Ivan Excender Soriano Quispe IM

Strengths in Your Recent Blitz Games

Ivan, your recent games show several notable strengths that are contributing to your continued success in blitz chess:

• Strong Tactical Awareness: You secured decisive victories by exploiting tactical motifs and pressure effectively, especially in complex positions.
• Opening Preparation: Your knowledge of opening lines like the English Opening and Caro-Kann Defense allows you to enter the middlegame with solid positions. Your highest win rates are in openings such as the Slav Defense (75% win rate) and Dőry Defense (62.5%), indicating good comfort there.
• Effective Positional Play: In the wins provided, you demonstrated patience and awareness in improving your pieces while restricting your opponent's options before launching an attack.
• Endgame Technique: Your games often transition into complex endgames where you maintain control and press small advantages well, sometimes even winning on time by keeping positional pressure.

Areas to Improve for Continued Growth

While your overall performance is strong, there are areas to focus on to further improve your blitz ratings and results:

• Opening Win Rates & Flexibility: Your win rates in some very common openings like the Ruy Lopez Closed (39.13%) and English Opening Agincourt Defense (37.5%) are below your average. Consider reviewing your responses or exploring alternative lines to boost consistency.
• Handling Complex Middle Games: Opponents tend to challenge you fiercely in the middle game. Analyze recent losses to identify recurring tactical or strategic missteps and practice solving complex positions under time pressure.
• Time Management: In fast games like blitz, managing your clock effectively is key. Though you won some games on time, refining the balance between speed and accuracy can help avoid rushed blunders in critical moments.
• Improving Draw Conversion: Your draw ratio is low in blitz, which is normal, but working on holding slightly worse positions can improve your average score, especially against tougher opponents.

Trend and Performance Insights

Your rating trends over recent months show a positive trajectory with a 1-month rating increase and upward slope in your performance. Maintaining this momentum will involve:

• Continuing focused opening preparation, especially sharpening your lines in lower win rate openings.
• Intensive tactical training and review of your recent losses to minimize repeat mistakes.
• Practicing time pressure scenarios to sharpen quick decision making and avoid panicked moves.
• Studying endgame patterns relevant to your playstyle to convert more winning or equal positions.

Your strength adjusted win rate of about 53% is solid for your level, but aiming for consistency near 55-60% with better opening outcomes can boost your rating further.

Specific Suggestions Based on Recent Wins

For example, in your recent game using the English Opening with a Caro-Kann Defensive System, your strategic pawn advances combined with active piece play led to a successful mating attack. To build on this:

• Review classic games in the English Opening to understand deeper positional plans against common responses such as ...c6 and ...d5.
• Practice recognizing when to transition from positional buildup to an attacking phase, as you did with timely pawn pushes and piece coordination.
• Keep refining your queen and rook activity along open files, which played a key role in your decisive finishing attack.

Analyzing such games deeply, including potential improvements for both sides, can help reinforce good habits.