First Game for Analysis

Victor vs. Bryan Round 3

First off I want to introduce myself a bit so anyone who wants to throw in a few comments can have some additional insight as to where my level of play is at. 

I played a lot as a youth up until 4th grade but since then (I'm 25 now) I have been relatively inactive except for the occasional game when a board shows up out of nowhere.

I started playing seriously again about 3 months ago and have racked up somewhere around 300 games including blitz, standard, correspondence, and in person since then. I learned what an "opening" was recently and tried out the ruy lopez to start. As black I would always mirror my opponents opening move. 

I recognize different playing styles, but don't understand the depths of them. For this match I knew that the player I was going up against was better than me, greater depth of knowledge, more confident, and stronger tactically. I also recognized that I struggled with fighting for the center and preferred flanking attacks. As a result I figured that I needed to learn a new opening that would suit my nature a little better (I know, not always the best idea with less than a week before your match). I checked the game explorer and knew that I liked fianchettoed bishops, so somehow I managed to find the sicilian dragon. As a result you will see that I am gunning for that set up in this match, even to my own detriment. 

I have also recently learned the basics of pushing for trades in my favor, evaluating tempo, watching pawn structure, as well as have done a ton of pin, skewer, fork lessons in the chess mentor program. So what does this mean? I have a ton of new information running through my head that isn't yet ingrained so I am not yet able to shift fluidly from one concept to the next. 

In the game I think you will see me focused entirely on one thing such as achieving the opening position I want, which opens me up to other attacks. Then I shift gears and see a fork and become focused in on that single detail, again, backfiring on me. 

A final note about this game is that I was stressed about time. We were on the clock for 45/0 and were using old analog clocks that I couldn't read easily. I have never played on the clock until using chess.com and it is very easy to tell where I stand on my time when playing here. This is just another complication to add to a game where I already expected to be playing at my current limit.

So I recognized my tunnel vision and also recognized that nothing amazing was played on his part. I just missed a lot of simple moves and don't think that he forced anything, I simply made the mistakes.

I definitely want to thank Victor for the game. He was gracious enough to stay afterwards and run me through a few recommendations and lessons. Also thanks to Kipperton for playing this game out with me on chess.com

This weekend I will be playing in the NC sub sub Masters division (a rated beginner open) and hope to play well and come away with some new lessons. Any tips, comments, drills, lessons or insightful questions would be great in setting me up for success in the future!

Sorry about the font change, I had a few problems posting this!