ok he wants to hit e4, right?
the implode is even worse than before now.
i mean he still leads on material, development, position, and pawns. the only place that i am equal is on officers and diagonals. but that is going to change quickly if i don’t do something.
so i am thinking start breaking up his position and let’s see if we can get the initiative back.
i am thinking night to c3. that protects the bishop at d4. now he most likely will take that with his pawn otherwise i am just going to get him out of the way. and it also gives me some additional lines on the 1 line to protect against mate. while continuing to threaten mate at h7.
Why not just play c3 instead of Nc3?
and if this turns out like i think it will, nars gets the best supporting actor award. i can’t believe i didn’t see that.
i am always thinking about the major pieces (the officers) and neglect the fact that the little folks can be problematic. which is what his have been doing the whole stinking game. :smack:
i was going to take the bishop at d4 and then i realized he was mine. lol.
ok, let’s continue trying.
initiative is =, i really feel like i have made some stides in the last move or so
material is stil =-
position is kind of fluid. i’d give this a solid =-
pawns are still =- but not as good as before
leaders are still =
diagaonals and stuff are about =. maybe =-
developement is a soldid =-
but i feel like i have a chance to improve position and initiative so i feel like i should take that opportunity.
ok, chessic here is what i am thinking. i want to move the bishop to h5 threatening his knight. if he moves then he is dead. that way i start making him start responding to me so at least i can get initiative back to =.
Do you mean Bg5? I was thinking Bg5 too, but that leaves him with Nxe4 and your pressure is gone. I suggest Bf3, then following up with Bg5 if that still makes sense after his next move.
ok on the implode scale that is definitely what i am doing.
now black has the advantage in every area. i want to take his durn knight and at least get back a piece but i think that is what he wants me to do. because if i were him i’d be taking the pawn at h2 with the bishop creating check. that forces the king to either h1 or f1. so that kind of bites.
or i could just trade knights but that helps not at all with the h2 threat still looming.
screw it, i’d rather be down two pawns than a major piece and a pawn.
and once again i want to thank chessic and mal for this exercise. it has made me realize that my only plan is the general one of take pieces and eventually (hopefully) get his king.
also, i play a lot of ten minute blitz chess, that while fun and exciting, probably doesn’t do squat for learning theory. there are many moves that i would have normally made in that type of game that while going through your exercise makes me go, jeebus what the hell was i smoking when i first thought of that.
ok, i think he has me.
but to get full benefit i will still go through your exercises and see if i can pull off some sort of comeback. or at least continue to learn.
or i could pull a searching for bobby fischer moment and offer him a draw. when he replies, “look at the board” and i come back with, “i have and you have already lost, take the draw and we share the championship”.
combines poker into this puppy as well. and if he doesn’t accept or take my bluff i just whack him in the head with my five iron.
well, i saw that coming but don’t really have much to do about it at this point. i am going to move the king to h1 with the thought of getting the queen back to the h line and threatening that bishop. i’d dearly love to have some sort of massive trade at h2. how come i don’t think he will let that happen. oh well if he backs off i get some position as well as getting the chance to finally get my other knight involved in this fracas as well as freeing up the rook on a1.
and i just posted this on the game thread but i will also ask it here as well.
does the format of these games give the stronger player an additional edge? since there are basically no time constraints does that allow them an advantage that they would not otherwise have if they were “on the clock”. i mean i like the idea of writing it out and thinking about it but let’s be honest, i could look at the board for a week and not see half the stuff that mal and chessic see in a couple of minutes (at least not yet).
or does it work the other way and let the less experienced folk a chance to take more time?
well i resigned. he had me so that seems to be prudent.
all in all this was not only instructive but also enjoyable.
shout out to mal and chessic. chessic’s suggestions made me think through a whole bunch of stuff that i would not otherwise thought of.
i got impatient there at the end and did not do what chessic told me to which is why it ended the way it did.
those folks are the reason people like me like this board. they are nice and helpful. even though if you give me some more time i will kick your ass mal.
Well played, peeker - just by slowing down and having a go at thinking things through as Chessic advised you, you put up a much tougher fight than in our SDMB Round 1 game all those weeks ago. h1 was the wrong square for your King at the end - not only did you walk into a pin but you couldn’t cut the Bishop off with f4 either and neither could you help yourself to the a-pawn (22. Bxa7, Bd7 and you’re forced to give Queen for Rook on pain of Rxe1#). On f1 your King is protecting the Rook and there’s no pin on the long diagonal, although I am still very happy with my position.
The acronym Chessic gave you is a good one. Neither I nor (I expect) he actually go through those steps one by one when we’re thinking through a move because we already think routinely of development, pawn structure and so on, and neither of us would willingly go even a pawn down against the other unless we had a clear plan to profit by it. But that’s like saying a concert pianist doesn’t think about his scales any more - it’s true, but he spent years making them second nature in the first place.
I don’t think too much ten-minute blitz chess is good practice. There are a lot of games you can read through on chess.com which are, to use an unPC term, complete tardfights - I saw a link to one today from someone asking for a critique on his play in which he got away with a draw because his opponent stalemated him in a K+Q v K ending. :smack: Play to a sensible time limit, use the analyse feature for its intended purpose, and check in often for help and advice (but not to get your homework done for you - not that you were planning to naturally!).
Chessic no doubt has a recommended reading list if you’d like to improve, but I always enjoy game collections and after a while you do start spotting some tactical ideas and maybe getting a feel for position too.
Any questions after reading my thread?
ok, when you say a sensible time limit, what would that equate to?
i guess i am impatient in nature and while i can only equate with golf that takes up to five hours to complete at least you are doing something every couple of minutes or so (and moving around even when you are waiting).
if i would have threatened your knight with your bishop, what would you have done.
it felt like i could either get mate over on the g or h lines, or if nothing else gone to some sort of endless check kind of situation.
also, just another silly question. do you approach a game with a different philosophy depending on their rating?
what i mean is do you go “this sucker doesn’t have a chance” vs “oh noes, it’s annand” and play differently?
neta:
threatened your knight with your bishop = threatened your knight with MY bishop.
kind of like wanting to take my own durn bishop with my queen. lol
Peek, are you referring to Bg5 instead of Be3? Mal can say his response, but I’d guess he might have still traded off the knight for your bishop on e4. There was the chance you might have missed that you needed to capture with the rook instead of the queen. The trade seems to favor Black, too : His knight is stuck defending that mate threat, and your bishop controls more space. Not to mention that he’s already up in material.
Or just chase the bishop away with h6 if he wants to keep the knight. That might actually be a better move.
i think what this game taught me is that i get so worked up in if i do this then he does that kind of nonsense. whereas the really good players seem to be more concerned with position and a focused strategy. and please, i know i will butcher this, but something along the lines of i am going to control the xfile. and if i do that good things will happen as a matter of course.
at the end i got too focused on catching up on material that i totally spaced the positional stuff, which ultimately is what cost me. i mean the material stuff would have bitten me in the ear at some point, but not to the extent that the lack of looking at squares and diagonals did.
jeebus, i stink.