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.