Game Analysis

I think I made a mistake when I exchanged the dark bishop for the knight, but other than that I really can't find a spot where I played inaccurately.

I think you sacrificed your castle too fast, you could have avoided giving up the bishop by holding it back but it was still a good move. ___thats just my opinion and I'm no expert.

It looks like the losing move is 25...Qd5? allowing for the passed pawn for White.  Perhaps better is 25...Qc7 or 25...h5 first (but if 25...h6?, then 26.c6 bxc6 27.bxc6 Qc7 28.Bd7 looks strong for White), then 26...Qc7 to allow an escape route for the Black King, stop the pawn, and have the White bishop mover to a worse square.  Black could also try 25...g6 (aiming for ...f5)and if 26.c6, then 26...bxc6 27.bxc6 Qc7.  Black just cannot allow White to get a passed pawn to the c7 square and then to c8 and queening.

After 25...Qd5?, White should win. 26.c6 bxc6 27.bxc6, now 27...Be6?? loses fast.  Black should try something like 27...Qc4 28.Qxc4 Bxc4 29.c7 Ba6 30.c8=Q+ Bxc8 31.Bxc8 Kf7 as the only counterplay, but still losing.

After 27...Be6?? 28.Bxe6+ Qxe6, now why doesn't White just play 29.c7.  Passed pawns must be pushed.  After 29.c7 Qc8 30.Qb3+ and 31.Qb8 wins.

I think there was a mistake way before the 25th move: you played without a plan for the whole game. How did you want good things to happen? If you think that exchanging the bishop for the knight is a mistake, then why did you do it? There must be a reason?

Aactually I don't think that move is that bad, I think that it turned out to be really bad because you playe it without a plan!

Around move 19 I would have played something like f5 followed by d5 to limit the bishop's activity. Also, you should know that when your opponent plays on a wing you should try to play in the center, and this is a demonstration of how to do it.

21...Bf7

Huh? Why? Why why why? Did you roll a die which told you to move the bishop, made a coiflip to choose the diagonal, and another die to see from how much squares?

There is only one mistake that lasts the whole game: you played without a plan. You did not try to achieve anything, so you achieved nothing. It's all that simple. A good evidence of it is your comment: "I don't see any mistake other than X", mixed with absolutely NO comments on your moves.

Wow, man... that's really harsh. I did have a plan (although you are correct that I didn't comment them). I thought I was winning until I exchanged the bishop for the knight, and this was an OTB game against a guy with 250+ rating points on me while I had black. Yes, I made mistakes, and as rudely as you phrased them, I appreciate your comments, too. I'm trying to learn something here.

I almost always play without a plan. My question is: Can you give me examples of good solid plans to base most of the game on? or if thats not a good question use this game to make a plan after a certain move? I just never really figured it out much. Thats my biggest flaut.

I don't think 21...Bf7 is that bad.  What else could Black do?  It is a waiting move.  Perhaps better is 21...a6 to prevent 22.b5.  I think 22.Bg4 is bad and no plan.  White should be advancing on the queenside with 22.a5 or 22.b5.  The White bishop is better at e4 (along the a-h1 diagonal and the b1-h7 diagonal), not g4.  But Black should not trade Rooks and give White a tempo afer 22...Rxd1+ 23.Rxd1 Rd8 24.Rxd8 Qxd8 25.b5.  Instead, Black should just play 22...Rb8 or 22...Ra8 and defend the queenside.  Now if White trades rooks, Black gets a tempo. 23.Rxd8+ Rxd8 24.Rd1 Rxd1+ 25.Bxd1 Kf8 and Black is OK.  And if 23.b5, Black can now play 23...h5 and it is White who has to move since the bishop is misplaced.  The game looks equal to me if Black just moves his Rook on c8 to a8 or b8.  I don't see a clear win or big advantage for anyone.  Earlier, I think Black missed a better move.  Instead of 20...Rfd8, which looks natural, I would have played 20...f5 (or earlier with 19...f5), aiming for 21...e4 and cutting off White's Bishop.

After move 25 from the strategic point of view white is better since there 3 pawns vs 2 in the queen side and the double pawns in the King side are good protection for the white King in a Queen ending. So the assumption that  I can make is that you should not exchange rooks. So the move 21..Bf7 was really bad  because it help to exchange  rooks. A good plan according to this pawn structure was to pushh the King side pawns because is the side you have superiority, so the rook places should be at f and e files to help this plan. I am not sure if the exchange of the dark square bishop for the knight was good or bad because the knight had also very good square at d5.

