The BHAG

Setting a big hairy audacious goal... and planning how I can get there

Welcome back to Chess in Small Doses, a Substack about adult improvement in chess. Today I am looking ahead and sharing a goal I set for myself. Goals are essential in improvement, but this one might just be in reach. I have a goal of being a Class A (> USCF 1800) player by the end of 2027. Let’s get into it.

Let’s Be Real

Before I get into any plans for world domination (or at least Arizona) let’s be real for a moment. I am a (currently) 53 year old adult improver who has been at this since 2021. Here’s my Lichess rating graph over the last year.

Not bad…but also not good. I’m not trying to be self critical here, just objective relative to my goal. You’ll see what looks like (at least to me) variation around a mean. Classical and Rapid lead the way, with blitz lagging behind. The rating graph shows that I’ve been essentially treading water all year. What is positive is that I sit in the 90th percentile for both Rapid and Classical. Also I’ve also peaked at 2131 Rapid and 1978 Classical this year.

Now let’s look at USCF.

Again, this looks like movement around a mean. However I was surprised to find I sit in the 87th percentile for Arizona. At least I’m consistent in my relative capabilities both online and OTB. (As an aside, props to USCF for their new Ratings page. Very cool.)

Now reality might start to set in here. You might be tempted (as am I) to say it’s difficult to improve on 90th percentile, which is true. You might also say I’ve hit a wall as things have stayed stagnant for awhile. But I will try to make the case for why I think I can gain 150 points in my OTB rating by the end of 2027.

Opportunity…

Well first of all is that I haven’t really played that many games OTB. Here’s my tournament history:

There was a flurry of activity in 2022, but then only one tournament in 2023. I had 3 tournaments in 2024 and again in 2025. This is a total of 47 rated OTB games in my career since 2020. The honest truth is that’s not nearly enough to learn and grow as a chess player The other honest truth is the 182 online classical games I’ve played since 2021 are helpful, but OTB is a more intense learning experience than online IMHO.

The main reason for the lack of OTB games is the conflict between hobby and reality. The family responsibilities I have make it infeasible for me to regularly play in weekend Quads. Having found a Tuesday Night USCF tournament where we play one game per week was a game changer. As things stand now, it looks like I can continue to get regular OTB Classical games in 2026 and beyond.

(FYI - One thing I learned is to get into a habit after each game. Shake hands, reset the board, and then record the result. I was credited for a loss one round when I won. Very frustrating but outside of my control. I have learned.)

It’s possible (but not likely) that I could double my game total in one year. That’s a lot of additional data to add to a rating graph. Even if I only added 20 games, that’s almost a 50% increase. Now it’s possible that I could hover around a mean… but it’s also possible I could make significant improvement. That’s where a training plan comes in.

… Meets Preparation

I trust Jacob Aaggard when he said that “if you’re under 1800, you don’t have tactics sorted”. This means my training plan is heavily weighted towards improving at tactics and game play. As I wrote in Program Minimum a training plan needs to focus on basics and have several key elements.

First there needs to be regular practice of basic, simple tactics for me, maybe 10-15 minutes a day. I’ll leave it to the neuroscientists to explain why but repetition of simple work results in greater capacity to do that work. (Think of scales in music, batting practice in baseball, or passing drills in soccer aka football, etc…) Every advanced player doesn’t leave these essential skills to chance.

Second, there needs to be some deliberate practice on more challenging puzzles. As I wrote in Breaking Through The Wall, deliberate practice is effortful by design. Without it, we will all land in the OK plateau. I have tactics days where I work on harder tactics to improve my skill. Still, finding the right mix of effortful practice and fun is also key as there’s no point in burning out along the way.

Lastly, I need to play often. Perfect is the enemy of good here. If I wait for my game to be “ready” I won’t play enough. If I wait for 2 hour windows to play a classical online game, they often won’t happen. And if I don’t have a plan I find I often just fall into aimless blitz sessions. The plan is simple: At least 2 classical games per week; or their equivalent. (In my book 1 Classical game = 2 Rapid games or 4-6 Blitz games). The point is to play regularly. Each game is analyzed simply looking for moments where I missed something or didn’t know what to do.

Whatever time I have to fit those games into (without setting myself up to fail) I will use. But this plan needs to live in reality since I have other more important things asked of me. As an adult, this plan needs to be able to fit into my 20% time so I do not compromised the quality of my work or the quality of my relationships. A tough reality to accept, but an important one.

The other thing to keep in mind is that some is better than none. If all I do is just 10 minutes of basic tactics, I’ll call that good. If that’s what I can do today, then that’s good enough. Keeping things simple and focused on games, analysis, and tactics is what I believe will help me break through this plateau.

A Journey of 10,000 Steps

As I wrote in Mountains Beyond Mountains, chess improvement is an endless road. This remains true, but right now I’m focused on getting up to the top of the next hill. Not having a goal other than “better” for the last 2 years I believe has allowed me to lose my focus. I’ve became distracted by the endless options we have as chess improvers. One day I may publish my confessions, revealing all the mistakes I’ve made along the way. Many of them sit unread on my shelf and online. For now however, let me just say that plans are great but not critical. What is critical is having a direction. The famous saying holds true: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” I’ve spent a lot of time on books, courses, videos, and more. The truth is much of that was unfocused time that didn’t get me anywhere.

What has helped is focusing on increasing skills rather than knowledge. However there is some knowledge that is essential for improvement: the common mistakes I make in games. Unfortunately that can only be purchased with time and effort, by exposing myself to risk and loss.

I see this is a cycle that repeats. Train, play, fail, learn, train again…. Joshua Waitzkin talked about this as “investing in loss” in his fantastic book The Art of Learning. To grow beyond our natural talents, loss is required to show us what we don’t see. Painful, but true.

I benefit from having a structure, and setting this goal helps me create a structure. I have a target to shoot for, but having a deadline also provides motivation. I have given myself 2 years to make significant gains in my play. The only way to do that is to take one step at a time.

I believe I can and will get there. At my best I can solve 2000+ level puzzles. At my worse, I blunder whole pieces. I hope to be elevate my ceiling but mostly, I want to raise my floor. Over the next 6 months I will have the ratings turned off for Lichess. I will focus training, playing, and analyzing. I’m signing up for the next Lichess Lonewolf season as well as the Tuesday Night tournaments. Along the way, I’ll give you updates how it’s going. I may publish other general improvement articles too, but not as often now. I see this as a great way to end the year, looking forward to better things to come. I cannot control the ratings, but I can control my focus and my effort. Until next time…

P.S. If you’re part of Noel Studer’s Simplified Chess Improvement System, you can follow my weekly progress there. Oh and Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the US!