Anup Deshmukh IM

Overview of your blitz play

You’ve shown a willingness to fight for initiative in sharp, tactical lines and to press in the middlegame. Your openings indicate comfort in dynamic, aggressive repertoires, and you can create chances with active piece play. The main opportunities now are to improve consistency under time pressure, choose solid opening paths in blitz, and convert advantages into clean, decisive middlegame-to-endgame transitions.

What you’re doing well

• You handle aggressive, tactical structures confidently, keeping the pressure on opponents and trying to destabilize their position.
• You show good practical resourcefulness in the middlegame, often generating concrete threats and complicating the position in blitz scenarios.
• Your openings include several lines that lead to dynamic play, and you can seize initiative when the position is tactical and unbalanced.

Key improvement areas

• Time management: balance your clock so you have reliable options in the critical middle game, rather than chasing long forced lines when you’re short on time.
• Opening discipline: build a compact, reliable blitz repertoire to reduce early mistakes and keep the game’s direction favorable after the first 10–15 moves.
• Endgame conversion: practice turning small advantages into wins and avoid getting entangled in heavy tactical skirmishes that exhaust your clock and resources.
• Blunder prevention: develop a quick “scan” routine to check for unprotected pieces, hanging tactics, and opposing threats before making each move, especially in time trouble.

Practical practice plan (next 2 weeks)

• Daily: 10–15 minutes of tactical puzzles focused on blunder prevention and recognizing forcing sequences.
• 3 sessions per week: 30–40 minutes each, focusing on one or two compact openings in blitz, with an emphasis on a simple plan after the opening phase.
• Weekly: 20–30 minutes of endgame basics (rook endings, minor piece endings, and basic pawn endgames) to improve conversion in short games.
• After each session: review your two blitz games, identify the moment you lost time or momentum, and note a concrete plan to avoid repeating it.

Opening plan and recommendations

Based on your performance in the openings you’ve used, here are two to three focused paths you can deepen for blitz. Practice them in multiple quick games to build pattern recognition and reduce early mistakes:

• Sicilian Defense: General approach is solid; work on a few reliable sub-variations that lead to clear middlegame plans. Sicilian Defense
• Scandinavian Defense: You’ve shown good results here; deepen the main lines to reach clean middlegames where you can press with active pieces. Scandinavian Defense
• Sicilian Defense: Alapin Variation (Sherzer Variant) for a more solid, positional fuse that still yields dynamic chances. Sicilian Defense: Alapin Variation

Tip: pick two openings you enjoy and feel comfortable with in both White and Black, and run through core plans, not just tactics. This helps in blitz when time is tight. You can review specific lines using the openings placeholders above as quick references in your study app.

Next steps

• Implement a fixed two-plan approach for every game: (a) a practical plan after the opening, and (b) a fallback plan if the position becomes tactical and unclear.
• Schedule a weekly review of the week’s Blitz games, focusing on the moment you spent too much time or missed a straightforward continuation.
• Keep your tempo steady: allocate a small amount of time early to ensure you don’t get dragged into risky complications when your clock is low.