You Can't Improve Alone: My 2025 Chess Year in Review

After another year of playing, coaching, creating, and building, there’s been one main takeaway that I’ve come to appreciate more and more as the year comes to an end: the importance of community.

Throughout 2025 I did it all in the chess world:

• Played 82 rated classical games in 15 tournaments
• Taught over 530 individual lessons to more than 35 unique students
• Taught 40 group lessons online
• Taught 80 group classes to kids in local schools
• Had 16 lessons with my coach
• Created my 5th Chessable course (not including free ones)
• Worked as a second for an International Master
• Release 8 YouTube videos (definitely a slow year)
• Wrote 25 Substack articles in the past 4 months
• Co-founded Chessalyz.ai

The common factor connecting all of these things was (re)discovering how deeply community shapes both improvement and enjoyment in chess.

Let me tell you a story...

---

Storytime

Community was incredibly important in my early years of chess development, even if I didn’t realize it back then. Growing up in Florida, I was introduced to competitive chess at the age of 10 (in 2003) through a local club, the “Orlando Chess and Games Center” (OCG) which was owned and run by FM Alex Zelner (R.I.P.). Every Friday night I would play against other local kids and adults at the club and once a month I would play in a weekend tournament. Big thanks to my parents back then for driving me around!

Back at this time I also played online chess (Internet Chess Club/ICC) but it wasn’t anywhere near as accessible as it is nowadays. Because of that, playing at the local club and in weekend tournaments was incredibly important for my development and gave me the chance to make friends and rivals in the local area. I developed close friendships and rivalries which pushed all of us to become better players. When your friend hits a milestone rating or has a strong tournament result, you can be happy for them and very motivated to catchup to their level at the same time! Shoutouts to Toby and Chaz!

During these formative years, I went from playing my first rated tournament to becoming a National Master 8 years later and a FIDE Master a few years after that. In 2010 a few of my friends and I (team name “Beasts of the Southeast”) also ended up winning the US Amateur Team South championship:

However, as time went on, especially after all of my friends and I graduated high school, many of us went our separate ways due to college. Good friends and rivals moved to different states, stopped playing chess and moved on to other pursuits in their lives. I stuck around in Florida and for a period of about 8 years between March 2013 and August 2021 I plateaued hard around a 2275-2325 USCF rating. A big reason for this is that I wasn’t playing many tournaments during these years and a big reason for not playing tournaments was the lack of a community at that time (the pandemic during 2020-2021 didn’t help either).

I felt like a lone wolf when I would go to tournaments and didn’t have the same friend group who I would travel and hang out with in-between games. I was still heavily working as a coach during these years but didn’t feel the same drive to work on my own chess as I had in the past. During this time period I only played 26 classical tournaments which was barely an average of 3 classical tournaments per year. For a 1.5 year span between September 2015 and March 2017 I didn’t play even a single tournament. I also had no real goal at this time, not considering working towards International Master yet.

However, my first new chess “community” was created when I got married to my wife in October 2019. During the pandemic she encouraged me to give chess tournaments another shot and once the pandemic died down, I had set my sights on working towards becoming an International Master (a goal I still have to this day). From September 2021-December 2022 I played in 11 classical tournaments (including 3 IM norm invitational events) and 10 rapid/blitz tournaments. During this time I actually hit my peak USCF rating of 2362.

Most of these tournaments happened while we were living in Chicago and St. Louis which are hotbeds for chess. Living in these two cities definitely helped since there was more of a community aspect compared to what I had left behind in Florida. However, after moving to Cleveland in early 2023 (where I still am to this day), there was another lull in regards to the community aspect of things. I had to get used to a new city, new people and it took me longer to acclimate to the community than it had in Chicago and St. Louis. In 2023 I only played 4 classical tournaments and they were all out-of-state. In 2024 I started to play more local events and ended up playing 13 classical tournaments but my rating stagnated all year, going from 2308 to 2301.

This takes us to the year of 2025 where we’ll focus our story now. I had a rough start to the year in regards to tournament results and dipped all the way down to a USCF rating of 2265 after February ended. I had formed friendships with local players and had a training partner but still didn’t feel like I fit in yet. However, that all changed when I was randomly invited to be part of a team for the Midwest Open Team Chess Festival (MOTCF) who needed to fill an empty board since their previous player wasn’t going to be able to play anymore. Our team ended up winning the tournament and my friendship with these teammates Justin, Amogh and Gajanan made a big impact on me as the year continued, along with many other friends (Wilson, Anant, Bryan and more) I made along the way. Shoutout to you guys!

During the rest of 2025, from March through the end of the year, I did the following:

• Played 13 classical tournaments (68 games)
• Won outright or tied for first in 7 of them
• Became the Ohio State Champion
• Traveled to 4 out-of-city/out-of-state tournaments with friends
• Went from 2266 2330 USCF (peaked 2343) in 6 months

I am absolutely sure that I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all of this without the new local community and friend group that I have become part of during these past 9 months.

