Coach Chesswick
Hi Thomas, great to see you grinding the blitz pool!
Quick snapshot
- Peak blitz rating so far: 2324 (2022-10-04)
- Hourly performance:
- Win-rate by day:
What you already do well
- Early piece activity. You rarely leave pieces undeveloped; the win vs protectiago shows how fast development plus a little tactics can decide a game.
- Converting extra material. The technical win below illustrates good end-game method:
- Practical time handling. Several opponents flagged while you kept sensible, safe moves on the board.
Patterns that cost you points
- Over-extension before king safety. In multiple losses (e.g. Slav vs KorolDimitriy) pawn storms happened before castling or full development, handing your opponent targets.
- Missing intermediate moves. In the same Slav game, …c5?! allowed the tactical Bxe7! followed by Qh6. Review the critical phase:
- Rook endings. In the Scandinavian loss to plasm712 you resigned an objectively drawable rook-and-pawn ending. Sharpen Philidor/Lucena technique.
Action plan (next two weeks)
- Daily tactics (15 min). Focus on “zwischenzug”, “deflection”, and “interference”.
- Defence drills. Play five sparring games starting from move 15 of the KorolDimitriy loss; set an engine to low strength and practise holding.
- Opening hygiene. Add one solid reply to 1.e4 besides the Scandinavian (Classical Caro-Kann or a quiet …e6 Sicilian line) to reduce early pawn tension.
- Rook-endgame refresher. Revisit the Philidor and Lucena schemes; test yourself against the engine until you can hold with <20 seconds on the clock.
- Post-game micro-review log. After every blitz session jot down:
- Opening reached
- Result
- One move you’re proud of
- One moment you mis-evaluated
Time-management tweak
Your average clock on move 20 drops below 40 s. Mix in a dozen 3 + 2 games; the increment will let you calculate one extra ply without losing blitz sharpness.
Next check-in
After 20 additional games send me one representative win & loss; we’ll measure progress and set fresh targets.
Keep the momentum, and enjoy the journey!