Your opponent played really well for someone rated in the 1000s for the first 16 moves (showing why your opening concept isn't that great, Black is solid enough to last a caveman attack if he just keeps cool). However, then he crumbled: 16.-f6 (why) and 18.-Rad8 (simply 18.-Bc6 for instance) made things a little harder, playing 19.-f5 instead of 19.-Rf7 gave back one of the pieces, 21.-e3 dropped a rook and 24.-e2 allowed a nice mate. You did well to spot 25.Rxf8+! Did you calculate 25.-Kxf8 all the way to mate?

Nice win and I like the fact that you're attacking. Even if the attack wasn't entirely sound, at least you gave your opponent chances to make mistakes. Your opponent didn't defend accurately and you were there to take advantage of it. Now let's look at the mistakes. I'm tempted to run the moves through a computer first but that feels like cheating, so be sure to look for mistakes in my analysis!

8 Ba3 is very aggressive but after 8... hxg5 Bxf8 9 Qxf8 (or Kxf8) white gave up two minor pieces for the rook and isn't really threatening anything.

9 h4 is interesting but I think black is fine after 9... hxg5 10 hxg5 Ng4. The knight is almost trapped but after 11 f3 Ne3 forks the queen and bishop, and black has Qxg5 if white doesn't protect the pawn. But after 11 Bc1 Na5 (seems necessary, that light squared bishop's pin on the f7 pawn is a real problem for black ) it looks like the g4 knight is doomed. Maybe black isn't fine after all, this is where I'd run the computer analysis to see what the real answer is.

Just got home. I reviewed my game on my phone for a few minutes in the waiting room.

It looks like I missed a 2 to 3 move quicker win with 23. Qxf7+ Depending on the order he blocks in, it looks like I win in 25 or 26 moves.

Sadly, I did not calculate 25. Kxf8 through. Looking at it for a few minutes it appears I ma have ended up in a forced-draw position (at best). Oops!

After ...Kxf8, you have mate-in-several (or, if time doesn't allow you to calculate in full, an easy win of his queen) starting with 26. Qc8+.

There may be a win in there but I'm probably not talented enough to find it in time. My philosophy was, in a way, desperate, as it largely was "keep trying to check him so he doesn't take my Rook and Queen his pawn putting me in check, all in 1 move."

Luckily, it worked out. It may not have though if he takes my Rook.

23. Qxf7+ seems to be my big endgame miss, right? I didn't even notice this move at the time.

So yeah, HIARCS 14 didn't like my suggestion of 9... hxg5 much although it still gives black a slight edge (about half a pawn) following the 11 Bc1 Na5 line. It prefers the move black actually played 9... Bg4 where it has black up about a pawn, but the move it recommends is 9... Na5. Now back to my own analysis without consulting the oracle any further.

After 15... Qxg5 black is totally winning, up a piece and incidentally those tripled pawns are hilarious. 16... f5 >>> f6 and black should start trading off pawns and also get that knight back in the action.

17 Bxd6 looks unsound but you're desperate here and need to create something. 18... Bc6 holds the position together nicely but black wants to keep the bishop on d7, which makes no sense.

19... f5 loses the bishop, 19... Rf7 holds it (possibly followed by Nf8 and a really awkward position for black). Allowing the bishop to be pinned like that was super terrible.

21... Rxd7 should at least stop the bleeding for black. He's still up a knight.

22... Rf7 is horrible (Kh8 was black's best hope though white wins after a bunch of exchanges on d8, though if you're not careful that e3 pawn promotes). But 23 Qxf7+ is a much better finish.

Yeah eventually moves like that (with check!) will jump out at you immediately.

heh I missed Qxf7+ when looking through the game Just like sometimes when your opponent just does something ridiculous you don't notice since you didn't expect him to do that

I don't like 5.Ng5 once he can castle. How about 5.Nd5 (5...Nxe4 6.Nxb4 Nxb4 7.Nxe5, or 5...Nxd5 Bxd5 and the Bb4 looks silly)

5.O-O is also fine: the fork trick 5...Nxe4 (not 5...Bxc3 6.dxc3 Nxe4 7.Bxf7+ Kxf7 8.Qd5+) 6.Nxe4 d5 doesn't look good after 7.Bb5

Yeah 23. Qxf7+ I didn't see at all during the game but immediately upon review I noticed it. Funny how that works.

Nice day today. 3 wins 1 loss. Rating went from 928 up to 957. One of my wins was an abandoned game that I don't think was deliberately abandoned. I think he was up material slightly and had better position. I actually misclicked a pawn move to the 4th rank instead of the 3rd and it screwed me a bit. Anyway I feel like I may lose that one if he comes back within 5 minutes. He challenged me to correspondence game moments later so I don't think he abandoned. I've still got my Seek set to -50/+200 and it sure feels like I'm getting a lot of dudes nearly 200 points better, but that's cool.

