Three Blunders Versus Four

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My rating continues to slowly climb. It's now 1519. In my latest game, I made three blunders versus my opponent's four. Figure 1 shows my first blunder in response to Black's f6. I intentionally moved my Bishop to e5 when it was attacked by the Knight. I had intended to provoke Black's pawn move and then retreat my Bishop to g3 - which I did. This was regarded by the computer analysis as a blunder. Prior to playing 8. Bg3 my position was assessed as +4.7. Afterwards it was just +0.7. I was still slightly better but I had squandered an opportunity.


Figure 1: link to game

The recommended move was Nh4. Ah! It's easy to see now how much better this move is but I had already made up my mind to retreat the Bishop and didn't assess the new position. Fortunately for me, Black continued to make poor moves and I quickly won. As my opponents get stronger, I can't afford to throw away opportunities like I did in this game.

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