how good can a player be without studying chess?

Yes that's possible, but for that you will need to analyse each and every game of yours and actually need to use your brain to know the mistakes and then not repeat them ever. It would take you much longer if you don't study to get a respectable rating, but it's doable. I have seen 2000s who didn't study but played like 200k+ games and analysed them. That being said, i still doubt you can get to a level like NM without studying.

It all depends on where you want to see yourself after 5 years. If your goal is to reach somewhere like 1800, it's definitely doable. But,if your goal is something like NM, then I think you should stop because the goal is simply too high or rather better to say unrealistic.

Really? 5 years to reach 1800 in chess.com or fide? Because i'm not sure if it takes 5 years to reach 1800. I want to be at least 2k after 5 years... Would be kinda frustrating, in my first month i reached 900, so it will take around more 59 months to get more 900?

Practice by only playing ranked matchmaking will only get you so far in CS:GO. I'd argue that the same training plan can get you much further in Chess provided that you're prepared to spend some time analysing your matches.

Chess improvement becomes harder as you go up. As because u are not willing to spend a single minute studying from books or videos, then yeah it may take even more than 5 years to reach 1800 if you don't play enough.

I was talking about 1800 chess.com which is equal to 1500-1700 FIDE depending on where you stay.

I would offer that up to a certain point being strategically intuitive without study or analysis might get you a start. That being said I would feel confident in saying that if you asked 1000 players rated 1800 the ones who would say they have "never studied", and aren't lying about it, you could count with the fingers on one hand.

If all you do is play, but you don't know what the good players are doing, what are the good strategies and what are the bad strategies... you'll never get good. The same in chess.

Thanks for the help, so I'll start studying... Let's see what happens... I'm too lazy to study a game, but ok, stop playing seems worst, and taking 5 years to be 1800 seems even worse.

Reaching 900 in a month is not that strange and I do not think it is possible to start at 0 rating. You for example started at around 800-900 range and that is where you are at now, a month later also. So you have not increased your strength from 0 to 900.

Also the leap from 1000-1900 will be quite a lot bigger and harder to achieve than the leap from 0 too 900 would have been, had you taken that leap in the first place.

Also I think comparing chess and CS: GO is rather pointless. The latter is a FPS game and been around for around a decade. There is not much deep thinking done in FPS games.

Chess on the other hand is a game that is centuries old, has been studied by many brilliant individuals and requires deep thinking, at least if you are not going to be playing only blitz.

Now if you can figure out such things as opposition, the rule of the square, how to mate with 2 Bishops, creating a passed pawn in a 3 vs 3 pawns situation, the Lucena position, Philidor position and all those other endgames and somehow manage play without any knowledge of opening theory and reach NM levels, then good for you, but I think it is highly unlikely you will get to that level any time soon without studying.

Yeah, I don't think it's strange or something to reach 900, it's actually easy. But I'm just saying, i reached 900 in a month, then I would take 59 months to reach 1800, and the numbers aren't that different... It's like around 15 rating per month (not that linear). And I compared because they're just games, people play it to have fun, but it's not a good comparison if you ask me. And i know 1 opening, it's called London system

But you have to understand you were basically 800-900 right from the start. Your rating was in that range after only a couple of games. So basically you have not gained 900 rating points more chess strength, you are maybe 100 rating points stronger than you were when you opened your account.

And the next 900 points are going to be a LOT tougher to gain. And after that, there is still a lot to learn before you are NM strength.

See, the rating will kind of increase logarithmically as you increase your chess strength. After every 100 points, it will be harder to earn the next 100, so the gap from 1000-1900 is a lot larger than the gap from 0 to 900.

I went from 400 (where I started) to 900 in 1,5 months. And now I have been playing, and studying, and analyzing for around 22,5 months and have only reached a peak rating of 1441 rapid. I have put in way more effort to go from 900 to 1400 than I put in to go from 400 to 900. Like exponentially more effort.

Thanks, I see it now. Life's harder than what I expected, lol, i really thought that just by playing causally you could reach 1700 in a couple months, that's an absurd. And congrats for reaching 1.4k

You just have to find an interesting way to study as I get the impression when you think about it it seems daunting and overwhelming. It can be, when I started playing tourneys in college I was stuck for a while trying to break 1400. I would get to 1380 or so and then right back down again. The only book I had at the time was the MCO, lol.

To your point, no one wanted to study, they wanted to keep playing thinking eventually they would just learn from their mistakes and slowly get better. The only problem with that is if you don't analyze not only your games but how the GM's played games similar to your positions in games you don't even know what your mistakes are!

So what did I do, threw the book on the shelf and kept playing, lol. Then one day I was at a bookstore chess club and this 10 year old kid came in to play. He wiped the floor with all of us, even the club pres. who was around a 1700+ player. Not a single one of us won so much as one game against this kid, speed chess, slow, didn't matter. Sprained ego's sent most of them home. I was fascinated and kept playing the kid, after about another 10 losses the kid explains a big flaw in my openings and my endgames. Goes into the bookstore and comes back with two books and says "These should do the trick", lol getting schooled by a 10 year old!

His dad finally opens his mouth and tells me "Don't feel bad, he is the junior state champion!", lol. Turns out the kid was right, my endgame sucked! After I absorbed the book and it contents my next tourney saw me not only break 1400 but dam near 1500 as well!

Just eat those chess pieces and easy win.

Great story, what's the name of the book?

They're made of wood, I'm not eating...

I am not saying it is not possible that you reach 1700 by just playing casually. People have done that (or at least people say they have). I think it is going to be pretty unlikely that you get to that level very fast without studying though and that is still very far from NM level.

There is always that one in a million chance that you are a chess prodigy, of course, but seeing that you have not been going up steadily since you started, I am sorry to say I think it is unlikely.

I still think you have good chances of becoming a very strong player, do not get me wrong, I just think you might have to put in a little work for that.