Anyone please help me analyse this game?

Hello all,

although I have joined this forum some years ago, I am relatively new to chess (and to this forum as my number of online games suggest). Actually I have learned "the moves" many years ago but didn't have the opportunity to pursue it further. Now in my mid 40ies, with a demanding job and 2 kids I just thought I should add another demanding activity to the daily schedule   .Well, actually I am only playing chess on the iphone (shredder and hiarcs) just to keep my mind busy and relaxed. 

The introduction is just to place the request on the right basis, meaning I do not have any ambitions of becoming the next world champion (not even the neighborhood champion) rather I would like to improve my game as a personal satisfaction. 

I started playing shredder and hiarcs on iphone as mentioned earlier and managed to reach a level of just about 1200 ELO as measured by both products (my understanting though  is that my actuall elo rating would be far less, close to 900). 

Anyway, at this point (opponent at 1250-1300 elo) I find it difficult to win a single game on either hiarcs or shredder. I would like to see some progress in my playing and searching on the net (and this forum) I have found that the common suggestion is one should go through his own games (especially losses) and try to analysing them to find the weaknesses, so here we come to the point of the topic.

I would greatly appreciate if someone took the time and patience to analyse a typical game I lost, as the one below (since I do not know yet how to copy/paste pgns I pasting this as text, sorry for that):

[Event "19:29"]
[Site "Shredder for iPhone / iPod touch"]
[Date "2016.02.01"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Apost"]
[Black "Shredder Solid"]
[WhiteElo "1216"]
[BlackElo "1264"]
[ECO "B54"]
[Opening "Sicilian Defence"]
[Result "0-1"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nc6 5. Bb5 Qb6 6. Nc3 h5 7. O-O Bd7 8. Nxc6
bxc6 9. Ba4 Nf6 10. Re1 Bg4 11. Qd2 e5 12. Qe3 Qc7 13. f3 Be6 14. f4 h4 15. f5
Bc4 16. b3 Ba6 17. b4 Qb7 18. b5 cxb5 19. Bb3 Ng4 20. Qg5 b4 21. Nd5 Nh6 22. f6
g6 23. Ne7 Bxe7 24. fxe7 Qxe7 25. Qxe7 Kxe7 26. Bxh6 Rxh6 27. a3 bxa3 28. Rxa3
Bb5 29. c4 Bd7 30. Rf1 g5 31. c5 f6 32. cxd6 Kxd6 33. Ra6 Kc5 34. Rc1 Kb4 35. Bd5
Bb5 36. Ra2 Rd8 37. Rb2 Ka5 38. Ra1 Ba4 39. Bc6 Rd1 40. Rxd1 Bxd1 41. Ra2 Kb6
42. Ba4 Bxa4 43. Rxa4 h3 44. gxh3 Rxh3 0-1

This is a typical loss where I resign at the end having lost all hopes for a descent end game.

I am also starting a study plan with some books found on the recommendations on the other threads (like logical chess move by move, art of logical chess, practical chess excersices etc. but this is another story). 

Regards, Apostolos. 

Both sides made a lot of mistakes, both strategic and tactical. I'll just list the first three specific mistakes I saw by White since you were playing White.

I believe 5. Bb5 is weak. It's the wrong placement for that bishop, and leads either to you losing a tempo in backing up that bishop (which happened in this game) or to you giving up the bishop pair, both of which create a minor weakness that lasts for the rest of the game. I believe Be2 is standard. The Sicilian is not the Ruy Lopez or the Italian Game, so you can't just use the bishop placements from other openings without knowing what you're doing. This suggests you should learn the best piece placements for the variation of the Sicilian you want to play. 

I believe 11. f3 would have been better than 11. Qd2. The reason is that the resulting kingside pawn structure with f3, e4, etc. is very common, especially in the Dragon Sicilian, and has numerous advantages such as preventing ...Ng4 and allowing you to double your queen and bishop on the diagonal pointing at h6. Besides, you can now force Black to lose a tempo, which would be good since you just lost a tempo yourself.

