Punishing Beginner Mistakes in Daily Chess

As many of you know, Chess.com is currently hosting its biggest daily tournament ever, the 2023 Daily Chess Championship. This tournament has an astounding 35,000 competitors of all skill levels. The tournament is formatted into thousands of 12-player double round-robin groups, in which the winner moves on to the next stage every time. Since this was my first time competing, I had little idea what to expect, but soon I found out from conjecture and discussions with previous participants that the first group is relatively easy, and sure enough, I won my group with a perfect 22/22! 

You might ask how this is possible; after all, most of you know that I’m not that good at chess. Well, for one, I had a whopping 14 timeout wins! This wasn’t unusual or surprising, as many people lamented that they only had one or two actual games; with such a high participation number, the odds are that many people will forget to play or not care enough to put the necessary time in. (It still doesn’t make sense to me, why even enter in that case? Wait, actually, keep registering. I like free wins. )

Another factor was the low ratings of my opponents. My highest rated opponent was 1200, which is around 300 points lower than my daily rating, and around 800 lower than my blitz rating! Due to this discrepancy, most of the games were of low quality and ended quickly.  So instead of analyzing all eight games, I took the five most interesting games and broke down how I punished the opening mistakes that my opponents made. Hopefully, you can avoid these pitfalls in your games. If you’re an advanced player reading this, I guess you can stay for the jokes, because there will be a plethora.

Game 1: Beating A Frantic Queen

The first game I will showcase was a simple miniature I had against a 500-rated player where he brought his queen out early, and I was able to safely bring out all of my pieces for a quick victory.

That was fairly good for a 500, and it would have been potentially an interesting game had he found Qg2. Now if you’re thinking that this game was boring, then you’re in luck! If the games don’t improve, then (hopefully) my humorous commentary should!

Game 2: Free Stuff!

 This is a game against an 800 where I opened up the position, and he unfortunately deteriorated. 

I think my opponent’s main problem was that none of his moves acknowledged my threats. Most of my moves made a threat against an important piece or square, but he ignored them and played “normal” developing moves that did nothing to defend any of my ideas. The best example I can think of for this type of play is putting on proper clothing when your house is burning down. Normally, you’re supposed to get out of your pajamas and get dressed into your street clothes before you show yourself in public, but when a fire is actively trying to kill you, then priorities change, much like how you must forgo “natural” moves like 5. Nxe4 when your opponent is threatening a deadly fork. 

Game 3: Tactics, Tactics, Tactics!

In this game, I went on a tactical rampage against a 1200. First I used a basic combo to win a piece, then I got flashy to offer two rooks for a queen, defended counterplay, and finished off with a rook fork. Enjoy!

My opponent didn’t hang any pieces outright, they merely walked into multiple tactics. There are two reasons this was possible:

1. My opponent played passively in the opening, and tactics come from dominant positions like mine.
2. My opponent failed to acknowledge my threats, although to a lesser degree than my previous opponent. Moves like 8.d6 simply indicate inattentiveness to me.

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Game 4: Positional Punishment

In this game as Black against the same 1200, I played well out of the opening, won an exchange, but almost hung a potential draw. There are some interesting moments in this game and I’d say it’s arguably the most instructive game of the round. (To be fair, that isn’t saying too much.)

Well, aside from f5, this was another clean game. f5 was simply an example of me (mildly hypocritically) not paying attention to my opponent’s threats and being lazy. Remember, your opponents can counter threats with larger threats!

Game 5: My Most Interesting Game?

This was probably my most interesting game of the round. Instead of winning a piece in the first ten moves, I shredded him with superior development before finding a cool tactic to win his queen. So without further ado…

Well, I hope you enjoyed that! This game was a more effective example of why Nxb4 is bad against the Evans Gambit, as you got to see him get pummeled down the open lines, even before he hangs material. And this is instructive because even at the beginner level, your opponents won’t always fold, but if you get a great position, you have to know how to convert.

So those were the five most interesting games in this tournament, and now I’m just waiting until everybody else finishes so I can move on to my next group, and probably get destroyed by a 2000, but hey, at least it’ll be content!

Do you have any Daily Chess Championship stories? If so, please share them in the comments, to boost views, sorry, I meant so that the community can enjoy them. Well, that’s all, until next time!