What You Are Doing Well
Your recent wins show a clear pattern. You get a solid position out of the opening, keep your pieces connected, and then outplay people once the board clears. The Queen's Gambit and Slav Defense structures are clearly comfortable for you, and when queens come off you are usually the one making the better decisions.
Two wins against rishavrajchess show this nicely. In the game where queens went early, you did not panic when the heavy pieces left. You kept your rook active, used your bishop, walked your king toward the action, and slowly pushed your extra pawns until the position was resignable. That is patient, grown up chess and it is a real strength.
Your Attacking Instinct Is Real
Against Give Mqwathi you played a Grünfeld Defense and gave up an exchange to keep the initiative. Many players go passive after losing a corner rook. You did the opposite. You used your bishop and queen to hunt the king and finished with a check that ended the game. Choosing activity over safety was the right call there.
Same story in the King's Indian game against the same opponent. You spotted that his pieces were not connected and won a rook out of it. When your opponent leaves loose pieces lying around, keep looking for the trick, because at this level it is often just sitting there.
Where the Points Are Leaking
- Black against the King's Indian Defense Four Pawns Attack. This is your most played line and your weakest score. When White builds a big pawn wall in the center, do not wait and hope. Go after the base of the chain with the ...c5 break, support it with a rook on the file, and trade a knight to loosen the wall. A forcing plan beats a waiting plan almost every time.
- King safety in your own games. In the game against Nguyễn Minh Hiếu your opponent walked his king up the board and it ended his game. Watch for the same habit in your own play: before you start an attack, ask where your king will live for the next ten moves.
- Deciding when to push and when to take the draw. In the draw against naungcommm you were two pawns down but your rook and knight were far more active than his rook and bishop. Forcing the repetition was a good practical decision, not a failure. The skill to sharpen is judgement: recognise when the position rewards a push and when the draw is the best result on the board.
- Clock habits. In the Grünfeld win you finished with about a minute and a half still on the clock, which was enough because the attack was forcing. In calmer games you often drift down to under a minute in the middlegame. Play the first ten moves on pattern, not on thought, so you keep that time for the endgame where it actually matters.
Your Next Ten Games
- Before each game, decide one simple plan for the first six moves. If you are Black in the King's Indian, that plan is the break in the center and pressure on the pawn chain.
- After every game, look only at the moment the queens came off or the moment you were clearly better. Ask one question there: what was the fastest way to convert?
- In won positions with rooks on the board, aim for a rook endgame you can calculate, not a complicated middlegame you have to guess at. Your technique in those endings is already good.
- Do ten short tactics puzzles a day, all of them about undefended pieces and back rank ideas. That habit feeds directly into the pattern you already use to win games.
Keep Doing This
You are not losing games because of tactics or nerves. You are losing them because a few opening plans and a few conversion decisions are still fuzzy. Fix those two areas and the results in your next block of games against players near your level should follow, the same way they did against rishavrajchess and Give Mqwathi this week.