Playing past a blunder

For my first ever chess.com blog post, I'd like to illustrate the value of playing past a blunder. As you can see in this game, the critical move occurs at 11. o-o-o Bh6. As a result of having castled, my queen becomes pinned by black's bishop. I elect to take black's bishop with my queen, and thus 12. Qxh6 Qxh6+. Instead, I should have sacrificed my knight and pushed up the f pawn, as in 12. Ng5 Bxg5 13. f4.

Not all is lost, though, as scrolling through the rest of the game shows. Carefully using the knight allowed me to threaten the queen and rook with a fork, eventually succeeding. This goes to show that a mistake early on does not necessarily spell the end.

Some players judge a situation by counting the pieces taken. Great players judge a situation only by the pieces left on the board!