How am I doing?

I've been playing online for a little over one month and seem to hovering in the 750 - 780 range in rapid. I've been playing 30 minute games.

Below are my two most recent games. I play black in both. 

In the first one, the game report tells me it was a smooth game and I had the advantage from start to finish. It also tells me I made zero blunders or mistakes. 

In this game I made a big blunder with 22...Re3.  

From that point on I struggled. 

My original idea was to move 23...Re2 and then attack the f3 pawn. What else could I have done from around move 20? 

I would say the first game represents the games I win and the latter the ones I lose. 

How am I doing and where do I go from here in order to improve?  

Your first game looked nice. You seem to play the Four Knights game pretty well and be aware of the themes in the opening. You spotted the tactics (and the moves were even positionally good without the forks - the squares were nice outposts) and got a comfortable lead. You could have made the game easier to yourself by simplifying, I would have traded the light squared bishops immediately. The less pieces there are on the board, when you have the material advantage, the less there are chances for counterplay. The only thing you need to be careful in such a situation (now there was no such danger) is that your opponent doesn't get passed pawns, they are harder to fight against with less pieces on the board.

From the second game I noticed a few things, but they are rather typical for your rating range. Finding plans are not easy in a drawish-looking situation and defensive tactics are not easy to spot. For instance I didn't understand the move Kf8 - yes, you unpin the pawn, but you allowed the queen to enter via h7.  Even if you had put your rook on a better square, 23. Qh8+ would have won the rook on the b-file.

The better plan around move 20 would have been to double on the semiopen b-file (20. ... Rb6, 21. ... Reb8). If they defended with b3, you could have put more pressure with Qe6 and c4. Your queenside pawns were more advanced than your opponent's kingside pawns so your attack would have been faster.

I think you are currently slightly underrated (though I'm not too familiar with the level of the 30+0 pool). Tactics will of course remain as an important area in your games, both games were decided by blundering pieces. So solving puzzles will remain to be beneficial. Regarding making plans probably the easiest way is to learn to spot weaknesses. This means undefended pieces or pawns, isolated or backwards pawns, problems with king safety and so on. Usually making threats against them gives you the initiative and trying to avoid weaknesses of your own gives you a more solid position. It will not always lead to a win, but at least you should be able to spot moves that can be useful.

harriw - thanks for that in depth review. Looking at that first game, indeed trading off light squared bishops would've been the better option considering I was already two pawns and a queen up.

The four knights game seems to be a popular opening at this level. I guess it's a safe and solid building block which actually has led to some interesting games for me. 

The second game contained as you say the typical blunders at this level. I would say that most of my losses have been due to the kind of 22...Re3 move. A game I played the other day fell to pieces due to a similar move. On the other hand I win games when my opponents do the same, so it's all swings and roundabouts. 

Thanks for the input. 

I've just signed up for a paid membership so I can analyse all of my games and play more puzzles and take lessons. 

I agree with harriw that tactics should be the most important you focus on. Puzzles and puzzle rush on this site are a great way to improve that. When it comes to tactics try your best to calculate the entire tactic or exchange out as far as you can. I saw number of times in both your games where you did not do this, and lost material. Ex: In your first game on move 20 you played Qxa1, after white recaptures on a1 with the rook you are down on the exchange a rook for a queen. It would have been better to move the queen away to a square like c5 in this case. It would be out of the way of attack from the rook. Also you will want to look out for dropping pieces. Example in the first game is on move 29 you played Rbd8. This dropped the rook on e8 for the bishop. You also did this in the second game on move 22 Re3. The pawn could take it for nothing, and that is what your opponent should have done the very next move, but didn’t do it then. Fixing these two things can add a lot of rating points to your rating. One other thing I will point out (although this might be slightly above you skill level, but will need to learn it to go beyond 1000 rating) to not just trade pieces to trade. That is what it looked like you did in the second game with the bishops in the opening. First it is not a good idea to trade bishop for a knight when the position of the game is open, semi-open, or too early in the game to be decided. That is because bishops do better in open positions, and knights do better in closed positions. Also bishops can only control one color square so if you trade one off, then you decrease your ability to control a certain color square. This can be extremely important in the endgame especially. The main point is only make even exchanges when it creates an advantage for you; like you are up material so exchanging down material with an even exchange actually increases you material advantage in the game (this is not the only strategic reason for making those type of exchanges, but is the most common strategic reason).