Ben Johnson emphasizes community as one of his four pillars of chess improvement in his book “Perpetual Chess Improvement” and I whole heartedly agree.

Throughout my entire chess career, community has been a big driving force for what has pushed me to improve as much as I have. From my first local chess club in Orlando to the friends I made there, to the hotbeds of chess in Chicago and St. Louis that I lived in, and now to the friends I’ve made in Cleveland, all of this has been a large part of my improvement and even more importantly, my JOY of playing chess.

It’s so much more fun to study and train with friends rather than doing it alone.

It’s so much more fun to travel to tournaments and hang out with friends in-between rounds than going solo.

It’s so much more fun to analyze games together and play blitz into the late hours of the night with friends rather than be alone in a hotel room.

And this community aspect applies in all other areas of chess too!

---

How Community Helps In Other Ways

As a coach, I make it a big focus of mine to help my students to improve and enjoy chess as much as possible. Of course I can do this through the lessons we have together, but another big part of this is being genuine friends with many of my students too. I’ve met various students in-person throughout the years, enjoying meals with them and would really like to meet the ones I haven’t met yet at some point too! Many of my students have my personal phone number and will text me about their tournament results, ask questions and send me pictures of what they’re working on. I celebrate their good results while they also celebrate mine too. I would like to think that this gives them more of a feeling of community, even if they don’t have a local community of their own. That being said, many of the students I have that make the quickest and biggest progress are ones who are playing in local tournaments and have their own local community too! (If you’re interested in coaching then you can fill out this questionnaire here)

I’ve also grown to enjoy teaching kids in local schools throughout this year too. I started doing this a bit back in late 2024 but in 2025 I taught at 6 different schools consistently throughout the year. Sometimes I’ll run into a few of the kids in local tournaments and always enjoy seeing them improve and do well. Shoutout to the Progress with Chess team!

Having my own coach throughout the year has been a big help too. Just like how my students are able to talk to me about their games and issues they face during tournaments, being the student myself and having my own coach to talk with helps me too. He keeps tabs on my tournament games and cheers for me from the sidelines, always ready to help me improve after each event. Shoutout to Wojciech!

Creating Chessable courses has given me an online community where I’m able to help students who have purchased my courses. Not only am I able to help them through the course material itself, but I also pride myself on being one the more responsive coaches on the site in regards to answering questions about specific positions or questions that students post in the forums.

Having the opportunity to be an opening second for an International Master this year was also a great experience. I felt like I was able to be part of someone else’s chess journey at a level higher than my own which was fun. Working together and collaborating to prepare him as best as possible for tournaments was an experience that I cherish and I hope to do more of this going forward. Shoutout to (redacted)!

Back in February, my long-time student and friend Varun and I decided to start working on a new chess project focusing on helping to make the game analysis and annotation process easier for players. This project eventually became Chessalyz.ai which we are constantly working on each day and over time we’ve grown to include a few more members of the team. Shoutout to them! Without the community and friendship Varun and I fostered over the years, having this partnership wouldn’t be possible. (If you want to learn more about Chessalyz.ai then you can click here)

Last but not least, you dear readers and the fellow chess Substackers are an important community for me too! Around four months ago when I started writing on Substack again, I was invited to a chess Substack discord group which included other writers. We all supported each others goals of writing on Substack while giving tips and advice based on our personal experiences. Unfortunately the group is too big for me to shoutout each person individually, but you know who you guys are!

Also, I’ve enjoyed helping readers throughout the past four months to improve at chess. I’ve gotten many nice messages from readers who have enjoyed my articles and especially the subscribers who received game analyses have appreciated my help too.

---

What About 2026?

Honestly, I just want to do more of the same as 2025 and even better! I want to continue to enjoy chess with friends during 2026 and continue improving. I already have plans to make a road trip to Kentucky with a friend this weekend to play in a tournament. Hopefully 2026 can be the year I get my first IM norm too!

I want to continue improving as a coach and continue growing my community of students. Probably during 2026 I would like to connect them to each other a bit more so that they each get to grow their own communities too.

I want to continue to teach more kids in schools and help them to enjoy chess. I’d like to continue making more Chessable courses (I’m in the works on one right now focusing on playing the Ruy Lopez as White). I’d like to help more strong players as an opening second (if any IMs or GMs are reading this, hit me up!). I’d like to grow Chessalyz.ai into a popular website that is used by players all over the world in their chess improvement journeys. And finally, I’d like to continue writing here on Substack for you readers. I hope you continue to enjoy the articles!

---

While chess is generally framed as a game which focuses on individual mastery (“you against the board”), the real magic is in the people that make up the community. Without all of the people I listed (and many, many more that I didn’t mention!), I wouldn’t be the person I am today. So in closing, I want to say THANK YOU!

Thank you to everyone in the chess community, whether local or online, which has made 2025 one of my most fun and enjoyable years ever.

I wish everyone a great start to the new year and hope your 2026 goes well!