Murithi Ken

Quick summary for Murithi Ken

Nice work — you’ve converted tactical chances into real material gains in your recent win and you have several openings that are performing well for you (Elephant Gambit, Philidor, etc.). Your long-term trend is strongly upward, but the last month shows a dip linked mostly to time losses. Below I cover what you did well, where to fix things, and a short, practical plan to keep improving.

Highlight: winning game (clean tactical conversion)

You turned an early tactical skirmish into a decisive material advantage. You calmly recaptured after your opponent traded into your knight, used a pawn push to chase a checking bishop and then captured that bishop — that sequence shows good calculation and willingness to simplify into a winning material edge.

• Game viewer:
• Opening: Italian Game — you reached typical Italian middlegame themes and handled the tactics well.
• What you did well:
  • Accurate tactical calculation — you saw the sequence that wins material and executed it.
  • Converting a small advantage into a clear material gain instead of risking complications.
• Small improvement: avoid exposing your queen early unless it’s a forced recapture. Here it was fine, but keep the rule-of-thumb: don’t bring the queen out too soon unless you have clear justification.

Loss review (most recent)

Several of your recent losses ended on time rather than on-the-board mistakes. That masks whether the position was lost or salvageable; improving time management will turn many of those into wins or draws.

• Game viewer (loss on time):
• What went wrong:
  • Time management — several games end by forfeit on the clock. In daily chess it's easy to get into very long think sessions early and then run out of time later.
  • Opening familiarity — in some losses you faced less-common replies (Owens, French Advance, Caro‑Kann) and you spent extra time. Having one short, reliable plan vs each main reply helps.
• Immediate practical fixes:
  • Set soft personal deadlines: allocate an hour for the opening + early middlegame decisions, then aim to make steady progress so you don’t face a huge clock crash late.
  • When you have a clear plan (develop, castle, centralize), make the routine moves faster — don’t spend deep time on trivial choices.

Recurring patterns & opening notes

Look for these patterns in your games and continue to exploit or fix them.

• What’s working:
  • Elephant Gambit and Philidor lines are giving you real wins — keep the core ideas and tactics for those lines fresh. (Elephant Gambit)
  • When you get active piece play (bishop and queen coordinating), you convert material advantages reliably.
• What to improve:
  • Responses to early knight jumps (the Nd4 idea in Italian positions). Consider playing c3 early in some lines or preparing the knight recapture so you don’t get hit by forks or exchanges that leave you awkwardly developed.
  • Weakness vs some pawn-structure systems such as the French Advance and the Caro‑Kann — run through one model game vs those to learn the typical break (eg. c5, f6 ideas) and a safe plan.

Practical training plan (weekly, small time commitment)

Focus on 3 simple things each week. These are high-impact and mobile-friendly.

• Daily puzzles — 10 tactical puzzles per day. Build pattern recognition (forks, pins, discovered checks).
• Opening tidy-up — pick 2 troublesome replies (e.g., French Advance and Owens/Caro-Kann) and study one short model game each (10–20 minutes total). Save one simple line and one backup line for each opening.
• One post-mortem per week — open the game you won and the game you lost, write 3 sentences each: what you planned, what your opponent did, one decisive moment. This stops repeating the same mistake.

Time management checklist (daily games)

• Before your move: ask “Is there an immediate tactic?” If yes, spend time. If no, play a reasonable developing move quickly.
• When ahead on material: trade down into simpler positions to avoid long calculation and time trouble.
• Use short notes on the game page: mark the move you’re thinking about and come back later — it saves re-evaluating from scratch.

Next steps (in the next month)

• Do the 3-item training plan for four weeks and re-check your one‑month change — your current one-month dip is reversible with improved clock habits.
• Keep using the lines that give you high win rates (Elephant Gambit, Philidor) but prepare one solid reply for each opening you struggle with.
• If you want, send me one game you want a deeper post-mortem on (pick a loss or a close win) and I’ll annotate the critical moments and give move-by-move suggestions.

Quick links & placeholders

• Your profile: Murithi Ken
• Opening you played in the win: Italian Game
• Example training game viewer (winning tactical conversion):

Want a focused plan for one of the openings in your repertoire? Tell me which opening to target and I’ll give a 1‑page cheat sheet you can study in 10 minutes.