Groovy Training Camp [Revived]

Recently, I was perusing the Groovy Gang forums and came across the Groovy Training Camp thread. I think the training camp is an excellent idea to help us improve our game. With permission from mrklin, I am reviving the training camp (the last post was five months ago).

It will work the same as it did before, but with a twist. The new tournament is a thematic opening tournament. For those of you who don't know, a thematic opening tournament starts all games with the same opening moves and play commences from there. Hopefully, this will help us to understand opening principles, reach a playable middle game, and plan moves in advance.

I will be choosing two games from each group to analyze and annotate. Also, I will look through everyone's games to analyze their strengths and weaknesses. I welcome participants to take a stab at analyzing their own games as well. Once Round 1 is completed, I will post my analyses and annotations here.

The tournament is located here: http://www.chess.com/tournament/groovy-training-camp-ii

Thank you Kullex,I like your tournaments:-)

Here is the first game I have had a chance to analyze and annotate. The game is a little short and one sided, but I still think it is very informative.

The match is played between kram246 and siouxie. I've had the chance to play against siouxie several times, but not against kram246. It was very interesting to see their different styles in action. While kram246 was very aggressive from the start, siouxie waited for weaknesses and then struck with deadly precision.

Lastly, I would like to give some constructive criticism to both players on their game and give them suggestions on how to improve:

@kram246- I would suggest working on your tactics. It's definitely the weakest part of your play and you can only be as strong as your weakest link. To help with this, I recommend Tactics Trainer. It's an amazing tool that has improved my tactical ability. I really like your aggression. It makes your games fun to watch and if you can learn how to play aggressively without dropping pieces, you'll be very intimidating on the board. For an aggressive playstyle such as yours, I recommend studying Mikhail Tal, commonly held as one of the most aggressive chess players ever.

@siouxie- I recommend working on your openings. Your opponent took advantage of your lack of piece development early in the game. Try watching a few videos on opening principles in chess. Your strength lies in your ability to find weaknesses in the enemy position and exploit them. Great mating combination, by the way!

I will try to analyze and annotate another game tomorrow! Feel free to make comments on what you think I did well and what I could do better.

Thank you - extremely helpful

can some1 please teach me chess im real eager 

Hello all! I've analyzed and annotated a particularly good game between KEV0913 and paullogan. The game lasted long and both players played above their rating.

And now my constructive criticism for you both:

@KEV0913- You played the opening and endgame especially well. There were only two points in the game where I saw you falter. You have a tendency to make slow moves that don't seem to accomplish much. If I were to hazard a guess at your playstyle, I'd say that you're a very solid, logical player. My only suggestion that I have is to watch for your opponents threats. You almost let paullogan back into the game!

@paullogan- For a player rated 900 against a player near 1200, you played remarkably well. To improve, I would suggest the same thing that I suggested to kram246. Tactics Trainer is a big help. You would've faired even better than you did with more tactical knowledge (forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, etc). As for your playstyle, I still couldn't quite figure it out. Maybe I'm just tired. If anybody else wants to make a guess at paullogan's playstle, go ahead.

Later today I will post some tactics puzzles for you all to work on. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate!

Hello again. I've put together some tactics puzzles for you all. It's my firm belief that improving one's tactical ability improves one's overall game. Tactics training is working well for me, at least. I started at a rating of 900 on Tactics Trainer and climbed to 1200 in three months. In that same time, I've gone from a rating of 1050 in correspondence chess to 1200.

So here they are. For each problem, find the best move. Answers with explanations at the end.

Puzzle #1: A beautiful fork (or double attack) of the king and queen. The knight is the best piece for forking. Always look for these opportunities and don't fall victim to them!

Puzzle #2: More advanced than the previous puzzle. This puzzle is an example of a pin. Pins are extremely useful for holding your opponent's pieces down and winning material. Also look for opportunities to pin, just be wary that pins can backfire!

Puzzle #3: Even more advanced than Puzzle #2. The knight was the only protector of the bishop. By taking the knight out, the bishop could be captured for free. In essence, trading one piece for two.

