Analyze beginner thoughts & pawn question (please)

Below is a game that me and my friend played recently (both amateurs). What I want analyzed is my thought process (which is why I put a comment after each of my moves and then a comment after his moves with what I thought he was thinking or doing). Or if you want to remember what a beginner thinks like for entertainment then have fun. And even though there is a blunder the first move please don't let that stop the analysis (I blunder a lot in here too I think).

I plan on learning the basics here from the mentor system though not sure if I will go diamond or the one below it (are the videos worth it?). After learning more then I will also come back and analyze my thoughts. I do have chessmaster but can't get it to work on my PC though I know it has good teaching lessons in it also. Hopefully the mentor program on this site is good for beginners.

And is there a name for the pawn structure where there are two pawns on the same file and a pawn next to them? I like this structure but maybe it is weak???

My ego will not get hurt with your comments so please analyze openly. I am not good at following long lines but if you post them I will try and follow along to better understand.

Thanks for your thoughts and analysis!

PS: I had to type all of this twice because I guess this times out if you don't submit in time! Ugh! 

(I'm posting this as quick as possible and then will go back and edit mispellings if needed - I don't want to type a third time!)

1. Nf3 is a perfectly good opening move, especially if you want to avoid the stereotyped double-center-Pawn openings while still playing something reasonable.

Naturally, you should have retreated your Knight when his f-Pawn attacked it.

You would really benefit from studying model mates and tactics... they make up the majority of the game at the under-1800 level.

Relative value of pieces are:

Pawn 1
Knight 3
Bishop 3
Rook 5
Queen 9

When you lose a more valuable piece for a less valuable piece (your moves 4 and 13 offered 3 points for 1) then in the long run your position is worse.  It's called losing or dropping material.

When you play new players it doesn't matter much because they lose material (or get checkmated).  But as you face stronger opponents this becomes more and more important.

The grouping of 3 pawns doesn't have a name itself.  Their strength or weakness just depends.  If you can maintain them, especially so far up the board, then they may be very strong.  In the game your opponent had multiple opportunities to play dxe5 and if you recapture then the pawns become doubled and isolated which are weak.  Doubled pawns are two pawns of the same color on 1 file and isolated pawns are pawns with no friendly pawns on adjacent files (they're usually weak because they can't be protected by pawns).  When they're both doubled and isolated they're definitely weak and will likely be captured for free rather easily.

His castling kingside was fine.  The pawns that protect the king are the three that extend from the edge of the board.  Losing your d or e pawn doesn't make a difference for which side you want to castle.  Losing your f pawn (as he did) may make a difference.  As with most things in chess there are pros and cons.  His king was more exposed on the a2-g8 diagonal but, as you noted, the f file was immediately available for his rook.

Thanks blueemu & wafflemaster  I appreciate the feedback!

I did understand that I was losing material but thought by locking him up a little by guarding my pawns that I could somewhat equal the balance. But I do see how the pawns could have changed for the worse if he moved differently...thanks.

I do plan on studying tactics first I think...I am going through the beginners section of this site then I may pay on here to go through the mentoring lessons. Thanks for the input on proper retreating, weak pawns, pawns that protect the king, and material value (though I understand the material part just did not follow it properly lol)

Yes, unfortunately we've all had to learn that hard lesson... 

Lol...yep lesson learned there! Not sure how long it takes for it to timeout but not fun when it does

Allegedly it is half an hour.  You can read more about the problem (a lot more) in the following thread:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/suggestions/fix-the-long-post-lost

Thanks! Yeah I probably took more than a half hour to go through that move by move. Will read the thread and thanks again!

Yeah. 

Phase one of learning chess: The points really do matter!  Don't lose any pieces ever!  Lost a pawn?  What, are you trying to lose?!

Phase two: The points don't matter that much, it's ok to lose pieces if the ones left on are doing well.

well the game seems pretty anilized to me, but I can speak to you about the diamond membership... It has helped me alot... in the past 9 months I went from 1100 to playing consitently in OTB tourny and getting a rating preformance of over 1500 almost everytime... It taught me all about the different opinings and I am now an expert in king and pawn endgames. I recomemd starting with danny renchs vidios if you do end up getting the membership. the computer analisis is not that great I will admit and I think fritz or rybka is better. tactics trainer is a absolut blessing. I can now visualize positions far in advance and see traps and tactics all over the board. 

there are also no ads and you have unlimeted accses to chess TV which I think is really cool. The last thing is chess mentor. I dont know how much you will like it, but I think its pretty cool. there are hundreds of lesson from which you can take coarses that help you see tactics and go through opining with you. This is really cool scince there are several opinings that dont make scence at first glance and if you play it without understanding you could get into alot of trouble. 

I would deffenetly recomend you get the 1 month free trial to see if you like it. you have to put in your credit card, but it is really easy to get your money back within those three months. also if you decide you dont want the diamond you can always switch to platnum and you get the currect amount of time...

hope it helped! if you have any questions just post here I will be tracking!!

He'll also prune your roses.

Lol guys and thanks wafflemaster!

And I-eat-guini-pigs thanks for the thoughts on diamond. I am going to wait until next week to see if I win that caption contest for a free diamond month (but don't really stand a chance). I definitely want to do the mentor lessons just not sure if I need the chess TV so thanks for your input there (is chess tv for lessons or is it for watching tournaments like the world champion tourney that just took place?). If I don't win that contest I will do the free month at least to see which level will be best. I will look forward to no ads (except one that made be do a triple take lol...that one can stay). Thanks!

You're a super GM pretending to be a novice.

I'm not Genetically Modified!

Lol that explains the chin on carlsen.

Lol funny...still laughing

no chess.com tv has alot of things. it has GMs commentating on all the major tournys of the world, and it has other shows... 

1) it has IM danny renchs "the big show" were he plays simuls against anybody and anilizes the game after. (my brother got to play him, he was so happy he called me to watch the game) there is Q and A with NM dan highsman were you ask any question you want and he will answer. ect.

also no problem =D