In regards to the opening the four knights opening is extremely common for under 1000 rated players. I would say to focus on the opening principles (from your games it looks like you know or have an idea of what they are) and applying them consistently. That will help you improve also. Here is the link for the opening principles article: The Principles of the Opening | Chess for Beginners - Chess.com

I would also focus on the basics of endgame: I would focus on the basics of king and pawn endgames as long as you have mastered two rooks vs king, two queens vs king (I saw you used this in the first game so you probably know all else) queen and rook vs king, king and queen vs king, and king and rook vs king. That way when you get to a won king and pawn endgame you can actually win it, even if under time pressure. 

Hope this helps.

AlphaTeam - that's a great response and I shall take on board what you've said.

Just in reply to the point about 20...Qxa1 in the first game - I decided to trade my queen for his rook for a number of reasons, 1. His queen was already off the board 2. He would be down 1 rook after the exchange and 3. I was confident that I would be able to defeat my opponent considering how he had played thus far. Perhaps that last point was a mistake as he ended up fighting to the bitter end and I could easily have fallen into a draw by stalemate - something I've done even when high up in material.  The analysis told me that Qxa1 was a good move but the best move was Qc5 as you suggested.  

I'm a bit late, but you should know that the chess.com analysis has some issues, especially with declaring moves to be "good". Specifically, if you have a really big advantage, say +15, and you play a move that brings it down to +8, Chess.com will often say that move is good instead of calling it a mistake or blunder because after the move you still have a large advantage. Even so, such a move still would cost you nearly half of your advantage. The same thing applies for moves that make an already massive disadvantage worse. I wouldn't trust the analysis calling moves good, or even to recognize mistakes, if the eval bar is tilted 5 or more for one side after the move. I've had games where I straight up blunder pieces, but because by then I was winning by a ton it said I made zero mistakes the whole game.

I think that although your line of thinking is correct, and sometimes I give up a rook for a bishop or something like that in order to simplify to an easily won endgame, sacrificing the queen here is different because 4 points of material is a lot, and at that point you'd have to ask yourself whether it's actually more convenient to simplify or not.

You are doing great! Keep up the work, never take a break from chess longer than 3 days and it might be possible to achieve the 90 percentile (1350 rating in rapid) in 1 year, or even better!

The reason you are hovering is because your brain is learning on the new information of the harder competition than you are used to (your first competition was against 700 rating players, those are weak compared to the 750 rated players). It is normal to be hovering for a month on the same rating, or having your rating going down, your brain first has to adapt to the 750 players play before you can beat them 60 percent of the time on average instead of 50 percent of the time. Just try to play as much as possible against those 750 rating players, your brain will adapt soon enough. Neurons will always improve if you keep training them, don't be afraid you will hit a plateau, a plateau will only happen if you take big breaks from chess, or if you don't play solid.

Big breaks removes the just formed connections between neurons. How do I know this about  breaks? From experience of other games, school, and this paper on halo and starcraft 2 (applies to chess as well): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/tops.12251

My other advice next to playing allot, is to play solid, you can learn how to play solid by watching the chessbrah habits videos for the most important habits in chess, which are the building blocks for every grand master. this will not make you win games now, but give you the building blocks for continuous development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyww1wXu4ZI

To define solid more, I will give you an extreme counter example: if you try to do the scholars mate every game and surrender if it fails (see wikMpedia for scholars mate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholar%27s_mate), you will improve your rating until you get to players who can deal with it on average 50 percent of their games. 

TLDR;
1. Play as much as possible
2. Never take a break longer than 3 days
3. Play solid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyww1wXu4ZI