I had a long, grinding Resignation loss against this guy.. Not a whole lot there I don't think so I'm not going to analyze it. Basically he owned me in the endgame. He got his pawns and King involved sooner than me and I had to Resign. Y'all can have a look if you want to see if there is anything there worth noting. I think it's fairly standard stuff - lot of trading. He probably figured he could trade down as much as possible and beat me once the board was clear - which ended up being true.

Then I beat this guy. I got the impression based on his opening that he must have had a small sample of games to be in the 1100s, and I was right. He dropped almost 100 points after this Resignation. This game plays out much different than most, and I think I made some good moves near the end. I'll post my thoughts:

1.e6 has me scratching my head already. Whatever, I'll play the same Nf3 on move 2.

2.c6... whatever. I'll simply claim more of the middle if he's going to allow it. My third move is 1.d4

5.e5. He's pulled a wall of 4 pawns out. I don't care, but I play this so I can recapture with my Bishop, and not feel forced to trade Queens so early against what appears to be a drunk guy. My d4 pawn is protected by my Knight anyway. And if he threatens my Knight with his LSB, I can always simply move my C-pawn forward 1.

His 5.Bb7 makes it look like he wants to pull his C-pawn forward 1, so I think I can bring my Bishop all the way out to the C-file. If he pulls his pawn forward to threaten my Knight I've already determined I'll push my D-pawn forward 1, since I've got more protection of the d5 square than he does.

9.c4. Now he's got control of the d5 square if he wants it.

11. Nc3. He has done as I thought he would and taken some control of the d5 square. Nc3 feels like a great move since it develops a piece, threatens his bishop along with a slight material gain as well as great positioning for my Queen, and it also gets me 1 move closer to being able to castle 0-0-0 if I want it.

12. Qxf3. I can capture with the pawn here but I decide to pull the Queen out. It's got a strong diagonal to his Rook so his Queen is fairly immobile after this move. Unless he wants to waste tempo playing Rb8. I also want to free up 0-0-0 because the D-file looks potentially super-strong for me.

13. Qc6+ He has just threatened my Bishop with a pawn but I stay calm and determine this to be a good move. It looks like I win his Knight if I want it. (Let's see if I want it).

15. Nxf6. He plays what appears "obvious" to him at this point but I assume Kf7 might be better for him?

16. Ne4. I recognize that his Knight is pinned and I have him in a world of **** right now - with the ability to capture his Knight with my Bishop while forking his King and Rook. I've also still got the Knight over on the A-file if I want it.

He resigns 1 move later. The writing is on the wall and I don't think he's very excited about finishing this one. I would have liked to play it out, though. I doubt his position is fatal* but yeah I'm pretty sure I can close this one out.

I'm sure I made errors here but overall I'm happy with the patience I'm showing. I'm not going after a piece just because it's dangling. I'm remaining focused on saving tempo and sticking to an offensive plan of attack. That is good for me because if you knew my irl character you'd know I'm one of the least patient humans you'll meet. It's a character flaw of mine. lol.

*Nevermind, it's definitely fatal. After he plays Kf7... 18.Bxd8 (his queen) then it's just a bloodbath from there no matter what direction I go.

e6 is one of Black's many conventional responses to 1. e4.

The rest of his opening is indeed bad/nonstandard, sort of like a weird variant of the Hedgehog formation.

You should be more eager to analyse your losses than your wins. It's where you can learn the most.

I'm not suggesting to study openings at this point, but you should learn common tactics that can happen in the opening as soon as possible. These will come up in almost every game you play.

5...dxc6 is better than 5...bxc6 here. You open a better diagonal for your c8 bishop, and you indirectly defend your e5 pawn with 5...dxc6 6.Nxe5 Bxf2+ 7.Kxf2 Qd4+. What does he do instead if you try 6...Qd4, a double attack which threatens Qxe5 and Qxf2 mate?



As played, 6...Bb6 gives away the e5 pawn. Better is 6...exd4. If he plays 7.Nxd4 you have 7...Ba6 preventing castling for the moment. That's one of the good points to bxc6 over dxc6, but he could have avoided this by playing 6.O-O instead of 6.d4.

He gives back the pawn with 9.Qf3. Instead 9.Ng4 puts you in big trouble.

14...d5 was a pawn giveaway. You have to be able to count out the captures on that square to see who comes out ahead. Just 14...d6 is fine

In the end, don't trade those rooks when you are behind. Try to do something active with them. Be a barnacle and make his life difficult. Annoy him by attacking his pawns and tying him down. 17...Re2 instead of Re5, 20...Re4 or Re2 instead of Rd6, 27...Kf8 instead of Re4. Then he might have to go back with 28.Rf1 and you can repeat position with 28...Ke8.

