Thrilling coffeehouse game! Opening, midgame, and endgame analysis!

When I lived in Arkansas I would often travel down to the Little Rock CC to spar with the players there.  I could not often attend at nights, so a few Conway players started meeting in our own city.  Aaron is a high schooler that started coming to the weekly Wednesday night Conway meeting at Something Brewing.  He's very good, even though only playing for a short time.  This particular night at Something Brewing we split two games, the second of which was nothing short of spinetingling.  The opening was very unorthodox, the middlegame swashbuckling and the endgame exacting.

There are all kinds of positions to analyze.  Have fun!

I apologize for not including progressive diagrams with the game.  I could not get them all properly aligned with the text, and didn't feel like editing the post 6 times to work it in.  Hopefully this doesn't result in crankiness.

Here are my two points of analysis to pose --

1.  Instead of 20. Bb5, why not 20. Bh5+?  I confess I failed to even consider this move during the game.  Black is either mated by force, or loses considerable material, doesn’t he?

If 20. ... Rf7??, then 21. Qxf7++
If 20. ... Ke7??, then 21. Nxc6 ++
If 20. ... g6 (forced), then 21. Nxg6+
then either 21. ... Be5?, 22. Rxe5+ Qe7 (forced); 23. Rxe7+
or 21. ... Qe7; 22. Nh8+ Rf7; 23. Qxf7
or 21. ... Be7 22. Nh8+ Rf7 (forced); 23. Bxf7+ Kf8 (forced); 24. Qxd8 Bxd8, isn’t Black down a Rook and Knight?

I was just so involved in the Bb5 calculations that I didn't look away from those positions before I found my next move.  For a 1500ish player like me, after about 10 minutes calculations start to turn into head-mush.

2.  Black's 35th move -- 35...g5? was ultimately the losing blunder, but what continuations could have kept Black afloat?

Nice game. Intresting queen sac there.

You had this:

*(ooops, just realized you included this in your analysis under the game... oh well... yes it wins by force)

A few thoughts... 

35...g5 you're right that wasn't good, but he does want to get pawns off the board. He needed to improve his Rook.  cxd cxd Rc8+ Kd3 and then he'd like to play Rc1 but the bishop defends c1.  I dunno... If I were Black I'd look for a way to get the rook to White's back rank from where it can harrass the White pieces from behind. I think White has a hard time getting the win at that point, but I don't see an immediate way to accomplish it.

Sometimes it's crucial to centralize the King, sometimes it's crucial to have the King play goalie on the back rank keeping pawns from promoting. Black didn't understand this and centralized his King willynilly.

Dylan, the saving combinations you found after hanging your Queen were 10x harder to come up with than the simple Bh5+  you had earlier that would have won the game in crushing style. Tunnel vision prevented you from finding Bh5. I think it's a kind of error every amateur, including myself, is intimately familar with... -- there was a simple winning move if only you'd considered it.  Your game can take an immediate bump up if you can train yourself out of the erroneous mental habit that lead to this mistake.

Don't examine variations in depth until you've looked at your options.

The maxim is  -- go wide before you go deep.  Applying that advice leads to sharper attack, more resourceful defense, and more creative surprising moves.

"Do not calculate complicated lines before you are absolutely sure it is necessary" -- Mark Dvoretsky

"Searching for candidate moves is not an automatic process. The mind usually does not work logically but intuitively. Searching the board for possible moves is neither automatic, nor something that will happen automatically once you know you need to do it. You need to train at it.... [snip] .... We have a natural tendency to want to play the move selected for us by our intuition, and our subsequent thought processes will often become an attempt to prove the correctness of our intuitive choice..." Jacob Aargaard in Excelling at Chess Calculation.

For training, I sometimes make an artificial rule that I will find at least five candidate moves (however ridiculuous) before analyzing any single variation in depth.

I think solving difficult problems... really struggling with them, writing down variations and taking a half an hour or more with an "I'm not checking the answer until I've exhausted the possibilities" attitude is good training too.

actually there were some really really dubious moves in that game. Not a problem by itself, but if you are to post annotations it can't hurt to be a little more objective. An engine may help with that!

Thanks to everyone for their analysis.

JG, I will henceforth indeed be going wide before I go deep.  Very well said.

RC Woods, I think we take different approaches to annotating, and that's okay.  I believe that one can learn just as much, if not sometimes more, from analyzing one's methods of analyzing! -- as from learning what the best moves were themselves.  Sure, we can discover the "right move" and study its path.  But we will progress further if, for instance, I first review my wrong thoughts and understand why I chose 20. Bb5?! in that position. 

