How I Achieved 2000+ OTB in Under Two Years (as an adult)

Hello all, and welcome to my first Lichess blog post! Just a week ago from the time of writing I officially hit 2000+ OTB rating for the first time, and so I figured this was a good opportunity to document the process of how I got there—in only one year and 10 months of studying chess.

The Beginning

Now, I'll say straight away that I did not go directly from learning how the chess pieces move to 2000 OTB in two years—that would frankly be ridiculous. I learned how to play chess at an earlier age, but my chess "journey" actually began in October of 2019 when I first started to study the game in an active effort to improve. I watched a lot of YouTube videos, played a ton of games, and in just a few months' time I would join my city's chess club and participated in my first ever nationally rated tournaments. And then COVID hit, as well as the nationwide lockdown.

Regarding my online chess account(s), at the beginning (08/19) my first Lichess Blitz rating was in the 1300s. Just to clarify, my account was technically created in 2016, but I had practically zero games played back then and my only other rating at the time was some ~1100 on chess.com, so I really was still a beginner when I regained an interest in chess. I was instantly hooked and proceeded to spend a troubling majority of my free time playing mostly Blitz games, as that was the most efficient way to get a large number of practice games in a short time period. I analyzed each and every one of the games which were critical, and as a result my general chess understanding increased rather rapidly.

A Venture into OTB

I'm pretty sure every competitive tournament player has a story about their first venture into serious OTB chess. Here's mine: I was still in school in the months leading to the pandemic, and they had a small chess club with only one remotely strong player. Basically, we played each other a few times over the course of a month or two and if I recall correctly, I lost all of the games. During this time, as I was technically still eligible, I was also participating in some youth chess events for a scholastic organization. The following is a memorable loss of mine from one of these tournaments:

From a boring Italian Four Knights, I clearly wasn't sure I knew what I was doing this game, for the most part. A couple of sophisticated ideas such as 10...Na5 and 13...c6 (intending ...d5) stood out, but obviously my main issue was failing to recognize typical threats, as well as my poor sense of danger. For instance, anybody with a decent amount of chess experience would have had alarm bells ring in their head upon seeing the Q + B battery and the Nf3-h4-f5 maneuver (priyome), and defended accordingly.

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Moving on, at some point I decided to step it up a notch and joined the proper chess club in my city. They regularly host a 2-month-long tournament wherein one rated game in a 90+30 time control is played each Thursday with unlimited half-point byes if requested, and I late-joined one of them in Round 2. Here is my first ever "real" Classical OTB game (I was Black. Enjoy my humorous commentary :P):

As you could tell, my strategy of using a pet line I had recently picked up massively backfired. My opponent by no means played a perfect game, but all the natural moves came to him—most notably 8...d3—and I was completely busted out of the opening. Only two more rounds were played until the first COVID wave came; I won one and drew the other, and then the chess club was forced to shut down as per government orders. Back to online chess it was!

Pandemic Struggles (or blessing in disguise?)

While the pandemic shut down the few regular social interactions I had, in a way it enabled me to push my chess study further by giving me the time and space (isolation) to concentrate more on improving my game all around. I'm not sure what exactly I did that contributed most to my improvement, but clearly whatever it is has been working pretty well. As an indicator, my online blitz rating skyrocketed in the first few months, and has somehow been steadily increasing ever since:

• 1400—10/13/19
• 1500—10/25/19
• 1600—11/13/19
• 1700—11/24/19
• 1800—12/21/19
• 1900—1/25/20
• 2000—2/16/20
• 2100—5/3/20
• 2200—8/16/20
• 2300—1/1/21
• 2400—8/13/21

Below are, in my view, the three most important things I did during the pandemic to obtain these results. It's up to you, the reader, to theorize which of these likely helped the most, because I honestly have no idea.

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1. Openings. I've been borderline obsessed with openings ever since I studied them seriously for the first time in early 2020. There's just something about this phase of the game and its limitless possibilities that really intrigues me and makes me want to learn more. For me, opening study primarily constitutes these two concepts: a) knowing the best or optimal piece placement in each of your opening variations; and b) understanding the typical plans and structures which can arise from your openings. The first is especially important because if your pieces are on bad squares, you simply won't consistently get playable middlegames, and as a result you'll find yourself on the backfoot early on more often than not. Having your pieces on the right squares can also help you figure out the correct moves over-the-board when you're out of book, since piece placement is an integral aspect of established theory. As for b), one of many benefits of knowing these things is if you happen to slightly mess up your move order or whatnot in an opening line, you'll probably still be fine specifically because you studied most of these lines in-depth and you know how you're meant to generate counterplay or open the position with thematic pawn breaks. Likewise, understanding the pawn structures can help you identify potential outposts, weak colour complexes, etc. in order to facilitate the thinking process in the middlegame. Now, notice how I have yet to mention how I approached learning specific opening theory—that's because it's often not as important as the things I described above! Here's the thing—I admit I probably know far more theory than the average player of my rating range, but I don't even think this is the strongest part of my opening preparation. While I do believe that at a certain level you should have the most critical lines in your repertoire memorized pretty well, what I think is a much better use of your time is to reconsider your opening repertoire, stop playing garbage lines if applicable, and ensure there are no glaring holes anywhere in the mainlines. A well-prepared player is someone who is comfortable playing their main repertoire against essentially anybody and can come up with reasonable ideas on the fly when their opponent deviates from what you already know—which is a FAR more realistic goal for club players than to memorize hundreds of obscure opening variations in their recently-bought Chessable course (not to take a shot at them, by the way. I use the site regularly :P).

