Game Analysis

@LoversPromise No, there's no reason why you should be banned based on the game you shared. Your opponent simply abandoned the game, and that was that. There's no fair play issue there. When someone is banned for fair play reasons, there are always cheating suspicions involved. Based on the game you shared, there's no reason to believe you were cheating, and therefore, banning you would be unwarranted.

In my opinion, you should be banned and sent to irl prison. 1. e4!! was an insane brilliancy. No way a human could've ever found that. I'm on the phone with chess.com right now. Your days are numbered.

I've been kind of busy. So, I haven't posted in this forum in a while. I decided to stop being a deadbeat and share some analysis of a nice game I played on Lichess today. Enjoy!

@Logando2805 Welcome back! That was a great game! Well done! I really liked your annotations and how they eloquently explained the positions you had in the game, as well as your ideas and potential tactics (and your opponent's potential moves, too). I always really enjoy reading your analyses, as they are incredibly instructive for me. Feel free to keep them coming as you have time!

I'll give a pitiful effort to try to explain the move 6. f4!!. I'm more than likely 99.9% wrong, so take this with a grain of salt: You are further striking at Black's overextended kingside pawns, and giving yourself the opportunity to get a semi-open f-file if Black ever captured the pawn. Additionally, you're grabbing more central space and allowing yourself to put the knight on g1 behind the pawns, which is a common idea in the Vienna Game. If this is wrong, I honestly have no idea. At that point, it's probably computer chess jargon that's super complicated for no reason.

I appreciate your kind words! I think you're generally right about wanting to open the position. I did some digging with the engine, and it seems like the computer prefers White's Queen on e2. So, it doesn't see the need to prevent Nf6 at all, and after 6. Bxg5 Nf6, white is forced to play 7. Bxf6 after which White's Queen is still "misplaced".

Very interesting! Thanks for the clarification! I guess I can see the queen becoming "misplaced" in some sense, but I think you played the position very well from a practical standpoint. The queen is putting a significant amount of pressure on Black's position, and it's sort hard to deal with, at least in my opinion. Maybe Black is fine from a computer's perspective, but I would take White's position any day of the week.

Oh yeah, White is completely winning (+1.71) after 4. g5? with a bunch of different approaches. I just thought 7. f4!! was a really crazy idea.

Not a specific game question but a general analysis one, (and apologies if it has been covered before).

After a game I use the game review and make written notes on two or three key points in the game. Is there also a way to discover error patterns in my games? e.g. can I search on when I have used Caro-Kann defence and then use the website's tools to see if I make the same mistake on a regular basis? The website's analysis is a great facility and I'm sure that I am not using it to the best effect.

@Stillingtonion I don't think the site offers such granularity, although it'd be a great feature to add (albeit very difficult to implement, probably). If you want to check if you made the same mistake in the exact same position before, though, you can use the explorer for that, and insert the opening moves. That being said, once you identified the problem, you should be able to fix it, regardless of how many times you've done it before, so one sample game should be enough for you to make progress.

@KiriyamaKazuo you make a good point (as always), and I guess it was not so much about a specific error but patterns that lead to weak positions. No doubt as I play more some of this will become apparent; and I probably need a way of utilising my written notes so that they can provide a better reference resource. I will investigate the explorer, which I don't think I used up to this point. Thank you for taking the time to reply.

@Stillingtonion I agree with @KiriyamaKazuo. Also, on a computer browser you can go over to the sidebar and when you roll over the graduation cap you'll see a link for Aimchess Training at the bottom. It takes you to a separate website where you can upload your game history and it will give you TONS of insight into your play. It will also create puzzles pulled from actual games you've played to help you start seeing positions differently.

@ClingermanChess I did discover Aimchess just the other day and ran an analysis on my rapid games which I found to be really informative; I haven't tried the puzzle function. I will delve into it a bit more, and as always the best features come at a cost but the chess budget only stretches so far! Do you subscribe to it? And if so, have you found it value for money? Thanks for taking the time to reply

@Stillingtonion Thanks for your question! Blunder prevention is indeed one of the most fundamental methods of chess improvement. For your written notes that you mentioned you made after each game, I would maybe try to focus more on general concepts and principles rather than just the specific mistakes in the game. Improving your general knowledge will help you become better at specific situations and circumstances. But if you've found that writing down the specific mistakes was really helpful for you, I would continue that practice and then just write down a few general principles.

Another resource you might want to consider using is the Insights feature. It gives you all kinds of information about your opening, middlegame, and endgame play, and I think it even points out where mistakes were made in each of those three stages, based on the opening played for a particular game. I'm not sure if you've already been using this feature, but I would highly recommend it otherwise. Hope this helps!

I do subscribe to it and I feel like it's worth it.

Really nice game with some very fun ideas! On a side note, I always appreciate both the effort and detail you put into these annotations!

@Logando2805 Excellent game! As always, your annotations are incredibly clear and expressive of your thoughts and ideas. I really enjoyed that tactical game; those were some decisive attacking ideas! I'm salivating, if you will, when I see tactical opportunities; they're my favorite kinds of games to play, as you may have deduced from analyzing some of my own games in the past. I also enjoyed watching you experiment with 1. d4, even though I haven't played that opening in years. Have you had much success with it compared to 1. e4 or some of your other common opening choices?

I also had a question, though: in the line you demonstrated after 10. Ne5! g6 11. O-O!, I was wondering what the idea was after 15. Nxg6!! and Black's queen came to g8 after you recaptured the pawn (I'm assuming with the queen). I was thinking of possibly 17. Qh5+, but I wasn't quite sure if that works. Does it in fact work?

I've really been enjoying 1. d4. I've been playing the Catalan and the Sämisch which has served me well. My experience so far is that d4 + c4 gets me a strong attack about as often as the dubious stuff I was playing with 1. e4. Of course, there is recency bias + small sample size, I might post about it in the forum once I've played more games.

In the line after 15. Nxg6!! hxg6□ 16. Qxg6! Qg8□, there is a simple M2 with 17. Qh6+Qh7□ 18. Qxh7#. But actually your idea with 17. Qh5+!? is also winning after 17... Kg7□ 18. Ba3! weaving the mating net (M5).