To start off this blog, I have decided to work on my endgame this week. I am not really sure the best way to study yet, the majority of my chess knowledge has been gained through YouTube videos and playing. So, I will start out by watching YouTube. The video I decided to watch was from the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta. GM Ben Finegold looks over several endgames played by Karpov in this video and I have always been a big fan of Karpov's methodical play-style so it seems like a perfect start.
The video was very informative and I learned a good amount about keeping pieces on the correct squares in the endgame. The pawn structures presented in the video as well as when to freeze pawns were very valuable.
I have decided to play only one game on chess.com per day in order to make sure I put as much effort into the game as possible rather than spamming games and losing concentration. I will practice on lichess in addition to my chess.com games, but I will not post lichess games to the blog unless they are very interesting.
Link to Today's Game: https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/3638756083?tab=analysis
10 minutes blitz
White: Zakmer 1649 vs Black: Portalmaker (me) 1625
Summary:
The game I played today was a Sicilian variation that I had never played before. I captured my opponents bishop (we traded bishop for knight) with a pawn toward the outside (5. dxc6) early on because I was planning on castling Queenside and attacking my opponent's Kingside because he castled so quickly (4. O-O). My opponent blundered a few times and resulted in me gaining a material advantage before mating him.
Where To Improve:
Since the players at this rank often blunder or make mistakes, I sometimes make a move in hopes that they make a less than ideal move and this often ends up resulting in me gaining an advantage. I think for future games I will try harder to find the best move rather than second tier moves such as these. My main mistakes were not capitalized on by my opponent; however, I did not see a move where my opponent could have pushed his pawn to e4 and blocked my dark squared fianchettoed bishop.
Suggestions:
This is my first time writing a blog post, if you have any suggestions for how I can improve, especially regarding the the format, please let me know. If you have any video/content recommendations feel free to comment them below.
Ending chess.com rating: 1634 (Blitz)
Could you share with me some material about Karpov's style? I would like to learn about his positional games. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteSure! Here is an interview of Karpov, he talks a little bit about his style and his outlook on the game. https://en.chessbase.com/post/big-think-interview-with-anatoly-karpov.
DeleteThere are lots of videos on YouTube that focus on Karpov and his famous games. Here are a couple good videos that look at some of his games in addition to the one I posted in the blog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enR0ntHVjG8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUd4jPIX0Gs
I was thinking about analyzing some individual games of top GMs in later blog posts, let me know if you would be interested in this.