Coach Chesswick
Quick summary
Nice fighting spirit in this session — you finished a cleanly converted win where you turned active rooks and a passed h–pawn into a win, but several losses came from time forfeits. Your rating trend shows strong peaks (2400s) but a recent month drop; the core opportunity is fixing time management and tightening your opening choices so you reach better middlegames more often.
Highlighted game (most recent win)
Win versus Daniel Frempong-Smart — you played aggressively, created an outside passer, and used rook activity to force decisive pawn advances and mate threats.
- Opening: Scandinavian Defense (you won by converting a material/positional advantage into a passed pawn and mating threats)
- Key moments: rooks to the 7th/3rd ranks, king marching into the attack, pushing the h–pawn at the right moment
- Replay: |fen|3r3k/4R2P/6P1/5p1K/5p2/4pP2/8/8 b - - 0 58|orientation|white|autoplay|false]]
What you did well
- Active rooks and seventh-rank play — you routinely use rooks aggressively to invade and create decisive threats.
- Creating and advancing outside passers — converting a pawn majority into a passed pawn and using it as a winning tool.
- Good practical instincts — once advantage appears you press it (keeps opponents under pressure and produces errors).
- Strong opening clusters — you have good win rates in lines like the Accelerated Dragon and Barnes Defense; these are reliable weapons for you.
Where to improve (highest impact)
- Time management — several recent losses ended on time. Prioritize keeping 10–20 seconds for critical phases and practice playing quickly in equal positions so you don’t flag.
- Opening selection and depth — some openings show poor results (Caro-Kann and the Catalan). Either simplify your repertoire there (play solid, short lines) or prepare a few concrete traps/idea-lines so you avoid getting unpleasant middlegames.
- Endgame technique under the clock — you convert when you reach the endgame with a clear passer, but sometimes technical converting with little time is wobbly. Practice basic rook + pawn endgames and king activity patterns on a 5–10 minute clock.
- Tactical patience — in blitz it’s easy to go for flashy solutions; prefer forcing continuations and checks when low on time to reduce calculation risk.
Concrete fixes and drills (actionable)
- 10-session plan: alternate 15 minutes of tactical puzzles (focus on mate threats, forks, skewers, back-rank) with 15 minutes of rapid endgame drills (rook + pawn, king and pawn races).
- Time-control drill: play 10 games of 3+0 but force yourself to pause if below 15s and think 2–3 seconds per move to build discipline (goal: finish with >=10s remaining in 70% of games).
- Opening triage: for bad-performing lines (Caro-Kann, Catalan) pick one simple, safe anti-system each and learn 5 key moves and 2 typical plans — memorize one move order to get you to a comfortable middlegame.
- Pre-move & flagging: disable risky pre-moves in complicated positions. If you keep losing on time, practice short endgame patterns vs computer with low increment to simulate flag pressure.
Short training schedule (7 days)
- Day 1 — 30m tactics (pins/forks), 30m 5+0 games focusing on keeping time.
- Day 2 — 30m rook endgames, 30m review of your Scandinavian and Najdorf key plans.
- Day 3 — 40m mixed tactics, 20m play 10 rapid (10+0) focusing on simple plans.
- Day 4 — 30m opening drills (Caro-Kann simplified line), 30m 3+0 games practicing discipline with 15s rule.
- Day 5 — 45m endgame positions from your own games, 15m solve time trouble mini-drills.
- Day 6 — 60m play a 1-hour session (5+0 + 3+0 mixed), then review biggest blunders.
- Day 7 — Rest or light tactics; review one loss and one win in depth and save notes for repetition.
Game-by-game takeaways (quick)
- Win vs Daniel Frempong-Smart — excellent rook invasions and passed pawn play; keep doing these plans.
- Win vs buddika amarasinghe — quick time-forfeit win: good opening stopwatch use, but don’t rely on opponent's timeouts; aim to win on the board too.
- Losses vs Matin Ghaffarifar and Hillel Toledo — both ended on time. The chess decisions in both were often complex; the core leak was clock handling rather than pure calculation error. Improve clock discipline first.
Next-game checklist (use before each blitz)
- Set a simple opening plan for move 1–10 (one line, two plans).
- If you fall below 20s, switch to safe/forcing moves and avoid long deep calculation unless decisive.
- Disable risky pre-moves in messy positions; only pre-move in clear recaptures.
- Look for rook lifts and outside passers early — these are your conversion strengths.
Motivation & closing
Your strength-adjusted win rate (about 50.7%) and peaks near 2450 show you belong at a high level — the next 50–100 rating points will come from cleaner time management and targeted opening trimming. Focus one week on clocks and two weeks on endgames/opening triage and you’ll see the monthly drop reverse quickly.
When you want, I can:
- Make a 4-line opening booklet (short, blitz-friendly) for your worst-performing defenses.
- Generate a 30-day blitz practice calendar tailored to your time availability.
- Annotate one of the losses with line-by-line suggestions — pick the game and I’ll do it.