Simon Williams GM

Big picture from this mini‑sample

These Titled Tuesday blitz games show exactly what people tune in for: swashbuckling initiative, willingness to trust your hand, and a stubborn refusal to go quietly in worse endings. Across all the data, your strength‑adjusted win rate is essentially 50%, with a clear positive trend over 6 and 12 months, so you’re still trading punches just fine with the shark tank.

The three highlighted games underline your identity:

• Vs Zbigniew Pakleza (A41 Wade / “Harry Attack with queenside pawns”). Classic Ginger method: clamp space, overprotect, and then grind with rooks and a passed pawn.
• Vs Vasif Durarbayli. Model Tromp with a long‑term pawn on a7 and a kingside chase that never lets up.
• Vs Cem Kaan Gokerkan (French Tarrasch). Sharp, objectively playable French fight where practical details and clock management let a tenable position slip in the rook endgame.

Below I’ll separate what’s working well from what is costing you half‑points and energy, then give some very focused training ideas for the next few weeks.

What you’re doing really well

• 1. Keeping the initiative in messy structures

  In the Byniolus game you grabbed space with pawns on the queenside and then calmly improved every piece behind them. After building that grip, you smoothly transitioned into an active rook and queen battery:

  This is a good advert for “Ginger positional play”: you didn’t rush a Sneaky sack, you just made sure all your pieces were better than his and let the clock and structure do the rest.

• 2. Long‑term pawn advantages and piece coordination

  The Durarbayli Tromp game is a great case study in turning one asset (the a‑pawn) into a whole game plan. After you pushed the a‑pawn all the way to a7 you never let him breathe:

  The way you used rook lifts (Ra5, Rfa1, Ra6, Ra3) is close to textbook. That fits perfectly with your lifetime success with Dutch Defense / Modern – positions with clear pawn levers and dynamic rook play.

• 3. Practical “Swindle radar” and tenacity

  In the French game vs ckgchess you were completely lost around move 60, yet you still found ways to generate threats, push the c‑pawn, and harass his king with your rook and bishop. That “never sign the scoresheet until it’s mate” instinct is a huge part of why you’ve stayed around 2700 blitz for a decade.

  Your career numbers – over 30,000 games, with a strength‑adjusted win rate ~50% in a field full of GMs – show you’re still a top‑tier Blitz addict and Swindling artist.

The main leaks this session

From these games and your long‑term stats, three practical issues stand out. None are about knowing more Book; they’re about decision‑making speed and structure.

• 1. Time trouble “echo” in convertible positions

  The French vs ckgchess is officially a loss on time, but the critical phase was much earlier. After move 40 the position is bad but your pieces are coordinated; from there, the problem is more about clock than board.

  Characteristic pattern:

  • You invest time in the early middlegame to squeeze out initiative (…g5–h5–Rg5 etc.).
  • When the initiative fades, you’re already under 30 seconds and have to rely on instant decisions in a complex rook endgame.

  In other words, the real loss happens 10–15 moves before flag‑fall. The clock graph would look like a slow bleed rather than a sudden cliff.

• 2. Over‑committing pawn storms without a clear stopping rule

  This shows up in both directions:

  • Vs ckgchess (French). …g5–h6–h5–g4 created massive kingside imbalance. It’s thematically fine in a French, but once White’s pieces regrouped, your pawns became targets and you had to spend tempi patching things up instead of centralizing king and rooks.
  • Vs RRMaster (Dutch). Your 12…f4 and 19…f3 break the position open in typical Dutch Defense style, but leave a permanent weakness on the dark squares around your king. In the game you got away with it, but versus your usual 2700 opposition that pawn skeleton is begging for a Swindle.

  You’re brilliant at starting pawn storms; the leak is not having a simple “no more pawns until my king has an escape square and at least one heavy piece nearby” rule.

• 3. Converting initiative into something permanent

  In several of these games (Byniolus and Durarbayli included) you did convert, but you needed many moves where your advantage could have been turned into a safer, simpler position:

  • Against Byniolus, after you win the b‑pawn, there are chances to trade queens earlier and head for a “Technical win” instead of keeping maximum tension.
  • Against Durarbayli, once a7 is established and his king is tied to the queenside, you could look for a forced queen trade and pure rook endgame rather than maintaining full chaos with both clocks ticking down.

  Your lifelong style is “keep the pieces on, keep swindling chances.” But at 2700+ blitz, being able to flip into “Bean‑counter mode” and bank a slightly better rook endgame would add a lot of rating juice without changing your brand.

Opening takeaways from this batch

Your lifetime opening stats match what we see here:

• Amar Gambit and related Coffeehouse lines: win rate over 54%. Great practical weapon; keep it.
• Dutch Defense / Dutch Classical: huge volume, excellent lifetime score (over 52–55%). This is still your identity and it works.
• Australian Defense and fringe systems: solid but not obviously outperforming your core weapons.

