Success with Blitz!

I've been feelin' blue, unable to think fast enough for Blitz, running into time trouble. In this 5 minute game, my moves were all played from memory, and each move played instantly.  Bullet speed.

Black could have played much better, only losing a rook and pawn after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f6?! 3.Nxe5! fxe5? 4.Qh5+! I was most happy with another move pulled from memory, the discovered check with 8.d3+!

It felt good to see what pattern recognition can do for my game. I definitely want to burn more patterns into my long term memory. 

Good job. Insightful annotations, too. Take a look at http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2012/01/opening-disaster-damianos-defense.html, which addresses similar failings in your opponent's defensive idea.

Thank you

You did very well. A few weeks ago, I played a 10 minute game with my daughter (she's 7 years old) and she chose 2...f6. Even though I knew there is a refutation starting with the knight sac, and also had seen it in print more than once before, I could not neatly reproduce it. I sacced the knight alright, but then along the way things became somewhat muddled ... 

Yesterday, in an after school chess club, a kindergarten boy played 2...f6 against me. I tried to talk him out of it, but had to show him how quickly that he lost. Then I had him play the white side against a second grader. He was less vigorous in the attack, and the second grader's first move was 3...d6 instead of fxe5. I was glad the second grader knew not to take the knight.

A second grader knew not to take the knight? That's impressive! It clearly shows that he has a good chess teacher.

Or that he didn't notice that he could take the knight.

This is my first year coaching a particular group of second graders who helped their team do well at state two years ago as kindergarteners. I cannot take credit for their skills.