Nova Daily - 4 January 2025

Hi!

A very tense game today! I chose some obscure moves, and I missed a tactical shot that gave my opponent a very promising position when I had just imagined that I was better. I saw a win for my opponent that I was very glad he missed.

Before I played the game, I entered a lot of moves of the 4.Bd2 and the 4.Bg5 Nimzo-Indian lines into my opening repertoire book for black. I'm not nearly done yet, because it's a lot of work, but I'm preparing to complete my black repertoire as well.

The quality of my play was abysmal, but in intensity this game was more than worth it. Have fun!

Post-Mortem:

It's quite ironic, I must say. I've played two games with 10 seconds of increment, and in both those games my opponents flagged.

My Aftermath analysis:

I'm definitely not proud of how I played this game. It was very very chaotic, most of the time it was just awful, and I got away with it because of a trick and a flag.

I hated every bit of conducting this analysis because of how hideously confrontational it was. So, to top my self-loathing off, I'll give myself an extra clip round the ear by recapitulating all the things that I did wrong in this game:

1. I went for an unforced trade of knights with 10.Ne5 when I could have solidified my central advantage with 10.e4.
2. I overlooked a trick with a bishop move that I should have foreseen.
3. I got scared of a few enemy ideas such as the rook entering on b2 which was nothing.
4. I went for a bizarre tactic that turned out to only jeopardise my own bishop because of a check along the diagonal.
5. I missed a skewer attack with Bf6 on the other long diagonal.
6. I neglected my knight's development.
7. I sent my queen down into no-man's land with 26.Qc7.

This list alone gives it the impression that my play was abysmal, and I agree with that very much. So I hope that you had fun reading through this.

So, what can I take away from this:

1. I should look out more for enemy tactics along the diagonals. It's certainly not the first time I get in trouble because of this, and here it happened no less than three times in one game. I did win because of a bishop manoeuvre, but that's no excuse.

2. During the opening phase, I should adhere to the basic principles of opening play. I failed to properly confiscate the centre. I neglected the development of my queen's knight and played my king's knight twice in the opening. And I failed to properly punish my opponent for his opening mistakes.

3. Don't panic if the opponent gets one active piece. Keep looking at the situation objectively.

Despite the negative tone, I'll end this entry positively. Ultimately this is just one bad game, and one that I didn't even lose. And even if I had lost this game, it doesn't matter. The beautiful thing about chess is that there is always the next game. I take away from this game what I can, learn what I should, and move on to the next game. Hopefully this will be the last time I will be making these mistakes.