Anshul Shetty NM

Hi Anshul, here’s a personalized post-mortem of your recent games and a roadmap for the next rating jump.

Quick Stats

Peak bullet rating: 2115 (2025-01-17)

When you play best:

What you’re already doing well

• Opening consistency. As White you reliably reach Reti/KIA structures with Nf3-g3-Bg2, and as Black you stay inside familiar King’s Indian / Grunfeld setups. That saves you clock time in bullet.
• Tactical alertness. The win vs. KatakuriDono shows you spotting 26.Nxe4!! and converting the exchange quickly (Mathis Sabatier).
• Practical swindles. Several victories came from keeping the game messy when down material—an excellent bullet skill.

Recurring trouble-spots

1. Time management. Both your most-recent win and loss ended on the clock. You often hit ≤5 seconds around move 40, even in won positions.
2. Over-extension of central pawns. In the loss to pepechess12 you played …h6–e6–Re8–Nf8 without completing development, then suffered when White planted a passed d6 pawn.
3. King safety lapses. Getting mated by KIDFIRE after 25.Qxh6# and 33…Rxh1# shows a habit of leaving back-rank holes or walking the king into nets.

Targeted fixes for the next 4-6 weeks

1. Clock discipline

• Adopt the “15-second rule”—no move should cost more than 15 seconds before move 25. If nothing obvious works, make a solid developing move and keep the game alive.
• Play a daily set of 30-second + 1 sec increment games. The increment forces you to finish with moves in hand rather than pre-move frenzies.

2. Opening tightening

• As White: Mix in the London or a direct d4-c4 repertoire twice a session. Keeps opponents guessing and lets you practise playing with a space edge instead of hyper-fianchetto setups every game.
• As Black vs. d4: Your King’s Indian is fine, but have a solid fallback (e.g. the Nimzo-Indian) for when you don’t feel like entering race positions.
• Review the first 15 moves of each loss this week—build a “red-flag” list of three moves you never want to repeat (e.g. …Nb6-Nd7-Nc5 carousel from the pepechess12 game).

3. King safety drills

• Set a Lichess puzzle filter to “mate in 3-5, defender side.” Solve 25 per day from the Black side to train your danger antennae.
• During post-game review ask: “Could I castle one move earlier?”—then write that move number in your notes. Lowering the average castling move by even two moves will cut the mating nets you fall into.

4. End-game conversion

When up material you still enter bullet scrambles. Borrow this routine:

1. Identify the cleanest winning plan (trade queens, push passer, etc.).
2. Premove all forced recaptures; save calculation for junction points.
3. Use hotkeys to pre-offer draws if you’re low on time but winning—in bullet many opponents accept out of panic.

Micro-homework (15-minute blocks)

Confidence booster

Your tactical vision is already bullet-IM level; polishing the technical and time-use sides will unlock the rating ceiling fast. Keep the board messy, guard your own king, and hit that next peak—you’re closer than you think!