Road to GOLD III - Ranking Up in Splinterlands Without Investment?

Now that Chaos is out soon, I've been thinking of a strategy to crawl up in the ranking to earn more DEC and to be able to level up as many cards as possible in order to get real power that I can use in battles, not only at the end of seasons by getting more chests.

I asked myself a question: is it possible to do that without investment?

Please note that my calculations are not accurate, numbers depend from actual market prices of cards, DEC, and other circumstances that affect the value of assets.

How much $$$ to spend?

My current Collection Power (CP) - 34,000 CP
Current Rank - Silver III
CP needed to Gold III - 66,000 CP

66,000 CP = 5,550 CP / month = 185 CP / day

Counting with 5 CP / cards, which is the cheapest option now by buying common Chaos cards, I need to buy at least 37 cards each day for one year. Of course, daily necessary card numbers will change if I buy cards with higher rarity.

If we think of a 0.30 $ as an average card price, counting with 5 CP / card, we can get a 0.06 $ price per CP.

This means a total of 11.1$ per day, which is roughly an average of 1,110 DEC per day.

According to these calculations, I have to spend about 333$ each month for one year, which is a total of 3,996 $ in one year spent for cards.

How much to battle?

In average, to get 1,110 DEC on a daily basis, I have win about 158 battles every day, if we calculate with an average of 7 DEC per battle won in Silver III.

If I have an at least 60% win rate (which is not much I think):
I have to play at least 253 battles / day, again, played in Silver III.

How much time?

Now, maybe you already figured out, that playing 253 battles each day is nearly impossible if playing Splinterlands is not your full-time job AND your hobby at the same time, and we still weren't talking about getting bored or more importantly losing capture rate, which leads to lower and lower DEC rewards.

But just for fun:
If we calculate with an average of 2,5 minutes per battle, I need to play around 10,5 hours (!) a day.

Since I am not a bot, and I don't even plan to use one, I won't reach Gold III without investing money in the game.

Blogs to Follow:
Splinterlands: https://peakd.com/@splinterlands/
Monster-Curator: https://peakd.com/@monster-curator/
1Up (#OneUp): https://www.1up.zone/

Discord Channels to Join:
Splinterlands Discord: https://discord.gg/Tw7KjNsQGs
Monster Market Discord (Monster Curator): https://discord.gg/DR3J9rfRFV
PeakD Discord (PeakMonsters as well): https://discord.gg/7mQmzZeugE
NFT Studios Discord (aka 1UP Discord #OneUp): https://discord.gg/4VYBcNuVQd

@steemmonsters @splinterlands