You are getting better. Now stop giving back the games you’ve already won.
Almost everything you play is 10+0 rapid. You went from 334 to 1,034 in six months, and the engine confirms the improvement is real. What is costing you points now is mostly one thing: what happens after you are winning.
Improving, or lucky?
| Metric | Last 30d | Last 90d | Mar–Jun | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Results | ||||
| Games | 473 | 772 | 733 | |
| Rating, start → end | 1035 → 1034 | 1072 → 1034 | 334 → 899 | flat, because most games are unrated |
| Score | 59.2% | 59.7% | 51.8% | up (p = 0.002) |
| Skill: what the engine sees | ||||
| Your accuracy | 84.3 | 84.0 | 81.1 | up (p < 0.001) |
| Opponents’ accuracy | 82.6 | 82.2 | 81.2 | tougher opponents |
| Big mistakes per 40 moves | 1.98 | 2.04 | 2.45 | down 19% (p < 0.001) |
| Opponent blunders you punish | 69% | 69% | 63% | up |
| More accurate than opponent | 56% | 57% | 52% | up |
| Eval at move 10 as White | +2.4 | +2.4 | +1.4 | 1.b4 is working |
| Eval at move 10 as Black | −1.3 | −1.0 | −0.7 | getting worse |
| Conversion & luck | ||||
| Score after reaching +5 | 78.8% | 77.3% | 68.5% | better, still the biggest leak |
| Losses that were +5 at some point | 34% | 38% | 44% | one loss in three is a thrown win |
| Wins that came from a lost position | 15% | 14% | 21% | you win on merit more often |
| Losses on time | 3% | 5% | 10% | clock is not a problem |
Rating, rolling 50-game average
A fast climb from March to August, then a plateau once most games went unrated.Accuracy, rolling 50-game average
In the spring the two lines moved together. Since July the blue line has stayed above the orange one, which means you are outplaying the people you face.If you want the rating to move, play rated games, including as Black. Your skill has already outgrown 1,030. The 133 rated games from the last 90 days are too few, and too many of them are Black games, for the number to catch up.
Six leaks, ranked by rating points
Every position below is from one of your own games in the last 60 days. Decide on your move 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 · Giving back won games
Reached +5 in 1,044 games · lost 263 · drew 391,115 of your big mistakes (42%) happen when you are already winning. You have also lost 72 games after being up a queen’s worth (+9). There is plenty of time on the clock, a median of 6:53, when it happens. The usual pattern is that you keep attacking and never ask what the opponent is threatening. Most often that is a queen on the long diagonal to g2/h2, or a check on your back rank.
2 · One-move oversights
≈690 mistakes · 26% of all306 times you moved a piece onto a square it could be taken on. 283 times you left an already-attacked piece where it was. 57 times you allowed mate in one. Your blunder rate is 5.6 per 100 moves with more than 90 seconds left, and 6.8 with under 10, so almost the same. You have the time. What’s missing is the habit of looking.
3 · Not taking what’s offered
862 missed punishments · 94 free pieces · 10 matesYou punish 69% of your opponents’ blunders, which is up from 63%. The ones you miss are mostly quieter: in 56% of them, the winning move was attacking a piece that had nowhere to go. The rest were plain free material that you passed on to play your own plan.
4 · Two-move tactics against you
≈850 mistakes punished by a short combinationThe most common punishments: capture sequences on pieces with too few defenders (306), attacks on pieces that had no retreat (228), checks (171), and forks (140). Each one is visible a move early if you check where the enemy knight and queen can land next.
5 · Two opening traps, and Black
White: +2.4 by move 10 · Black: −1.0, and ≥1.5 pawns down in 33% of games1.b4 is a real weapon for you: +2.9 by move 10 across 412 games of the main line. Keep it. It has two holes that keep costing you, and both are shown below. Black is the real problem. You score 44% in both the Scotch (−2.6 by move 10) and the French Advance (−1.7). Only 40 of your last 500 games were as Black, so those positions never get practice.
