Thursday, 29 May 2025

Meeting Blunder With Blunder

Even though I ended up winning this game, I missed a wonderful opportunity when Black blundered. This is shown in Figure 1 where I thought I'd blundered by allowing my Queen and Bishop to be forked by the Black pawn.


Figure 1

I captured the pawn with my Bishop, reasoning that I'd at least get two pawns for my lost piece. However, this was a blunder because capturing with the Knight leads to a catastrophe for Black if he captures my Knight. The Black King is brutally exposed and must block the Bishop's protection of the Knight. See Figure 2.


Figure 2

I totally missed this unfortunately but it goes to show how great opportunities can be missed. I'm currently rated at 1464 after two wins and one loss for the day.

Ouch

I've been playing 15 | 10 on chess.com , meaning that the players have 15 minutes per game with 10 second increments. This is a comfor...