I'm pretty terrible with Rook play, notably, cleaning up pawns. A lot of my wins are either on time, resignations, or early CMs, so I don't get a ton of real practice. I need to practice this aspect of endgame strateg (pawns and rooks vs. pawns and rooks).

Just keep it in mind for now. Your best path to improvement at this point is tactics, especially early game tactics.

You should really pick up a few beginner chess books. I'd suggest some of these https://www.google.ca/#q=Seirawan+winning+chess+tactics, and I'm sure there are others that cover much of the same material.

Try to assimilate some of this information and you'll improve more rapidly. Right now your games have little real substance to them since neither you nor your opponents have any concept of proper strategy and tactics. You will eventually pick some things up by trial and error, but I don't think it's optimal if you're serious about improving your game.

Rook play is really complex. Way more so than you'd think it should be. It's still on my to-do list in terms of endgame study, and not really an area I understand much of anything about yet. I'd definitely say that for now your time is better spent elsewhere. Banging your head against a wall trying to understand subtleties of rook vs. rook endgames will bring more frustration than improvement.

I can tell it's complex. It seems like it shouldn't be because there aren't many combinations of moves left at that part of the game so you think the right play should be somewhat obvious, but I think because there are so few combos of moves left, a minor slip-up can be catastrophic. So it seems you have to be super efficient and precise. I like watching the 2200 players on chess.com as I'm queuing up a game - it helps illustrate how precise (and counter-intuitive) some of their end moves can be.

I agree that rook and pawn endgame strategy isn't something I'm going to master any time soon.

don't have to worry about rook endings if you play the dragon and sack a lot of exchanges

Tonight's match.

My opening is AIDS. I had little idea how to react. I feel like I thwarted his attack pretty easily though and then launched a pretty decisive attack of my own and got to Mate-in-one, before he resigned, honourably. My mating tactics are probably inefficient. I felt like I had an embarrassment of riches and so I took quite a while to figure out the most efficient way to close. I'm sure I missed better moves. Luckily he never was able to breathe long enough to evade.

3.d4. I know this is awful. It's a compromise between sucky and slightly more or slightly less sucky. I realized after he stole my pawn that I didn't want to trade Queens right away if that was his wish (it seems like it is - so I figure why let him implement his game?) so I meekly push my pawn forward a space and realize, as White, I'm already behind in tempo and material. What's the best response to his first move if I don't want to trade Queens?

11. a4. Clearly I can see his plan is to try to catch me sleeping and trap my Bishop. Not ideal to be moving my A-pawn this early and losing tempo but I don't want to just let my Bishop die for sins he hasn't committed.

12. c4. It looks like he's trying to free up this diagonal for his LSB. And since I don't have a lot going on just yet, I push a pawn forward and try to choke this route off, especially since the c4 square is protected by a Bishop that won't be threatened anytime soon. I can be aggressive here and maybe pull my DSB out to g5 or play Ne5, which looks like a nice square for my Knight but I'm not sure I'm ready to yet.

13. c5. I was right about his plan to pull his LSB out in the other direction. He's one pawn move away from threatening my Knight. I'm not sure if this is a big deal or not since like I said I can move my Knight to the cozy e5 square, or just trade with him and pull my Queen out to the f3 square which would then threaten his Rook. I honestly didn't have these thoughts during the game though (unless noted, all posts itt are 100% game thoughts). During the game I simply saw him threatening my Knight and didn't like it. Now that I look at it - I shouldn't have been so concerned. Meh.

14. c4. This is probably a mistake. He's definitely got a boner for that diagonal, so I just choke it off. Unfortunately this keeps my Bishop pinned here and also blocks it across what could be a strong diagonal. Furthermore, there is probably zero reason to be concerned with this Bishop now or anytime soon. Again, meh. Let me know how bad this is! lol.

16.Qe2 This is still excruciatingly reactionary on my part and I haven't really done anything offensive yet. I think I made an in-game misread of his intent here. For some reason I thought he was going to sacrifice his Knight in a 3 or 2 point loss in order to trade Queens. I shouldn't care about this, though, and I've now got less control over the pivotal d4 square. I do have increased protection of e4, though, which is nice. How bad is this!?

18.Nd7 seems like a huge mistake for him. His only hope is that I fail to notice my Queen under duress.

20. Bf4. Not too sure what my next move should be but I figure this can't be too bad. I clear up the first rank for my other Rook, and add protection for my Queen which may end in me threatening his Rook. I also can't really be threatened by his pawns anytime soon. At least not pushed off that diagonal.
My bishop is also backed up by my F-file Rook, if his queen gets on this diagonal and I am able to move my Queen away from his.