12. Qe3 loses yet another tempo by moving the queen twice in the opening. In general it looks like you're losing a lot of tempi because you don't know the piece placement and pawn structures you need for your desired opening (the Sicilian).

I'll let somebody else list some more specific mistakes. In general it looks like you're habitually doing these things wrong:

(1) Not learning where your units should go in the Sicilian.

(2) Losing tempi.

(3) Losing pawns through tactical mistakes.

Thanks Sqod!

I didn't know this was the Sicilian opening...I guess I need a lot of study on the openings since I just open with e4 without any knowledge of what the specific opening is after black's move. I try to follow just the basic principles (occupy center, develop pieces, castle early) apparently without much success and without knowning much of what is going on.

So, lesson one for me, learn some basic openings, learn where the pieces are best positioned on each of them (this will cure the lost tempi also). About tactical mistakes, OK, I guess I should practice tactics more. 

Thanks! 

You're welcome. Yes, doing one thing right, especially proper unit placement, tends to make other things go better, too. It's also that way in real life.

As for learning tactics, the tactics you need here seem to be low-level tactics, not puzzle-type tactics. Out of curiosity I looked at exactly how you lost pawns...

(1) 18. b5?? Black has 3 units covering the b5 square and you have only 2 units covering that square, so obviously  when the capturing sequence starts on b5, which starts with you losing the pawn on that square, the sequence will end with a Black unit standing on that square, unchallenged. In other words, you don't get your pawn back. That's just a counting shortcut you can use in many positions to see quickly who will come out ahead in material. If you use the long method of visualizing the whole sequence, it might look like this:

18...cxb5

19. Bxb5 Bxb5

20. Nxb5 Qxb5 {The Black queen stands alone, unchallenged, on the contested square.}

If you include the erroneous pawn push, that means you would need to look ahead 3 full moves to evaluate the outcome.

(2) 22. f6?? You overlooked 22. Qxh4, which wins a pawn for free. In that case you needed to look only for an unusual possible defense like 22...Nxf5?? 23. Qxh8, which means you would need to look ahead less than 2 full moves.

(3) 23. Ne7?? You'd need to look ahead only 2-3 full moves to see that that loses a pawn. (A cute tactical shot exists in there that somebody else can discuss: 22. Ba4+!)

(4) 31. c5. This is a more complicated tactical position, but Ignoring the complications from the distractions of various piece attacks, you'd need to look ahead only 1 full move here.

(5) 37. Rb2?? You may have overlooked the win of a free pawn by 27. Rxa7, which requires only about 1-2 full moves of lookahead.

Altogether, it looks like you needed to be able to look only 3 full moves ahead in this game, which in principle is all you needed to do to have won or saved 5 entire pawns! These are simple exchange lookaheads, too: no puzzle-type themes of dazzling piece sacrifices, discovered attacks, forks, pawn promotions, etc. Therefore practicing by solving more puzzles is the wrong way to practice the type of tactics you most commonly need. I would just recommend practicing looking ahead 2-3 full moves during such exchange sequences in order to get the type of tactical practice you need first.

Doing tactics problems is fun and helps you improve.  Chesstempo.com now works pretty well with most phones, so make a free account there.  Well, learn your way around the website on the computer, then switch to your phone.  

It starts everyone at a problem solving rating of 1200 I believe, and while that doesnt corespond directly to any other set of ratings, its quite possible that the problems will initially be too hard for you.  There is no easier setting, but the problems given to you do adjust fairly quickly as you fail problems and your rating changes.  Still, if your frustrated, you can just guess and quickly fail a few to get your problem solving rating down closer to the 900 your guesstimating might be your ELO.  

thank you both for the valuable feedback!

at move 23 you solved a lot of problems your opponent has with Ne7 (and your continuation) and you gave him a pawn too. all his pieces on the kingside are useless and frozen there, let him struggle to fix that while you improve your position.