Overcoming my Bad Openings

I have not been playing so well lately. I think we all get into slumps sometimes. This can happen for many reasons. I can pinpoint two main reasons for my recent struggles.

First, I've been allowing myself to play distracted. As all of my play is now online, I will sometimes play in front of the television or with my kids in the room and not be able to give my full attention to the game.

Second, my opening preparation is poor in certain lines. I know this seems like a lame excuse for an amateur player, but it's true. I've changed up my opening repertoire in 2020 and decided instead of studying the new lines I'm looking into, to "just play" and then as I encounter a new position, find the moves I want to play and then add that to my repertoire. This is a slow way of learning the opening, but as I gradually encounter all of the possibilities over time, I feel I'll have a deeper understanding of my repertoire as the analysis of my own games will show me the plans as well as the possible pitfalls that occur in this line. 

So with this in mind, my repertoire with the Ruy Lopez and Open Sicilian are much more developed than my responses to the Scandinavian and Pirc as I encounter the former much more frequently than the latter. So in the game I'm going to share with you today, I was glad to fight my way to a victory against a player who played the Pirc against me. 

Going into this further, it's not necessarily that I get horrible positions out of the opening - although that happens at times. More likely, I get okay-ish positions but end up having spent more time on the clock, and it's only later that I blunder in time trouble. You can say that is a time trouble issue or a tactical awareness issue, but it's also a unfamiliarity with the opening problem.

In this particular game, I actually end up with a decent position, although I try a little too hard and nearly give my opponent a way to equalize. However, he falls for a little tactical trap, allowing me to win a piece turn the game into a nice little miniature.

If you look at the game and run it through an engine, it looks like I had an even game with my opponent and then he just blundered. However, this would downplay the pressure of the game and the psychology and calculation that went into each decision by both sides. I've tried to capture as much of these thoughts and feelings in the game annotations as possible.

To get you into the mindset of the game, below is the critical position where I had to find the best move to avoid a much worse position. See if you can find what I played and the ensuing tactics.

As you can see, I went from potentially losing to winning in almost an instant. My opponent had the opposite experience. Although this was a fairly short game, it was packed with emotions and excitement for me!

As for my opening woes. I think I'm on the right track. My present struggles in the opening hopefully is an investment for the future as I try to build deeper roots by experiencing first hand the rationale, strategies, and tactics behind the underlying moves.

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