Piotr

Quick summary for Piotr

Nice mix of wins and tough lessons. You’re doing well with the French Defense family and converting complex, unbalanced positions — especially when you get a passed pawn or active king. At the same time you have recurring tactical and coordination issues that cost games. Below are concrete, bite-sized items you can work on this week to push your rapid score up.

Recent notable win (click to replay)

Good practical game vs strongman2137 — you turned a messy middlegame into a decisive passed-pawn finish and used active king and queen play to force mate.

• Replay:
• Key themes: active king in the endgame, passed-pawn creation and escort, using checks and tempo to promote.

What you’re doing well

• Opening choice: strong performance with the French Defense family — you understand typical pawn breaks and structure plans.
• Creating and converting passed pawns — in the recent win you pushed the kingside passer at the right moment and guided it to promotion.
• Practical play under imbalance: you find active counterplay and use checks/tempo to keep the opponent under pressure.
• Good persistence — your overall record (318 wins) shows you play plenty and keep taking chances to win.

Recurring issues to fix

• Tactical oversights in the middlegame — a few recent losses came after missing a rook or queen tactic. Before each move, ask: “Does the opponent have any forcing checks or captures?”
• Back-rank and loose-piece vulnerabilities — make a quick habit-check for back-rank weaknesses and undefended pieces before committing to trades.
• Transition management: you sometimes trade into endings where the opponent’s piece activity or a passed pawn decides the game. When exchanging, evaluate resulting king activity and pawn structure.
• Candidate-move discipline — in sharp lines (French Advance in particular) pause and count candidate moves: at least 2–3 options and the opponent’s strongest reply.

Concrete drills & short-term plan (this week)

Short, focused training produces fast improvement in rapid games.

• Daily 10-minute tactics session: focus on forks, skewers, back-rank mates and discovered checks. Do 15–20 puzzles, review every miss.
• 5 mini endgame exercises (this week): rook+king vs rook, rook+passed pawn races, queen+pawn vs queen. Practice converting and defending these patterns.
• Opening tune-up: review typical advance-variation motifs for the French Defense: Advance Variation — study one illustrative model game and memorize the break ideas (c5 and f6/f5 when relevant).
• Pre-move checklist (use before every move): 1) Are any of my pieces hanging? 2) Does opponent have a forcing check/capture? 3) Which candidate moves change the opponent’s strongest reply? 4) Is my king safe next move?
• Play 3 rapid (15+10) games this week with the explicit goal of applying the checklist — review each loss for a single recurring theme.

Longer-term training (1–3 months)

• Regular tactics (30 min, 4x/week) to push calculation speed and reduce blunders.
• Endgame basics course: focus on king activation, outside passed pawns, and queen vs rook endgames.
• Build a small, reliable opening repertoire: keep the French lines that give you practical chances; simplify sidelines that lead to repeated tactical trouble.
• Analyze 1 loss per week in depth: try to find the mistake without engine first, then check with an engine to learn the pattern.

Immediate next steps for your next session

• Warm up: 10 tactics puzzles focused on pins and forks.
• Play 15+10 and force yourself to use the pre-move checklist every time.
• After the session: pick the most painful loss and annotate the three critical moves that changed the evaluation.
• If you want, I can do a focused move-by-move post‑mortem of one of your recent games — tell me which one and I’ll highlight the 3-5 turning points and show alternative lines.

Helpful links and study anchors

• Opening study: French Defense and French Defense: Advance Variation — reinforce pawn breaks and typical plans.
• Tactic themes to drill: back-rank mates, discovered checks, and promotion races.
• If you want a replayable version of the win again: use the viewer above to step through key moments.

Would you like a deep-dive?

If you pick one game (win or loss), I’ll provide a short annotated line-by-line review with 3 turning points and a concrete improvement checklist you can practice next session. Which game do you want analyzed first?