Game 1

Hello. I plan to post my games here with my own annotations. My ranking as I've said before is about 1700-1800ish. I base this ranking on players I've played on gameknot (blitz style games). Though blitz style games I understand I cannot benifit fully from using all the instructions gained from my 1st month lesson. I can use what I've learned from here against my games. Hopefully it is of use to others who examine it.

This game was vs a 1888 rated player. He seemed to have made 2 major blunders; but, I show this game anyways because I believe there's always room for improvement.

Ill post the game here and describe my plans below. Ill even evaluate the game against Fritz 9.0 and show you what it finds.




1. Nf3 * I chose this move because I believe it's the most flexible move of all the openings. If you think about it, several of the openings use Nf3 so why not play it first to see what kind of defense black plans to use.

1... Nf6 Natural developing move but doesn't tell me much about black's choice.

2. d4 I chose d4 because black didnt dare sticking a pawn in the middle, so I will.

2... b6 So now I know he wants to fianchetto his bishop

*To-Do List (Limit the scope of the a8-h1 diagnonal)

3. c4 Place another pawn in middle with the possibility of playing d5 to block the bishop's scope and achieve my short term goal.

3.. Na6? I was shocked when I saw this move. Since neither of his center pawns have moved yet and now he's playing a knight on the edge of board. Nethertheless I made a note to myself he may plan to play c5 in the distant future.

4. d5 Im not sure if this was the best move at the time, since it is another pawn move and my opponent is about to develop a 3rd piece; but I didnt want to pass up the opportunity to not block the a8-h1 diagnonal. Also, since he played Na6 instead of Nc6 that means he is not covering the d4 square so Im making room for one of my pieces to possibly move onto d4. The downside to d5 is that I allow his knight to come to c5; but, I concluded my knight on d4 is better than his knight on c5.

5.... d6 after he makes this move I make a note to myself 'theres a hole on c6'.
*My new To-Do list is fortify my pawns in the middle and castle ASAP as to take advantage of the fact his Queen's knight is out of play and his Queen's bishop is out of play. With d6 I considered the possibility he may castle queenside since his dark squared bishop is still stuck behind pawns.

6.... e6 it appears he's trying to get his bishop out.

7. Nd4 I remember thinking of 3 choices: Nd4, Be3 and Bg5. I chose this move because I trying to provoke the e pawn to come to e5. I want the board to be locked up so to minimize the chances of his queenside bishop of play. I didnt go with Bd3 because it didnt seem to do anything for my position except give me the option to castle kingside. I didn't play Bg5 because if black plays h6 my bishop would either have to capture or just retreat, and that only helps get a possible headstart if we were to castle opposite of one another (example h6, g5, Nh5) and kingside pawn storm. Remember I still think he plans to castle queenside.

8. Nf5 I spent most of my time on this move probably. I knew I couldnt do Nc6 since that would simply trade his entombed bishop for my knight. My other choices were Nc2 or Nf5. I plan to check this game with Fritz afterwards, but perhaps Nc2 was better since if black plays g6 he gets a tempo off of my knight and then can play Bg7; but, when I thought of this possibilty it wasnt so bad. Losing 1 tempo for black to place his bishop on g7 meant a rook on g8 and h8 would have a bishop in the way if we both castled opposite of one another. This move provokes his g pawn to move forward and create dark square weaknesses around his kingside pawns. (Increases the value of my darksquared bishop).

9. Bd3 I didnt mind giving up the bishop pair since the position was locked. Besides my light squared bishop is on the squares as my center 2 pawns so I'm looking to trade it since its inside my pawn chain.

9.... h6 Im confused about this move. He preventing Bg5 or is he preparing to attack my kingside? I know his bishop on f8 cant go anywhere until my knight is chased away so I continue.

10. Be3 This move wasnt thought out properly. I wanted to be able to take out the knight on c5 if i wanted to so I posted my bishop on e3. I completely missed the fact that by doing so took away a square of my knight. The only other move I was considering was f4, but f4 seems to open the position up and I want it closed. I noticed 2 pieces on e4 so I had bells going off to keep an eye on it. At this point I know for black to be successful he has to play f5 at some point to 'free' himself. His knight on f6 seems to be halting all of that from happening. So I made a note to myself that if he moves that knight know it's about to come.

10... Nxd3? No idea why he would trade that good knight for my crappy bishop but I knew now I HAD to keep the position closed at all costs.

11.... Qd7 here comes queenside castling.

14. Rae1 I know the battle will be on E/F - files so I slide my rook on down.

14.... Ng4 Knight moves I know f5 is coming now. At this point I really don't have a plan, it's sorta like me reacting to my opponents plan. I know I have to attack somehow but, there seems to be no serious weakness in black's camp. I guess my plan is just to improve my pieces positions.

15. h3 I played this move almost impulsively. I dont mind losing my bishop, as knights seem to do better in locked positions. Not to mention I get an open file on the F-file for my rooks.

