This is a recent chess game that I played. I would appreciate any comments or tips on improving my game. I was white.
Nice game. I don’t feel like I can talk with you without seeing more of your style. Do you follow a style of any sort? That may help.
I’m still a novice player, so I don’t have much of a style yet. I favor queen’s pawn openings, and I try to play as aggressively as possible. Beyond that, I’m not sure what my style is.
Queen’s pawn openings are not exactly what some would consider aggressive. They can be pulled off more or less by anyone, but there are certain styles that develope over time. If you take some of the leading past and present world champions there is always a definable style. Some are classic aggrssive, some are traditional. Like Bobby Fischer who liked straight lines and silent aggression. Kasparov was a dynamic attacker who pulled 6-piece brilliant attacks against the King and as we all know more often than not was the winner.
I have not seen you play so I do not really want to evaulate one game displayed here, I could grossly misinterpret your skills.
Fair enough. 
Yeah. I’m kind of stuck on the queen pawn thing, though. I need to work through some e-pawn openings, but I’ve had much better luck with the d-pawn, so in the spirit of making it to a playable middlegame, I have been focusing on the d-pawn.
Converting to pgn:
Queen’s pawn openings tend to lead to quiet positional games, with pressure building up somewhere until it breaks. I like those games personally, but I don’t play regularly any more. BTW, if you got this from “How to Think Ahead in Chess” throw the book away and forget the Stonewall.
As for your game, I’m not familiar with the line it took, and I don’t have MCO handy, so I don’t know how far you were following book, but 5.Nc3 doesn’t look good to me. It blocks off the c2 pawn and allows the d4 pawn to be protected only by the queen. At quick glance, 5.Nbd2 looks interesting, or even 5.e3.
7.e4 seems to give something up too soon. What was your motivation? Did you just want to undouble the pawn? It seems like you’re offering a pawn for very little compensation.
9.Qd3 I would have thought about 8.Bd3 instead.
15.Bf2 any reason you didn’t just go 15.Be1 threatening the queen and allowing the Bishop to follow through to c3? It just doesn’t seem to do much when the Knight is backed up by 2 pawns.
I think black flubbed big time with 17…Qb5 and should have done 17…cxb4. Your kingside would have been exteremely vulnerable at that point, and his black bishop could have come into play–very dangerous if the bishop gets to b4. Also, Qxa3+ becomes a threat.
21.Kxd3 – why not Rxd3 keeping the pressure on the Knight, and holding the open file? It would also allow doubling the rooks by R8d1 later.
What were the time controls for the game? Also, FYI there’s a great program for viewing games called XBoard (or WinBoard) at http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html
Nother point…
I think 12.c3 would have mad a huge difference. You’d have owned the d file after that, and your Q could have gone to b3 unchallenged–threatening b7 as well as f7.
If he plays Qb4, then Qh3+ with a discovered attack on the queen. Study your tactics.
Before that, 15. Be1 would have been better. You remove the bishop from attack with a gain of tempo. Bf2 just loses a tempo. And if you want it on f2, just put it there after he moves his queen, who is pretty well posted.
You made a huge mistake with 19.Nc3.
But, he made a huge mistake with 22. . .Na5. The lesson here is that after a huge material gain like he got, he wasn’t cautious enough. He just had to trade pieces, destroy all counterplay, and should have an easy win.
Also, a pretty big rule of thumb when playing d-pawn openings is to play c4 before playing Nc3. Typically in d-pawn openings, you’ll attack the center with the c-pawn before the e-pawn. However, since you took on f3 you were able to keep some central control after playing e4.
Try a place like rec.games.chess.analysis for more help.
Get software (chess base light for instance) that will allow you to see where you made mistakes.
But, study tactics. You missed an attack on his queen and an attack on your queen. Discovered attacks with check are very powerful. Always consider all possible checks.
Your mate at the end was nice, but that was “obvious” tactics. You should have seen more in the middle game.
I should have said 15…0-0-0 was a huge mistake in my first sentence.
Slight hijack: How long do you have to play chess before you can “read” a game from the move list?
I didn’t.
Yeah, I had not encountered the bishop move 4 . . . bg4 before. I regretted the move, and several other moves were made to compensate for it later on. I liked 5.e3, but I am always saving up for e2-e4, even where it doesn’t make sense.
