Challenge 2500 | 0. Intro

Where I am

For a long time, my aim had been to become an International Master. In fact, I remember defining this as my goal when I was asked by my then-coach back in 2013.
Five years later, in 2018, I was awarded the sought-after title. Since then, though, not much has happened: currently sitting at 2407, I have crawled around 2380-2420 for what feels like an eternity. A five-year plateau, basically.
Having played a couple of relatively successful tournaments this year, I've regained quite a bit of motivation and as a result decided that it is time for an updated goal and a new push forward.

Where I want to be

Reaching a classical FIDE rating of 2500 is the goal.
Why not simply 'becoming a grandmaster'? I don't much care much about titles. To me, rating is much more important, as it is a pretty good marker for your current playing strength. I'd much rather be an IM with 2525 than a GM with 2475, for instance.

So, why 2500 (besides it being an undeniably beautiful number)? Mostly because it is an ambitious goal while at the same time not being entirely unrealistic in the long run.
Less importantly, that rating puts you firmly in the top 1000 players in the world and among the top 50 in Germany, which would obviously be quite nice.

Why I think there is progress left to be made

What makes me think I have yet to reach my full potential?
Most importantly, the fact that I haven't trained consistently and thoroughly at all to get to where I am now.
Did I spend an unholy amount of time looking at chess in general? Absolutely. Was the time well-spent though? Far from it. Looking back at my chess-related activities (besides OTB games) since I started playing chess around 2010, much of it was just playing blitz on the internet, some of it was preparing opening lines, and in comparison only a very small part of it was actually working on my ability as a chess player, that is, practicing endgames, improving my visualisation, solving puzzles, and so on.
If you do a lot, but not of the right things, eventually progress will halt.

This leads me to believe that, with a structured training routine (paired with regular OTB play of course, after all, the rating points have to come from somewhere), it should be possible to make some further progress.
I do notice, for example, significant deficits in my calculating ability. Visualising positions at the end of semi-deep variations is still embarassingly difficult for me.
There is also much to be done in terms of opening preparation, which has been pretty hapharzard until now and certainly lacking in professionalism.
Given that those are incredibly important areas in the context of general chess playing ability, improving in those areas should yield some results. Right?!

How much time I am willing to invest

I am not doing this full-time, as I am a student with other obligations. I think though that a weekly investment of around 10 hours of dedicated training on average should be sustainable and at the same time sufficient to improve gradually. For the sake of consistency, I'll try to keep the workload variance as low as possible.
The training will change from week to week, but in general, a basic daily routine supplemented with longer weekend sessions is the idea.

Why document the journey?

• To force myself to think about my training in a more methodical and rigorous way. Writing things down can be valuable in terms of developing/formalising ideas, gaining new insights, organising thoughts etc.
• To introduce some level of accountability. If I fail, I now not only disappoint myself, but also potential readers. By 'fail', I don't mean 'not reaching 2500', but 'not doing the work necessary to make reaching 2500 a possibility')
• To possibly inspire other chess players to take their own training more seriously and maybe share and discuss their ideas and methods with others
• To introduce some level of regular creative output to my existence. Obviously, it's not like I'm producing weekly philosophical essays here, but hey, it's something.

What exactly will I write about?

I'll mostly write about the methodological aspects of chess training and specifically of my own training routine.
This will be a weekly post (probably to be published every Sunday) summarising the work I've done in that week and discussing any potential changes to the routine going into the next week. Additionally, I intend to review the tournaments I compete in and analyse their games (as far as that is possible without revealing too much of my openings). In short, I'll include anything relevant relating to the journey I'm about to embark on.
Training starts today, the first 'actual' weekly post coming this Sunday, the 25th of December.
Suggestions and criticism very much welcome of course. Cheers!