First Analysis-Sanity Check

Hello chess.com forumgoers,

Today I had a pretty crushing loss in 15/10. Borderline embarrassing actually. So I decided to do my first real analysis of my own games. I was thinking back on how terrible my moves were while I was at work so it motivated me to come home, take a look at the game again and write down my thoughts. I did leave the engine on while annotating but it wasn't helpful, in fact it felt kinda misleading in most cases. 

Posting my analysis here for further human insight. Basically just want to see if I am on the right track or if I've got it all wrong. 

9.Rc1
I wouldn't say this is bad because you want it on b1. I'd say it's bad because you don't know where you want it yet. It might end up on d1, and you can't be sure black will capture your knight.

11.Bg3
Yeah, I would have preferred e3. As a rule of thumb, if your opponent puts a piece on a bad square (Nh5 is not doing anything) and the only purpose was to trade... then your first instinct should be to retreat to an active square. Be3 makes the knight look stupid. Yes Be3 is behind pawns, but moves like Ne5 (uncovering attack on Nh5 and chasing it away) or moves like d5 will bring your bishop back into the game. At worst both players will have wasted 1 move so it's even.

15.g4
Yeah, your last few moves have been pawn moves. In the opening we're told to limit pawn moves, but it's actually a useful rule all game long. You're exactly right that it's slow / "waste of time." It was better to try to finish development by moving your queen to connect your rooks, then putting your rooks on open or half-open files.

Also, in this specific case, if you let black capture on d4 then your c pawns become doubled and isolated on a half open file, which is very bad. For that reason 15.d5 was correct.

16.Qxd4
I would have played this. Engine agrees it's good. I guess it's hard to explain though. Basically I don't see what the knight is doing on d4, so either way you'd have to move it again probably. But with queen takes you're connecting your rooks, which finally completes your development, so I prefer taking with the queen.

17.Qd1
You're right this is bad, and sure it lets black activate a rook with tempo (Rd8) but even if black doesn't do that, your queen is not as active on d1 as it would have been on e3 or e4. Plus it disconnects your rooks.

 

Thank you for your insight. Everything makes sense to me except I have one follow up question.

You bring up moving the queen to connect the rooks. I understand why moving the bishops and knights off the back rank (and castling) so the rooks can support eachother is a good idea, but why is it so important that the queen be off the back rank for the rooks to be connected? Is the queen incapable of supporting the rooks in a similar capacity that they support eachother? Or is it because it's better for the queen to be doing something closer to the center? I've been rather happy with my development if I only had my queen and rooks (and castled king) left on the back rank, so it seems like perhaps leaving the queen on the back rank is a habit I need to break.

An answer to your question is 1. that you are not completely developed until your rooks are connected. That is how you ultimately measure how far away you are from being fully developed. The main reason behind developing the knights and bishops first is that you don’t have to move them every time they are attacked, and thus are very useful in attacking and defending. The queen does have to move almost every time it is attacked in the opening because of the value of the piece, but once the minor pieces are developed then it is usually alright for the queen to come out because you have a better idea of where to put it.

Thus when it comes to move 16. Qxd4 is probably best because it 1. Develops the queen. 2. Helps control the center. 3. Allows the rooms to move freely and work together. Also since all or other pieces are together then it is not as big of a deal to move the queen again. Also you could have possibly moved the queen to a better square then completely un-developing it. Think of where it could go for better attacking chances or threats in this situation as your opponent has only developed half of their pieces.

Makes sense. I will keep that in mind for future games. Thank you.