Time to do the second part.
The second problem from my
lack of tactical vision and calculation ability is to do with
defending in particular. It's probably one of the most underrated area and a huge area of seperation between GMs and amateurs. Everyone can build up a great kingside attack, align their pieces and launch a flurry of combinations to win and claim a minature, but turn the situation around and they are all panicking. Defensive technique especially with the advent of Engines are probably one of the pinnacles of modern chess. Back in the days, Tal would obliterate players but now, even 2400s-2600s would find satisfactory defense.
To give you a background, my opening choices against 1. e4 in particular has generally been quite dubious, unlike the rest of my repertoire which is very solid. But I think it's a good thing to put my tactical abilities to the test or else I would just become another positional grindlord that can't play dynamic position and get killed by juniors in sharp positions.
I, like every young player ever, started with the Sicilian Dragon which is already rather speculative as a main opening choice. The Yugoslav has constantly put the dragon under the test and it has experience many deaths and revivals. Not only you have to keep up to date with theory, white gets a very comfortable game with much less risk. I decide to move to a more respected opening choice, well not really. I chose the Kozul Suicide line (
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess...on?cid=1008325) which is EVEN MORE theoretical and speculative than ever - it's not called suicide line for no reason. Perhaps I decided it will be one of my opening possibilities, although I have to book up for alot of other anti sicilian lines.
I ended up settling down with the Caro Kann and even spent abit of money on Schandorff GM Rep. I getting all the lines in PGN (with some assistance) but didn't really go through them in too much detail. However, I start to notice a distrubing trend - the caro, while solid, has to deal with alot of attacking plans (like opposite side castling) and plays quite passive in general, especially in the classical variation.
My current scores against experts-master+ in the caro against 1. e4 is 0.5/4. Pretty poor. But I have a good idea of where I went wrong in each game. All of the game has a pretty clear trend. I spazzed out and played some ridiculous move/plan to lose the game.
I wanted to find a game to go in depth, but I then realised all these games I was much worse/lost right out of the opening. The games took me 18, 11, 14 moves respectively to get into a worse game (white is around +1.00).
Maybe you can argue that it was my opening that let me down, and you wouldn't be wrong. I probably shouldn't play an opening I have zero experience with in an international tournament. But you can also argue that if I had better calculational vision and concrete calculation, I would be able to not go into panic mode and play some pretty ridiculous moves.
Of all these three games, I played a spastic move to send a completely fine position up in flames.
I'll give you the three position here.
So in this position arrive after some prep line in the classical caro kann. My opponent was a close friend and has been helping me with my repertoire, so he knows this is what I'm gonna be playing. I had to prepare for semi slav possibilities and other lines the night beforehand.
White played 18. Ne5 and I instantly went into the tank. I forgot my prep after this point and realised I was supposed to play 17. Ng4 to prevent Ne5, g4 and Rh4. This one key move is the key theme of Black's defense in The classical Caro Kann 0-0-0 lines. Obviously, I started panicking here and should've realised I could've just played Bd6 or even Nd7 here. But instead I played the extremely passive and awkward 18. ... Qe4?! 19. f3 Qh7.
Had I just calculated abit and played 18. ... Nd7 19. f4 Nxe5 20. dxe5 Qe4! pinning the bishop and preventing g4 with the threat of Bc5 and forcing white to spend a tempo to get out of the pin.
This second position was even wackier and I arrived to it after falling into a gambit line prep by my opponent. In my preparation I was expecting the Panov, but turns out my prep was outdated. Once again I should've realised 11. ... Be7 12. Rd1 Nd7 13. 0-0 Qc8! and I get out of the pin and can castle next move. Instead I spazzed out and got obsessed with the Bxb8, Bxc6 sac lines and played a series of ridiculous and anti positional moves 11. ... f5?! 12. Bc2 Qf6 13. 0-0-0 g5?? making my king even more exposed. I had alot of variations of Bh6, Nd7, 0-0-0/0-0 in my head but they were wrong. Somehow my opponent didn't exploit that and I got into a drawn endgame O.O only to blunder a free pawn
The last position was against another friend of mine. He played an early Qf3 line which is a decently line actually. After 14. ... e5 15. Qg4 g6 Black should be fine, but I went for the gambit line 14. ... 0-0-0 which was rather unneccessary and just gives a pawn with no compensation. I went for some Ne5->Nxc5 and even later missed Qxe6+->Qxc5 without even losing a tempo.
If I had calculated abit more, I would realise that black doesn't really have any initiative with opening the e- file, it only gives white more counterplay and my Rdf8, g5-g4 plan is too slow compared to his hack. These opposite side castling lines need concrete analysis rather than simple thematic ideas. Feel free to look further into this line if you want.
Alot of those lines weren't hard to calculate at all, in fact they were quite easy. But my lack of classical experience and my tendency to play intuitively (from blitz) hampered my ability to do even some of the most basic calculations.
I will write a post on how I intend to focus on my tactics and calculation training.