Another correspondence draw. I can't make much headway against this guy. 1/3 against him with 2 draws. Our other game is fairly evenish, though he's probably < a pawn ahead.

6.Bxd6. I don't know what to do in these spots, but it seems like this is his good bishop so I decide to trade, though it activates his Queen so that kind of blows.

10...b6. Groan. Whenever I grab space with c5 I forget they can play this little move. I take.

26...Nc5 is a good square for him but I am not sure I could have prevented it. It's annoying, though. I spent time getting my knight to a nice outpost but so is he.

30...fxe4. I'm surprised he captured this way but I haven't looked at it too closely. I thought he'd open up the file for his Rook.

39.Rg5+ was played with minutes left. I went to bed the night before and woke up and saw it so I just played a quick easy check move to as not to lose. I'd already offered the draw for about 18 hours before this move was played.

I might have an edge with that passed pawn but his King is quite active and he can play c3 at any moment which looks quite bad for me after bxc3...Rxa3.

6. Bxd6 looks good.

Reinforcing the c5 pawn with 11. b4 is another option. But yeah, I prefer to maintain the central tension in these positions with 7. e3.

I like the active play after the queens are traded.

I think the draw offer is premature. The position will probably end up being drawn, but White has most of the winning chances. White's h-pawn is already pretty advanced, so Black might not have time for c3/Rxa3 at all. e.g. 39. Rg5+ Ke6 40. h6 c3? 41. bxc3 Rxa3? 42. h7 Ra8 43. Rg8.

A grinded out win with an obscure defense from foe.

13.e5. I don't really know what to do here.

17.h5 I didn't expect to work but it did. Trapped his bishop.

Look at how poorly-placed his pieces are after 18...fxg6. Don't play dumb defenses.

21.Bxa6. Probably not great but I'm up and I get 2 pawns' compensation and wreck his queenside pawns.

23.Qb5+. Figure it can't hurt to get Queens off board. I'm up a pawn, his pawn structure blows, and his pieces are all poorly-placed.

33.Nc5+. After winning a pawn via pin, I exchange more material. I think I can beat this guy in an endgame.

42.Nc5. He allows the same move with the second knight. This will give me some weak pawns but he's got them, too. And the anticipated 44.Bc3 looks good.

I don't have a lot to say about the end...

53.Rxc6. Not sure if optimal, or if I should push my a-pawn or something. But I figured we can wipe pawns off the board and I can be up 2 pawns to 0 with just Rooks remaining, which shouldn't be a tough win for me.

67.c7+ was a fun find for me. It looks like the Rooks are off the board after the possible continuation of

...Kxc7 68.Rf7+

Then it's a trivial pawn promotion and trivial win. I was surprised he didn't resign sooner once it was clear I was intending to promote my g-file pawn, but my wife said "Ehh, you might screw up, though." True dat.

wp

13. e5 looks fine.

16. h4, trying to open the file for the rook, is a good, principled move even if Black doesn't blunder a piece, so I like it.

I should emphasize that if Black could teleport his knight to a better square . . .



. . . then the "space-gaining" 17. h5?! would be the wrong strategic idea.

Around move 20, the knight maneuver Ng1-e2-c1-(b3/d3)-c5 (possibly provoking b7-b6, which would soften up a6/c6) seems worth pursuing. That's what I'd do on move 21, instead of the piece sac.

The various liquidations (e.g. the sequence after 42. Nc5) are nice.

This is where the game got critical (and the reason I'd avoid the piece sac).



R+2P vs. R isn't a cakewalk -- a number of these endgames are either draws or non-trivial wins, and even many of the trivial wins offer ample opportunity to go wrong.

Case in point, here, where if you didn't recognize the plan of getting the king to h6 ASAP, Black could have swindled a draw. 58. Kd2 Rxc6!? (losing quickly against accurate play, but worth a try since everything else loses but nothing else has drawing chances) 59. Rxc6 Kxc6 60. Ke3 Kd6 61. Kf4 Ke6 62. Kg5 Kf7 63. Kh6, where every White king move from 60-63 is the only move that preserves the win.

