This thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/14...sition-793195/ and a memory of this post: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...9&postcount=17 gave me an idea for a new thread. I will play a correspondence game, and post all the moves here as they happen, along with my thought process behind each move in as much detail as possible.

I welcome and encourage any and all commentary and discussion about the game, as it progresses, with the one request that ALL posts by players other than me be enclosed in spoiler tags, until the game is over. I will NOT read any of the posts until after the game, but once the game is over I'll go back through and see how the comments compared with my own thoughts at the time. I encourage not only comments that address my thoughts about the position, but also side-discussions about points I've missed entirely. Since I'm one of the weaker players on this forum, I expect numerous opportunities for the latter.

If noone responds, the thread should still be interesting, both to me and others, as it will be a full game, annotated as it's played by one of the competitors, and such things are always interesting. If there are a lot of responses, in real time, from other posters too, however, I think it will be far MORE interesting, as there will then not only be my own analysis, but also analysis OF my thoughts. I hope I can play a solid enough game to make such discussion worthwhile

Again, PLEASE remember to make ALL posts in spoiler tags (unless it's completely unrelated to the game), I don't want to see ANY of your thoughts until after the game is over. PREVIEW YOUR POSTS to make sure the spoiler tags are functioning properly.

Spoiler syntax is "{spoil}post content{/spoil}", only without the quotes, and with square brackets. "[]" instead of "{}".

I'm submitting my request for a game now, I will have time controls of one move every three days. I'm playing through Facebook (the app sponsored by chess.com) if anyone is curious. Let's see how this goes...

I drew black, against an opponent just about 200 points higher than me (though my rating has been steadily climbing lately and I don't think it's accurate to my ability yet). He opened with 1. d4, which is annoying because I'm an e4 player myself and prefer open games. I'll go with my standard Slav, which seems to work well enough for me in practice, even though I really don't feel like I understand the concepts involved.

Current position:


Moves so far (should function in a PGN reader, although I'm not including an appropriate PGN heading... let me know outside of spoiler tags if there's a better way I could format this for you):
1. d4 d5

Taking a look at my opponent's record, though he's rated 1871 to my 1678, his record is 86-11-2 against 1512 average opponents, and his best win is against an 1848 (my best win in far fewer games is a 1778), so he may be a bit overrated due to cherry-picking, and perhaps I'll be a tougher test than he's used to, despite being a couple hundred rating points lower than him... we'll see

2. c4 c6 as planned. I had planned to post a diagram after every move, but on second thought don't think a diagram is really necessary at this point, I'll wait until things actually get interesting, or at least a couple more moves go by. I'm probably playing 3. ... Nf6 next, unless he does something weird.

Moves so far:
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6

As expected, Nc3 Nf6. Nothing particularly interesting yet. Again, unless he does something weird, I'm looking at e6, Nbd7, and probably Bd6, over the next few moves. Nothing to see here yet

Moves so far:
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6

this should be amusing

LOL, yeah, the divergence between my (optimistically) Class D thoughts on the position, and the thoughts of all you people who are actually GOOD at this game should make for quite the entertaining spectacle at my expense, if nothing else

And there's the "something weird" I was talking about... he played 4. cxd5?!

I don't think I've ever seen that move before. Taking back seems mandatory, I don't see any candidate moves for turning this into any kind of a gambit, so the question is cxd5 or Nxd5?

Taking with the knight looks similar to thematic recaptures in a lot of king-pawn openings (kind of a queenside version of the white side of a sicilian). Also following up with Qa5 puts some pressure on the knight at c3, but Bd2 or any of the queen moves that defend the knight, I don't think there's really anything there. Even though getting the knight centralized seems kind of nice, I don't intuitively like how that position looks, I don't have the easiest time developing my other pieces with my c-pawn blocking the knight and his d-pawn restricting my ability to play e5. If I have to play e6 instead, I have to decide whether to lock the white bishop onto the kingside or the queenside, and either way my pieces aren't working together that well. I think the negatives outweigh the positives.

On the other hand, cxd5 leads to a comfortably symmetrical open position. It's not quite a normal symmetrical king's pawn opening, with the fully open c-file and of course the queen pawns, not the king pawns, developed. Looks comfortable though, and I shouldn't have any problem getting my pieces on to squares where they will work well together. Of course neither will he, but it looks like the kind of position I'm comfortable with. I still don't know why he played cxd5 though, it seems like if this were the type of position *he* prefers, he ought to have just played e4... oh well, whatever his reasons are, I'm going with 4. ... cxd5.

Moves so far: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. cxd5 cxd5
Current Position:

He played 5. e3

I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't a normal king pawn opening. If I were black in a game that went e4 e5 Nf3 Nf6 d3 I would be excited about d3 being a passive move that gives me a chance to play for the advantage by setting up a d5 push and breaking up the center on my terms, or locking up the center to my advantage, depending on my opponent's play. Looking at this position, that pattern is hard to ignore, but an e5 push doesn't seem to be as promising of an idea here since there's no queen to back it up. Maybe later? Probably e6 instead though.

As for what I WILL do, I'm probably going to have to play e6 at some point to free the black squared bishop, unless an e5 push does end up being merited, and I'm not sure yet if I want the white squared bishop developed to f5 first, or if I want to keep it on the queenside. Or, come to think of it, perhaps I don't want to play e6 at all and will fianchetto the black squared bishop instead. Since I'm not sure of any of that quite yet, I see no need to commit to anything there, and I have one other piece that it couldn't possibly hurt to develop right now. In a normal slav, the developing move would be Nbd7, but here with the position opened up I think a more classical development is called for, so... 5. ... Nc6.

Moves so far:
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. cxd5 cxd5 5. e3 Nc6

Current position:

Okay, well he played 6. Bd3, so I can't really delay a decision on my development structure any longer. I like the look of the kingside fianchetto, since his dark-squared bishop isn't (currently) a threat to invade the weak dark squares, and that shuts down the b1-h7 diagonal he just stuck his bishop on. The downside is mainly psychological, I have almost no experience with fianchetto structures (other than playing against them), but here it really looks like my best set-up, so I guess I'll go with it and hope I can work my way through the unfamiliar territory comfortably enough. 6. ... g6

Moves so far:
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. cxd5 cxd5 5. e3 Nc6 6. Bd3 g6

Current position:

Looks like you guys have stumbled into a Slav/Gruenfeld hybrid. Good luck!

Discussing an idea for future black development:

Good idea. Personally I suck playing against any form of closed system (or any system if it's a blitz game but meh :P) so should be good to watch.

I'll try to give my thoughts when I can

where do you play your matches btw?

I play on Facebook, lol. There are better places for it, but one nice thing about Facebook is that tons of average joes who probably don't even know what castling is have the app installed, so even though I suck at chess I still get to log in and see that I'm in the 90th percentile

If I went somewhere that only draws actual chess players I wouldn't have that luxury, and that's really the only hold Facebook has on me.

He brought his knight out to e2. My plan is a fianchetto and that doesn't disrupt anything, so this seems like a pretty straightforward move. Bg7.

Moves so far:
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. cxd5 cxd5 5. e3 Nc6 6. Bd3 g6 7. Nge2 Bg7

Current position: