Continuing with the theme from yesterday, I have decided to watch another video from the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta. GM Ben Finegold looks over notable endgames played by different GMs/Super-GMs in this video and I thought that this video would give me a wider variety of different endgames as opposed to the one from yesterday in which all the endgames were played by the same player (Karpov).
This was a very good video and Finegold stressed adamantly about the value of king activation in certain positions (usually when there were no queens on the board). He also went very in depth regarding when to trade pieces.
Continuing with my one game per day strategy of improvement, I played another game on chess.com. I was very uncomfortable in the opening, but I managed to come away with another win. I think I have been dedicating so much of my time to studying endgames that my opening knowledge has suffered slightly. I might watch an a few videos regarding openings tomorrow or over the next few days.
Link to Today's Game: https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/3641398330
10 minutes blitz
White: Vithadang 1586 vs Black: Portalmaker (me) 1634
Summary:
The game I played today was another Sicilian variation. I ended up with a few pawns up out of the opening but I was quite far behind in development and was pretty uncomfortable until nearly the end of the game. My opponent lost on time, but I am very confident I would have won regardless.
Analysis
On move 5 my opponent played e5. The computer does not like this move but it made me very uncomfortable and I wasn't sure if I should take the pawn. I ended up just moving my knight to d7 but looking back the analysis says I should have taken the pawn. On move 8 i played e5 but I didn't see that he could play his knight to e4 which is a very nice square for the knight. I should have taken more time on this move and I probably would have seen Nf6 which is definitely the best move. After this I ended up a pawn ahead but I had a sort of wonky pawn structures blocking in my dark square bishop. On my queenside my queen was nearly in a trapped position and I blundered by playing Qb4 on move 19; however, my opponent did not capitalize on this mistake. On move 20 I played Be7 to begin to maneuver my bishop around to f6 because I was planning on playing e4 eventually and this would leave my bishop on a nice diagonal. I should have probably played Nd4 instead to fork his queen and light square bishop and if he takes it with his bishop I can fix my doubled pawns, this was a move I was thinking about playing next but it would have been too slow because he moved his queen. My opponent blundered his knight by playing Nd6 on move 22 but I did not see the sequence in which I could win the piece (22. Ndx+ Rxd6 23. Rxd6 c4) which would have resulted in me up a piece. At this point I am now up 2 pawns and my opponent is trying to make an attack on my king by playing Bd5, I defended this by playing Qa4 and Rd7. I did not see that he had a mating attack here that would have lost me the game, but he didn't see it either. The rest of the game was just my opponent blundering a piece and me defending from his attack before he/she ran out of time.
Where To Improve:
I need to focus more of my studying on the opening and I need to pay attention to when my queen is is nearly trapped. My dark square bishop was not developed for most of the game and I need to develop it sooner. There were lots of errors in this game that I could have avoided and I will think longer on each move to try to avoid mistakes.
Suggestions:
I would really like the blog to be very easy to read and understand, if you have any suggestions regarding formatting or studying ideas, please let me know. Additionally, I was thinking about including screenshots of positions from the game, but I am not sure if this is the best idea.
Ending chess.com rating: 1641 (Blitz)
Ending chess.com rating: 1641 (Blitz)