So, in fact, Black blundered an additional pawn after the piece sac and still could have drawn if you had a non-trivial lapse in technique. After winning a piece, that's not the sort of position you want to be in.

Believe me, I wasn't super excited about the big pawn liquidation. I knew a win wasn't a cakewalk but I went for it, assuming draw at worst. I liked that I had two pawns so far apart, so his two pieces were pretty overworked. I think he played poorly at the end. Did I make any poor moves in the endgame?

21.Bxa6 is impatient. Note that if you were not already up a piece, this would be a losing sacrifice. He could cover everything with bxa6 Qxa6 Na7, so that you don't have any attack or even perpetual, and you've even opened up your own king a bit (Ka8, Rb8-b6, Rgb8, Bf8, etc. Our g6 hangs if you want it, but its a near worthless pawn anyway, and we go Nf8-e6 improving our worst piece). Black got the piece and the compensation.

You could activate your pieces with something like Bd3, and Ne2-c1-b3, and then maybe get your rooks involved on the c-file, or the f-file intending f4, depending on what he does in the meantime.

A 10 minute game I just played. Kinda fun. My final moves are lame but I was up about 90 seconds on time and he resigned with :14 left. After offering a draw. After saying "GG" after our queen exchange. I screwed up by not protecting that passed pawn, though. lol.

I was able to spot the ability to play 20.Rab1 and leave my bishop hanging on c6 because if ...Qxc6 21.Rb8+...Qe8 22.Rxe8...Kxe8 and I get his Queen and Rook for bishop and Rook. And position is crushing with his a-pawn falling immediately, at least.

24.Qb8+ looks better for me, exchanging queens earlier in the game with more clock left for endgame, and buying time for my bishop to move anyway. Rook gets move involved and closer to the action, too.

28.d5 took a while to play. I was lucky enough to notice his mate-in-1, at least. Yikes.

28.Qb7+ leaves him without any hope: trading queens, winning the a7 pawn, and leaving his only remaining piece terribly out of play.

Definitely

You should post the most recent correspondence game. Ignominious ending, but instructive game.

I assumed you mean this one I timed out. I verbally asked "another draw?" (I would have been 0-1-3 against this guy in our 4 games lol) several hours before playing 28...Rgf6, then he played 29.Red1 and said "Sure, if you want" and officially made the offer. However, after his last move I wanted to continue. After 31.Rg2 I offered him the draw officially now that his offer was gone, but he didn't see it in time and I forgot to check back while watching the golf Open Championship. Meh. I don't stress over my rating much anymore. Anyway, I'll post my thoughts:

8...Bb4 might be better. Pin his knight which is defending the central pawn. Not sure.

I figured Bc5 chases his knight back, develops my bishop, and gets me closer to castling.

12...Bg4 might be better?

15...Nd7 anticipates my pawn being attacked a 2nd time, and gets my oddly placed knight closer to the action, but it also hinders development of my bishop. Wasn't sure about this, but I thought maybe eventually I'll have pawns on a6, b6, c5, and c7, allowing my LSB the b7-g2 diagonal.

22...Nxe4. I don't have another defender of d6 so I figure exchanging knights here is best.

23...Re6 adds a defender to d6 and maybe allows movement to g6.

24...Rf8. Not exactly a waiting move but I'm not sure how to proceed here so I get my rook to the open file.

25...a5. Again, just kind of a non-losing waiting move as I'm not sure what to do next.

26.Nxd6 didn't make a lot of sense to me. His knight is centrally-located and my DSB is rather weak. This also gets me an immediately-defended pawn on the d-file. He forced his hand here I think.

27...Rg6 attacks his f-pawn.

29.Red1 I thought was bad so I didn't take his draw. My dream is to get a rook on f2+ and win his bishop.

31.Rg2 isn't going to allow me the f2+ fork of his bishop. I can play Rf2 now but he doesn't have to take with 32.Rgxf2. He can just move his bishop then eventually get my d-pawn if I don't retreat to protect it. So I didn't see much and offered the draw.

