Lessons from my 1st chess.com turn-based tournament: Round 1, Game 3
Opponent: eysgar
Game 3: Narazadd vs. Eysgar
This game offers a good illustration of the dangers of not castling. In fact, I believe Black had the intention to castle, but an unnecessary pawn move costed Black the right to castle. As you'll see, during the first round, all my games as white were English Openings. My opponent chose the ...c6 and ...d5 setup, which deprived his queen knight from the the best square. When fianchettoing bishops, it is very important to be aware of discoveries on that diagonal!
Puzzle #1: Exploring opening mistakes
I missed the tactic on move 9, but was still able to implement it on the next move. What Black should have done is simply 8.0-0, or developing the bishop with 8.Be6, so that either the g7 bishop or the d5 pawn would be safe. The game continued:
Puzzle #2:Massive attack on the uncastled king
In this position, Black has just played 21...Qa5??, with the intention of attacking the bishop on e5 a second time. In order to defend the bishop, white would need to give up the attack, wither by 22.Nf3, which would be too passive and would block the bishop on g2, or by 22.Qe4, unpinning the rook.
Here is the conclusion of the game, with many innacuracies and missed forced mates:
Lessons from the game:
There were many tactical shots missed in this game. In many occasions, I was aware that there was a good opportunity lurking around. However, I often failed either to calculate the best variations, or to consider the best candidates.
It believe that performing some Stoyko exercises often would help me. I should become faster in identifying all the good candidates and really calculating through a sequence of forced moves!