Bertalan Buzás FM

What You're Doing Well

Bertalan, your recent games show some strong strategic understanding, especially in your opening repertoire and piece activity. Here are some highlights:

• You handle complex opening systems like the Queen's Gambit Declined and the Sicilian Defense with confidence, developing your pieces actively and preparing to contest the center.
• Your ability to convert small advantages in middlegames is evident, such as pressuring your opponents and forcing resignations as seen in your wins.
• You maintain a solid presence in the center and often find ways to exchange off opponent's active pieces, which helps reduce their counterplay.
• Good use of piece coordination in fast-paced blitz games shows your practical understanding and quick decision-making skills.

Areas for Improvement

While you have strong skills, there are some areas to focus on to boost your results and rating trends:

• Endgame Technique: Several losses involved critical endgame positions where better calculation or defensive technique could have saved the game. Reviewing basic endgame principles will help.
• Opening Precision: Some losses occurred due to mistakes in the opening or early middlegame, such as losing critical tempo or pawn structure weaknesses. Study the typical ideas and plans in your chosen openings to avoid these pitfalls.
• Tactical Awareness: Quickly spotting opponent threats and calculating forcing moves under time pressure will reduce blunders in blitz games. Incorporate tactical puzzles in your training routine regularly.
• Time Management: Improving how you allocate time throughout the game—spending slightly more on critical positions and less in well-known lines—can reduce rushed errors in the late game.
• Focus on Stronger Openings: Your highest win rates are in lines like the Sicilian Defense: Closed Anti-Sveshnikov Variation and Scandinavian Defense (~65-69% win rates). Deepening your preparation in these openings might increase success and confidence.

Training Recommendations

To address the above areas, consider the following training steps:

• Review master games and study key concepts in your preferred openings, particularly focusing on pawn breaks, piece placement, and typical plans.
• Practice tactical puzzles daily to sharpen your calculation and pattern recognition.
• Study endgames, starting with basic king and pawn endgames and progressing to rook and minor piece endings.
• Analyze your blitz losses in detail—try to identify critical moments and alternative moves to improve future decisions.
• Experiment with varying your time usage during games to find a balance that helps you avoid time trouble.

Overall Outlook

Your current strength adjusted win rate is about 50.7%, which is solid but suggests some room to raise your consistency. Your rating has fluctuated slightly with a small downward trend in the last month, but the longer-term slopes are positive, indicating underlying improvement.

Maintaining focused study and practical play in openings with strong winning records will help reverse short-term dips and stabilize your rating upward trend.