My first chess achievement!

Today saw the proudest moment of my chess life so far! I’m afraid I couldn’t resist sharing it with everyone here on chess.com, as it means a lot to me. Here it is, with a bit of back-story (of course!):

Like a lot of guys I know, I was taught chess by my father, I don’t remember when exactly, so it just seems like we’ve always played. I don’t remember the first time I beat him, probably because it wasn’t a convincing, or wholly deserved victory. Today, however, was different. Today is the first time in my life that I played my father and felt that every move had a purpose, that I always knew what I was doing and why, and that I was cruising towards a win! I must add that this is no mean feat as my father, despite never having studied chess properly, has a decent intuition to play meaningful moves and has a lesser tendency to blunder or play unconvincingly than I do. (at least up until now!)

The game started with the French defence: advance variation (C02), in the miniature below I’ve omitted the first 10 or so moves since they’re (mostly) book moves, and since I was recalling the rest from memory (we played otb a few hours ago) so I just wanted to get the pertinent bits down.

Anyway, having looked a little into playing against the French, for one of my online games, I knew how to begin and give myself a solid grounding, which also gave me confidence from which to start planning the fireworks. Then, when the tension couldn’t hold any longer, I threw caution to the wind and played (what I will call) a daring sacrifice that, backed by my surging confidence, resulted in a exciting win over my dad and the most memorable moment of my chess career so far!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!