Also, I lost to another 2200 player by blundering mate. Went from winning, to "it's complicated but draw" to "I'm mated" in a few moves like last time. lol

I should probably update my log and/or post my games but, like you, I'm not sure anyone is really reading anymore.

Reading too. Have not read the entire thread yet, but want to as i have similar doubts than you. Have not got the time yet to read but from a few i read i feel this might also be helpful for me.

I read all yall's logs, update those ****s

Since there does appear to be some interest I have uploaded some of my games. These are in reverse chronological order, so the most recent game is displayed first. It doesn't really matter much so I don't want to fix it.

Weekly Tournament

As uploaded:

Chapter 1 - I'm playing an FM here. He is a bit order, and his rating has declined, but he is still pretty damn good. I didn't really have a chance to analyze this game and annotate it, but he went over it with me afterwards. I have some positive things to take away and some negatives. I have won exactly 0 games as white vs. the Grunfeld. It is definitely my nemesis.

Chapter 2 - I keep playing this kid and I keep getting beat. He also beats 2100 rated players commonly. He is 9 and he is a beast. There are some positions where I have a hard time seeing my opponents reply as there seem to be so many possible choices. I made a blunder here with 16. f4? and fell apart. Although, I was pretty happy with how I handled the next few moves to get out of the trouble I thought I was in. Having said that, the FM from Chapter 1 pointed out that the kid could have 20. ... Qxc1! 21. Qxc1 Nxg4 and he's just winning. Stockfish agrees.

It's interesting to note that after I get out of all of the trouble caused by 16. f4 my position is still terrible and we couldn't find an improvement for White as Black's moves just come very naturally.

Chapter 3 - I'm out of book at 4. f3... Oh well. I'm not going to spend much time on openings, but I did briefly look at this and the line recommended by Emms in a book I have is pretty neat and counter-intuitive. We preach not studying the openings and just following general principles, but using that approach no one is going to find 4. 0-0 5. a3 Bxc3 6. bxc3 Ne8! I mean, really? Without studying specific lines I am never finding that move because I clearly explored castling in this position during the game.

I seriously underestimated his pawn sacrifice and he had definite winning chances. I was lucky to get out of this one with a draw let alone swindle the win, although the finish was very nice if I do say so myself.

Chapter 4 - The same future GM mentioned above. I really need to understand this line better as I'm out of my prep early and don't have a plan and he is too good. Remember that this game after happened before Chapter 2, and I played better in this game.

Chapter 5 - This young gentleman is only rated about 1200 now that he has a rating. I certainly made my life more difficult than it needed to be and missed a few opportunities to be more precise in this endgame. My final calculation was pretty good though.

I will post my recent weekend tournament a bit later. The games are pretty interesting imo.

Game 1- Umm, this seems pretty good vs. such a strong opponent. It really seemed like he was letting you off the hook when you won back your pawn, of course he still had a lot of pressure. Rd8+ seemed like you were asking for trouble given your back rank issues and I was surprised you didn't just automatically take on c8. Moving the Q on move 30 seemed natural to me and you can just try to keep fighting. From your notes you had only spent ~30 of your 60 minutes so far? Definitely seems you could have been more patient at the end once he had let you back into the game.

I'm not sure the game had anything to do with playing against the Grunfeld. I don't really play against it so I don't know. But it seems it should be a pretty big part of your repertoire and may be worth learning more about common plans White has in main lines.

Game 2- Ok I haven't gone through this but it bothers me whenever someone gets called something like "future GM". I guess it is probably a joke since he's surely a (substantial) dog to actually ever become a GM. What is his actual rating?

Game 2 - Whoa @ f4, where is that coming from? Is that a typical plan in this kind of line? Right away all of the dark square holes jump out at me after that move. Usually if you want to start that kind of assault the game should be more closed or your opponent should have less mobility I'd imagine.

What were you calculating when you made that move?

In general I'd recommend putting in all of the important variations you had in mind when playing into your game. Otherwise there's no way to guess what you were actually looking at. For instance, I see now you say f4? is a blunder. Maybe it was a blunder but there's no way to tell what you missed in your calculations.

Also, his bid for future GM does not look that great after missing Qxc1 + Nxg4. He's just up ~a piece (R+B+N vs. Q) in a position where your Q can't really do any damage - his king is safe and pawn structure is solid.

After that what did you calculate and/or think of? The next few moves confuse me. You try to activate your rook, but then when he does offer a trade you move it into a super passive spot. You put your B on e6, but it's blocked from the queenside (where there is an open file and all of his weakest pawns) by your pawn on d5.

Game 3 - you mention in move 10 you're worried about losing a pawn. I assume ...c5 is very thematic there and even if you don't spot an immediate concrete way to recover the pawn, you can notice that if he plays dxc5 his pawns on the queenside are super weak and it will be hard to hang on to all of them (let alone more than 1 of them). So you can probably just play ...c5 based on positional merits. That being said you also have a few natural developing moves that target the c5 pawn to get it back more quickly (...Qa5 and ...Nbd7) so finding a concrete solution seems possible given that you had identified ...c5 as the proper positional move.

Then on move 11 why not ...c5 since that is what you just prepared? Also, Ba6 seems very awkward b/c he can take and then attack your N with Qd3 (where he wants to go anyway) and now you either have to go back to b8 (ugh) or play Qc8 (also kind of ugh). So why not just ...c5 right away, you must have considered it and then abandoned that move order for some reason.

