Pawn Army Offence

I've never seen this before so my play was pretty problematic. Thankfully he blundered and I took him but... I'm sure I shouldn't have had this much trouble getting an attack going. What would you do in this situation? also is this a legitimate strategy? i can't find anything immediately on this kind of thing

It looks to me like you WERE doing the right thing; making/exploiting weaknesses in his advanced pawns. Even without his blunder, I think you were well on your way to underminding his defense.

really? thanks. i felt silly about the first two failed attacks

Well, losing that bishop was kinda silly, and, no doubt he could have done more to stop you, but he didn't. 

What was the time control?

its online chess so days. i'm still not used to time control. i hadn't realized it until i started playing on here but i had never played a timed game before. i've lost all but 1 of my live chess games 

I see.

In case you don't know, here are some useful things in Online Chess:

1. Use the Explorer option in the openings. This will help you quickly learn the first 8-10 moves in popular openings.

2. Use the Analyze option. This lets you move pieces around and test candidate moves.

3. Watch Youtube videos about the openings.

although this game took like 30 minutes to play. i think i would have still had time on the clock.

here is the computer analysis. and, truthfully, there is less wrong about this than i thought. but im most surprised that this pawn attack is legit(ish). i was expecting alarm bells through most of it, but only a couple offending moves.

http://www.chess.com/home/computer_analysis?id=91654882&game_type=1#

i was curious about a couple of the calls it made though, most notably calling the missed move to block my queen a mistake and not a blunder. since it lost the game. i was mathmatically losing the game before that move. i guess i'm not clear on the difference between mistakes and blunders?

I think a mistake is when you have a stronger move and a blunder is when you lose material.

I'd question your 5th, 7th, 9th and 13th moves in this game. I'd be happy to tell you what I think I'd do differently, but I'd like to see if you can see what is wrong with each of those moves first.

5. d5 is fine, but it should have been followed-up with dxe6.

7. Was just a straight-up blunder.

9. Nxe6 may have been better. That e-square is weak and should be used.

13. I'm not sure there was a better place for the bishop. Maybe you could have o-o first, but not sure what else.

I was more hoping for spyv to look for the answer themself, but yeah.

On a second look, I somewhat agree that 5.d5 might be alright. I guess it just seems counterintuitive to punish someone making unnecessary pawn moves by making a pawn move.

13.Be3 I think is just wrong because with the pawns how they are, the Bishop's most useful square is probably d2. If you don't want to put it there because you'll want to develop the knight via that square, then I'd suggest doing that first before moving the Bishop at all.

Sorry. I thought it was up for comment.

I see what you are saying about the knight. It seems to me that the bishop is good because it will take 2 moves before it can move if you play Nd2 first. Now, you have the bishop cutting diags across the battle field and you can see how things progress a little before you decide where the knight goes after Nd2.

If you come up against an unexpected defence, then it's no surprise that you had problems starting an attack. I had a game against a weaker player where he set up a ridiculous pawn structure with his pawns all on the same colour squares, which actually proved quite hard to break through, so I had to develop my pieces towards the center and then set up an attack using the weaker squares.

All that happens from setting up a ridiculous and stupid defence is delaying the inevitable; defeat. It won't take long for your opponent to break your defence. If there is a lesson learnt, then it is 'don't do what your opponent did'!

You general strategy was the right thing to do; develop your pieces and then set up an attack; focusing on the weaknesses in your opponent's defence.

110% true.

When you see an opponent who is ignoring the basics, all you have to do is fall back on the basics, keep your eyes open for opportunities and you will find a winning line.

Here is a game I JUST played that shows this in action. I have not had time to analyze it yet, so be gentle if you find some glaring issues.