As such, these annotations are like a glimpse into my thinking, a reflection of what my initial analysis of the game was like.  They are available for understanding where I came from as a player, and where I should focus my later analysis.

tonydal, Thanks for the line.  That would have been an interesting continuation.  Sure Bh5+ is the correct move, but following with my initial thoughts, this would have made an entertaining try as well!

If you want to analyze your method of analyzing, your own thoughts, it helps to know where your own resources got you to the right path and where they did not.

Engines, while definitely not infallible, do help with that. In fact I think it is exactly the reason that even 2700 people use them. They just filter out the otherwise possibly overlooked tactics.

I'm not saying you shouldn't understand your own thinking. It is true that I believe that an ordinary annotated game should continue analysis that is somewhat objective. If you want to post a game with just your thoughts added, that is fine. Just don't say "this position is like blablabla". The risk of being wrong is just too big. Say: "I thought this position is like blablabla" instead.

I'm mildly irked by this.  That's really quite an authoritative statement, coming from someone who's advising me to say that I merely "think" something is the case instead of just saying it.  Well, I think it would be more credible to offer advice using the sentence "I think you should say ___" instead of "Say ___".   How's that for a little consistency?  Wouldn't want you to risk being wrong.

Back to the point, and a little more gently, the truth is that if I said something about a position, it is because I thought it.  Again, my annotations are thoughts, they are not facts.  I can check with engines on my second go-around with the analysis.  It is not a race, or something that has to be done perfectly.  I am not in a hurry to improve with the quickest model possible.  I learn quite a bit from analyzing my own games and the games of others, and that relaxed process A) does help me improve more than you'd think, and B) is more satisfying than the need to achieve higher and higher goals in the most industrious way possible. 

Again, I think that we are different people at different places.  I am simply not as ambitious.

I'm mildly irked too.

The fact that I usually run an engine check on a game doesn't mean I must be more ambitious than you. Neither do I think a game can not be annotated without Rybka running on a quad core.

What got my eye in the first place was your comment after 8. Qb3:

"Threatening to meet 8...Ne4 with 9. Qxd5, as well as putting pressure on Black's b-pawn. However, I missed that 9...Qh4 wins at least the Exchange after 10. g3 and even more after 10. Kd1. Thankfully my Queen move was distracting enough for Aaron."

I can't remember why, but I guess I just didn't quite see the line. So, I checked that with Fritz:

Now personally I like discoveries of this sort. It also struck me that you presented your line as fact. The second thing that caught my eye was the comment after 19. ..Bc6

"The opening is over and White has come out with a clear advantage and attacking prospects. At this move I stopped and thought for about 10 minutes. There had to be a way to take advantage of Black's King in the open like that [..]"

Now you can read it in different ways, but to me this sounded a bit inappropriate.

With your description you could understand it as if black would have trouble holding on. As if white should be able to win with good calculation. But that's not true at all. Black is just dead as fried liver in this position, and there is absolutely no reason why white shouldn't win. (I didn't need Fritz for this conclusion but I checked: White is up two pieces in nine lines and one in the tenth variation.)

That made it seem to me as if you were painting what had happened in colours a bit too lively. I might be oversenstive, but I appreciate it if people are square about what happened on the board.  ("I battled myself to an advantage but failed to find the winning line"  vs "my opponent blundered me into a completely won position where I managed to drop the queen")

When I read your post the first time I was a bit tired and as a result maybe a bit more dismissive than I usually am. I suggested using an engine to get an 'objective' second opinion when annotating your games.

Then you come in talking about "different approaches to analyzing" and how I can "sure discover the right move and study its path" but would probably learn more if I "studied my method of analyzing".

Now I agree that it is usefull to do so, but you went right past what I tried to say in a modest way. intentional or not, you still misrepresented what was happening on the board, and your annotations still contained factual inaccuracies.

So I just stated my thoughts: sure it is fine to analyze your way of thinking, but engines still help to see where the initial thinking was flawed. Implicit in my reply was "If you don't want to use engines and go hippie on analyzing your analyzations, be more modest in your comments." Remember I was thinking you misrepresented the first part of the game and there are many out there who do so intentionally to look better themselves. That annoyed me quite enough to sound quite authorative I guess.

Last words:

Your rook combination was really nice, and against humans probably the best try to get the win. It he hadn't taken the bait you would be way worse than before, but then again with 'engine play' you would've been down 2 pawns which loses too. I liked it. Engines aren't always right

Okay, I understand that it could seem that I was magnifying my own efforts or not giving enough credit to the opponent.  I could see how that would warrant criticism to someone on a forum.  I'm sorry that previous experiences have led you to feel cynical enough to make the assumption, but I suppose that is understandable.  I was at the game, and I remember watching Aaron get distracted by Qb3.  I don't recall specifically why he appeared distracted, but something caused me to write that down.  I trust my notes.

