Back in the Saddle Again

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The day following my twin disasters as reported in my previous post And Just Like That, I managed to lucky win a blunderful game and reclaim 9 rating points. I played around 5am in the morning having gotten up and had breakfast at 3:30am. I watched Agadmator's review of the Round 7 Gukesh versus Arjun classical game and the Carlson versus Nakamura Armageddon game. So I was fresh and in chess thinking mode.

That didn't stop me making the first blunder of the game and overall I made three as opposed to my opponent's two. Figure 1 shows my final blunder.


Figure 1

As can be seen, if not completely blind, the White pawn on f4 is pinned and so Black's move is simply Rxe5. Fortunately, Black missed this and was tempted into playing Qc2+. My mistake was to be obsessed with doubling my Rooks on the h file. While this is a splendid tactic, it's useless unless the pawn on h6 is undermined and that's only going to happen if White advances either his f or g pawns. This open h file often occurs after a Knight attacks and captures the opponent's Bishop after it retreats to g3. My timing was wrong. FIRSTLY, advance the pawn or pawns to within striking distance of the opponent's h pawn and SECONDLY double Rooks.

Figure 2 shows the statistics of the game:


Figure 2

As can be seen, it was a game of fluctuating fortunes and it was more that Black lost rather than White won. At this 1500 level, you can blunder three times as I did and still win but against higher rated players I will be punished instantly. I need to raise my game. I usually emerge from the opening phase of my games with equality or better but then I often dither about and make poor choices that allow my opponent to gain the initiative.

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