14.g4 - ooo, that doesn't look right to me, lol. Of course, I don't see any concrete way to exploit it. Playing c4 so you can do stuff with your knights seems odd to me. You can move your knights while keeping that tension. After this you have no pawn breaks so you should only commit to it if you know you are locking up a favorable situation (e.g. your knights will immediately have great outposts, you are preventing e4 breaks, etc.).

17.g5 You are right this seems weird. I think he can just play e4 directly - g5 just seems unnecessary to me...although it softens things up a bit possibly. I don't know, this whole g4-g5 thing would not have occured to me I don't think. I just would have gone for e4 and proceeded from there.

22...Nf8 - Why Nf8? It actually covers fewer squares (and still has no where to go) on f8. Unless the g6 square is critical for some reason I don't even see the purpose of this move. ...Nc6, which you mention, is something that definitely improves your N unless you somehow think you can afford putting it on b3 (your original idea).

29.Nxf7 - Weird, he must have missed Rxg3 or something. Totally unnecessary move, it's not like he can't just play that any time over the next billion moves since his N will be on d6 seemingly forever. I see almost no way to properly remove it.

How far did you calculate Rxg3? Did you anticipate the possibility of Nxf7 or only spot Rxg3 after he played it?

I like that you didn't waste any time at the end and just made strong, normal moves to finish things quickly. I can only assume he didn't even consider that you don't have to take his R on d2 and instead can defend with your Q. This is a moment given the previous momentum where it could be something you miss too, rushing to trade Rs since you used to be under such pressure (and he's offering to trade a major piece off), so good job staying calm and playing Qh3.

In Game 1 I was in time trouble. These games are 90+30/move and at move 18 I only had 8 minutes left. I spent 30 minutes on 16. e5 and that is where things start to go south. I'm usually decent at time management, but not in this game. By move 30 I was playing on the increment. He admitted that he missed 27. Be3 in his calculations and that he definitely blundered, but I still only had 2 minutes on my clock at this point and the position is still uncomfortable. Rd8+ was just the first thing I saw and I played it planning to play Rxc8, but then Qc7 seemed to win a piece (obviously, I didn't calculate far as I only had 30 seconds left).

Yeah, in game 2 I need to put some of my notes into that game, but I left town right after playing it for work and haven't had time to revisit it since. All of this chess stuff takes a lot of time. I definitely remember spending time on f4, but I also know that I spent that time without doing a lot of calculation. My brain was muddled and I had no plan and couldn't calculate a response to any move I considered. I was looking at h6 and f6 as responses to f4 and I was playing it to expand my center and prevent Ne5 as I had the idea of routing my bishop to f3 and pushing e5 myself. Qb6 wasn't even on my radar in this position. I was blind to it or else I wouldn't have played f4. I have no defense.

Future GM is obviously a tongue in cheek joke, but he is currently 1991 CFC (approximately equivalent to USCF), which seems quite strong for a kid who is just barely 9.

Game 4 - Ok I'm going to stop looking at games but I did notice your comment. I guess these are in reverse chronological order, and since you play this same (I assume mainline) Grunfeld variation in 3 games I'd assume I'd be able to tell - but I couldn't without your note. Although it did seem you tweaked things in subsequent games, you still didn't seem to know what to do with your central pawns in any of the 3 games. There should be a bunch of high level games that illustrate what to do with them based on black's play I imagine.

Oh, no wonder. Ok, nevermind the last few moves. I mean, I still definitely didn't like them once he let you back into the game but it's very difficult to change gears when Black still has such a favorable game and you don't really have enough time for a 5 minute think or something.

Oh wow, that's what you meant with your comment. I have to admit I have some 20 minute thinks in games this year but I think they were only in situations that involved a lot of calculation and also along with positional considerations. The position before 16.e5 is not critical and even though I might be tempted to spend longer than 10 minutes on it, I can't imagine being okay with anything longer than 10. Honestly I think 5 or so would be better - most moves are probably "fine."

Yeah, yeah, nevermind. I blundered mate in two games within the last month and wasn't even quite on increment in either situation. You should feel pretty happy you found the way to get back into things, although, yeah, if he still had time you were likely getting ground down even without Rd8+.

I know! I used to blaze through Yusupov books (well, it felt like a blazing pace) but now that I play a game most weeks I can't find the motivation. Chess is hard work!

Ok, that is not a great sign. Is this a common thing in the middle of games? I certainly can attest to feeling this way sometimes and especially late in games where things have gone wrong, but except for 1 day last year not earlier on in games.

Hmm, well, if you spent time and missed ...Qb6+ it's hard to know what to say. Maybe going for a walk or clearing your head somehow when you notice such "muddled thoughts" creep in. And then "start over" with the position? I mean, even if ...Qb6+ isn't strong, it is pretty much the first thing every player as Black will spot, because it's check!

Yeah, that is very strong. Certainly the right kind of start for a future GM, .

This is the type of thinking I need to work on. c5 was a good idea and I need to accept that playing a pawn down isn't that bad in certain spots.

I have no response to this. I probably just decided it was a good spot to exchange bishops and abandoned my c5 plan.


Sometimes I get fixated with improving "bad" pieces and the knight on h7 felt misplaced and I was trying to reroute it. I was trying to get it into e6 and I was also trying to make my Rg6 plan work.

I only spotted it after he played Nxf7. He said he missed it. I didn't think Nxf7 was playable yet and it came as a shock to me so I am glad I had the Nxg3 resource.

Good comments - definitely giving me things to think about.

Cool thread.


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