"His knight has spooky moves" great quote. I will be using that with appropriate credit, of course.
Whenever I see lower rated games, it reminds me of when I was learning chess. I always wanted to make my opening moves some kind of pattern or balance the board - i.e. symmetry.
I would suggest studying opening move tactics - here is a great website that shows you the names and appropriate counter moves to keep balance - http://www.eudesign.com/chessops/ch-clear.htm
Spend some time on that site and get more comfortable with opening moves. You will find that many of the middle and end game uncertainties you have will start to sort out when your pieces are better placed in the opening.
Overall, nice game.
At move 15, I think Nxe6 is good, following up with Re1, pinning the queen to the king.
Move 19, Nxd5 wins a free pawn.
You made a lot of quality moves. On move 20, Nxd5 would have forked the Q and R. The d-pawn was pinned. The queen trade was okay - when you're ahead material, it's good to trade off pieces. There were better moves, but it wasn't bad thinking. Your move 28 was much better than thekentuckyimbroglio's suggestion. If 28.d5 then 28...Nxd5. You were correct that 28. Ra6+ was better than Ra1. I really liked the way you finished with 40.g7! Other moves worked, but this finishes it with style.
up to move 13 you have played very strongly. You used your attacks well, and for your efforts, you are a full piece ahead with solid position and development. Your biggest concern there is getting trapped by pawns, the b3 bishop for example could get trapped that way if careless (a3 makes a nice spot if he tries this).
14) because his pawn attacks your piece, the queen or the pawn can STILL take a piece. The knight move was poor. After this mistake, your hard work before is undone and you are no longer a piece ahead.
19) well done... his questionable move to pin his queen to his king and you are in perfect position to do some damage.
20) as another said, knight can fork now. Once you can see this sort of thing often your rating will jump to 1200+ in a heartbeat. One of the best books I ever read on chess says to "sit on your hands" when you think you have found your move. That is, remember the move you wanted to do, but keep looking for other stuff. Sometimes, all you can do is look for a slight positional gain, but the longer you look, the more you see, if you have a long time control game.
21) he wins the pawn. A pawn will win the game at higher levels, be worried about it. Not every move is check or checkmate --- sometimes, you just win a pawn.
23) Who knows. I call those paranoia moves... moving the king around in the back due to some concern about an attack that may or may not actually exist. They are useful when a knight is in striking range, to mess up which squares it can hit, takes 2-3 moves to get back aimed at the king if a tactical check is being sought. Here, he actually moves INTO strike of your knight for some reason.
25) f2 is weak for you. It is also unclear what he is doing, and perhaps, like you, he is unsure? Here, you could pin the knight to his king or hassle his rook with your queen for obvious moves. Qg5 and you get a pawn if he moves the rook, for example.
32 yes, his plan seems to be to somehow brave his pawn and king through your rooks to promote a pawn. Not going to work, but its very brave.
34 I think you need Re2 here to deal with that a pawn. then you can put that rook on C and move the other to A, blocking it and tying up his pieces or winning it and moving on with your plans. If his pieces are tied up, your king can go take a pawn home.
38 Ra1 and take his. You lose the C pawn anyway at this point.
43 check on the diagonal with the queen (watch the knight...) seems better at a7? Maybe not.
Go back over the game from the moment you queened the pawn and play both sides. FORCE a win by checkmate for white. That will teach you a lot, I think? There are many ways it could happen. Try to do it in just a few moves, do not be distracted by taking pieces if you do not have to take them.
All in all, a strong game for your rating.
Thank you for all your informational posts. I very much appreciate it.
thekentuckyimbroglio, I have now started using the idea of moving the knight to the d2 square and I think it has actually helped quite a bit. I had to look up what fianchetto means. It is a cool move and I'm gonna try some other openings with fianchettoing too just to see what happens.
umjw21, thank you for liking my quote. As for your website thing, I will check it out.
KingGeorgeIX, That is an interesting move that you reccomended on #15. How the hell do you see that? It seems simple, but I always miss stuff like that all the time.
Clifton Burdette, Thanks for the advice on move #20. That move also has looking ahead. I immediately discard that kind of move, because I think "uh oh, I'm trading my knight to get pawn and the fork won't work, because they will kill my knight with their pawn." That is where I stop. However, I now see that if the pawn kills my knight then my rook eats their queen.
jonnin, your post seems quite informational. I can't read it right now, but I will get back too it and might have a few questions or comments.
