Road to ELO 1500 — Part 1

Starting a new series. Long-term goal: chess.com rapid rating of 1500. Near-term: claw back over 1000 first, then push for the 1327 peak, then keep going.

Where I am right now

• Current rapid rating: 771
• Peak rapid: 1327
• Games played: 784 (49% W / 2% D / 49% L)

The graph tells the story — I held around 1000 for a long stretch, spiked up to 1327, then slid back down through 2025 and early 2026. Time to climb back.

The plan for this series

Each post in this series will be a mix of:

• Game analysis — annotated games (wins and losses) with PGN files you can load into your own board.
• Ideas from creators — takeaways from GothamChess, Hanging Pawns, and others, applied to my own games.
• Puzzles I’m working on — tactics themes I’m drilling and what’s actually sticking.
• Weekly/monthly check-ins — rating, what’s working, what isn’t.

What’s next

For Part 2 I’ll pick three recent losses, analyze where I went wrong, and post the PGNs. If you want to follow along, the games are public on my chess.com profile.