His 20.f6 seems awful. From here it's a cat chasing a mouse around for a while.

26.Bf5+ I sit here for a while doing some calcs in my head. I can put him in check with my A-rook here but he can block with his Knight and that might complicate things as my pawn may get in my way and his F-pawn can clear off that file and open up his Rook onto my Bishop and Rook. I also like that this Bishop skewers his Knight and Queen, so I play it.

27.Bd6+ Thank God I pushed my pawn forward so far!!!!!! Giggity. lol. Play bad..get there.

29. His Ne6 seems like a blunder. The end is near but I think he should play Nd7 here to at least complicate things for me?

31. Qf7# appears to be Mate for me. I'm carefully looking things over with my 3+ minutes of clock to his 13, and I hear the bloop sound that can only mean Honourable Resignation.

I really am trying to shorten these posts. As my games progress I'm trying to ignore moves that y'all recognize are becoming standard for my level and self-explanatory. But I end up typing more because my thoughts seem to be getting more expansive, wrong as they may be. Judging by some of the responses... I don't think many people are reading these anyway lol.

2. d3? Just take the pawn and force him to bring his queen out early to recapture. Follow 2. exd5 with 3. Nc3 to develop with tempo, and go from there.

14. c4 wouldn't be terrible except... en passant. After 12. ... bxc3 you just gave away a pawn with nothing to show for it.

20. ... f6 is indeed awful for him, but your mopup was pretty solid

Missed the en passant, as did he. I like your opening line. Somehow "just take his pawn" escaped me. I know I played his opening before and ended up in a bad spot and posters here told me to not play it but I couldn't remember how to exploit it. I'll remember next time. I don't really see that opening from black very often especially the higher I go.

2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 is the standard continuation.

12. c4 allows 12...c5, where Black opens up the a8-h1 diagonal for his light-squared bishop and relegates your own LSB to an uncomfortable square. I'd prefer to give him a6-f1 and keep our bishop spying d5 (a very useful square for his knight; would exchange our LSB for it immediately). I'd castle before 13. c5; 13...Ba6 is a very annoying response. 14. c4 should be met by 14...bxc4 en passant, but he missed it. for thinking about opening/closing useful bishop diagonals.

16. Qe2 and 18...Nd7 are fine.

Looks solid. The maneuver Rf1-Rf3-Rg3 (Rf3 threatening Bxh6) is probably best.

Yeah I missed his ability to postpone my castling. In fact, it was my next move I think once he moved his Bishop but of course I couldn't castle through the check. And my Rook would end up being traded for his Bishop anyway even if I could. Was annoying. I was itching to get that Rook out toward the center because it looked like I had much better control of the center of the board than he did.

It's not that trading queens is bad. You shouldn't be afraid to trade queens early under the right circumstances. But in this case it would be bad for you (after 3 dxe4) because you'd have to recapture with your king and you'd lose the ability to castle. So that's a favorable queen exchange for black, which is why 2 d3 is a mistake. By far the most common move is 2 exd5. Remember, from when you played this opening as black?

Moving the a pawn on move 11 was a nice catch, assuming you noticed black could trap your bishop with a4 if you didn't do that. A lot of beginners fall for that one. You're mostly past making those kind of oversights now, I think.

Black's bishop ends up stuck in a cage on the queenside because he didn't play the en passant capture on move 14. Mostly I'm just pointing out en passant at every opportunity. But notice the cage. One of the locks is your pawn on c4 which is secure as long as your bishop protects it. The others are black pawns on c6 and e6. Black's light square bishop is hardly in the game at all (and when you notice this type of situation, it's usually worth the effort to keep it locked out).

After 18... Nd7, notice how passively placed all black's pieces are. If you launched a kingside attack, what would black be able to do about it? I like 19 Qg3 which threatens Bxh6 where black can't capture because of the pin (and if allowed Bxh6 threatens mate). Black can only stop an immediate Bxh6 with pawn moves or by moving the king (or I guess Qb8 but then you just push the queen up to g4), so you've brought your queen into the attack and black hasn't brought any more pieces in for the defense. And you'll be able to bring in more pieces for the attack quickly while black's pieces will be slow to respond.

20... f6 black decides to wreck his king's shelter for no reason in particular, but way to capitalize with Qxe6. Right on with the next few moves as well.

25... Ke6 black decides to be helpful but should really just go back to g8 and hope for a draw by repetition. (25 Bg6 would have been the way to force the king out of the corner but since he came out voluntarily that worked out great for you.)

27 Bd6+, these are simple tactics but we'd be criticizing if you missed them, so good job not missing them.

29 Qf7, it hardly matters at this point since you're clearly winning anyway but you could have taken his queen.

31 Qf8 mate if he doesn't resign.