Nice 👍
I really played poorly in this endgame
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Jul 6, 2023
0
#3
There are three things I noticed in your game.
1) You should plan a little bit further ahead. I'm not suggesting a deep calculation five moves into the future, just think one move ahead.
In this position, before you play Kd6, ask yourself what will my opponent play if I do? Again on the next move after h4 c5. And again after dxc5 Kxc5.
2) Related to the previous point. Don't play without thinking. Before you play, ask yourself if that's the best option.
Your Rook is attacked and your immediate response is to move the Rook. Without too much thinking you played Rf7, but there is a much better move available.
3) Consider what your opponent wants to do.
In this position you are stuck on the queenside, while your opponent plans to march the pawns forward. Understanding your opponent's plans helps you avoid moves like 37. Kxa4 or 39. Rc8+. Don't just play without thinking.
4) use your time to think about your next move.
You have just promoted to a Queen. You have a decisively stronger position and multiple ways to checkmate your opponent, not to mention an 8 point material advantage. After your opponent played f4, it's not exactly clear what your next move should be. But you have more than 10 minutes available. There is no need to play a move every 10 seconds. Don't just play without thinking.
Instead of pushing pawn on h5 you could have forked the king and the rook. The opponent had only one danderous piece on the board which is the rook. If you could eliminate the rook, no one could stop you from promoting the pawn. That would be the only game changing move.
Jul 7, 2023
0
#6
Thanks everyone for looking at the game. I review all my games and I was aghast at how I threw away the endgame. I was trying the check check check approach looking for a King/Knight fork and then I could hover up the pawns. It never occurred to me to look for a King/Pawn fork and there were several. And once the top pawn dropped, the others did also.
Let me give a bit of background, starting back in January I was traveling a lot and never had a reliable internet connection, so I went to just daily games, and only with 2 of my good friends from work. I've been home for awhile and wanted to get back into 15 minute games, with the eventual goal of OTB games. I knew I had improved considerably in the Daily Games, and I was curious to see how that translated to Rapid.
It has translated poorly. I won't my first two, then the one above I threw away, and I just threw away today's game. I'm really feeling time pressure, but the crazy thing is that I know that and I have plenty of time on the clock in both my loses.
I know to not hang, to look for hung pieces, look for forks, pins and skewers, and that all just disappears in the Rapid Games. (In my daily games I was able to spend 15-30 minutes per move.)
So this is the mental challenge I face, to use my time.
Jul 7, 2023
0
#7
Something I really like doing if I have a winning position and the opponent resigns or some other scenario where I was winning but failed to convert to a win is practice against the bot from the point (an option in game analysis) at which my play collapsed. At the default bot setting from practicing a position with the bot, its the 3200-level engine bot which essentially plays (near) perfect chess. So to convert a winning position requires understanding the concepts of how the convert the position, without blundering pieces of even potentially giving up a perpetual check.
We both made lots of mistakes, but at the end I had a Queen and a Rook, they had a Knight and a horde of pawns. They made it through to the end, with a draw.
What can I study on chess.com to make my endgame better? I'm currently reading A Guide to Chess Improvement: The Best Of Novice Nook by Dan Heisman, so I'm not sure another book would help right now. Are there Custom Puzzles that I should work on?