First look at my play in the Scandanavian

Inspired by a YT video from GothamChess, I've started looking at my profile to see what I need to do to improve. And at this moment, to procrastinate for a few minutes before I start work, I'm looking for where I need to do better in my response to e4.

Currently, I play the Modern Variation of the Scandinavian as suggested in the book by Vincent Moret. I think this is fine for me to stick with for awhile, but I've played it enough now that it's time to look for my mistakes and where I don't know the correct continuation.

After 2 exd5 Nf6 the move I'm seeing the most from white is Nc3, then my planned line is Nxd5 and I expect to see Nxd5 and Qxd5, with my queen now out in the middle of the board like a normal Scandinavian, but without white's queenside night to harass it. I'm getting the line I expect to play, but I'm only winning with it 44% of the time.

Where I'm doing well in this opening is when white follows up exd5 with d4 or Bc4. The move d4 is what Moret covers in his book, he says this is the best response from white and don't be too worried about other responses, but I've only seen d4 15 times, compared to 161 times for Nc3.

Basically in this opening, I'm always trying to force the same position, which is with my bishop on g4, my queen on h5, and then I try to get another piece to backup my queen, so I can sac the bishop and go for a checkmate. I hope that white castles short, so I can castle long and start advancing my pawns. I'm happy when this plan works out, but my win rate after exd5 is only 50%, so obviously something is not working.

There is also the factor that I'm just going on tilt and blundering games, which is a separate issue. Right now I just want to identify games where I messed up the opening and I could do better if I learned a better line.

This is the position I'm seeing most often. It's definitely not what's covered in Moret's book. I want to find out what positions I'm seeing from here, what the engine suggestions are, and what the opening database shows.

5. Nf3 is the move I face most often. I've responded a few times with Nc6 and won 60%, and I've responded 54 times with Bg4, winning 44%.

In master openings, this position is mostly winning for black. The engine says it's basically equal, with a slight edge for white.

So I'm messing up somewhere in the Bg4 line, and I would bet that it's because I'm rushing for a checkmate in 20 moves.

6. Be2 is what I then see the most, and my win percentage drops further to 40%. And I responde with 6... Nc6, getting ready to castle long. The computer says Nc6 is good and so do the master games.

The opening can go pretty much anywhere from there, I see the moves O-O, d3, c4, h3, b3, c3... but the move I see most often and I lose to most often is O-O. After O-O, the opening database is running thin, which is okay, because the whole point of choosing this opening is to avoid learning too much theory. But the opening database does show an advantage for black in this position, as does the engine (a very slight advantage according to the engine).

My most common move here is O-O-O followed by e6. The engine says that castle long is okay, but that e6 is weak (it's the engine's 3rd choice, but gives the advantage back to white). The engine's top move is e5.

I even know that I should play e5 here, but I play e6, I think I'm scared or something. Anyway, e6 is losing for me 80% of the time (only 5 games in this position though).

It seems like in the engine lines, the idea is that e5 either becomes a target for the white knight or support for my knight headed to d4, but in any case, the engine is trading down pieces at this point and maybe doubling white's pawn in front of the king in some lines. This is definitely one way in which I'm messing up. I'm trying to keep the pressure of the bishop on g4 for as long as possible and work my way into a quick checkmate, where the computer happily trades off that bishop.

...and here's the big problem: there is a variance in my accuracy in this position from 95.5 down to 20.4

Here's my low accuracy game... I was in a basically equal position after white played d4, and at the point the engine suggests trading off some pieces, but instead I made a very weird move with my queen, which can't even tell from looking at it what I was thinking, but I put my queen on the diagonal with my king, and then hung the queen to a pin a few moves later.

So I can't do too much more chess analysis today. I think the lesson here is that I'm not messing up too badly in this particular line of the Scandinavian (I'm also not getting any great advantage), I could be just getting into an equal middle game. I need to give up on going for the same checkmate every time, and instead be happy with trading off some pieces to stabilize the position and then fighting out the middle game from an equal position... if I don't like that, then I think I better find a different opening.