My Chess Experience Part 1: First Blog Ever

Preface
I've been playing chess for a while now: multiple years to be exact. I am by no means a professional or even what most would called "good." However, I have always wanted to improve my abilities. So, I have decided to dedicate more time into improving my game play overall. I plan to do this by simply playing more often and then analyzing those games (with the help of a computer, of course). I'll be using games from both Lichess and chess.com

Analysis

Original Game: https://www.chess.com/game/live/70382516953

Initial thoughts
In all honesty, this is one the worst games I've played in a while. Maybe that means I shouldn't play in the mornings when the caffeine hasn't hit my bloodstream yet. At any rate, I still think it was a good game and my opponent played well.

Opening Analysis
According to Stockfish, the opening phase is the first 12 moves, but I would prefer to focus on the first 8. I was white in this game, and I started with my favorite opening, d4. I'm not exactly sure why I like it, but its variations are very interesting. So my opponent accepts my Queen's Gambit and tries to defend the pawn with his own queen on move 3. After attacking their queen and after they kept it on the d-file, we both developed our minor pieces like usual until move 6. This is when they suddenly placed their queen on the kingside as a sort of threat. I didn't take it too seriously as I castled 0-0. Stockfish recommends that I play Nd5, which is an amazing move, since it forces black to forfeit castling rights in order to avoid a fork on c7 (7.Nd5 Kd8 8.Nf4 Qf6). After that, white would have a smooth game. Alas, I completely overlooked that, so I'll try to look for something like that in the future, hopefully. After I castled, black becomes very aggressive with Bg4. For some reason, I freaked out and broke a fundamental rule of the opening: don't move a developed piece more than once unless you absolutely must (move 8). I thought I had to scare the queen off, even though I could have continued advancing my well placed center pawns. Black moved their queen once again (move 8). This is where (I believe) the game transitions into the middlegame, as Black is now threatening to compromise my kingside structure via an exchange on f3 (example: 9.Bb5 Bxf3 10.Qxf3 Qxf3 11.gxf3). And that doesn't seem like what opening strategies usually are.

Middlegame Analysis
Oh boy, this is where stockfish yells at me like a verbally abusive spouse about how dumb I was. Black places their knight on b4 and I never even thought about forking both it and the king with Qa4+. I'm pretty sure I've done this before on online games. I had several opportunities to do this fork, and only did it on move 13. But I'm jumping ahead here. On move 10, I moved my knight to e5, trying to win the bishop or force it to take on e2, which is what black did. On move 11, I took with the queen, which stockfish considers a blunder. I'm not here to question the chess gods, but I have no idea why retaking with the knight on c3 is so much better. Maybe it prepares a knight maneuver to f4 while avoiding a harassment of the a1 rook from the b4 knight by having the white queen on her home square? Like I said, no idea. After some piece maneuvering, black plays 12. ... f6. This is where I saw a checkmate opportunity and finally forked that b4 knight and king with Qb5+. However, I was no longer winning a free knight since mine on e5 was being threatened as well. The checkmate opportunity was that if black responded with Qd7 or Kd8, that would be game over with the white queen on d7 herself. I knew that was unlikely and expected the move that actually came (13. ... c6). I crudely calculated that I would exchange knights with 14.Qxb4 fxe5. When the time came, I instead took on b7, which not only gave me a free pawn, but also threatened checkmate with 15.Qxa8+ Qc8 16.Qxc8#. This forced black to move the rook to d8, which allowed me to take another free pawn on c6 with the knight. Black had to recapture with their knight and I retook with Qc6+. This is where I made another conceptual mistake: I started playing hope-chess. On move 17, I played Qc8+, which is not a bad move at all, but it did little to help me in the long haul. I was hoping that black would mindlessly play Rd8 and let me take their undefended queen with Qxf5. Instead, they simply tucked their king to the relative safety of f7. After some pawn moves, black again moved their queen to a5, thus pinning my knight since my d2 bishop was undefended. At this point, I really wanted to exchange queens; I was two pawns up and had control of the center. So, I played 20.Qb5, which threatened the unprotected rook and queen. As I should have expected, my opponent really loved their queen piece, and moved her over to c7.

Endgame(?) Analysis
Stockfish is telling me that there is no endgame, only an abrupt end to the middlegame. It's true that not all games have an endgame, or even a middlegame (example: 1.g4 e6 2.f4 Qh4#). It's simply felt off-putting to not include a sort of endgame analysis, no matter how brief. I protected the d4 pawn with Be3 and they made a seemingly bizarre move of Nh6. I contemplated taking it with the bishop, but I realized that a semi-central bishop was better than a knight on the edge. I should have taken that fricking knight. I prepared a discovery with Rac1, and I was so preoccupied by the queenside that I utterly ignored the kingside and checkmate threat that followed when black placed their knight on g4. I assumed that they were targeting my bishop and decided that I could live without it and went with the discovery, Nd5. What I wanted to achieve with that I don't remember, but I missed a chance to fork that hell-spawn of a knight with 23.Qh5+ g6 24.Qxg4. At any rate, they checkmated me with Qxh2#.

Conclusion
As anyone who has played this game for long enough knows, Chess is a tricky game. In one instant, you can have a two pawn advantage, then in another, your king is being mauled in the corner. I've definitely learned a few lessons from this one game, and I hope to do this blog weekly or even biweekly (no promises). I don't know if anyone will ever read this, but even no one does, then at least I have a sort of open journal to record my progress. Thanks for reading!

P.S.: This post is a slight edit from my original blog on Lichess.org (https://lichess.org/@/Flbbss2020/blog/my-chess-experience-part-1-first-blog-ever/OdsGKWGw)