From the three fresh games:

• As White vs Wade / Tromp. You are very comfortable playing “space and bind” setups with pawns clamping light squares, followed by rook lifts and pressure. That plays to your strengths and keeps your prep fairly low‑maintenance.
• As Black vs French Tarrasch. The game vs ckgchess actually shows a perfectly playable practical choice with …a6–b6 and a quick …g5 thrust. The opening itself is not the problem; it’s the middlegame time/structure choices afterwards.

Conclusion: no need for a major Theory dump here; the fix is more about knowing when to stop attacking and cash in.

Concrete themes to train (with examples)

• 1. “Cash‑out move” training

  Objective: in every attacking game, find one moment where you could safely simplify into a much easier win.

  Drill with your own games:

  • Open the Byniolus and Durarbayli wins.
  • At each move where you are clearly better, pause and ask: “Is there a queen trade or major simplification that keeps a healthy plus?”
  • If yes, play that line out quickly (no Engine worshipper mode, just human evaluation).

  Over time this will build an internal “conversion radar”: you’ll still attack like a madman, but you’ll also spot when it’s time to turn the position into a Book draw for your opponent and a “book win” for you.

• 2. Simple king‑safety checklist for pawn storms

  Before pushing a kingside pawn in front of your king (…g5, …h5, f4, g4), ask three plain‑English questions:

  • “Does my king have at least one safe square behind the pawn I’m moving?” (Escape square test.)
  • “Do I have at least two pieces helping cover the squares that pawn will leave behind?” (e.g. dark‑square bishop plus queen.)
  • “If my opponent ignores my attack and blasts the centre, is my king or theirs more exposed?”

  If you cannot answer “yes” to at least two of those, delay the pawn push for one move and bring a piece closer to your king. This takes 2–3 seconds in blitz and would have helped vs ckgchess once or twice.

• 3. Time‑management rule: two gears instead of one

  Right now you oscillate between “streamer move” speed and deep think. Try a hard rule for the first 20 moves:

  • Gear 1 (bookish / known patterns): Max 5 seconds per move. Play on feel; trust your years of experience.
  • Gear 2 (first completely unfamiliar moment): Allow one 20–25 second think, then make a decision and live with it.

  In the French game you effectively burned your Gear‑2 think multiple times in the opening and early middlegame. Try limiting yourself to one deep think before move 20 unless the position is absolutely on fire.

• 4. Rook‑and‑pawn “auto‑pilot” patterns

  Given how many of your games end in rook endgames (and your lifetime volume), shaving just one or two seconds off each rook‑endgame move will pay huge dividends.

  Focus on three patterns:

  • Building a bridge (Lucena): when you have an outside passed pawn and rook behind it, know the standard bridge‑building sequence by heart.
  • Checking from behind vs from the side: always ask “Is my rook best behind his passed pawn, or harassing from the side?” You often choose dynamically, but sometimes a simple “rook behind pawn” approach is enough.
  • Trading into king‑and‑pawn wins: with your swindling instincts, you’re very good at spotting tricks; combine that with a few “tablebase‑familiar” patterns and you can make even more practical magic with seconds on the clock.

  Use a handful of positions from the ckgchess French endgame as custom puzzles: set them up and give yourself 10 seconds per move to play them out against an engine in Study mode.

How this fits your rating trends

Looking at your rating history and recent slopes:

• Last month: +51 with an up‑slope, clearly positive momentum.
• 3 months: small dip, mostly noise given opposition quality and volume.
• 6 and 12 months: both trending up (around +136 over six months and a positive yearly slope).

That picture matches what we see on the board: the core engine – tactics, pattern recognition, practical instincts – is all still there. The leaks are “grown‑up” ones: clock discipline, deciding when to cash in, and a bit of risk‑management with pawn storms.

Action plan for the next few blitz sessions

• Before the event: 5–10 minutes of quick rook‑endgame drills (Lucena, Philidor, and one or two custom positions from your loss vs ckgchess).
• During the games: apply the pawn‑storm checklist and the “one deep think before move 20” rule.
• After the event: pick exactly one win and one loss. In each, mark the first moment you could have:
  • Cashed out (simplified into a safer plus), or
  • Declined to push a pawn in front of your king.

None of this asks you to stop being an attacking monster. It just adds a thin layer of “Bean‑counter” discipline on top of the chaos. Given how close your strength‑adjusted win rate is to 50% in elite blitz, even a tiny improvement in clock and conversion could nudge you into consistent rating‑gain territory again.

If you’d like, next time we can zoom in specifically on one opening family – say, the Dutch Defense or your 1.d4 “Harry and friends” systems – and build a very targeted blitz repertoire sheet with a few ready‑made Trickster line ideas.