Post-game analysis

Just had the idea to do post mortems of games in a forum for convenient future reference.  We have one game that will need one soon!

De mortuis nil, nisi bene

Never quite got round to doing the game that motivated this forum. There is still time!

But here is our last game, which ended prematurely, but satisfactorily. We ended the game with a big positional advantage when they timed out.

We messed up badly at the end of our last vote chess game (and by 'we' I very much include me), despite the fact that our opponents had had a remarkable 9 'great moves' according to the computer review. We still had one chance to save it because they slipped on move 48.

Our opponents had a sizeable advantage for the last part of the game, but probably not enough to be resignable, and they proved this by making a mistake just before the end allowing us to equal it. We then blundered by missing the best move, to leave them clearly winning for the first time in the game. Ironically, @Axorcist even considered the one drawing move, but had the wrong follow-up, missing the drawing line. So we resorted to an 'interesting' alternative that didn't actually work.

I feel this blunder may have been the result of an insufficiently positive attitude right at the end. We should have stayed open to the possibility of a draw until things became clear.

Our rare loss against Holland could be said to have resulted from us missing a brilliant move (computer review gives it two "!"s) but there was also the earlier point where we had the choice between f3 and f4. While huntwabow initally advocated f4 we all turned against it as it seemed it lost a good pawn.

We slipped up, perhaps by missing the simple recapture with the pawn before the bishop on g4. Duh!

Our win against Holland was indeed a very good game! It is interesting how inadequate the Stockfish game review tool is for analysing a game of this quality. For example the Qc8 we played (inspired by the same idea in a different position) was too deep for the engine. It views it as an error, but at the end of its own best line, further analysis finds the position is fine for black. And at the very end of the game, the tool gives us less than 2 pawns advantage. Deeper analysis finds it is a decisive > 5 pawns.

It may be that we were a bit inaccurate by playing h5 late in the game, giving white a bit of counterplay, but it was never going to be enough. And the review is simply wrong to suggest d4 right at the end was an inferior move - our opponents were correct to see our finish was clear and their resignation was more perceptive than the software.

Stockfish in lichess gives Qc8 a ?!, playing subtle moves for White before pushing the central pawns.

Our mistake apparently was A5?!, we underestimated their kingside attack

After a rather bad defeat to the Unsound Openers Group for which I have to take a lot of responsibility for (multiple recommendations of inferior moves, I am sorry to say) preceded by another loss that was due to no-one voting on about move 4) I feel we need another double header against this group so we can level the score.

Shall we challenge them to two more games with black and white?

I prefer to not have a prescribed opening - I am sure they can find something unsound to play against 1.d4

We should not feel that bad about another loss to Unsound Openers Group (who I believe have at least one exceptionally strong player on their team). The review of our last game says it had no mistakes or blunders by us, just one miss, and that miss was merely to keep equality. However that is not technically correct - it's just that our mistake was very difficult.

We played the opening perfectly and kept that nice little advantage for more than half of the game. But after slightly inferior moves in the early middle game that left us in a dead level position (literally 0.00 eval), on that move where we discussed playing f6 but instead played Bc5 - I argued for it, annoyingly - we should have stuck to f6. Exactly why what we played was inferior is obscure, but we know what happened. While the consequences were unclear, the key thing was that the idea of defending e4 to enable Qxc4 did not work, as we realised next move.
Their play was faultless according to Stockfish except for playing a highly questionable opening (c. 0.8 pawns disadvantage), and play that is faultless according to Stockfish is usually not possible to hold up against in a complex position.

Really difficult game against the Power of Chess where we made multiple mistakes and dubious moves). The difficulty of the game is made clear by the fact that they forced a draw at the end a pawn down, but the engine says they had been 3 pawns up since our last mistake (32. Rh6, which turned it from almost even to losing).

Looking at four of our questionable moves, @lukeluke00 deserves credit for having suggested the best move 15...h5 instead of the 15...O-O-O we played as our first error from a position of advantage (small plus for us changed to small plus for them, but we got ahead again after).

Following errors gave them a winning position from our substantial advantage (peak 1.7 pawns) may be forgiveable as no-one suggested the engine top move for any of them. Just too damn difficult!