Disclaimer: I'm not very good at chess, leaving some personal notes here to try and get better.
Played a few bullet games and won with estimated ELO between 1600-1700, which I'm pleased to see. I'm trying to get back to my old strength at least (was between 1500-1600) and I'm performing a little better under time pressure. I want to analyze the one longer time control game I played, against a human:
Game 1
Against human (level 1). Opened with the main line Vienna game. Game outcome: win. Accuracy: 91%, ELO for game: 2150. My opponent played pretty well, estimated ELO 1750. I played a standard opening, Black countered with Owen's defense and a double fianchetto:
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| End of opening. |
My weakest opening move was this exchange:
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| Move 7. |
Analysis favors dxe5. The following line doesn't make it super clear why so I want to consider from a fundamentals perspective. Having the pawn on e5 is good, it is strongly backed up by the knight and bishop. It also probes farther into Black's territory, forcing them to either deal with the more limited space or exchange, breaking their pawn structure (since they will be left with a lone pawn on the e file). By contrast, having the knight there is nice for a second but Bxe5 8. dxe5 leaves with me with a weaker pawn and Black has a strong three pawn chain ready to go and disrupt. I think the lesson to learn here is, when faced with multiple pieces to perform a capture, strengthen as many balances simultaneously as possible. From here on, I played pretty well. Ironically, having the knight on e5 led to this really strong position:
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| Move 17. |
It wouldn't have been possible without the knight where it was, but that's why Black should have kicked the knight as soon as it could, to avoid exactly this scenario. I realize that this tactic wasn't set up because Nxe5 was a good move from me but because Black didn't punish me for it properly, so lesson still learned. From there on I didn't make any suboptimal moves and we arrived at
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| Move 26. |
At this point I was able to force exchanges of the knight and bishop, and advanced a pawn to promotion. Black resigned.
Lessons learned:
- When faced with multiple pieces to perform a capture, strengthen as many balances simultaneously as possible.
Previously on this blog:
