You don’t need more chess knowledge. You need to look before you move.
10,752 of your games are blitz, 93% of them 3+0. Your rating has lived between 800 and 1,080 since 2020. The engine says why, and it is mostly one habit.
Improving, or lucky?
| Metric | Last 30d | Last 90d | Prior 9 mo | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Results | ||||
| Games | 170 | 413 | 953 | |
| Rating, start → end | 930 → 1039 | 799 → 1039 | 1013 → 791 | up |
| Score | 53.8% | 53.3% | 48.1% | p = 0.08, not significant |
| Skill — what the engine sees | ||||
| Your accuracy | 79.0 | 79.7 | 80.1 | flat (p = 0.36) |
| Opponents’ accuracy | 79.1 | 79.6 | 80.3 | flat |
| Big mistakes per 40 moves | 3.00 | 2.89 | 2.83 | flat (p = 0.81) |
| Opponent blunders you punish | 60% | 58% | 58% | flat |
| Eval at move 10 as Black | −2.1 | −1.8 | −2.0 | flat — still bad |
| More accurate than opponent | 47% | 47% | 46% | flat |
| Resilience & luck | ||||
| Score after being −5 or worse | 37.8% | 37.5% | 26.2% | real change (p = 0.001) |
| Score after reaching +5 | 71.9% | 72.2% | 65.8% | borderline (p = 0.055) |
| Wins that came from a lost position | 47% | 47% | 33% | half your wins are comebacks |
| Wins on the clock while losing on the board | 14% | 12% | 9% | flag luck rising |
Rating, rolling 50-game average
Same band for 18 months. The current climb starts from the lowest trough in the sample.Accuracy, rolling 50-game average
If you were improving, the blue line would pull away from the orange one. It never has.Credit where due: not resigning and fighting on is a skill, and it is paying. But it is a skill that depends on opponents erring back. Both players reach +5 in over 60% of your games — these are coin-flip brawls. Fewer blunders is the only durable way up.
Six leaks, ranked by rating points
Every position below is from your own games in the last 120 days. Decide first, then open the answer and step through what you played and what was best with the ← → buttons (or your arrow keys). Red arrows show what went wrong, green arrows what was best.
1 · One-move oversights
1,081 mistakes · 23% of all460 times you ignored a piece that was already attacked. 427 times you moved a piece onto an attacked square. 146 times you walked into mate in 1–3. Your blunder rate is the same with 90+ seconds on the clock (7.4 per 100 moves) as with under 10 (6.1) — this is not time trouble. It is not looking.
2 · Not taking what’s offered
1,704 missed punishments · you cash in only 58% of opponent blunders243 free pieces left on the board. 19 mates-in-one not played. Opponents blunder as often as you do; whoever notices first wins. Before every move: checks, captures, threats — for both sides.
3 · Openings that start you in a hole
As Black: −1.8 average by move 10 · ≥1.5 pawns down in 46% of gamesAs White you are fine on average (+0.2) except for the Qf3/Qh5 sorties. As Black you are regularly lost before the middlegame: early …Qf6, the Scotch (−2.8), the London (−2.7), generic 1.d4 (−2.2), Italian (score 32%). In a quarter of all games your first blunder comes before move 10.
4 · Not converting won games
Reached +5 in 1,220 games · lost 382 · drew 40164 of those losses were on time, 163 by checkmate. When you are winning you keep attacking at 2 seconds a move instead of trading down and checking your own king. 35% of your big mistakes are made from positions that were already winning.
5 · Two-move tactics: forks, loose pieces, f2/f7
≈1,900 mistakes punished by a short tacticMost common punishers: capture sequences on under-defended pieces (653), attacks on pieces with no retreat (651), checks (297), forks (270). Your puzzle rating (≈1,600) says you can find these when told one exists. In games nobody tells you.
6 · Endgames played at 1.4 seconds a move
Score in 40+ move games: 38% · entered winning endgames: only 71%You reach move 40 with 37 seconds on average and lose 38 clearly winning endgames on time. 85% of endgame mistakes are in rook or rook-plus-minor endings: passive king, rook behind nothing, missed back-rank and edge mates.
