An Online game I won tonight that I'm really pleased with.

I won a lovely game tonight on playchess. I was playing a much lower rated player but he played fairly solidly for his level, no bad blunders at least not early on and I was really pleased with the way I was able to win his crucial central d pawn, destroy his center and then pounce with a devastating coordinated attack that cumilated in a lovely Queen sac and Royal Fork. It's the first time I've had such a satisfying end to a game and I really feel the ICS material has been the key, for the forcing of me to think all the time of CQS and TO DO Lists and also for having me actually do all the exercises they set.

There were a few errors in my game, the opening wasn't played brilliantly by me, some better tactical shots I missed etc but on the whole I'm really pleased with this game, mainly for the perfect coordination of my attack at the end and the opportunity to sac my queen and win.

I've given some light commentary but no Rybka analysis, if anyone is interested feel free to run it through an engine but I have Rybka too and already know some better moves I could have played.

Still for my first month of training this is very encouraging for me!

For black, i don't like the opening, i would prefer black bishop fianchetto with Nf6 knight and king castled.

Whatever 10... Bb7 is a key wrong move i think, for him, because the exchange in the center, block this newly developped bishop. I think black should have taken in dxc4 first and then developp the bishop. Here the position of the d5 pawn is awful, if this pawn is lost, well, it should have been activated before.

18. b2 is also possible as a bit more agressive waiting move

Moves that follows comes directly from the bad decision of black regarding d5 pawn, and you well take advantage of it. But again i think, black should have limited this to only d5 pawn loss by playing 22.... b5 fortifying the queenside! And effectively rybka shows a -1.00 after this move, loss is strictly limited to 1 pawn.

23. and following, why not directly Ne4 and the nice Rook+King fork on Bf6 and in the same time Rook+Rook on d6 ?
This seems more natural (and powerful) to me, regarding the comment and what happens next, you seem never have considered it.

25. Nd5! is very good.

27.... f5?? is self-suicide for black, panic maybe.

Hey HangingKing thanks for the feedback.

Regarding not playing Ne4 on move 23 you are right I didn't consider it.

I'm still only a beginner with less than a year experience and I was following the advice of Yasser Sarewein in his book 'Winning Chess Strategies' where he says when you are ahead in material consolidate your position before worrying about gaining any more material and only then look for forcing moves and attacks etc.

I saw that after 22...Qc7 my queen had no escape squares and so Rd8 would be crushing. I was looking for a safe haven for my queen and found that Nf3-d2 both gave my queen a safe route home and also attacked the pawn on c4.

As I was playing online I was only taking maybe a minute to move and this seemed like a perfect continuation, certainly not a bad move.

I can see straight away that Ne4 is much better, and maybe I would have found that in a real OTB game but at the moment I'm happy with the fact that I didn't just play an irelevent move and blunder away my queen!

I'm concentrating on playing solidly and avoiding making mistakes which is really going well for me so far.

In slow games on playchess now I'm rated at 1776 with 9 wins and 3 draws since my last defeat. My actual over the board ECF (English Chess Federation) rating is currently only 82 which I think is around 1300-1400 elo so I'm just happy to be clearly playing way above my current supposed level.

I post this game to illustrate that even with closed positions (here an e4-e5 old Steinitz variation) we can have tactical destruction like in open positions.

Even if my choices at some moments are not the best ones, and maybe the classical sacrifice knight sacrifice on the 'g' is refutable, I was really pleased with the rythm of my game, there is a capture every 2 or 3 moves, which kept my opponent under high pressure, and prevent him from finding correct answers i guess.

I finally concluded thanks to the good position of bishop on d8 in endgame !

So even with closed positions, it's not an obligation to get positionnal play, tactical fight is also very possible.