Masterpieces & Meltdowns: Share Your Best (and Worst) Games

Played a game you’re proud of? Or one so bad you can’t help but laugh (or cry) at it?
This is the thread for both!

Post your:

• Masterpieces – Tactical wizardry, long-term strategy, epic comebacks, or brilliant moves.

• Meltdowns – Blunders, mouse slips, and harakiri on the chessboard

Let’s learn, laugh, and cringe together.

I think i'm gonna start this forum with one of my best game. There was no impressive moove but I get a precision of 94 at the end wich is really high

Wow, wonderful game. That fork winning the rook and nice endgame technique sealed victory for you. Amazing!

51 moves of effort, a significant material advantage, and all the right plans… until I pulled off the perfect draw — by force.
Chess gods: 1, Me: 0.
I was playing Black by the way, and it was a 3 minute Blitz game.

Ouch! In 3 mins though I think that was an easy miss... Still really cruel. I'm always so paranoid about stalemate, but didn't see that cycling through.

Can't seem to figure out how to post my game? Any advice?

I struggled a bit too. But you can click on the icon above the comment section here which looks like a chess board and upload your game either from your game history directly or as a PGN. For uploading PGN, you would need to go to that specific game, you will see the 'share' icon somewhere. Go to the that, and you will have the option to copy the PGN link. If this seems confusing, let me know, I whill try and explain it more thoroughly.

Posting another one from last week. Just 8 moves - 2 brilliants, 100% accuracy - and my opponent had enough.

This was the Albin Counter-Gambit against the Queen’s Gambit.
If White isn’t prepared, it’s basically over in, well, 7-8 moves.

Short, sharp, and surprisingly effective.

Wow that went downhill for your opponent very quickly! Thanks for sharing!

I call this game 'a comedy of errors' ! No educational value whatsoever... but a win with 44% accuracy! It was from a Thematic Scandi tourney, but no excuse for my play!

Thanks!

whoa that was chaotic

This was one of my quickest wins. I'm proud of this one because a review of a previous game showed me this line and I was able to implement it in this game. Technically, I blundered (according to the almighty stockfish), but neither of us picked up on it

I have not seen this exact line, but after move 5 it does resemble a Queen's Gambit set up if I'm not wrong. And blunder? I have not identified it yet. Is it the Queen moving to A4? But I would have thought it might be an accuracy at the most. Still, I'm sure I would have fallen for this trap too

The blunder was Queen b3, it allows the Knight to b4 and then do some nasty forking on c2, which is protected by the bishop. Apparently, I should have gone a3 before moving my Queen. Moving the Queen to a4 was a "great" move by the engine.

I would never have guessed any of that! But now I see it. Thanks for sharing! It was truly informative.

I just have a question about one of the moves in my recent game. The computer says at move 13 I should have taken the opponent's bishop with my pawn, rather than my bishop. This causes doubled pawns which I would think would be the weaker move, but the computer says that's not the case. I can't seem to understand why, any insights?

Hi. It is not entirely clear to me either why the computer prefers 'pawn takes bishop', but here are a few insights I have:
1. I still believe that bishop takes bishop is the most natural/humane move in this situation no matter what stockfish says.
2. The computer might want to keep the bishop on E2 and have a pawn capture the opponent's bishop probably because this bishop is much stronger on this diagonal with more open squares than on F3, where it is heavily restricted by pawns (especially the D5 pawn).
3. If there is a situation in the future where the white knight on B5 moves and you have the opportunity to capture the A6 knight, then that would create very weak isolated doubled-pawns on the A-file, much weaker than your doubled-pawns on the F-file.
4. Because the enemy king is on the light-square, there is no longer a light-squared enemy bishop, the king-side pieces completely under-developed, and no knight move to defend the king against your light-squared bishop, this could mean that there is a possibility that in future, a simple check from the bishop could have the opponent lose castling rights and give you a big advantage.
5. When it comes to the question of why the computer feels that our doubled-pawns are ok is probably because the board no longer has queens, and hence, the computer must have calculated that there are no immediate/undefendable threats to the king. This might be true, but I think that's what makes this a computer move, and not a human move to voluntarily double our pawns.
6. The computer probably also thinks that because you are a pawn up, you can afford to double your pawns now, give up a pawn during the course of the match (maybe one of the F-pawns), and still be ok because in exchange for that pawn, you get a very active bishop always threatening to worsen the enemy position in some way or another.
So yeah, these are possible reasons I can see why the computer prefers pawn takes, even though for a human, seeing that is nearly impossible , especially at our level. Hence, I would say, great game!

Here's an instructive game I played for our club (I'm black). It highlights the importance of castling early, especially against higher rated opponents. My opponent didn't have any obvious blunders, but his exposed king made the attack almost impossible to stop. I did make a pretty big mistake, but my opponent missed it (we were both so focused on my attack).

Absolutely correct! Castling late cost him the match. He also did not play the opening too well, such as playing H3 on move 2, Playing D3 first, then D4 etc., and you took great advantage of that. Putting pressure on that pinned piece and eventually trapping his queen, it was a great finish. Yes, that bishop was in trouble for a move, but one miss, and there was no coming back for your opponent!