Unpunished Blunder

-

I've started a new blog dedicated to chess. My previous chess related posts have been on my Pedagogical Posturing blog and I'll link to these posts at the end of this current post. In the meantime, Diagram 1 shows a screenshot of a position that was reached in my latest game as White on lichess.org in a 10 + 5 time control. I'd just played Re7, attacking Black's Queen, totally forgetting how vulnerable my Queen was. All Black needed to do was to play Qxe7 and it was game over for me. Fortunately, Black didn't spot my error and instead played Qb6, after which I had an easy win.


Diagram 1

Prior to this move, I still had 3:55 on my clock so I wasn't under too much time pressure. The position is instructive because it shows how dangerous it is to have a Queen on the same file as the opponent's Rook. Furthermore, the Queen is unprotected. I've embedded the game below.


So far I've managed to steadily increase my rating to a 1413 for the 10 + 5 time control. Figure 1 shows my progress. Since the start of May, I generally played each day. If I lose a game, I immediately play again in order to try to recover my lost points. So far I've been successful. 


Figure 1

Here are my chess-related posts from Pedagogical Posturing blog:
  1. More Rapid Games on 14th May 2025

  2. Google's NotebookLM on 23rd March 2025

  3. First Rapid Chess Game on 16th March 2025

  4. Shocking Chess Defeat on 16th March 2025

  5. Science Fiction Nonsense of 26th May 2024

  6. Chess Puzzle on 8th October 2023

  7. Indonesian Language Skills on 2nd February 2023

  8. Lichess: Another Win on 8th November 2021

  9. Chess Puzzles on 19th October 2021

  10. Stored Games on Lichess on 17th December 2020

  11. LICHESS.ORG on 13th May 2020

  12. An Historic Win on 16th March 2020

  13. A Win Against Fritz on 19th January 2019

  14. Chess: A Personal History on 8th January 2019

  15. Toroidal Chess on 7th January 2019

  16. Chess: An Unlikely Win on 24th February 2018

  17. Chess: The Fried Liver Attack on 4th March 2018

  18. Chess Diagrams on 2nd November 2017

  19. CHESS: Ding Lirin - China's highest ranked player ever on 8th November 2017

  20. CHESS: HOW TO EMBED A FULL CHESS GAME IN A BLOG on 10th December 2017

  21. CHESS: The Budapest Gambit on 10th December 2017

  22. CHESS: FISCHER versus TAL on 10th March 2018

  23. CHESS: THE ELEPHANT GAMBIT on 7th March 2018

  24. CHESS: THE MARSHALL ATTACK on 22nd February 2018

  25. CHESS: Nodirbek Abdusattorov - 2nd Youngest Chess Grandmaster in History on 3rd November 2017

  26. CHESS: A BUMBLED DRAW on 23rd December 2017

  27. CHESS: The Rules for Drawing on 4th December 2017

  28. CHESS: Holding On on 28th December 2018

  29. CHESS: More Master Mauling on 25th November 2017

Popular posts from this blog

Almost at 1500

-
Image
After beating a more highly rated player (1547), my rating jumped 10 points to 1497 and so I'm knocking on the door of 1500. I managed to avoid any blunders but committed three inaccuracies. The critical point in the game came on Black's 22nd move when he captured my pawn on g3 . I'm embarrassed to say that I never even saw it coming because I'd forgotten that my f pawn was pinned by Black's Knight. See Figure 1. Figure 1: link to game. This was a serious oversight on my part. The Black Bishop had been bearing  down on my King since move 18. Fortunately for me, this was Black's undoing. Three moves later he resigned. See Figure 2. My Queen check freed up the e4 square for my Knight where it forked the Bishop and Queen and even protected the f2 square. Figure 2 Figure 3 shows the statistics for the game: Figure 3 Even if I allowed Black to play Qxf2+ , there are no further threats once I move my King. Black overestimated his prospects with the move he made whi...
Read more

Handling Time Pressure

-
Here is a crazy game for which I made the following comments on Lichess: Another comedy of errors in which I made four blunders compared to White's five. I should have lost but managed a draw by three-fold repetition in severe time pressure. My mistake was advancing my e-pawn instead of my d-pawn. The opening was a Sicilian after all and Black needs to advance his d-pawn if he hopes for equality. After White's advance of his d-pawn to d5, my position became hopelessly cramped. It was a miracle that I was able to salvage a draw but once again it reminds me to never give up no matter how hopeless my position looks. A draw by repetition is what saved me in this game. I was happy with how I handled the time pressure. By the way, both of us received zero points for the draw. I haven't played the Sicilian for a while, preferring the Caro-Kann or Pirc Defence, both of which lead to fairly cramped positions for Black. However, before I start a game I should have a definite idea as ...
Read more