Coach Chesswick
Hi Mahmoud!
Great job keeping the grind going and pushing your blitz rating up to . I reviewed your last few wins and losses (examples against Liz Ivanov, escimoplay, and others) and put together targeted feedback to help you climb to the next bracket.
What’s already working
- Opening familiarity. With Black you steer 1.e4 into the Ruy-Lopez C88/C91 and get comfortably to middlegames you understand. With White you’re not afraid to play sharp Italians or Sicilian main lines.
- Tactical alertness when attacking. The miniature below shows how you converted an initiative into mate:
Key areas to sharpen
- Time management. Four of the last five losses were on the clock. You often enter reasonable endgames (e.g. versus escimoplay) but leave yourself under 10 seconds. • Adopt games with a small increment (3 + 2). • Make one early “big think” and then switch to play–by-principle mode to save time.
- End-game technique. When you do reach endings, converting is slower than it could be (see A01 loss where 46…Kg5 instead of 46…Kf5 kept drawing chances). • Spend 15 minutes/day on basic rook-pawn endings and the “Lucena” & “Philidor” positions. • Use the 50-move drill: set up K+P vs K and win it against the computer in under 50 seconds.
- Piece coordination after queen trades. In many Ruy-Lopez games you exchange queens on move 12; sometimes the minor pieces get tangled (e.g. Nc6-a5-c4 with no follow-up). • After a queen trade ask “Which piece is my worst?” and relocate it before pushing pawns. • Review classic games in the Closed Spanish to mimic correct knight manoeuvres (…Nd7-f8-g6-f4).
- Dark-square awareness. In the Nimzo-Larsen loss 24…Qd7? allowed White to plant a knight & bishop on e5/f7. Practice spotting hole squares using daily puzzle rush or a quick scan: “Which color complex did I just weaken?” (see outpost).
Action plan for the next two weeks
- Play 10 games of 3 + 2 only, no bullet. After each one, quickly tag one moment you spent >15 seconds and ask if it was worth the time.
- Solve 25 intermediate tactics daily. Focus on back-rank mates and knight forks—patterns that showed up in both wins and losses.
- Watch a 20-minute video or read a chapter on the endgame you mis-played that day, then replay it against the engine from move 30.
- Once per session, open a Ruy-Lopez master game, skip to move 12 (after Qxd8 Rxd8) and guess the next five moves. Compare ideas, not exact moves.
Progress tracker
Keep an eye on how the changes affect your performance:
Final encouragement
You’re already converting clear tactical chances and you have a reliable opening backbone. By tightening the clock discipline and polishing those bread-and-butter endings you’ll see a rapid jump past 1500. Good luck, and keep me posted on your progress!