Chess improvement

Crushing 9 moves game

Today we'll see very short game that I played recently. My opponent did some seious mistakes which I converted to win.

[Event "Rated game, 100m + 0s"]
[Site "Main Playing Hall"]
[Date "2006.08.25"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Ibarix"]
[Black "Ase_1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C41"]
[BlackElo "1671"]
[Annotator "Fritz 9 (60s)"]
[PlyCount "17"]
[EventDate "2006.08.25"]

{C41: Philidor Defence} 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 {Consolidates e5}



This is Philidor defense. If you don't know how to play it, better skip this opening. Especially as black. I did some research on Philidor after this game and when you sum all the variations you see that very often white has the advantage, mate threats etc. and black doesn't come out with any good positions that justify this opening. This opening is considered good for white and passive for black.

3. d4 {White threatens to win material: d4xe5} Bg4

Of all the black possible answers that I looked at Bg4 and Nd7 are not considered good. Bg4 especially.

4. dxe5

After dxe5 black can't take back because of Qxd8, Kxd8, Nxe5. If this would happen, black would lose the right to castle, he'll be a pawn down and underdeveloped. He must instead play an in between move Bxf3.

4... Bxf3 (4... Nc6 !? {is worth looking at}) 5. Qxf3 +- dxe5

Already you can see why this Bg4 was wrong. White forced black to exchange his bishop for a knight. This way black has given up the bishop pair already and by doing this so early he has no options to play. He is commited to 1 bishop. The most logical move here is Bc4. It aims at f7 pawn threatening mate, it develops a piece and doesn't weaken the position.

6. Bc4



6... f6 ?? {another bit of territory lost} (6... Qf6 +-)

Oh my God! What a terrible thing to do. I calculated that after Bc4 I would almost certainly play Qb3 no matter how black responds.

7. Qb3 +- Ne7 (7... Qe7 {no good, but what else?} 8. Bxg8 Qb4+ 9. Nc3 Qxb3 10. Bxb3 Bc5 +-)

Another blunder by black. My threat was Bf7+ then Qe6. Also my threat is Qxb7. He can't possibly take care of both threats so I must get the upper hand whatever black chooses. Somehow I think black tought that I'll play Bxg8. But he obviously didn't see that my bishop doesn't have to go all the way up the board.

8. Bf7+ Kd7 9. Qe6# 1-0



Hooray! I won once again. This was forced. Well, 9 moves, beautiful mate.... What can you want more? Last couple of days I'm studying the openings, reading chess books, looking at some recnt tournament games and I noticed that I see more then before. Maybe I'm progressing. I looked at some 2100-2200 rated player games and I'm seeing some things better then they do. This is great motivation for me. I might not even be 1900 at all! I feel better, more confident when playing and considering my previous games where I did some inaccurate moves I think I'm slowly fixing those errors.

I've read Chris Ward: Improve your opening play and it helped just a bit to outline the basic ideas behind some openings. I have bunch of Starting out... series books and Winning with... series books. First I'll read general books and then I'll go into detail. So, I hope this blog helps some one and that you can see what to do and what not to do when playing chess. I find these games and personal annotations extremely helping both to me and also to others that read this. So, until next time, bye.

posted by Bark! @ 1:25 PM