I hoped to undouble the pawn, by centralizing it, and remove some pawn cover from the center, because it looked like black would be late in castling.
I was, in retrospect.
I wanted to castle queenside because of the g-file. So I put the queen in the only place it seemed to fit. Again, a costly mistake in the end.
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I did not look at that choice carefully enough. I was afraid that I would wind up exchanging queens if I attacked his queen there, and I was not ready to do that.
I was surpised by this move. I expected something along the lines you have described.
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I analyzed this move badly. I was afraid of 21 . . . Nc4+, blocking the d-file
Time controls were not a factor. I played this on Yahoo! with 10 min/move. The grouchiness and impatience of the other player being the true time control in such games. Had problems installing the viewer, but found a substitute in the meantime.
A great idea. I tried the f-pawn again, with the unsubtle idea of clearing the center for play against the king.
I kicked myself repeatedly for missing this, especially after giving up my queen.
I totally missed it until the queen was gone.
At this point I was looking for opportunities to draw. I was very surprised that he moved his knight there, and was still sure he would comeback somehow. I was aiming for a perpetual check.
Thanks **Trunk ** and emarkp, your comments have been very helpful.
You could play for 50 years and still not do it if you never practiced it. I’ve heard that learning ‘blindfold chess’ which is essentially what that would be is not that hard to learn but I’ve never tried.
I didn’t read it from the list. I dropped it into a program.
Oh, unless you’re talking about “reading” the game by being able to translate those moves to a board. That takes about 5 minutes to learn.
gfactor – right now your major drawback is definitely “tactics”. Winning the queen wasn’t necessarily obvious because it was 2 move tactic, but losing your queen was a 1 move tactic.
Your opening was a bit weak but you still came out of the opening fine. You just missed some major tactics along the way.
Thanks Trunk.
Do you have any recommendations of books or the like for improving my tactical skills?
I’m new to the game. So this might be one of those cases when you know more than me, and I’m giving you really dumb advice.
I guess I really didn’t see how you intended to win the game from the opening. I didn’t see you fight for a key square, like establishing your knight or bishop on E5. Also, I didn’t see any attempt to backup a central pawn push with a rook. I understand it’s speed chess, though.
E3 before B1-C3 would have protected your knight. B1 to D2 also protects the knight. If you’re looking to establish a knight on E5, the queenside knight on D2 allows you to quickly cycle your knights. If your kingside knight gets taken, the queenside knight can quickly go to F3 and then E5.
After Black plays F7-F6, there is a beautiful hole for your knight on the G file. It can be supported with your rook, and you can even bring the queen to H5. At this point, I’m focusing in on exploiting this weakness. Whenever there is a hole in your opponent’s pawn structure, look to establish your knight there and then back it up with supporting pieces. Once again, I understand you were playing a quick game.
As a beginner, I find the London System a lot easier than the Torre.
One Thousand and One Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations
Essential.
This is a small book that is easy to carry around all day. When you are waiting in line, or riding the bus, solve some chess problems… My tactics improved dramatically after a few weeks of this. This books just beats the tatical manouvers of chess into your brain! They say it takes two years to solve all the problems in this book.
These two books by Jeremy Silman helped me more than anything else. They are focused on strategy but cover tatics (and everything else). Deep strategy is the hardest thing for most chess players to learn.
How to Reassess Your Chess: The Complete Chess-Mastery Course
The Amateur’s Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery
Thanks
bookbuster and yellowcakesolid.
The black queen appears to have an escape hatch at a4.
To Gfactor
I use the book called “Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games”.
But I think any tactics book is good. There’s one called “Winning Chess Tactics” by Seirawan that has gotten good reviews.
I think that some chess tactics books are better than others, but the key is just to study and work at it no matter what book you have.
I’d take Guy A studying 10 hours per week out of a poor book over Guy B studying 8 hours a week out of a good book.
That book I mentioned has TONS of ‘Mate in 1’, ‘Mate in 2’ and ‘Mate in 3’ problems. But, it also has a lot of great middle game positions, “find the best move” (which are very helpful), lots of miniature games (which are helpful in a way), and lots of simple endgame positions (which are helpful but other endgame books are better).
Get it used for $19 or so. Its well worth it. It’s HUGE, though.
I’m not great tactically, but I’m a lot better than I use to be.
I have access to that one. I will have to check it out this weekend.
That’s what I need right now. Especially with explanations of the choices made.