Missed Opportunity

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Today I won another game and am now at my highest rating ever (1487) but I did miss an opportunity which the computer analysis flagged as a blunder but is more properly termed a missed opportunity I think. After all, my position was was still fine after the move that I made (b5). Figure 1 shows the situation. I should have played 11 ... Nxd4 and if 12. Nxd4 then 12 ... Qb4+ winning the Knight.


Figure 1: link to game

The lesson to be learned though is to always keep on eye on a King that's exposed in the centre of the board. I saw that the d pawn was protected by the Knight and didn't look any further. In the game that followed White spent too long on his moves and abandoned the game with less than a minute left on his clock. Two more wins and I should climb above 1500 which will be satisfying.

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Unpunished Blunder

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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 contr...
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Almost at 1500

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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...
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