Okay, it's somewhat less instructive now that I know you weren't trying to force a win (when you were arranging your pieces for the Bxf3 sacrifice, it looked like you were).

I'm not a fan of 28.-Rgf6. It seems designed to sac the bishop for two pawns, but that's a dubious idea.



^{(Position after 29. [pass move] Bxf3 etc.)}

It's usually a bad idea and a negative freeroll to go for lines that hinge on your opponents playing bad moves. If White is bad enough to play Rxd6 or allow Rf2+ most of the time here, he's destined to lose later somehow anyway. If he's good enough to not make basic blunders all that often, well you've hurt your position for no reason. "Swindles" like this are generally best saved for when you have a losing position (and thus nothing to lose if your opponent sniffs it out).

And the sac really has no real merits in and of itself. I like White's chances in the diagram position better. After 1. Kg2, Black doesn't have any active plans. Pushing the pawns isn't possible. In fact, White is threatening to move his bishop off the second rank (2. Ba1, to keep Bxe5 in reserve if the rook goes to d8) and then pile up on the d-pawn. He'll probably win two or three pawns if that happens (a2 might fall, but that's fine). The evaluation of a piece vs. three pawns imbalance often rests on the strength of the pawns -- and here they aren't very good at all. And if White manages to get all the rooks off the board, Black is completely lost, because Black's pawns are non-threatening and the White will invade with his king and munch all of them up. All in all, it's a pretty uncomfortable position.

So this is why 29. Red1 is White's best move -- it forces you to either lose a pawn (and probably two) for nothing or go in for the dubious piece-for-two-pawns sac on f3.

You'd benefit from removing the piece-for-two-pawns sac from your regular chess arsenal (unless of course you can calculate it to a direct win). It's usually somewhere between bad and outright losing, and to recognize when it's good positionally you need existing familiarity with the idea.

You are right that I play hope chess too often. Especially against this guy who was very solid in all our games IIRC. My main problem is that if it's my move and I cannot think of a good move, I force something because I want to keep initiative and not lose tempo, even at the cost of up to a full pawn. I have almost no idea when I am safe to play a quiet or waiting move. I understand the concept of these moves - I just do not recognize when I should play them, so I end up forcing something risky or aggressive.

Yeah, it's not simple at all, unfortunately. People who are consistently right about when to play active moves and when to play quiet moves are pretty strong at chess. Club-level players are "supposed to" mess that up frequently.

You'd need to expand on your mental database of quiet moves. For example, the typical move of making luft for your king to avoid back-rank mates that could happen 5+ moves in the future is one that most people wouldn't regularly play unless they knew of the idea beforehand. And there are quite a number of typical moves like that, and most of them are more obscure.

The one thing you can start doing is spending more time making sure the "obvious" aggressive moves that you tend to play quickly don't have downsides. Once all of the aggro moves are filtered out (because they end up being bad), it won't be too hard to try to look for quieter moves.

9.-Bxc3 and 10.-Ne4 in this game are the sort of moves I'm referring to. Technically, 7.-Qe7+ falls into this category too -- the queen is misplaced on e7 since the White rook is coming to e1, so it'll end up wasting time -- but that can't be faulted if you didn't know the positional concept beforehand. There are only 24 hours in the day, so you could "borrow" the time from what you typically spend on lost positions. (If you evaluate a position as lost, you have little to gain from tanking and not much to lose from blitzing, and your opponent might even get eager to win quickly and mess up.)

12...Ne7 in this ongoing game is an example of what I consistently do poorly. No comments since it's ongoing but it's the type of move where I can't see anything quiet so I try to sneak this move by, freeing up my c-pawn and getting my knight closer to the action. I knew he could play 13.Nxf6+ which I wouldn't like, but I *hoped* he wouldn't. Which is stupid because hope isn't a strategy. I saw that on one of those motivational pictures from the 1990s once. But this one carelessly over-anxious move when I couldn't find anything simpler is likely going to cost me the game. We'll see.

A corr game I played in a few days against a guy I'd played before. He plays quickly and I wanted another game going so he obliged. He'd beaten me in a long game our first time around. I think he got worse, though.

