Anastasia Pustovidko WFM

Coaching Feedback for Anastasia Pustovidko (pusnas)

Hi Anastasia! I've reviewed your recent games and would like to share some observations and suggestions to help you continue improving your chess skills.

Strengths:

• Opening Approach: You have a solid grasp of classical openings such as Queen’s Pawn and English Opening, showing consistency in starting your games with well-established principles—control of the center and piece development.
• Positional Understanding: You frequently develop your pieces harmoniously and castle early, ensuring king safety. This is a strong foundation for middle and endgame play.
• Endgame Patience: In several games, your technique in grinding down opponents or maintaining advantages until they resign or lose on time is commendable. This shows good endurance and focus.

Areas for Improvement:

• Time Management: Several games ended with your opponents losing on time. While this sometimes indicates you put pressure during complicated positions, it’s important to improve your pace to avoid falling behind on the clock yourself, especially in critical positions.
• Tactical Awareness: Some losses show tactical oversights leading to material loss or vulnerable positions. Regular practice with tactical puzzles—forks, pins, skewers, and discovered attacks—will increase your ability to spot threats quickly.
• Opening Repertoire Depth: Expanding your repertoire and delving deeper into specific lines beyond the opening moves will help avoid early equalizing or passive positions. Consider studying common plans and pawn-structure themes in your favorite openings.
• Handling Complex Positions: In a few losses (for example, against stronger-rated opponents), you encountered difficulties transitioning from the opening to a comfortable middle game. Working on strategic plans—like identifying weaknesses, good outposts for knights, and key pawn breaks—can improve your decision-making in these phases.

Suggestions for Training:

• Spend 10-15 minutes daily on tactical puzzles to sharpen your calculation skills.
• Review classic games in your main openings focusing on typical middlegame motifs.
• Analyze your games (especially losses) to identify recurring mistakes and try to understand better alternatives.
• Try playing some faster time-controls (blitz or rapid) to improve intuition and time management, complementing your daily games.

Next Steps:

Continue building on your solid opening play and positional awareness. By enhancing your tactics and time management, you'll convert more advantage into wins and recover better in challenging positions.

Keep your enthusiasm and enjoy each game as a learning opportunity. Chess improvement is a journey—you're on the right path!