School game, 55 minutes/5 second delaylucky and insightful game

This was my first game longer than 30 minutes since June at the Chicago Open!

Yup. Touch move rule indeed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch-move_rule

Thanks for the lesson.

You caught about everything I would have commented on.

The general advice I'd give is it seems like you became too focused on your opponent's threats, this is what caused most of the errors such as Rh3, Rc1, Ka1.  In each case you had a more active move that furthered your own plans.  e.g. I like 24 Rhe1 first, defending indirectly because it "pins" in a sense black's rook to the backrank.  Of course there's nothing wrong with your suggestion, Qc2.

It's a hard thing to do for any player, asking themselves, what's the most active move can I get away with.  Just remember once you start making purley defensive moves, you're becoming passive.  Passive is a bad word in chess! :)

Now when you have other pluses like structure and space, by all means take time out and defend -- once the threats disappear what's left is your pluses.  But in positions like these with mutual attacks it's important to fight hard for your own activity.  You played well and won :) but that's the advice I'd offer.

In the case of c3, yes it defends the immediate threat, but lets say he moves b5 or just any move like Rfd8... c3 is making your king more uncomfortable giving a leaver at b4 and weakening the castled position in general.  In this sense Rdc1 was a much more natural and comfortable move :)

Congrats on the win, it's great to beat a rival.  Hopefully I added something useful you can use for you progressive plan to improve :).  It was a good game, and it's smart to look at your wins for tips to improve.

 its the next step to get better at chess, making dual moves that are tactical and are attacking/defending at the sametime

thanks honda, yep i understand, most of the moves are based off theory and text, and also yes the b5 threat with b4 thereafter is quite troublesome, i havent really reviewed my najdorf books for a while ://

WOW cant believe i didnt see that

Wow, quite a game. Both you and your opponent made some huge blunders at the end! But for the most part it was pretty well played. It was probably wrong to have such a passive mindset. Remember that the best defense is offense; here black's attack was much to slow for a piece, so as orangehonda said finding moves like Rhe1 would have made the win very smooth.

I remember one time I was up a piece for like a pawn but played a bit inaccurately and had to defend my king. It was very terrifying, though I did still win, even if it was with shaking hands and a near heart attack. If I had still insisted to play accurately when I needed to the win would be both easier and quicker, but I wrongly thought I could afford to be lazy. Maybe when you're up a queen, but most of the time that is a very risky idea, makes things much more difficult for you.

its really difficult for me to see the moves that make my chess life easier such as rhe1, im adjusted to thinking lets defend and survive and then peacefully win, its the mood of the position, i even had about 25 minutes on my clock to his 4 minutes, so he was striving for complications, maybe the simple move is the best sometimes??

And btw, that was the cheapest and scummiest checkmate ever! Claiming "touch move" and then checkmating them, requiring no skill at all. I wish you would've just let him finish it normally...

A big part of chess is the fight: stuff happens when you're under pressure. It's not a pretty win, but it counts as a win 100%, as do all of them. I've had tons of games where it seemed the better player lost, but chess is a game of consistency and one's game can crack after any bad move. Without results angered players could spend hours arguing on "who played better, who deserved it". Indeed a good idea is to minimize silly game losing errors as much as possible, to try to avoid falling into terrible situations and to take advantage if the opponent does.

Anyway, touch move is how tournament games work and if he touched the pawn with his rook, it seems he, at least for that second, blundered. Now, I myself aren't totally clear on the rules; I know that if you touch the piece you must move it, but if you put a piece on a square you can take it off and move it somewhere else before you let go. I don't know why a pawn should be any different from a square, but I guess that's how the rules work?

i was winning clearly before Ka2??, besides its payback