The plan
Five rules, starting today
- The 3-second blunder check. Before releasing any move: “What did his last move attack? What can he check or capture after mine?” You have the time — at move 20 you still hold 104 of 180 seconds.
- Checks, captures, threats — his first, then yours. Every move, especially right after the opponent moves a piece next to your king or queen.
- Play 5+3 or 10+0 for the next 8 weeks. At most one 3+0 session a week. You cannot build a look-first habit at 3 seconds a move. 10,000 games of 3+0 have produced zero rating change.
- When +3 or more: trade pieces, not pawns; king safety first; no new adventures.
- Stop after two losses in a row (you score 40–48% after 2–3 straight losses), and max 6 games per session (game 7+ scores 45%).
Week by week
Each week has a board. Pick a tab, then step through it with ← → or your arrow keys. Every line was checked for legality; the two basic mates are Stockfish’s own play.
Board vision
Your game, move 8. You are +2.5. Before moving: what did his last move attack?
- Daily 15 min: Lichess puzzle themes Hanging piece, Mate in 1, Mate in 2. Untimed, aim 95% correct — accuracy over speed.
- Daily 5 min: for each puzzle position, first name every undefended piece on both sides.
- 2–3 games of 10+0. After each: find your first big mistake with Game Review and write which rule it broke.
A repertoire you can’t lose from
Your new White opening. Same setup every game.
- Step through all five tabs until you can play each line from memory, then play them out against a level-3 bot.
- White: the Italian setup. Delete Qf3, Qh5 and Qb3. If you keep the King’s Gambit, the knight comes out before anything is captured.
- Black: knight defends e5, bishop to c5, castle. One setup against every 1.d4.
- Rule: no queen move before move 8 unless it wins material or the line above says so.
Two-move tactics
King behind three unmoved pawns, no rook guarding the back rank.
- Daily 20 min puzzles by theme, one theme per 2 days: Fork, Pin, Trapped piece, Discovered attack, Removing the defender, Back-rank mate, Kingside attack (h7/f7).
- Learn the 10 basic mate patterns (back rank, smothered, Anastasia, Arabian, Qh7/Qg7 support mates, Légal, Scholar’s, Greek gift idea).
- In games: whenever a knight reaches your 4th/5th rank, check its fork squares.
Winning won games
Box the king in with the queen a knight-move away, bring your king, mate. Drill until it takes under 30 seconds.
- Play 10 “+5” positions from your own lost games against Stockfish level 4–5 until you win each twice.
- Drill: K+Q vs K and K+R vs K mates in under 30 seconds each, five times daily. You drew 5 games by stalemating.
- Checklist when ahead: is my king safe → what can I trade → what is his only threat.
Endgames that actually occur
King on the 6th rank ahead of its pawn always wins.
- Silman’s Complete Endgame Course, parts for beginner → class C only: opposition, square of the pawn, rook behind passed pawns, Lucena and Philidor ideas, king activity.
- Lichess Practice: Rook endgames, Pawn endgames basics.
- Clock rule: keep ≥ 60 s for move 30+. Spend less in the opening (you now know it) — not less in the endgame.
Audit again
- Play 40 games at 5+3.
- Re-run this exact analysis on them. If accuracy is ≥ 82 and blunders ≤ 2.4 / 40, the gain is real and 1,150–1,200 follows. Then go back to 3+0 if you like.
- If not: repeat weeks 1–2. That habit is worth more than everything else combined.
Rough value of each fix, from your own numbers: converting +5 positions at 80% instead of 67% is worth ≈ +55 Elo. Reaching the middlegame level as Black instead of −1.8 is plausibly worth as much, and halving one-move oversights likely more than both.
All games from the chess.com public API. Stockfish 19, 150k nodes per position, every position of the latest 2,000 blitz/rapid games (≈130k positions). Mistake = ≥20 win-percentage points lost in one move (Lichess win-% model); accuracy uses the Lichess formula, so numbers differ slightly from chess.com’s CAPS. Motif tags are heuristic. Significance: Welch z-test, last 30/90 days vs days 91–365. Older games (2009–Feb 2025) were used for opening, time-of-day and streak statistics only.