Beginner Trying To Learn Fundamentals

What is the Berlin Wall Endgame?

Why can't black do the same thing in the mainline with 3...a6?

Hey everyone, today's game was a devastating one, filled with many errors and must frustratingly of all lost of time :( .

Full credit to my opponent who made me think for long periods of time and who played a great defence (at least to my eyes?) as Black. Lesson learned though, 30 mins whilst better than 15/10 still isn't long enough, especially if the calibar of my opponent continues to get better.

To be honest it was a game that threw lots of unexpected things at me and I just didn't know how to react pretty much from the get go, and stupidly brought my Queen out and after it got chased Queenside, that set the whole momentum of the game to that side.

I think with more time, I could have won, possibly, maybe, sorta ... ? The last few moves were made in 10-40 seconds and were quite frankly moving just to get the clock back on my opponent who was at roughly 50 seconds left. So don't judge them as well thought out if you'd be so kind :)

Other than that, I need analysis of what the hell happened in this game, I think it was full of blunders by me.

As always thanks so much in advance, I absolutely love reading and seeing the feedback on the missed opportunites and mistakes I make during games. Don't take a non-direct response from me as not reading your replies, I have this thread bookmarked and check everyday several times lol. Hopefully for all those giving feedback, my response will be the best one, improved play and incorporating of lessons given in my chess game.

I hope I am allowed to continue to post games and hope you all can see me learning lessons and getting better :)

Game 4

Here's another perspective:

Because you said time is a big issue for you, I would suggest playing mostly correspondence games for a while. This will give you plenty of time to think before each move, and will help you practice applying the things you learn to every position. I did this, along with daily tactics and reading books about positional ideas, and my rating has gone up 300 points in the last couple of months. If you'd like, I could play some unrated games with you and give you an analysis with each move, which I wish someone could've done for me when I was at your level :P Of course, you should also play some games with others at the 1500 level, so just send out some challenges. The initial range is 900-1500, and I would suggest bringing that up to 1200-1500, that way you aren't playing games against people who don't really stand a chance. As long as you think about everything important in the position at every move (yes, even move 1), you will get more accustomed to it and begin to analyze positions faster and more accurately. Eventually, you should be able to move to faster time controls without any issues applying the things you've learned.

As I mentioned earlier, studying tactics is also very important. On Chess.com, you can get five tactics a day with a free account, which isn't enough to improve quickly. There are other sites you can use that will let you do more, or you can upgrade your account here and use the tactics trainer on Chess.com. In the games you have on this post, there are quite a few times when you blunder a tactic or miss a blunder by your opponent, and tactics will help to decrease those instances.

I hope this helps you on your journey to becoming a great chess player! :)

Well I'm glad you took to my advice.  I have to take my own advice and start playing long games sometimes .  I hope you looked at the site by Dan Heisman.  BTW it's changed since the last I saw it.  Now it's a piece of crap.  Oh well!  I guess he felt he was giving away too much free information

Anyway, the best advice Dan Heisman has to offer is this:

When playing long games...  With every single move, make a list of candidate moves for yourself, and a list of one move replies by your opponent.  Don't go through the lines until you have seen all good candidate replies for your opponent, as if you go through a paticular line you see for the first time you might over look a move that is utterly devastating for you and you know for sure that would be the move your opponent play's, however, you already spent 5 minutes thinking about a line that probably won't be played ...  So don't make my mistake.  List of candidate moves, and 1 move into your opponents candidate replies to your candidate moves, and pick the one you think your opponent will do only after you have considered all the "normal" possible candidate moves for your opponent.  There are other concepts that Dan Heisman talks about in his book, A Guide to Chess Improvement.  He basically goes into a very good chess thinking algorithm, and also references a lot of his novice nook columns to go over (the thing I mentioned earlier about candidate moves is just a partial algorithm) that you won't have access to unless you have at least one lesson with him, or just buy 50 dollars worth of stuff from chesscafe.  His lessons arn't cheap

About opening memorization:

I would say, for me, to learn openings, what worked best was this...  Consult something, anything, wheither it be wikipedia, youtube, or whatever, and learn like the first 3 or 4 moves to an opening, I guess 8 if you count your opponents moves, but really 4 moves, or 5.  Start with just the mainline.  Do this for all your openings that you want to play as both white and black.  Then, play a bunch of blitz, bullet, whatever suits you, until you've played those openings about at least 3 times each, maybe more, depending on time.  If there comes a time in one of your games where you encounter a variation of your particular opening that is not mainline, look that up, and memorize the first 5 moves of that one.  

To make it easier it really doesn't have to be 5, it could be 2.  Serious, no joke, it only becomes about 5 when you encounter different variations because if you play a certain type of opening there really only is one  good response and if you don't do those exact 5 moves you will be lost.  

All I knew about e4 when I started out, was just that you play e4, and nothing else, and I natually got better by just trial and error, but you don't know to do what I did.  You could learn to follow it up with Nf3!  I would stick to classical openings until you get good, so Nf3 would be better than Bc4 second move if you are going for a classical type setup.

To augment my post, I would say just learn the first 2 or 3 and if you have trouble learn a little more, maybe a move or two more, and keep going as you play more games and eventually your understanding of openings will grow with time, especially if you do this when you encounter variations you where not previously aware of  before after you played a game where it occurred.

You don't need special software to memorize openings.  Just learn 2-3 moves into the openings you want to play with both colors, play a bunch of bullet or blitz, and everytime you encounter problems, lookup the appropriate material, from whatever source you prefer.  I wouldn't bother with chessbase until you are good, as the information in those databases can be overwhelmingly difficult to go through what with there being thousands of games that have been played in each type of opening.  Unless you have a lot of time on your hands, stick to sources that don't involve you having to trying to sift between a thousand games when trying to only look at one particular variation of an opening.