Tigran Sarkisyan FM

Chess Improvement Feedback for Tigran Sarkisyan

Strengths

• Opening Preparation: Your repertoire includes solid and classical openings such as the King’s Indian Defense, Caro-Kann, and Queen’s Gambit structures. You maintain good development and control of the center early on, which sets up a strong foundation for middlegame play.
• Positional Understanding: You demonstrate good positional grasp, especially when maneuvering knights and coordinating pieces toward key squares (e.g., outposts like Nc6, Nb4). Your pawn breaks and exchanges are well-timed to open files and create targets.
• Endgame Technique: Several of your wins come from outplaying opponents in endgames, turning advantages with precise moves and good calculation.
• Time Management: Generally, you maintain good time usage even in complex positions, avoiding significant time trouble.

Areas for Improvement

• Handling Pressure in Critical Moments: In your most recent losses, it seems that under pressure (either from opponent initiative or time constraints), some inaccuracies allowed your opponents to seize key opportunities. Practice staying calm and re-evaluating the position calmly when under attack or in tricky tactics.
• Tactical Awareness: Although your positional play is solid, some missed tactical shots and oversight of opponent threats early in the middlegame tilted some games. Work on tactical puzzles daily — focus on pattern recognition and calculation accuracy to further sharpen your vigilance.
• Active Piece Coordination: There are moments in complex positions where piece coordination could improve, especially to increase pressure on opponent weaknesses. Try to identify and plan multi-move sequences to improve activity and synergy of your pieces.
• Defensive Resourcefulness: You might benefit from studying defensive techniques and counterplay ideas, as a few losses involved positions where a resourceful defense or counterattack could have turned the tides.

Next Steps for Training

1. Tactical Training: Dedicate 20-30 minutes daily to solving tactical exercises, emphasizing motifs like pins, forks, discovered attacks, and defensive resources.
2. Analyze Lost Games: Go through each lost game in detail, focusing on turning points. Try to understand why certain moves were suboptimal and what better options existed.
3. Endgame Study: Reinforce fundamental endgames — rook endgames, minor piece endgames, and king-pawn endgames — to convert winning or drawn positions more reliably.
4. Opening Deepening: Continue refining and deepening your opening knowledge, especially learning key plans and typical pawn structures in your favorite systems. This will help you reach middlegames with clearer plans.
5. Practice Slow Games: Play more classical or longer time-control games to improve strategic and calculation skills without heavy time pressure.

Summary

Overall, your chess foundation is strong, with good understanding of openings and positional play. By focusing on tactical sharpness, defensive resourcefulness, and endgame technique, you can reach a higher level of consistency and resilience in your games. Keep analyzing your games critically and training deliberately — this will pay off in your future performances!

Keep up the great work, and enjoy your chess journey!