What You're Doing Well
Mike, your recent blitz games show a strong grasp on positional play and endgame technique, which is a solid foundation for consistent performance. Notable strengths include:
- Strategic Opening Choices: You effectively employ openings like the Indian Defense variations and Caro-Kann systems that suit your style and have good success rates, showing maturity in your opening repertoire.
- Active Piece Play: Your attacking games demonstrate good coordination of forces and tactical awareness, often pressuring your opponents effectively until you convert advantages.
- Endgame Technique: Your wins demonstrate clear understanding of king and pawn endgames, and the ability to convert small advantages even in time pressure.
- Consistent Improvement: Your rating trend over the past 6 months is strongly upward, with a notable 782 point increase, showing sustained growth and adaptation.
Areas for Improvement
While your strengths are impressive, focusing on these areas can help you take your blitz performance to the next level:
- Time Management Under Pressure: Some losses, including in the latest games, ended due to time trouble. Improving your speed and decision-making in critical moments will reduce these costly losses.
- Endgame Precision When Ahead: Although your endgame technique is good, further sharpening awareness on maintaining winning tempos especially against tricky defensive setups will help avoid unnecessary draws or slipping positions.
- Avoiding Tactical Oversights: In blitz, rapid calculation is key. Practicing tactical motifs daily can reduce blunders and missed opportunities.
- Opening Variation Consistency: You have a broad opening base, but occasionally your win rates in some lines fall just under 50%. Narrowing your focus to the best-performing variations like the London System Poisoned Pawn (54.4% win rate) can increase your success.
- Dealing with Defensive Resources: Some draws and losses came from drawn-out defensive games by your opponents. Reviewing these endgames could highlight how to break through stubborn resistance.
Key Recommendations
- Work on blitz time management by practicing faster calculation and pre-move techniques where safe, to avoid time losses.
- Expand your tactical training with puzzles focusing on pattern recognition and calculation under time pressure.
- Analyze your drawn and lost endgames to identify patterns where you can improve precision or impose your plans more effectively.
- Consider refining your opening choices to focus on your highest win rate lines to increase efficiency and confidence out of the opening.
- Maintain your positive momentum by reviewing your games regularly, setting new goals as your rating rises steadily.
Additional Notes
Your overall strength adjusted win rate of about 49.6% in blitz is solid given the quality of opposition, especially with your recent rating over 2200. Keep building on this with focused training and maintaining game discipline. Your steady monthly and longer-term rating improvements affirm your dedication and growth.
Remember, blitz chess rewards both sharp calculation and practical decision-making under time constraints. Balancing these will help you convert more games to wins and avoid losses due to clock pressure.