2. Play games—a lot of them. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point, actually. I believe that online Blitz is the optimal environment to learn new openings, or to practice lines you already know. Why is this the case? Well, it's simple. The time control (my and most people's preference is 3+0) is the perfect middle-ground between Bullet, where nobody plays theory and is a pure flag-fest more often than not, and Rapid/Classical, where a disproportionate number of cheaters are looming and is too slow to get in enough games in a reasonable time frame. Imagine you recently picked up a new response as Black against 1.e4 as well as 1.d4 about which you currently know very little. Assuming your average 3+0 Blitz game lasts roughly 5 minutes, that's about 12 games every hour, meaning you can expect to test your new Black repertoire 5-6 times in an hour of play. The learning process should go something like this: Play game -> Briefly analyze the opening with the database/engine if you felt you were in trouble at any point, or if something felt off about your opponent's moves -> Try to remember what you just learned -> Retain this information for the next time you encounter the same opening line. Then you repeat this process for the entire play session, and it should turn out to be productive. My point here is that in theory, the more games you play and analyze, the more knowledge you naturally accumulate not only about your openings, but about chess as a whole. Personally, what I did was I created a secondary account in February of last year specifically to learn and practice new openings, as my performance (and in turn, my rating) was bound to drop the moment I played into unfamiliar territory. Nowadays I use it as a general burner account for whenever I feel like it, but I still found plenty of value in dedicating an alternate account to this type of experimentation. I don't have time to binge hundreds of blitz games every week like I used to now that OTB is back, but to put things into perspective, I have about 94 total days of playtime across all of my Lichess accounts.

3. Join an online chess community. This is a great way to interact with players of your skill level and to discuss various topics with other serious improvers. You can also ask the higher rated players any chess-related question you have within reason and you'll likely get a quick, informative response. My preference is Discord, a website/application with a clean interface that's close to perfect for this sort of daily interaction. There are several good servers out there that fit different people's needs, and you can take a look around to find the communities you like. The server I use the most is The Chess Lounge—I joined for the first time as a 1900, and I've since gained 500 points. They have an overbearing no-nonsense culture in contrast to the more chaotic servers, and I find that to be quite useful for the serious players such as myself who don't want their time wasted. They were very helpful to me in my earlier days in more ways than one, and I have their gratitude for having put up with all my silly questions. If you're an improving player of any level, feel free to check it out!

Back to OTB Chess!

In October of 2020, about a year after I started, the city and the local club reopened its doors for a new Thursday night tournament, although this was short-lived. We got to play 8/9 of the scheduled rounds before the next wave of COVID hit and we were forced to shut down again. Nevertheless, I came prepared and had a relatively decent showing, managing to draw against two 2000+ rated players in the first three rounds. Here is a critical position from the second of these two games:

My move, 30...Rd2 isn't a bad move in itself, but I had completely overlooked a resource my opponent had in an attempt to save his dead-lost position. Following 31.Bxg7!? I was compelled to offer a draw as I saw no way out of the perpetual checks; however, I'm still winning in the final position! Black had to see 31...f6! to keep the game alive, gaining a tempo on the enemy queen and vacating the f7-square for his king. Regardless, a simple move such as 30...h6 would have prevented this mess altogether, and as a result I was quite disappointed with the outcome. I definitely learned some tough lessons from this one, to say the least.

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The second (and hopefully last) reopening was this past June, and it's the start of the longer summer tournament wherein I gained a whopping 329 Elo to reach the 2000-barrier, after winning the 3-month-long event with a score of 8.5/12. I had some nice games in this one, and you're free to check them all out by clicking on the link, but here I'll share what is by far my favourite:

I lost to this same guy back in November with the White pieces, so this was a great opportunity for redemption. I switched it up this time and went 1.d4 with a Samisch setup against his King's Indian, and it was clear by moves 10-11 that he was ill-prepared to face this line. Ultimately, I had the superior prep and absolutely crushed my now-2000 rated opponent, trapping his queen in fewer than 25 moves. My personal highlight of the game was the knight transfer to f2 starting with 16.Nh1!, which again is a product of having vaguely studied this structure and knowing these thematic moves to reorganize my pieces, despite the fact I have not yet learned much specific theory in the Samisch. My superior understanding of the opening reigned supreme.

Here is a partial screenshot of the full tournament crosstable:

Talent, or Hard Work?

I would like to make it abundantly clear that I am far from a prodigy. My chess improvement is hardly impressive compared to the feats of the strongest youth players throughout history. And I wouldn't exactly describe myself as a hard worker, either. So, what is it then? In general, I'd say I have a knack for quick progression in subjects or disciplines I'm interested in, but I've never achieved world-class status in anything. Prior to chess, my main hobby of ~6 years at the time was competitive Rubik's cube solving. I got the hang of the pattern recognition aspect pretty quickly and I improved rapidly here, too. At one point I had a peak ranking of 24th in the world, in a pool of tens of thousands of competitors worldwide. Now, I wouldn't necessarily say that any of my cubing skills were transferable to chess. I simply learned the basics of chess strategy in a short period of time, and it was merely a matter of pure dedication from that point onwards. From what I can see, I doubt most people can do the same—especially at my age—so this whole phenomenon remains largely a mystery to me.

The Future

It goes without saying that I fully intend to keep playing and improving for as long I reasonably can. I'm not one to make distant chess-related goals only to be disappointed later on, but I do believe I can make the NM title within 2-3 years. Beyond that, I cannot comment, and I don't think it would be a productive point of discussion either way. I'm making it a priority to focus on self-improvement and learning from my mistakes first and foremost, and only later do I plan on seeking other means to push these barriers.

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Big thanks to everyone who made it this far, and I hope you enjoyed the content! Feel free to give me a follow if you want to see more—my next few blog posts will likely be openings-specific, so stay tuned for those :)
- pd159