Can't beat 1350+ players, lower is easy

help, lol. I usually end up blundering in the end game against the 1350 players, and the lower like 1200-1250 I just steamroll.

Here's me blundering hugely in the endgame:

But besides some obvious blunders, what do you think I should have done in the opening/middle game, and what could I do to defend my poor king?

Here's me easily beating a 1126. I have other of around 1200, but this one was shorter, so easier to post.

That first game was seriously messed up

Has the first game got a bug, or did you do that? It looks awesome from my end :)

I liked 16. Kg8 in the first game ;)

On a more serious note. Your comment after Qa4+ (the knight hangs) is incorrect because Nc6 saves the piece. Besides that I don't see anything wrong with the second game (besides your opponent playing very badly).

@Agazo.. yes, that comment should have been after he played Bd7

Ok, wtf, I have no idea what happened to the first game lmao.

In the first game, I like 5)... 0-0; Black eliminates two of his pieces (Rook and Knight), nice!

oh, the problem is black is playing white's moves and white black's.

here's a game i just played that ended in a draw

Well, I'm really annoyed at missing those things, but did I miss other things?

Or rather, what else did I miss?

@hammer: haha lol

the problem is black's playing white's moves and white's playing black's

Oops, in the above game I'm black. Hope everyone sees this, lol

EDIT: I just realized your first game wasn't a joke.

In your draw, 53...g3?? is a colossal blunder of epic proportions. It is [extremely] important that you are able to win this kind of endgame!

Yes, the first game is nonsense notation. It is impossible to offer any meaningful advice there, except perhaps that playing both e7-e6 and g7-g6 in an open Sicilian (White plays d2-d4, and an exchange on d4 occurs) is inviting disaster - play one, or the other, but not both.

I'd like to offer you a very general observation, if I may, however. You said, "But besides some obvious blunders, what do you think I should have done ...?", and my response to this is that the way you phrased your question makes it impossible for others to provide truly useful advice. It's like saying, "Tell me how to repair a flat tire on my automobile, but I don't want to be bothered with lifting the car."

In my opinion, the *only* thing you should be worrying about at your level is eliminating "obvious blunders". Do not simply accept blunders as inevitable! They are not. Mistakes may happen from time to time, especially at fast time limits, but if you see one "obvious blunder" every couple of games or more often, something's wrong. What advice can one give to someone who makes mistakes? It sounds flippant, but really the only good answer is "don't make mistakes". At your level, that means that you should work on never overlooking material that is en prise, one to two move tactics, nor one to three move checkmates. As long as you're missing basic stuff like that, you will continue to overpower weaker opposition, and fail miserably against stronger. In fact, you may even find yourself dropping games to players rated much lower (200 points or more) than yourself.

So, STEP 1) stop hanging material and allowing checkmates (and, by the same token, never miss hanging material and simple - 1 to 3 move - checkmates).

How can you accomplish this? By employing your study time by working on tactical problems. During your games, follow CJS Purdy's advice: "examine every move that smites!" And while you are concentrating on eliminating your tactical errors, never resign until your opponent proves that checkmate will be inevitably forced. I can't tell you how many times I have dropped a queen but still won against players rated 1350+ here on chess.com (that's fast time limits). I don't promise you the same results, but the exercise of looking for swindling possibilities and making your opponent's task difficult on each and every move is great training in blunder elimination and exploitation.

There are other steps, but they hinge upon the successful completion of step one, so don't even concern yourself with those yet. You can, however, get started on the basic activity involved in all of them, namely, playing over master games. I do mean master games, not simply games of players better or even much better than yourself. The idea here is to absorb good responses to quality patterns, simply by repetitive exposure, and for this purpose, you need great material - games played by FM or above, for instance, with particular emphasis on grandmaster games.

Thank you jconn and khpa21, yours is the first real help.

khpa21: yes I see that now, I put its in the annotation

jconn: I understand what you're saying..and you're right. Here I am thinking to ask for what I'm missing (in the annotation), but there really isn't much of a point to something like that. There's no point in not missing some more subtle things if I leave pieces hanging and checkmates open.

to everyone else: I know the first game is completely screwed up! It's funny to see some of the comments, but please post something instructive, about the other games. If anyone else is going to post that the first game is messed up I'm just going to edit it out completely.

Played that yesterday. I also played this game, against the same guy... Here he steamrolled me, but I'm not sure what I could have done.

For your game in post #8. You have an extra piece, you really need to look for opportunities to use it.

At move 36 you play 36....  Be1 and comment "I can't get any pawns at this point, so I pull back to make sure I can stop his c pawn". This move takes the bishop away from attacking a pawn to stop the c-pawn which isn't threatening anything.

An alternative is 36. ... Kd6.

Because your bishop is attacking the e3 pawn, white's counter penetration doesn't work 37. Kf5 Bxe3 and your bishop will go to f4 defending both pawns while your king goes to pick off the c-pawn. If white goes all the way up to h7 with his king, he can't stop you from going to win the f-pawn as well.

White's other try is to trade pawns with 37. f4. Then you have 37. ... exf4 38. exf4 h6 39. f5 Bg3 Now any push of a pawn loses that pawn, any move of the king lets your bishop go around to f6 and then your king wins the c-pawn.

Maybe winning this takes some endgame technique, so if you can't work all this out, that's an area you should try to improve.

In the second game of post #16

17. ... Bxf2+ 18. Kh1 Qxc7 because now the discovered check doesn't work with your queen attacking the bishop on c4.

You really handed over control of the game to white in the opening of that game. 2. ... dxc4 gives up your stake in the center. This is only ok to do if you have a plan for how to still fight for the center. If you can't see how you will do that, you're better off playing 2. ... c6 or 2. ... e6 and maintaining your pawn on d5.

ah, that's smart 17...Bxf2+

I understand that I should EDIT: shouldn't (what I originally meant) give control of the center to him if I can't fight for it, but what do you mean by a 'plan'? On the second move everything is pretty wide open, so I'm not sure what you mean by "If you can't see how you will do that". I guess you mean "If you don't know how to do that" because at the point where you accept the gambit I don't think there are specific conditions for that game you would have to take into account other than it's the queen's gambit accepted.

No, he's saying that it's okay to concede the center in the opening only if you know how to counter it. Otherwise, it's positional suicide.

The Queen's Gambit Accepted is one of those openings where if you don't know what you're doing, you can get yourself in trouble. The best players in the world have given us a road map for how black gets a good game in the QGA (that's what is in the opening books), but if you don't know that map you can quickly find yourself in trouble.

The reason having the road map for the QGA is important, but you can play the Queen's Gambit Declined (or slav) a bit more by the seat of your pants is that the QGA immediately gives up your stake in the center.