I never was able to get his c-pawn after he won a pawn early. I totally ****ed up the intro and it morphed into a position I'd never been in before. What's my best response immediately after he captures my c-pawn? I guess Qa4+ does the trick but I hate having my queen on the edge files, and generally don't like bringing her out early.

10.Qd3 was kind of a "I'm not sure what to do here" move.

11.Nxb5 was a fun tactic. Not sure if it was supposed to work out as well as it did but I went for it.

15.Ba3 is good, I think. It looks like I force him to trade bishops, and I'm up material so that's good.

25.Qc6. His queen can't defend the knight and the a-pawn anymore so it looks like a queen trade off or I win a pawn.

He played poorly, obviously. I got a lead early and just tried to trade down and win that a-pawn. Kind of a meh game. I don't think I played very well or anything but I liked a few of my moves. Opponent seemed poor at keeping tension. When we had exchanges he seemed to execute the first half of them, instead of using that tempo to move another piece.

According to the database, the main line of the 3. Nc3 variation (3. Nf3, 3. e4, and 3. e3 are a lot more popular) continues 5. a4 b4 6. Na2 Nf6 7. e5 Nf6 8. Bxc4, with approximate equality.

5. b4 is highly anti-positional and shouldn't be played.

5.-cxb3 is remarkably cooperative. Fixes White's short- and long-term queenside pawn weaknesses and gets rid of the protected passer in one burst. 5.-e5 is better.

After 11. Nxb5, Black has 11.-Ba6, and he comes out of the fray up the exchange (though White has some compensation).

It seems like Black was in the mood to give away lots of material. Those are the sort of blunders you'd see from people rated 800 standard, yet he's around 1400. 50+ games is really too much for him.

At the very end, 30. e5 vs. 30. Rxa7 is a good test of patience, even though it doesn't "matter" as in you should win roughly 100% in either case. But it's a good habit to win as tidily (and sadistically) as possible. Every bit of impatience is a tacit vindication of your opponents who forget that resigning is possible.

Yeah I considered e5 but didn't really care. I thought he might resign sooner if it was obvious he was about to have his Rook removed from the board.

That guy was playing 38 games IIRC the last time I played him and he played solidly, though my rating has gone up ~200 points since playing him. Not sure why he was so careless this time around. I reviewed another one of this games against mishrafish, since I'd recognized that name from a match play opponent, and he could have won a rook near the end but didn't. I only looked at the last few moves.

Scotch game against same guy. I haven't played too many Scotch games.

I watched a 10 minute video on Scotch games before choosing 4.Qh4. This guy is playing really poorly. I know I got a bit better since the first time I played him but I remember him being very sound. He challenged me again but I think I'll pass for now. They are fun to play b/c he moves quite quickly and is always online, and it's kind of fun to beat up on someone but I think I have some other games about to start any day.

7...dxc6 (instead of bxc6) ?? I know generally your pawns want to move closer to the center files but capturing the other way seems to not help my bishop much, and I figure if I can block his Queen from me trying to castle long through check then I can...castle long and maybe discover a rook attack on his queen. Castling long is probably wrong, though.

12...h6. Trying not to force anything here. This takes away g5 down the road for his bishop, and also gives my poorly placed knight on f6 the h7 square to back into and maybe re-route.

13...Nxg4. Not my intention but it looks like g4 is a good sac square for me to get my Bxg4 winning the exchange on d1 and ending up material. I would also wreck his advanced Kingside pawn wall. And, as I said, my knight is poorly placed for now anyway.

He sees this tactic and cuts his losses at just a pawn loss.

15.Bg2 looks to be a terrible move. He is trying to protect that central pawn and I've been eyeing it all game. But this just gives me a chance to attack his queen defender - the knight on c3.

15...Bxc3. I analyzed various orders of capture for him and even if he plays Qxh4 now, I have the in-between Bxd2, which means I win a minor piece and my knight ends up on h4, immediately attacking his pawn on f4.

