Coach Chesswick
Hi Nataliya, great job on your recent streak!
Your current form at a glance
- Peak Blitz rating: 2673 (2025-03-29)
- Most active hours
- Weekly consistency
What you’re already doing well
- Fast piece activity in Chess960. You regularly hit the centre quickly and coordinate rooks after castling. Good examples: wins vs. Kalyani Sirin and Eyal Noy.
- Practical time handling. Even with 180 + 1 you keep ~20-30 s in reserve for tactical complications, which paid off in your 56-move grind against SayonaraPonytail.
- Pressure with pawn wedges. The thematic …h5/h4 push netted space and created mating nets (game vs. BillCoe).
Key improvement themes
1. Early-game risk management
- Loss to Eytan Rozen ended on move 4 after Qa3-xf8. Before pushing a wing pawn (…a5) or fianchettoing, run a quick “loose piece & loose square” scan.
- Tip: add the “blunder check” step to your move routine—ask “what changed?” after every candidate.
2. King safety once the queens stay on
- Games against Safin_Safar and Gareth-Bale11 show attacks crashing through dark squares. Castling itself is not enough in Chess960; follow up with minor-piece defenders and consider prophylactic pawn moves (g3, h3, f3) only when they don’t weaken adjacent squares.
- Study classic patterns like weak-back-rank and exchange-sacrifice to decide when to “give the king luft” vs. keep the structure intact.
3. Conversion in favourable endgames
- You outplayed SayonaraPonytail but needed 25 more moves than necessary. When material up, trade only the opponent’s active pieces first, then simplify.
- Drill technical rook endings (Lucena, Philidor) 10 min/day; they occur frequently in 180 + 1.
4. Tactical sharpness under 15 s
- Several lost positions (e.g. final sequence vs. Safin_Safar) were still drawable but time pressure led to missed perpetuals. Add “bullet-calculation” sprints: 3-minute puzzles with 20-second limit.
Action plan for the next week
- Play 10 training games with focus on no unforced pawn moves before move 6.
- Solve 50 mixed tactics featuring discovered attacks and queen forks.
- Analyse every loss for one critical decision; annotate with candidate-moves.
- Review the first 12 moves of five elite Chess960 games; copy their development schemes.
Keep up the fighting spirit, Nataliya—sharpen these few areas and your next rating jump is around the corner!