Day 8: Thinking Things Through

One thing that I have come to learn about my chess-self is that I greatly prefer to play on intuition versus calculation. This means that I am heavily relying on pattern recognition and thus easily become confused in spots that I haven't seen before. This is definitely something that I need to work on and is holding me back some.

This game was a great example:

The opening was going well. I had maintained central control and deflected the early Queen advance. Instead of playing the nice building move Bd2, I decided that I needed to try and just get the Queen's off the board.

That happened, but I then left myself undeveloped on the King side and heavily exposed on the Queen side. I then managed to make a series of incorrect choices that ultimately led to losing a rook in the corner.

If I had stopped to really think things through, I might have found one of many moves that was better over that series. Still a lot to work on!