Vivi

Quick summary — what stood out

Nice session overall: your rating trend over the last 6–12 months is strongly upward, which means your study and play habits are working. In your recent games I saw confident attacking play, good rook activity in the win, and willingness to simplify when it helped. The loss shows where to focus next: defending against connected passed pawns and keeping pieces coordinated in the late middlegame/endgame.

Highlights — what you did well

• Active piece play and tempo: you opened lines quickly and got rooks into the opponent’s camp (excellent in the win vs zidha).
• Successful tactical intuition: the N–x–g6 and subsequent B sacrifices showed good pattern recognition and calculation of forcing continuations.
• Converting advantages: in the win you translated material + activity into a mating net instead of trading into a drawn endgame.
• Opening repertoire choices are paying off — your Vienna/Italian-style games often lead to sharp, unbalanced positions where you feel comfortable.

Key areas to improve

• Passed pawn defense and rook coordination in endgames — in the recent loss to megz26 the opponent’s queenside pawns advanced together and your rooks/kings weren’t coordinated to stop them. Practice common rook + pawn vs rook motifs.
• Piece activity vs pawn-grab decisions — avoid grabbing pawns if it leaves your pieces passive or creates outside passed pawns for the opponent.
• Time management in complex positions — make sure critical defensive decisions get the extra seconds so you don’t drift into passive setups under the clock.
• Opening follow-up plans — some openings you use (e.g., Vienna Gambit, with Max Lange Defense and Four Knights lines) require clear middlegame plans; practice the common pawn breaks and when to exchange pieces.

Concrete next-step plan (next 4 weeks)

• Daily: 15–20 tactical puzzles focused on mating nets and rook endgame motifs (build pattern recall for moves like your finishing R to the back rank).
• 3× week: 1 rapid (15|10 or 10|5) game reviewed immediately — annotate 3 turning points: one good move, one mistake, one unexplored idea.
• 2× week: 15–20 minutes studying 1 endgame theme — rook vs rook with outside passed pawns, Lucena basics, and how to block passed pawns with the king and pieces.
• Once a week: pick one loss and run a short post-mortem: find the single defensive resource you missed and practice that motif as a puzzle set.

Mini technical review — your latest win (key sequence)

Great execution: sacrifice to open lines, double rooks, then infiltration on the back rank. Replaying the final forcing sequence will help fix the motifs in your head:

[[Pgn|30.Rd8+|Kf7|31.Rxc8|b5|32.Rc7+|Kg8|33.Rcxg7+|Kf8|34.Rc7|bxc4|35.Rf3+|Ke8|36.Re3+|Kd8|37.Rh7|c5|38.Re5|Rd6|39.Rxc5|Rd1+|40.Kh2|a4|41.Rxc4|a3|42.Ra4|Rd2|43.Ra8#|orientation|white|autoplay|false]

Training exercises (short list)

• Tactics set: focus on back-rank mates and deflection/decoy patterns (15 minutes/day).
• Endgame drills: rook + king vs rook exercises and defending an outside passed pawn (use short practice positions).
• Opening review: for your main lines, write down 1 typical plan for both sides (where to put rooks, which pawn break to aim for).

Positive reinforcement & goals

Your strength-adjusted win rate (~51%) and steady rating gains (6 month +227) show you're improving with a good mix of tactics and practical play. Goal suggestion: in the next 20 rated games aim to reduce losses by 10% by improving endgame defense and time allocation — that will convert into more consistent rating growth.

If you want, next

• Send one loss you want a deeper annotated analysis of and I’ll mark 3 turning points and give alternative moves.
• Or pick one opening you play often and I’ll give a compact 5-move plan + typical middlegame plans to memorize.

For reference — recent opponents

• Win vs zidha — tactical conversion and back-rank finish.
• Win vs riverioguerra — good pressure in the center and queenside play.
• Loss vs megz26 — ended because of coordinated passed pawns and rook activity on the 7th/8th ranks.