threatening*

unstoppable without giving up the queen*

lead to a losing position*

Another typical idea with 15.-Qc8 looks crushing as well

I think White should be able to defend this position. After a simple move Nd2, what are Black's threats? If Qc8, just Kg2.

Yes. Needs to be careful, though.

Jesus Christ. Derp Derpington... Look how fancy I am! I'll discover an attack on his queen then fork his King and Rook! I'm so aggressive!

lol I legit did that last week - it's a shame cause this guy was terrible

I felt like I was already ahead positionally, too. He offered me a rematch but I declined. If my attention is this poor then it's too late to play a serious match.

My old buddy just beat me pretty solidly. This was my old college friend I was talking about earlier itt. He doesn't practice or study and has only played about 5 games since I got him to register on chess.com. I think he's got potential to be a strong player if he put some effort into it. I can't believe how well he played this game. I didn't even really make a huge blunder until late but he still just whittled me down.

He played the English and I'm not familiar so I just copied what appeared to be the best 2-3 opening responses from the chess.com library. I don't think this had anything to do with what did me in, though.

11. Bg4 seems to be my undoing. My idea was to get my knight to g4 which can subsequently threaten both his rooks and queen but I didn't realize how costly moving this knight would be as it creates a tasty outpost for his knight. This leads to me losing an exchange and then I just could never really mount an attack. He kind of smothers me with his pawns and then later I just make a bad move by getting my knight trapped.

28. Na5 blunder. I didn't think this through. My options were and are pretty bleak at this point. I can get a pawn for this but not really sure what that does for me. I try to bring my queen out and hope, in desperation, to play Qxc4+ forking his king and rook but am never able to. I could have resigned but I let him finish me off because it always feels nice to close a well-played game out.

8...c5 creates a backward pawn on a half-open file and opens up the d5 square to White's pieces. It doesn't lose the game, but it practically ensures that White will be in the driver's seat until he screws up.

Even if 11...Bg4 didn't lose tactically, it would work to trade one of your useful pieces for one of White's least useful pieces. 11...Be6 is better.

If you move the queen to another square on move 15, you might be able to make Nxf2 work after 16. Bxf8 and salvage the exchange.

_

He's playing way better than he did in the first correspondence game you two played. Was he just pretending to be very weak?

Yeah I forgot how bad move 15 was. I literally wasn't even thinking he can block with his pawn. I was moving pretty quickly since he usually doesn't get to move for a couple days and he was online tonight. But that move is a lame threat that just wastes tempo.

8. c5 was also dumb. That's just a stupid empty threat that doesn't develop a minor piece.

In our first match he was not playing poorly until after he realized the game was lost then I think he just kinda traded pieces. Our 2nd match (it sounds like you didn't see this one yet) he was winning, also but ran out of time. It's actually a pretty interesting one. You can see he doesn't quite understand endgame yet. I told him after the match that he needed to get his king and pawns involved way earlier. If I had his endgame position I would have beaten me.

We're in the middle of another good match right now.

Another match with my friend. This one I win pretty handily. He errs on move 15 then blunders on 23 then just turns his pieces into martyrs.

And a pretty weak showing against our very own EvilSteve.

Moves 9, 15, 18, and 20 all appear very weak for me. Some of that was trying cheap tricks once my position was infested with AIDS. He wrecked my pawn wall and I never recovered.

You played this game extremely well. I started following this game after you announced it, and 5. Qe2+ was the only move that stood out as a mistake (of course I might be missing something elsewhere). After he replies with 5...Be7, your queen looks silly; you need to waste a tempo moving it before you can complete your development. 5...Qe7 is so meh.

I was following this one too.

On move 12, Nxf6+ > axb3 > cxb3.

Readers: Don't click this spoiler if you follow the "positional exercises" thread and aren't up-to-date with it.



18. Qf3 holds things together, I think.

You are toast on move 20 anyway. I guess you could play 20. Qf1 and then 21. Qg2 and hope he misclicks and allows mate-in-one.

About Steve's game: Yeah my idea was hoping to get to Qg2 and hope he's not paying attention because it's probably the only way I can win at that point. I went to Qc2 thinking I had an option to attack his weak c-file pawn or get to g2 but didn't really even notice it allows him to capture a pawn and put me in check in one fell-swoop. Qf1 would have been better.

About the other game: Qe2+ is kinda lame. Mostly because it blocks me from developing my bishop. Not even sure why I played it. I think I was surprised he was still playing to I thought we'd play some action chess to try to finish it quickly. lol. I think he was excited after beating me and challenged me again.

On move 5 trading queens isn't really what I want to do there but I didn't know if it was better to play Nf3 or f2-f3. f3 sounded better to me but I kept hearing "That just blocks you from getting your knight to the important f3 square." lol. At the same time I didn't want to put my knight there then get my pawns doubled up so I just exchanged. And I already saw that I was about to win a pawn on c7.

