Reflecations on 9 months of playing chess

A little post where I reflect on my progress with playing chess semi-seriously for the past 9 months.

How I started playing chess

When I was in kindergarten some of my relatives taught me how to play but I never decided to take the game seriously. To me it was just another board game 😅

In 2020 together with a friend of mine we would do this thing where for the entire summer of 2020 we would hop on a call and we would switch between playing chess and solving competitive programming problems. But still, I never took it seriously. I think I learned way more about programming than chess that summer 😂

The third time I started playing chess was in 2025 when a friend of mine from university told me that he plays chess and has been playing quite seriously for a couple of years(shoutout to my G). He also told me that our university has a chess club, which he invited me to join.

So one day I was thinking to myself "Why don't I start playing chess again, but maybe more seriouslythis time? I'll find a new hobby and I'll meet some people if I go to the chess club."

And from that day I decided to play chess more seriously...

Taking chess more seriously

I first started by creating a lichess account to train and keep track of my progress. In October I started with a blitz rating of around 700.

By December I managed to get my blitz rating to around 900. I also started playing rapid and bullet at this time.

Before the christmas of 2025 I really did not take chess that seriously though, since I was really busy with my job and work at the university. However, ever since I got laid off from Metacraft Labs I had more free time and I decided to start playing chess more consistently. So since christmas I started playing chess every day.

January 2026 started with me acquiring a stable bullet and blitz rating of 900.

By February I managed to get to 1000 on both blitz and bullet, and I got to 1100 on rapid. However, during the month of February my progress seemed to have peaked, and I had a hard time keeping my motivation up.

In March I returned to the chess club and by the end of March I also started playing more consistently again. I also started playing a lot of puzzles. By the end of March I climbed another 100 points on each time control.

In April and May I continued keeping up the consistency. After about 3 months of solving puzzles and playing games I managed to get to my current ratings of 1150 bullet, 1200 blitz and 1350 rapid.

By internet standards my progress is quite slow, however, we also have to consider that this is just a game and I have a life outside of it. So for myself, I think I've done quite good. Also, unlike a lot of players, when I play competitively I try to keep my glicko-2 rating deviation low, which means that even if I saw a serious improvement in my gameplay, the true results would show up weeks after, since I climb at around 6-8 points a day at most.

Takeaways

My main takeaways from spending 9 months on this new hobby are:

Consistency is key as always
As an extrovert, playing it socially has helped me keep my motivation up
Playing bullet games has taught me how to think and concentrate under intense time pressure, and how to take advantage of time to defeat your opponent
My ability to calculate multiple variables on the fly has been greatly improved
It has greatly improved my concentration in general, since I was always a person with a disorganized mind
I also find it way easier to keep multiple things in mind at the same time now, which is something I have always struggled with
It has improved my ability to think out of the box
I also find that it has taught me to pay attention to what's happening around me more, since some seemingly inconsequential moves in chess might cause a devastating sequence a couple moves forward

Final notes

Overall, I think chess is a great hobby, I'll definitely be continuing to play more. It has greatly improved my day-to-day life and I think it's a hobby that will stay with me for quite some time.

Yes, my favourite opening for white is the English opening... I know I'm weird you don't have to tell me 😅