Puzzle #4: A combination of Puzzle #1 (the fork or double attack) and a new concept: the Trapped Piece. It might interest you to know that this particular puzzle comes from a real game played between Voodoooo and I. Voodoooo was crafty enough to see this tactical shot and swiftly beat me.

Puzzle #5: Good job if you found that checkmate in one try. This puzzle also comes from a real game. I was playing White in this game. It is the best mating combination I have ever found.

In conclusion, I encourage you all to look for tactical opportunities in your games. Tactical ability is what separates the good players from the bad! Tomorrow I will analyze and annotate another match. Please hit me with any questions, comments, and thoughts. Also, please tell me how you did on the tactical puzzles because I'm curious to see how difficult you all thought they were.

Hello again! Happy holidays everyone! I have another game (I know it's late) for you all to enjoy and learn from.

This game is played by lace3221 on White and calico253 on Black. There is something to be learned from the opening, middlegame, and endgame!

I have some suggestions for both of you to improve on:

@lace3221- You're a really strong beginner player. Keep working at it and I'm sure you'll improve even more. Your playstyle is a lot like KEV0913's: solid and logical. To improve, I recommend working a bit on making sure that you're away of your opponent's threats. For example, on move 29, you didn't see that Black could play 29 Rxf3, taking your Queen. Fortunately, seeing your opponent's threats is easy to improve. My advice would be to try pretending that you are the other player every turn and figure out the best moves.

@calico253- Tactics Trainer (or finding some other way to practice tactics) would really help your game. I know that I say that a lot, but it's true. You lost several pieces due to tactical blunders. As for your playstyle, I think you played slightly aggressively (for example 3...c5 was quite aggressive) and that aggressive openings (but not gambits) would really complement your playstyle.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading! I'll try to have another game up in the next few days. Questions, comments, criticism? Anyone? I'm getting the horrible feeling that nobody is reading this because nobody responds...

Hello again. Remember when I said that I would have another game up in a few days? Obviously, that didn't happen. I'll try to do better in the future. For the last game of Round 1, I present to you a game played by RFC69 (White) and danielemuritano (Black). This game is an example of why tactics in Chess are so important. Both players make horrific blunders and would've performed much better with an increase in tactical knowledge.

For both of you I would highly recommend Tactics Trainer. Another alternative would be buying a chess tactics problem book. I've been reading one and it's helping quite a bit!

Questions, comments, criticism?

Another game, but this time from Groovy Training Camp III. I was quite impressed with this game. Both players, ED59 (let's be honest, we already knew he was good) and wendycc are strong players with ratings over 1100. Compared to most games, this one had minimal blunders from both sides.

Unfortunately, you're both such strong players I can't find much advice for you!

@wendycc- In future games, I would recommend not trading a bishop and knight for a rook and a pawn. In this game, it was a huge mistake because you traded two well-developed pieces for ED59's less-developed pieces.

@ED59- It's even harder for me to give advice to you considering you beat me on a consistent basis! In my mind, your rating deserves to be somewhere in the 1200s. The two moves that I thought weren't very good that you played were 3...Be7 (that lost you a pawn) and 15...Bxd6 (better is to take with the queen, but I'll leave that to you to figure out why).

Questions, comments, criticism? I am considering giving a lesson on finding draws in lost positions. Leave a comment below if you would be interested in that!

Yes you are right. The third move I was not paying attention. Normally I protect the pawn.
But this is a very interesting thing with the analyzes. I still have not looked at as accurate a game of me. Respect!
That with the rating is such a thing, I was already times to 1280, but then it'll always downhill.

newly discovered to me so this is the first I've seen of this blog. Definitely looking forward to your critiques. Even if that means my tactics suck because I'm addicted to them as it is. I have over 13,000 under my belt. Not my score mind you. I'm only rating about 900 something for now because I fluctuate a lot. I've been as high as 1176 for ratings which would put me about average. The problem lies elsewhere…  Regards LB