I don't plan on being more modest, but at the same time, I'll keep this encounter in mind.  If the annotations don't need to be changed, they do need to try and be more forthcoming with explanations when my notes leave those assumptions to be made.  : )  If I think something is the case, I'm going to write it, knowing at the time that it may be an incorrect assumption but also that it is my authentic impression then.  We can check facts later, together as a community if I choose to share the game.  In this case, I am sharing my game and my chess brain with this community.  That is an invitation for fellowship with you.  Please fact-check the validity of my annotations, like the points you made about Qh4 not being a realistic possibility.  Thanks for that, that's what I'm looking for.  If you would like to question the nature of the annotations, like why I commented subjectively, why my notes don't stand up to scrutiny already, or whether I should have fact-checked it myself before coming here, I guess you're welcome to that.  Just be aware that is a subjective criticism in itself, and that it may come across as condescending.

In any case, I appreciate your responses.

I appreciate your response as well. I think we really got of on the wrong foot, and as I said - I was tired when I first read your post. I think that my first comment carried in it the seed of our (minor) confrontation.

I don't really think inaccuracies in your annotations have been intended to make you look better now, but you are right that I got that impression at first. And as you said, it is usefull to give your own thoughts with a game. I might have thought the same thing about the Qh4 line OTB. (after all it was Fritz who told me it didn't work.)

I'm really not that big on making sure all your annotations are a 100 percent correct. Its good to do things as a community too, and I should have posted the Fritz lines in my first comment - but I was tired and stuck with just saying "use an engine" which may indeed sound condescending.

Keep on playing, I'll keep reading your blog and you are most welcome to mine. I'm looking forward to putting the fellowship thing into practice!

Best,

RC

DylanAM wrote:

"Well, it's certainly not the community.  Ours is not a very refined userbase - there are a great deal of self-proclaimed "authorities" roaming the forums, along with others who insecurely wait for someone to make a mistake in a thread before pouncing like vultures.  Much of the discussion is carried on defensively or arrogantly."

I think that's a bit harsh on the community, and I hope you are not referring to our little discussion. Would you really say the userbase at large is unrefined? I agree that there are some odd users (I could name a few that we'd probably agree upon) but on average I'm quite content.

Just curious!

Yeah, I was thinking of our discussion, as well as a few discussion threads in the daily game puzzles section and some in the openings discussion.  Our conversation here is an example of the attitudes that run much of the discourse, even though it ended fairly quickly and very civilly.  You spoke hastily as an authority and I was overly defensive and unnecessarily snarky.  We clarified our points to each other, but not before we jumped the gun and had work to do to fix things.  Thank God, we agreed to be open and meet halfway, but that does not happen nearly enough here.

Thank God? I think you really are overrating the manners / attitude thing here. This is the world wide web and people are usually much more blunt online. I think it is much better to have a thick skin and laugh about all the flamery than to start complaining.

I would be lying if I said I was worried about what would happen if we hadn't met halfway. That we did is just a nice display of civil behaviour, but I don't like it when things get too civil.

Much of Mammoth-Hunting time's brutal honesty is already lost in today's society, let's not push it.

I understand your point, and think it has some merits.  However, I disagree -- I think you are settling for less than you need to on what any person's natural expectation of his surrounding community should be.  A thick skin and is a good thing to have, as an armor for personally brash situations, but only when those situations are necessary.  Battle should not be the default setting in a person's life -- should people go through always wearing battle armor because they'll need the armor when war is upon them?  Hardly.  You should have thick skin developed so you're prepared for caustic people, but unless you've surrendered to living in a antagonistic setting, you shouldn't be expected to wear that thick skin constantly, or as a default skin.  And surrendering to that notion when you could have done something about it is to live fatigued, fearfully, defensively, and animalistically.

Real life is not nearly as full of this battle-ready culture (at least it doesn't have to be).  People are blunt and willfully ignorant online, like children, because there are no life consequences to them for acting a fool.  That is the reason.  Reality of "Life on the world wide web" does not make dumb behavior a more acceptable form of communication, it only makes forgiveness for that behavior more understanding and abounding.  In real life people can be fired from their jobs, put in jail, kicked out of clubs, or stripped of custody over children.  Online, there is nothing which will physically compel a poster on a message board to change his ways other than being banned from a website.

This conversation is extremely boring.

Perhaps you'd like to participate?  We didn't even notice you "standing" there.

Nope, we didn't notice you, I second that. Probably because you have been boringly quiet so far!