Progressing? and tracking it!

Hello Guys,

I play chess because I like progress. Progressing is what keeps me on the edge of my seat.

For me the process of adjusting to my progress consists of 2-3 phases.

1. Climb the ladder

With the time I developed a sense for the pieces. For example the bishops movement. This improved my rating by an amount of 100 points.

2. Adjusting to the new rating

My feeling about the improvement is quite nice. I sense the achievement and I am proud of myself. It then takes some time until I am really confident about it. The fluctuations tend to decrease.

3. Take the next stair

10-20 games are enough to feel so confident about an improvement that I want to take the next step. So I pick the next weakness and I improve it.

What I am concerned about is, that I will not be able to track my improvement accurately due to the dynamic player base. How do you guys keep track of your Progress? I had the Idea to play against stockfish, but I don't think it is applicable to Human vs. Human in my range of rating. I still don't get how one can power an engine down. It would be nice to have the opportunity to play rated games against stockfish. This would (I don't have the time to put up the logic) make it easier to track progress in comparison to others.

what do you think?

I dunno, I'm getting dumber and dumber the more I play.

Play with Stockfish at whatever level one can win 50% of the time. That is your level.

It means?

#5 For example one play 10 matches against stockfish level 4 . If one win 5 matches and lost 5 matches, it means one is equal to stockfish level 4. That is what I meant friend blackdracula123.

I think you should play OTB chess, which will give you a good idea of your overall chess ability.

One of the best ways of tracking your improvement and actually speeding it up is writing a spreadsheet/notebook. After every blitz/classical game (obviously you need to analyse them afterwards), write out the opening, result, time control, opponents rating, your rating at the time and a few sentences about what you did right/wrong.

With this data you can calculate your progress as much as you want.

You can't track your progress online, unless you play thousands of games. Any rating system, used online (even offline) is very inaccurate and volatile. Numbers might fluctuate quite considerably, irrespective of your progress. You just can't reliably draw any conclusions on 20, even 100 games.

I played around 5000 classical games online. The majority of those on chess.com. There I am rated 1700+-50 and at 95% percentile. On lichess on the other hand I don't seem to get above 90% why do you think is that? My guess is that a lot of people on this site use engines in critical situations. Which is due to the fact that you can create a humongous amount of accounts.