Again, he sees what's about to happen and opts to try to keep material on the board. (At this point he's at least sniffed out a couple of my tactics, so I hope that he learned a little something from this game.)

17...Qa5. OK. Got lucky here. Kept looking at cute things like Bf5 but then it ended up with him playing Rook excahnge on d8, followed by Qd4+, followed by (pawn)xf5 and maybe Qxa7 afterwards. I also had been looking at Ng4, which I didn't love b/c it's simply an empty threat, and he can get his Queen on that diagonal, pinning my knight anyway. Thankfully I didn't play Ng4 because of this variation: 18.Qxa7...Qa5 19.Qxa5...Kb8 is the only way to stave off mate-in-2! Got super lucky to notice this, though he may not have. I could just hear Mato "White played a move...and black resigned. Can you spot the killer move? Pause the weedeo."

Anyway, I could play Kb8 here or b6, but my Queen isn't doing much on that side of the board, and this immediately attacks his a2 pawn, anyway.

18...Bg4 looks to force a Rook trade. His rook on d2 can either trade on the d-file with my rook, or move laterally to e2 (losing exchange) or f2 (safe). If f2, however, I have Rd1+ forcing 20.Rxd1...Bxd1.

19...Qxd2. OK, he's just playing so poorly this is a beating. Is capturing with my Queen here better than with my Rook? I wasn't sure but went with Queen.

21...Red1 is probably better at the end, but meh. He's toast. I didn't analzye this too much. Just went for the immediate trade.

I mean 21...Red8 not Red1. Computer analysis said it was better, too.

Chess.com computer analysis (2000 rating) spoiler:

You played fine. Engines have little say in what the best move is in completely winning positions. Practical move with +6 eval >>> unnecessarily flamboyant move with +8. You were completely winning after 15.-Bxc3.

Material-winning tactic square*. If it were a sac it'd be a bad one.

Thanks. I want to know what would you have captured with on move 19? The queen or rook? And why?

Sometimes I get these either/or scenarios where I'm not sure which is best. I just figured capturing with the queen was the better chance of having queens off the board (ie a giant chunk of material when already up big). I was trying to expedite liquidation or whatever.

Yeah Qx looks a lot more natural to me, as does dxc6 earlier. I guess you might be able to get a mating attack going with Rx, but whatever, you're up a boatload.

Another win against Renaldo. I don't know this guy personally but he sure loves chess and plays super quickly. Back over 1600 yay!

8.e3. I hate this spot b/c it allows 8...Ne4 but I figure it's still a bookish move.

9...Nd6. An interesting move. I almost just moved my Queen to b3 or something without noticing Queen is defending LSB. Then I found 10.Bxd6.

13.Qb5 is a waste of time. I totally forgot he can just castle. lol. DERP.

14...g5. Another bad pawn move by him. f6 is now weak for him. 15.Ne4 looks versatile. If 15...Qd5 then 16.Qd3 and just re-assess.

16.Nc5 threatens mate. He finds the best response, which is to lose a knight.

18-23. I'd planned these moves and the huge liquidation and had these all set as Conditional moves. His responses were almost immediate and these dozen moves were played in about 2 minutes. lol.

I figure he's way down material and his position seems terrible after this. And I've got a pawn I can push. Shouldn't have any problem converting this. And I didn't see a mate with these two attackers anyway.

28.Ra8 seems kinda good as it pins down both his bishop and rook, unless he wants to trade rooks by playing Bg7.

34...Kb7 loses a pawn.

38.d5 was a fun find. I first thought about b5 but he can at least capture my a-pawn so I played d5 instead, which defends my rook and doesn't seem to give him any kind of immediate pawn compensation.

42...Ke7. I can't believe he's chasing my Rook. He's got to stay near his bishop or play Rc8 I think.

My final move is going to be Raxc7, just to be clear which Rook I use to capture.

The finish is kind of clunky, and most of mine are. But I tried to just make sure I made non-losing moves. I did notice once he got his bishop on that final diagonal that I had a weak back rank, but I didn't see a way he could capitalize on it with his Rook anytime soon.