
players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most
dangerous man in the world to go over.

The band Sparks answered your question when they sang "Amateur hour goes on and on, when you turn pro you'll know, she'll let you know, amateur hour goes on and on, when you turn pro you'll know, she'll tell you so."

I think about 5 years of part time training 20 hours per week , 5000 hours in 5 years time for 10-25 years old age category would be 80% chance of achieving 2000-2200 OTB rating. 

What the Dickens was #7 all about? I do not recall Jerry though. Proves that i read it.

I read it in highschool. Haven't read it since.

What is it about? 

Clearly I'm mocking spongey.

He copy-pastes huge walls of text.

 "The Moirai (the Fates as represented in Greek mythology) used yarn to measure out the life of a man, and cut it to end it; Defarge knits, and her knitting secretly encodes the names of people to be killed."

Quote from a review of the book. The rest is my work:

That is one of the themes.

The novel has Two Cities, which also repesent the unlasting city, which is this life, and the lasting city which is the next. That explains his title, but the story is about London and Paris during the Terror.

Similar story to The Scarlet Pimpernal in its themes.

Read it again. The Terror is with us again, Only this time it is not confined to Paris, or even France. 

ok so I don't actively play nor do I focus as much as I normally do in tournaments on chess.com.... be it better or for worse. What I can tell you is I've seen stories of people who've improved to 2000-2200 in just a couple of years with a lot of dedication. I can also tell you I've seen most people spend a minimum of 15-20 years before they get decent (sometimes meaning at 2000 and not at 2000). Here's the thing. There's 2 things in chess that determines how quickly you can rise (IMO). Ceiling or potential. This can be moved and basically it means how high can you get your rating (it'll change based on how willing you are to practicing). There's also "talent". I don't like using this word because it seems unfair, but basically it means how quickly you can learn the ropes. For example a player like Karjakin is very talented which is shown by his speedy claim to become a GM. However, you could say based on current events, that he has a lower ceiling than that of Carlsen. IMO ceiling can move, but it doesn't change a whole lot, unless the way you approach chess is drastically different. For example let's say I play chess 1 hour a day every day currently. Now lets say I changed it so I spend 15 minutes doing tactics every day and the rest playing chess. I will improve but not significantly (assuming my opponents are the same level strength in both scenarios). If I changed my routine to where I played only 15 minutes a day, but spent an hour on tactics, 2 hours on endgames, and 1 hour on openings, I'd probably get much better. So the way you practice is your ceiling for the most part... talent is applying the practice.

Member Since: Jul 19, 2013

Perhaps he slept in.

Yeah, but he's played like... 20 games here.

Account creation date and start to play chess date can be different.

There qre quite a few accounts like that here. Sleepers I call them, although I am not suggesting that is the case here.

I could name some here, but that would get a good thread locked in no time.

Bingo!

An account opening 5+ years ago, and they just learned how to play chess 2-3 months ago.  

Meh, my first account I made just to check out the site. I didn't log in again (with any account) for almost a year after that because I played chess other places.

Maybe people sign up with facebook like that, then decide not to play.

I am currently studying Computer Science, so basically living off my parents income.
Just today I've applied for a freelancer transcriptionist on an onlne website.
I hope they accept me. I am honing my skills on Java (a programming language) & at the end of the summer whether I get accepted or not, I'll apply for a basic (probably internship level/salary) job.