Blitz Loss: A Nice Combination

I recently lost a game in 3 minute blitz to a very pleasant combination. While I saw the combination, I saw no adequate way of preventing it (there were a few). Instead, I played very greedily and let a few winning chances go past me in doing so. I figured the game might be amusing for the rest of the group.

Great to see you're still posting even after all of this time, gxtm :)

Regarding the exchange sac: No, I think you were right all along that it was a mistake. On move 16, as I imagine black trying to generate play with the knight and bishop, they seem quite harmless -- your pawns control squares like c4, e4, and how would black attack your position? It's not like a knight jump to b3 will ever bother you, even if black got it there with ...Be6 and ...Nb3. The only plan it seems black has there is to open lines with some pawn break like ...f5, but this in some sense gives white what he wants -- open files for his rooks.

17 bxc5 is the kind of idea I think you should be going for -- just open the b file, and who's to stop you from doubling rooks there? Also black has to worry about the position simplifying at all times -- that's of huge help to the side with the extra exchange. After you closed things around move 19, ok, now maybe black has some compensation, but with moves like bxc5 you could have given your rooks something to do.

But yeah, it seems you allowed black's minor pieces to get really active -- he does seem to have a nice attack! Even if you defend the immediate threats white might get really passive.

In summary, I don't think black's exchange sac was good, but you sort of let him make the most out of it. Although black's pieces got really active, that's partly because you allowed them to.

Thanks for sharing!

Oh no- I'm definitely aware that I gave this game away many times. It's 3 minute blitz. I'm not too great at it. But I figured that it was a "comedy of errors" worth showing, even if they were mostly my own. Why not show it? I guess I hadn't thought too much about the exchange sac being wrong. Maybe I underestimated the prophylactics that I overlooked in-game.

Yeah it was an interesting game -- what happened early on with the exchange sac makes you try to think of the plans for each side, way into the long term, who can use their material better, and later on in the game is a good example of the potential of black's minor pieces. What I'm saying though is that black achieving those nice pieces wasn't necessarily inevitable. As you said of course, it's just 3 minute chess. I was mainly just interested in the key positions that arised.

Myself I tend to be too sceptical of long term sacrifices like this, but I'm trying to be more flexible in my thinking -- looking at this position was good practice :)