Thread by @ideasofchess

How long does it take to learn chess, #chesspunks?

Playing chess every day for the last 12 months, took me from 900 to 1600 ELO on @lichess

This week I played a casual tournament against some 2000s and took third place, with a performance rating of 1839 🧵

That was the day my rapid rating broke 1600

This coworking space in Bulgaria ran 5 tournaments, and I participated in all of them

Feb: 926, won 1 game
March: 1210, won 2 games
July: 1285, won 3 games
August: 1324, won 3 games

This week, at 1621, I won 4.5

That first tournament in Feb was only two weeks after I first started chess

I had been working next to @vesper8, who spent most of the day coding and jumped into bullet chess games during compiles

he caught me shoulder-surfing and asked if I wanted to learn how to play

He showed me
- to control the center
- develop each piece once before moving any twice
- get my king to safety
- count attackers and defenders
- spot forks
- skewers and pins

and then he showed me the London System, so I could always make it safely through the opening

As black, I played the Czech Pirc opening from @NMRobertRamirez, with great success until 1200, where I plateau'd for a few months

Robert's youtube is a full chess course, so I rolled back to video #1 and studied about one per day

By video #100 I made it to 1600

At each plateau, I switched time controls from Rapid to Blitz. I don't know exactly why it works

Get better at playing faster?
Get faster at playing better?

Either way – it always breaks me through to the next level

One day, while wandering through the old agora in Athens with @paulienuh, I stumbled upon a small shop that sold wooden chess boards

After an eternity of plonking pieces around to find the ones with the nicest sounds and the least unsettling knights, I bought my first board

https://twitter.com/jacobmparis/status/1586812451605078020

So now I'm one year in and I'm just scratching the surface

There's an infinity of ideas, tricks, and tactics at every position in the game

I started this account to collect and share them all

Let's level up together 🚀