My Game Analysis of my Simul against Ayelen Martinez
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My Game Analysis of my Simul against Ayelen Martinez

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My name is Jonas, and I was fortunate enough to play in the recent simul against WIM Ayelen Martinez put on by the Improvers club (shoutout to them, they're awesome!). As expected of a 700ish rated rapid player, I lost. But I think that I played well enough to share my thoughts on the game.

Game Stats

According to Game Review, I had an accuracy of 66.6% and a game rating of 1250, compared to Ayelen's 80.4% accuracy and game rating of 1650. I had no blunders or misses, but I did have 6 mistakes and 2 inaccuracies. I didn't have any great or brilliant moves, but I did play either the best move or an excellent move 13 times. The whole game lasted 29 moves.

This is the whole game, and I'll be going over my thought process for the mistakes that I made, as well as a few more moves/moments that I thought were cool during the game.

The Opening

Ayelen played the Ruy Lopez against me, which isn't an opening that I usually play against. My style with black is to play either e5 or d5, matching what my opponent does, and then play sound developing moves. I don't really have an answer as black to specific openings (except the Fried Liver, I hate that one) and so I try to progress to the middlegame as quick as possible, where I can hopefully out tactic my opponent. 

Middlegame Mistakes
My first mistake was castling queenside, which gets rid of d8 as an escape square for my knight when it gets attacked by the pawn. Instead, I have to move it to b8, a7, or a5, all worse squares in the long run. I also moved my knight to a5, where it promptly lost all safe squares to move to.
At this point I was thinking that we were about even, and so I started moving pieces to start aiming at Ayelen's king. However, that attack fizzled out after I decided to trade the queens.
The Final Few Moves
After the queen trade, I was basically done for. I let Ayelen infiltrate my position with her rooks, and lost all king safety after I let her play en passant.
I'm obviously disappointed that I lost, but I think that it is fair to say that I held my own for the most part until I blundered mate in 2. I'm really glad that I got to participate in this exciting event, and the next time that me and Ayelen play (which will probably be never, but you never know), I can use what I've learned to win.