I’ve been playing chess on Chess.com for over two years—on and off, that is. I created my account on September 6 2022 (wow that is a long time ago. ) I started with rapid. Its a very beginner friendly time format which gave me time to think before making my moves.I have stuck with it.

When I started on Chess.com i already knew how to play chess. The moves, how to checkmate with simple patterns like ladder mate and basic stuff like that. I learned it from Dr Wolf who are kindly sponsoring this blog (jk not yet). After playing with Dr wolf for sometime i stopped playing but started again after encountering this funny guy who is known for shouting “The Rook”.

His reviews of the games made me want to play again and this time on a platform like Chess.com. In this blog I will share my journey all the mistakes, and good things you can learn from me to help you reach to 1500 and beyond.

If you don’t have the time to read through the whole thing tho (*inwardly judging your attention span) am basically saying Learn at least one or two openings, don’t play like you have to prove something, review the games you played, don’t you dare resign even if you are down a queen, touch real pieces sometimes and be okay with being beaten.

Okay now let me tell you how I learned those things. At some points I could say I was addicted to the game and it is the ego stroking you feel after defeating people that does that. I played a lot of games and quickly ranked up my elo and got to 1300 in just 3 month.

That is why I quickly ranked up my elo and got to 1300 in just 3 month. (I didn’t start as a total nooby so this growth kind of make sense).

One of the things that helped me was knowing one good opening for both white and black. I learned the stone wall defense which I basically always played with and the caro-kann for black. Gotham Chess in his 10 minute openings taught me those openings and I have stuck with them ever since.

That is the first lesson.

1. Learn at least one or two openings.

From Levi’s How to Win at Chess

I continued playing.I had my ups and downs and even got to 1406. But I kinda went on a losing spree and lost 300elo to go down to 1000. I attribute this to playing like I had all the time in the world and playing with for lack of a better English word to express this: በህልህ. Which is the second lesson.

2. Don’t play chess like you have to prove something.

The ego stroking thing can be addicting but their comes a time where your pride gets hurt when you start losing so many games. You start to blunder very easily and your opponents capitalize on you, you try to make up for that with the next game but instead of helping yourself you are now just donating your elo. This happens when you play በህልህ፡፡

Emotional play leads to bad decisions, and trust me, I learned this the hard way. You will probably lose more games if you keep playing while tilted. If I can return back in time I would shout to myself “Know when to stop playing. Don’t make it worse.”

Chess after all is a mind game and you will get tired and the mistakes and the blunders will come if you don’t rest in between games. I failed with this so I had to be humbled to understand this. You need to treat your elo as a precious thing which it is. It is your time and energy. When you play በእልህ you most probably won’t play as good as the person you are playing next after losing 15 games in a row which for him might be his first game of the day.

Don’t get me wrong you can also grow by playing like this.It has happened to me where I played and increased my elo dramatically in just a day but that is not a great plan for the long term.

What I did to help me not play like that which I applied just recently is limit the number of games I am allowed to play on a daily basis to 3. To be accountable with that I challenged myself to do that till I reached 1500 and posted my progress in my channel. This saved me from losing my elo and also I started a good new habit of reviewing my games.

3.Review games

You won’t do this when you just start out often but I wish did. Chess.com gives one free review per day on the free one. Use that everyday. Learn from your mistakes. Even if you can’t do that kind of review (only one is allowed per day without premium subscription) go to self explore and learn what you could have done better by seeing the eval bar.

Those same position will come up again. If you grow your experience of knowing them you will make the right moves on the next games. Go to the point where you messed up, play with the computer and see how you could have done it better . It looks like a hustle when you just want to play the next player but if you are thinking about long term growth its not an option. You must learn from the games you play.

Giving your queen for free, missing mate in one, and blundering a fork are inevitable when you start out. Has happened to me a bunch of times. Most of the time I wait the game out and a bunch of times I have seen my opponent blunder to give me a winning advantage. Look at this game I played a while back.

4.Don’t ever resign

The beauty of being in the beginner to intermediate level of chess is both me and my opponent are just waiting for the other one to be the first to blunder. Lets be honest we don’t know a dime about tactics and getting an advantage by playing in some way we are just trying to be the last person who is making the blunder.

His biggest mistake I would say is quickness to resign. For the track record of both of us blundering he shouldn’t have thought I would play a perfect game in the remaining moves. Your opponent will make mistakes so even if you don’t have a winning advantage at the very least you could get a draw. There is always a chance for that for things to turn around. So even if all seems lost don’t resign just yet.

5.Play Over the Board sometimes

Instagram vs Reality (this is my first and only board and as you can see I haven’t treated it well)

It might not be easy getting your hands on one but if you can its really a great experience. There is quite a gentleman feeling you get to experience starting the game by shaking hands and even more so shaking those same hands after defeating your opponent.

And if you can’t do that try to make your online experience as close as you can to the real one. You won’t get to see lines when you play on the board so its a good to remove them. I got the chance to participate in a chess tournament recently and it feels quite different. From writing chess notations, slapping the fide time control and meeting and playing different chess players its all quite nice. I learned that keeping calm and collected is the real battle. I was nervous in some games and even though I had plenty time I rushed myself to blunder stalemate in one game and lose another one by giving not calculating enough. The last lesson I would add is be okay with losing.

6. Play with higher rated players and be okay with losing

Its part of the process. When you lose it hurts so when you play next time you will try not to get hurt by doing the same mistakes and thus play a better move. A friend I made in that tournament i participated in said this ‘If you play with high rated players to obliterate you then playing with your equals won’t be as tough.’ Indeed if you want to see improvement you must get accustomed with being challenged. What better way then being wooped by a person that is better than you.

So try to play with older gentleman or higher rated player than you.This going hand to hand with reviewing and resting in between games will help you rank up.

That’s just it keep on playing and before you know it you will get there. That is what happened to me when I reached 1500 on February 23/2025. Going forward I want to do puzzles regularly, learn a bit of tactics, and study by reading or watching a video. I would appreciate any advice or recommendation. You can join the gang in my channel t.me/kershalom. And one final thing for my people on chess.com.

People who have the default bland green board theme on, what the hell are you guys doing? Don’t you guys have any taste or is it because you don’t know that you can change it to many nice themes? Go to Themes and pick one. I recommend Glass since its objectively the best one.

Thanks for reading.