Here's a 30/0 resignation win against an unknown.

His 7. Nh4 seems bad.

I screwed up move 10, failing to think he'd recapture with his knight. I thought he'd capture with his pawn, which was a dumb thought. I kinda had a lot of options here but I didn't want to waste too much time over-analyzing when I was up pretty handily versus a better opponent. I considered Qxg2 as well as Qxc4.

12. Qb4+ I like this because if he plays c3 I capture his b-pawn then his c-pawn. His only other option is to move his king which means no castling and his rook is buried back there. I personally think he should keep castling possible at the cost of 2 pawns but he does not.

16. e4. He falls into my trap that wins me more material. I was about to play Qxc1+ but took my time to make sure there wasn't a better move and he Resigned before I moved.

I haven't been playing much Standard lately but 1137 is a new high for me and his 1206 rating is a new "best win".

If White had recaptured with 8. Nxe4 instead of 8. dxe4, how would you have continued?

Same way, which I suppose must be wrong. I just realized that, as played,

9. Nd5...Qxf2#

lol me. Good God how did I not notice... lol

Yes. 8...Qxh4 9. Bg5 is very unpleasant.

@ARC, just friended you on chess.com. Let's play sometime!

Game on!

Should post the game in here for feedback after we finish obv

I'm not familiar with this opening. We'll see how I handle it.

I don't normally post anything less than 15 minute matches but this one is kinda quirky with a nice checkmate at the end.

10. Nd5 is probably better.

Move 18. Nxg7+ is better. I forgot he could capture my knight now that his pawn wasn't pinned. No reason to rush into capturing his bishop yet.

21.....bxa3 probably is better for him than simply moving his king and allowing me time to get my bishop behind his pawn.

I'm such an ass. Here's the chat. All of it begins after the game ends:



ChessKing9577: good try

piofusco: luck

piofusco: gg

ChessKing9577: lol

ChessKing9577: demolished you

ChessKing9577: if you take your time you might make better moves

piofusco: thanks mom

ChessKing9577: your mom ain't this good at chess

piofusco: you ain't that good dude

piofusco: your just like me, average

piofusco: get over it

ChessKing9577: looks like i snapped your 4 game win streak brah

piofusco: congrats

ChessKing9577: you got careless against a tough opponent and it cost you dearly

piofusco: thanks for the analysis mom

ChessKing9577: I'm just playing man. It was a fun match.

piofusco: twas indeed

ChessKing9577: GG

piofusco: gg

Why no Bc4, d4, or Nxe5 on move 3?

Before you develop a piece, like your bishop in the following position, you should ask yourself what purpose it would serve on the squares it has the option to occupy.

f1: impedes castling and exists in an undeveloped state, retaining the option to be fianchettoed (which is not useful in this position)

e2: allows you to castle and preempts any potential pins by a Black bishop on g4

d3: impedes the movement of your d pawn, weakening your control of the center

c4: exerts its influence along the weak a2-g8 diagonal, notably the key f7 square, and prevents Black from castling

b5: prevents Black from moving the d-pawn, but allows Black to play d7-d5's prepatory move, c7-c6, with tempo

a6: acts as an agent for the announcement of your resignation

So my order of preference, considering only bishop moves*, is Bc4 > Be2 > Bb5 > Bd3 > Ba6. You can save some cognitive energy by immediately rejecting Bd3 and Ba6 (as well as the idea of keeping the bishop on f1 forever). In general, Bb5 (non-check) isn't a very useful move before the knight is placed on c6. Even then, the weakening of Black's light squares would mandate that the bishop come to c4.

One more thing: on move 11, Black can screw up your trick by simply taking the bishop first.


*I prefer 4. d4 to 4. Be2.

I didn't notice he walked into the knight-sac trap. I need to look out for this but it's so rare to see that I never notice it.

About the bishop move. Since he didn't bring his other knight out yet I didn't know if Bb5 or Bc4 was more correct. Since it was a 10 minute match I didn't want to spend too much time debating between the two so I told myself "developing your other knight can never be a large mistake" but I guess that's wrong here.

I won with 2+ minutes of clock left to his ~5. I spend a lot of time in midgame so if I'm ever experiencing minimal paralysis of analysis I tend to do something safe.

Good call on move 11. I need to be careful of that. That is a tactical mistake I shouldn't be making at this point.

It's not wrong. Bb5 is among the better moves available--just a small mistake compared to 4. Bc4. Understanding why Bc4 > Bb5 is very important, though.

Yes, you shouldn't spend too much time thinking about things like this in 10-minute games. I meant to say "in your usual games" somewhere.