Hi, 

   here is a game i recently played, I believe i played well but i lost due  to an unavoidable mate.  ( i cant believe i didnt see it).

I have lightly annotated it as i havent got much time. Any suggestions on mistakes/ improving my game would be great. Thanks

I would say advancing your king pawns in order to win a piece is fine, as long as you can get enough defenders over to protect your king. Looks similar to the noah's ark trap, on the opposite side of the board.

I think you should have taken with your rook on 29, keeping your queen near your king, which is fine on the diagonal with no potential bishop pins.

Then I think you just need to get the pieces off the board asap, you should be winning.

good game openfile too bad I didnt look to see that trap  well done! You did have a winning position, but I showed the concept of not resigning when losing... I think that is another lesson that can be taken from this

Yeh, i agree i will have to play you again some time.

definitly!

Hey.

1) Moving pawns in front of your king in exchange for gaining a piece should generally be worth it if there is no devastating attack. 15.g4/16.f4/17.f5 were very good.

2) Important is that those files in front of your king are not opened. I personally would never grab the g or h pawn and rather sacrifice pawns to keep those files closed. That's why I don't like 20.g5 h6 21.Qg4 hxg5 opening the h-file - giving Black attacking chances - nor 29.Qxg7?? opening the g-file. Certainly not worth a pawn.

3) Trading pieces when you are up material is generally a good idea, but not at price of opening dangerous files. Instead of your 20.g5 plan "exchanging material" you should have followed even more important strategic plans like "activating undeveloped pieces" (take a look at a1/b1/c1/d1, e.g. play 20.Nd2 heading for Nf3/Nc4 or Be3 or Bf4) or "attacking" / "occupying open files/diagonals/ranks" (Qd5 and Qf3 look huge because nobody's there on the long a8-h1 diagonal).

4) Instead of 29.Qxg7 I would not have touched the g-pawn (though Rxg7 looks quite possible) but rather have attacked with 29.Qc6, e.g. with the follow up of 30.Nc4 threatening 31.Rxc7+ Qxc7 32.Nb6+ Kb8 33.Qa8#. Being up material does not mean you have to defend and reach a safe endgame. You still can attack and either force exchanges this way or     - even better - mate the enemy's king.

Good luck in your games!

12.Qd1 (?) : better is 12.Nd4, forcing the trade of queens (or winning a piece) due to the pin.

15.g4 seems fine to me, because Black has no attack here and his king is not safe either.hey, it wins a piece !

20.g5 ? is more suspicious. It doesn't even achieve his aim of 'blocking the bishop' after ...h6, and opens the dangerous h file.

And after that game, I hope you will never play 29.Qxg7 ?? anymore ! 

As an answer to b_complex : if you are up in material, generally speaking, you should trade and go for a won endgame where you have less chances to blunder. But sometimes you can't (because your opponent refuses the trades, and you can't force it), and you have to play actively not to lose, which is the case here where your king is still under serious attack.

What were the time controls on this game?  Is this a blitz game?

Thanks for all the analysis, yeh i will definately not play Qxg7 again. "Transpo" It was an online game, 3 days per move . 

Then some mistakes are unfogivable for correspondance chess (including Qxg7 !). Transform my (?)s in ?s and my ?s in ??s in my analysis !

I thought it was something like 30 min / player. But of course it's the same if you have 100 correspondance games going in the same time...

I totally agree with you. I hope I didn't claim anything different.