Coach Chesswick
Neitlon – Personal Coaching Report
Your Current Snapshot
• Peak rapid rating so far: 686 (2023-03-09) • Games show a clear preference for 10 min time-control.
• Win-rate patterns:
What You’re Doing Well
- Early tactical alertness. In several wins you spotted Nxe5 and Qxe4 “free-pawn” tactics quickly (e.g. against nazarzhar).
- Confidence with the queen. You don’t shy away from bringing the queen out to win material – an important skill once safety is assured.
- Opportunistic piece activity. Moves like 15.Nc7+! in your 40-move miniature show that you can keep generating threats when the position opens.
Main Areas to Improve
- Opening fundamentals. The sequence
1…e5 2.Nf3 g6leaves f7 & e5 loose and walks into the “Nxe5 trick”. Try delaying …g6 until you have played …Nc6 and …Nf6, or switch to a simpler setup such as the Four Knights. - King safety. In every recorded loss your king stayed in the centre or castled late. Make castling an automatic priority by move 10 unless you have a concrete reason not to.
- Over-reliance on the queen. Early queen raids worked versus lower-rated opponents, but backfired against sharper players (see the loss vs. boredl0l where 4…Qxg5 invited a huge counter-attack). Develop all minor pieces before launching the queen hunt.
- Time usage. You consistently finish games with 2–4 minutes left. Use some of that time to double-check hanging pieces and forced replies – it will cut accidental blunders in half.
Opening Clinic
Below is a safer Black repertoire starting point. Copy it to your analysis board and play a few practice games:
Step-by-Step Improvement Plan
- Spend 10 min/day on tactical puzzles focusing on forks, pins and discoveries – the themes that appear most in your games.
- Pick one main opening with White (e.g. the Italian Game) and one with Black vs 1.e4 (classical …Nc6 …Nf6) and play them exclusively for 20 games to build pattern recognition.
- After each game, ask “Did I castle by move 10? If not, why?”. Keep a tally for a week.
- Review every loss for 5 minutes. Identify the first move where the computer says the evaluation swings by >1 pawn and write down the reason (hanging piece, missed mate threat, etc.). Patterns will emerge quickly.
Encouragement
You already demonstrate good tactical vision and fighting spirit. By tightening your opening structure and prioritising king safety, you will remove the easy targets your opponents currently exploit. Stay consistent with the plan above and a climb to 700+ rapid is realistic within a month.
Good luck, and enjoy the journey!