Is 10 min blitz or rapid?

Blast From the Past

May 28, 2022, 6:51 AM | 11

Blast From the Past

Today is The Phoenix Blog's first anniversary. Now the blog I wrote a year ago came from when I was still a 1400, and it wasn't anything impressive. But over the past year, this blog has come a long way thanks to your support and encouragement. So I just want to say thank you for staying with me throughout this chess journey. And to commemorate, I will be sharing the very first game of chess I ever played on chess.com.

Game 1

The first game I ever played was on June 15, 2019. It was a 10 minute game- back when 10 minute games were considered blitz. Now, when you first join the website, ratings tend to change much faster, so that you can be paired up with people of a similar skill rating. So I won't focus too much on rating. All you have to know is that I was a complete beginner.

I would start the game with e4, which was met with e5. Then, I played d3 and Nf3. This is definitely not the greatest opening because it prevents your bishops from really developing and doesn't give your d pawn the best potential it could have. But at this point, all I knew was what my dad taught me, which was to take control of the center at the beginning of the game. My opponent would go for some sort of London setup with black and e5, which I usually see with a lot of beginners.

The game continues with me playing a3, preparing to attack black's bishop. However, I should have continued focusing on developing, rather than playing flanking pawn moves. My opponent also makes a move by pinning my knight to my queen and trading bishop for knight. This is generally not the best way to play the position, as the bishop apply pressure. By trading, he loses the bishop pair and an active piece. But I take back with my pawn, which doubles my pawns. Taking with the queen would allow for faster development.

My opponent does not hang their bishop and slides it back. But I continue with pushing my pawns, and I go for a wildly aggressive pawn storm on the queenside (before I even knew what a pawn storm was). But notice how severely lacking in development I am. All of my pieces are on the backrank. Luckily, my opponent doesn't have much development either, and we both haven't castled (especially since I didn't know what castling was).

Now my opponent had a chance to take a big advantage by taking on c5, but he chooses to slide his bishop back further, which is too passive. But when you're playing your first game, does it really matter? I continue by pushing my a pawn in a rather pointless march. Meanwhile, my opponent uses the opportunity to gain tempo by finally developing his knights.

My response to his development is to of course push my h pawn because pawns are cool to push. Then, my opponent unleashes the ultimate move that left beginner me in shock. His king somehow moved across the board, and the rook just jumped over the king in a single move. I clicked my king to see if such an option existed, but it didn't. The king moves in a box. Now, if I had actually developed my pieces, maybe I could have seen the little dots on the king extending beyond the box, but I liked pawns too much for that.

My opponent's new move was enough to get me to call in my knight on move 12. My opponent finally goes for a pawn trade to gain an advantage against my greatly over extended pawns, and he plops his queen right smack in the middle of the board. And I'll say that seeing your opponent actually put his queen in the middle of the board without being able to capture it is quite terrifying-almost as terrifying as seeing your opponent castle for the first time.

At this point, I spent a good 10 seconds to calculate attacking the queen with my rook. I saw that my rook hit the queen, and the rook was protected by my knight. Of course, I missed that nothing was protecting my knight, and I became a piece down. Things weren't looking good for my first game.

I repelled my opponent's attack with my bishop, and my opponent moved his queen out of danger. But I tried to keep the tempo by attacking the queen with my rook again and I made sure that nothing could be taken. I was sure I had him now.

But he just sidesteps and threatens one of my pawns. I decide to actually develop my final bishop to the side of the board because I had no idea what to play. We end up trading a pawn, and black capture the bishop on d2, which would result in a fair trade once I capture with the queen and queen trade. But what do I do? I move my king out of check and lose a second piece. At this point, I am down two pieces, a terrible pawn structure, and no castled king. If I knew there was a resign button, I would have pressed it by now.

My opponent gets an outpost with his bishop, but he does hang a piece when he develops his knight. The problem? I play Be6 because I come up with some insane and extremely abstract plan to attack the queen and get black to capture my bishop to give my rook line of sight of g7 Of course, this is a really bad plan.

But then, my opponent doesn't take with the pawn. He sidesteps the queen. And now I am getting excited because of the next following sequence.

My queen was now pinning the rook to the king, and I was going to have a powerful attack on the king with my queen supported by my rook. Can you find the best way for my opponent to stop my attack?

But my opponent does not play this in the game.

My opponent gives a check, which reveals an attack on the queen after my king steps out of the way. Now, my opponent will either lose the queen or hang checkmate. My opponent saves his queen and hangs mate in 2. On move 25, my opponent resigns, surprising me again because I hadn't checkmated him.

So when I began, I was a pawn pusher that didn't even know all of the rules of chess. And this was definitely beginners luck because I drew the next game and lost the next 5 games. Development, castling, and the basics would eventually be something I learned over time and definitely improved my play. Especially after I learned a few e4 openings.

But what are your thoughts on my first game? What were some of your first games? Let me know!