17. Rf2 I plan to dbl up rooks on F-File

18.... f6 I was so ready for f5, well I think I was, but he plays f6 instead. At this point I used a lot of my time to come up with a plan. I couldnt see one except trade queens. With queens off the board I figured the position would favor me since the board is locked and I have knights... so my plan was to move Qe2-Qg4.

19.... h5 My opponent must have seen where I was going and now I see h4 coming so my knight has to go somewhere else.

20. Rf3 this is where I have the idea to manevuer my knight to h1-f2-g4 to help my dbl rooks on the f6 pawn if he chose to play h4.

20.... g5? big hole on f5.

21. Nf5 attacking the bishop and a great square for my knight. My knight got a 1 year lease on this square since he didnt have any pawns to chase him away.

21... g4 he wants to open a file to my king. Notice the bishop on g7 is messing up his attack. Its just in the way.

22.... gxh3?? I dont think he saw this or perhaps he became impatient.

24.... hxg2 very sneaky move. Had I rushed to take the c pawn he would have equalized the game again. Unless my calcuation is wrong, but if I Rxc7+ then queensac by Qxc7, Nxc7, gxf1Q+, Kxf1, Kxc7.

25. Rf3 I dont want to take the pawn on g2 to give black counterattack chances. For example Rg8 pinning my rook and winning the G-file.

26. Rh3 Again.. im trying to limit all of black's counterplay so I block his final army towards my king.

27. Nxc7 now i can take the pawn finally. Rxc7 loses a piece to a6.

28. Ne6 if black takes i get a strong passed pawn

My plan here is trival move my king to f3 where he will be safe from attacks and use the pawn on e7 to force my win. If you watch how black tries to get to my king with his queen but she cant. Eventually she must return to help with the E pawn.

I know this is long.. and I had no expectation of making it this long.. hopefully it is helpful. Im no grandmaster so any suggestions or ideas Im certainly interested to hearing. My major drawback is finding a strategy. And of course stupid errors. which i must say from this 1st month's teachings it's helping me recognize the consequences of my moves!

Oh and let me quickly evaluate this through fritz and say which moves fritz said were blunders.

Fritz didnt like (1 = pawn.. most of these disagreements with fritz are .25)
4. d5
5.... d6
7. Nd4
9... h6
15. h3 (Fritz sees the game dead even after this move)
15... Nxe3
16. fxe3 (weird after this move it gives black .25 lead)
16.... O-o-O (after black castles queenside it gives white .50 lead) almost a full pawn.
17. Rf2 (dead even game again) (seeing this just goes to show my strategy is what's flawed.)
19. Qe2
20.... g5 (fritz really disliked this move)
22.... gxh3 (this move is a major blunder) white with 2.25 lead
23.... Qd8 white with 3.25 lead
26. Rh3 (Went from 3.80 to 3.20)

The rest I wont list. Though I probably should list the alternate moves fritz had for each of these- I think Im done for now for typing on this evaluation. Haha; but, if you're just curious these are just the list of moves I saw fritz disagreed with.

If anyone with a higher rating than myself could re-examine this game and give me some feedback on this thread I think it would be helpful not only to myself but those who read it. This is my 1st month using this school and I'm enjoying it so far. Wish me luck on my goal to 2000 elo.

Gave it a quick look.

(remark : Please post the pgn text along with the diagram, much easier to put in engine next. For some reason this chessflash utility doesn't allow to save it, and you have to quote the msg, extract the pgn from the html code, etc...)

I'm 1650-1750 in play, like you, here are my thoughts.

First, i want to say it again, at our level, a 0.25 evaluation means really nothing, focus on 0.75 minimum. At 1800 level, you should get rid of tactical blunders first, and a 0.25 diff is not tactical but strategical.
I often notice in my games that i ruin somehow good overall plan with tactical blunders, and it is the same here for black.

Second, it's difficult to judge the game since before move 20 game is equal, and after move 22 game is dead lost for black.

Fritz is not the only one to dislike 20... g5, this completely blow up black pawn structure. It's clear that f6 pawn is weak, and advancing g5 just make f6 pawn a little worse, backward pawn now.
Also it is obvious that your Ng3 targets f5 square, and g5 frees it. A move like h5 forcing passive Nh1 is much more valuable for black.

So let's concentrate on the start of the game.

I notice you get rid a bit to easily of your bishop pair... Look at the game after only 16 moves, black has bishop pair against knight pair, and moreover both his bishops are fianchettoed, a good position for bishops.
'c6' push would have annoying for you i guess, definitely fixing your doubled pawns on the e file, and opening the position for the bishops.

For example you can save one bishop by 15. Fd2, black knight won't fly away, and you can push h3 on next move and blow the center with f4 next.

Last thing about 16.fxe3, black should have castle short, o-o-o just barry light square bishop, and since dark square one is blocked in the center, this left nothing to black.

Finally, i discussed more about black play than your play, which was afterall a very good conversion of the black mistake made in 20. g5. Good game, but you should focus on analysing either your forced wins, or your losts. Games win by oppponent major blunder at early stage of the game doesn't bring much.

Awesome, great comments. It would be much easier to follow with comments in the actual game so I don't have to go back/forth from game to comments.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be sure to make my future games easier to read.