Just got to 2000 puzzles and realized I (kind of) suck

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Valleta-Chan

Apr 15, 2021

I first played chess when I was about 7. At that time I was horrible at the game and I didn't touch chess until a long time later in 7th grade.

I started playing chess again because a friend wanted to play on chess.com. So I decided why not, and we played during free time. At that time, I was pretty bad, like maybe 400-500 blitz and about the same on rapid.

Around that time I also discovered chess.com puzzles and puzzle rush. I played it a few times and got low scores, maybe 5-15. It was really just for fun then, as it is now, but I didn't have any serious goals.

So around this time, I got pretty decent. But I didn't like how I was stuck at a rating of 450 with a low glicko rd. So I closed that account and created a new one. I was able to balance out at about 700, signaling that I had improved some. Throughout the rest of middle school, I played some chess occasionally when I had the time, and I was able to get to the 900s and low 1200-1400s in puzzles. 1400s in rapid were extremely good, I thought. After that, I stopped playing as much for a while. I was decent among my friends, much of whom were also beginners.

I don't know what made me really interested in chess again, whether it was the fact that I joined some chess servers or just Covid-19. Instead of reviving my old account I once again closed it created a new one and started playing regular games. After a lot of practice, I'm at about 1350 rapid but have a disappointing 1150 blitz. Other than games I also practiced a lot of puzzle rush which propelled my results to the 20s and 30s. The most progress I made was over the last week, during spring break - partially because of my annoyance at school things - when I made several ambitious, far-fetched "goals":

- 2000 Bullet

- 2000 Blitz

- 2000 Rapid

- NM (2200 USCF)

- CM (2200 FIDE, generally FIDE rating is 50-100 points lower than USCF)

- FM (2300 FIDE)

- IM (2400 FIDE + norms)

- GM (2500 FIDE + norms)

in roughly increasing difficulty, and with all but chess.com ratings seemingly infinitely far away from me.

-- and in the past week I've improved some 200 points in bullet. And since then I've felt pretty motivated to continue working on my chess. The day after, I added 2000 puzzles to the top of the list since it was also relevant in my chess development (not counting variants, which are a bit different, and daily) and after a (honesty not too difficult) grind over the past week, I've finally done it. But after the initial excitement, I realized it wasn't much -- several 1300-1500 players have such high puzzle ratings and they are in the same boat as me. Suddenly, 1400 rapid players weren't so great anymore as I thought before after I played a few of them as a 1450 before tilting. Sure, they didn't hang pieces but a lot of them seemed to lack the same understanding as me.

I'm not really sure about chess in my life in the future. It may be quite fun, more so than other "scholarly" fields, but is it really meaningful to anything else? If I put in all this effort will I be getting anywhere? Right now I'm thinking of how to improve my positional understanding and then strategy. But in being dedicated at the moment I"m not sure where I"m headed.

tl;dr I still think I'm bad but I'm definitely addicted

sndeww