6 · Endgames: the last point
491 endgame mistakes · 77% in rook endingsYou convert 81% of winning endgames, which is solid. The losses come from forgetting what your king guards, grabbing pawns without counting a race, and leaving a piece where the enemy king can take it.
The plan
Four rules, starting today
- Winning? Slow down. From +3 on, spend 20 seconds on every move answering two questions: “What does his last move threaten?” and “What checks does he have after my move?” You can afford it. At move 40 you still have 3:47 on average.
- Guard g2, h2 and your back rank. When their queen lines up with a bishop or knight on your king, block or trade before you do anything else. Nearly every mate you walked into had this shape.
- Checks, captures, threats, both sides, every move. 94 free pieces and 10 mates went untaken in this sample.
- Half your games rated, half as Black. Skipping Black doesn’t make the problem go away. It only moves it into your rated games, which are the ones that count.
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, and the two basic mates are Stockfish’s own play.
Closing out won games
Your game, move 35. You are winning. What is Black’s only counter-chance?
- Daily 15 min: Lichess puzzle themes Defensive move, Mate in 1, Mate in 2. Untimed, and aim for 95% correct.
- Daily 5 min: set up 5 of your own +5 positions (above) and play them out against a level-5 bot until you win each twice.
- Games: 10+0 rated. After each game, find the first move where the eval dropped while you were winning, and write down which question you skipped.
A Black repertoire, and patching 1.b4
Your worst Black opening (−1.7 by move 10, 44%). One plan fixes it: hit d4 and keep hitting it.
- Step through all four tabs until you can play each line from memory.
- Black vs 1.e4: the French only. Against 3.e5, play …c5, …Nc6, …Qb6, and put pressure on d4.
- 1.b4: keep it. When the knight lands on b4, play d3 before a3. When Black plays …b5, don’t take with the f1-bishop.
- Play 20 rated games as Black this week.
Two-move tactics
King behind three unmoved pawns, no rook guarding the back rank.
- Daily 20 min: puzzles by theme, one theme every 2 days. Cover Trapped piece, Fork, Pin, Overloading, Back-rank mate, Discovered attack and Kingside attack.
- Learn the basic mate patterns: back rank, smothered, Légal, Greek gift, queen + bishop on the long diagonal.
- In your games: when an enemy knight sits near your king or rook, check every square it can reach next move.
Finishing: mates and stalemate
Box the king in with the queen a knight-move away, bring your king, mate. Drill until it takes under 30 seconds.
- Drill K+Q vs K and K+R vs K mates until each takes under 30 seconds. Do it five times a day.
- With a bare king opposite: before every move, ask whether he still has a legal move.
- Rule: when you are up a piece or more, trade queens if you can.
Rook endings
King on the 6th rank ahead of its pawn always wins.
- Silman’s Complete Endgame Course, the beginner through class C sections. Cover opposition, the square of the pawn, rook behind the passed pawn, and the Lucena and Philidor positions.
- Lichess Practice: Rook endgames and Pawn endgames.
- Before capturing in an endgame, count every pawn race on the board.
Audit again
- Play 60 rated 10+0 games, half of them as Black.
- Re-run this exact analysis on them. You pass if you score 85% from +5 and your big mistakes are ≤ 1.7 per 40 moves. At that point 1,150–1,200 should follow.
- If you don’t pass, repeat weeks 1–2. The winning-position habit is worth more than everything else combined.
Rough value of each fix, from your own numbers: converting +5 positions at 85% instead of 77% is worth about +35 Elo on its own, since you reach +5 in 69% of your games. Lifting your rated Black score from 48% to 55% adds roughly another +25.
All games come from the chess.com public API. Stockfish 19 ran at 150k nodes on every position of all 1,505 games that lasted at least 10 moves (≈94k positions). A mistake is a single move that loses at least 20 win-percentage points (Lichess win-% model). Accuracy uses the Lichess formula, so the numbers differ slightly from chess.com’s CAPS. Motif tags are heuristic. Significance uses a Welch z-test comparing the last 30 and 90 days with March–June. Unrated games are included; the rating shown for them is your rapid rating at the time.