Okay, I'll try to be more constructive. However saying that "I had a plan" without saying a word about it is not really effective. "Winning the game" is not a plan.

I will not comment the opening play since I am not familiar with those openings. However it seems quite dubious to me.

9...d4 is a good idea. Your king is safe while his in still in the center, so you try to open the center, or at least play dynamically.

With 11...Nef5 there are two possible (obvious) ideas. First is to centralize your pieces so that they have a better activity than their white counterpart. If you look at the position after 11...Nef5 then it is striking that black's [url=http://www.weebls-stuff.com/songs/Amazing+Horse/]horses are amazing[/url]!

From move 12 an easy plan comes to my mind: trading both your knights for his bishops, and then opening the position as hard as possible to make your bishop pair strong. However this seems counterintuitive since we just stated that your knights are extremely active. An idea to increase the impact of your active centralized pices might be to simple kill your opponents pieces activity. That's where 12...e5 strikes my mind. Totally entombing white's bishop. From here your plan should be to simply hold your center (because it grants you space), and try to keep your pieces much more active than his. At this moment, white already have the dreamish possibility of creating a queenside passed pawn (3vs2 pawn majority), however with your advantage in the center he has no way to use it!

I'm sure there are other plans available, based on the opening's imbalances, however as already said I'm familiar with it so I won't commit myself here ^^.

12...Nxg3!? You trade your wondeful knight for his inactive bishop, so you went for the bishop pair advantage, why not, let's see how you will make your bishops play:

14...Qb6. exchanging queens should help your bishop pair to show it's greatness.

15...Bxc3? Effectively, deep thinking here. You traded your wonderful knight a few moves earlier to buy a bishop pair, you get a very active bishop in the center, and you trade it for a sitting knight that have no influence yet on the board?? So in less than 5 moves you did trade two good pieces for two "bad" ones. Worse than that: you played two moves that go in a totally opposite way, showing that you had absolutely no plan in mind! In fact I'm looking closer at it and effectively this move is really bad: it kills every plans you could have in mind, free the center of your influence so that you have no active piece anymore, and forces the white queen to the best square ever to crush you on the queenside.

19...Rac8?! don't see what you are trying to do with that move? What's the plan? For me, you have central pawns, fo f5 followed by f4 is a way to use them and to play actively. You want to play in the center to get activity before your opponent's plan wins him the game.

20...Rfd8?! Still no plan here. "I get my rooks in the middle of the board and prey for my opponent to have a heart attack before he crushes me on the queenside"is not a plan.

21...Bf7? Still, I just can't understand that move! Explain it to me, please! forn me it looks as if you gave the game up! once again f5 was my move here.

22...Rxd1+? Okay, his bishop makes good use of the diagonal I just freed for him with my bishop move, so the next step is to.... give the d file to my opponent! so that he has maximum piece activity! As black you're supposed to implement a plan that gives play for black, not white ;)

the simple Rb8 was way stronger!

23...Rd8?? Oh no I gave him the file! I have to get it back with my queen! After 24.Rxd8+! Qxd8 25. c6!! you can take the paper sheet and write 1-0.

From here you are lost, if white does not blunder he can't lose, and he can't draw!

From the move 12 to the move 24 you played almost only innacurate moves that had absolutely no relation with what was going on on the board. This was just like random moves, except that you took care that it didn't give pieces or pawns away. You have to try to achieve something. Material is useless. Material helps you to achieve things, but having pieces with no plan is just like being a ghost on the chessboard that can't touch your opponent. either he is afraid of ghosts and plays bad moves (just like a suicide), either he is not afraid of ghosts and he can't lose, even with a 1100 ranking!

Now tell me: what were your plans? Maybe you had plans that had just nothing to do with the position, and this would be the reason why I did not see them. In that case, explaining how you chose your plans might help us to correct your thought process, so that you don't play another of such games.

I don`t think 15...Qb6 was good.

Instead I recommend 15...f5 intending to attack on the kingside and trying to mate the white king.

I am not convinced that 23...Rd8 is a bad move or that 24.Rxd8 Qxd8 25.c6?! is a good move for White (25.b5 is much better, but still not a forced win at this level).  Seriously, DoigterFou, do you think you can beat any grandmaster, or international master, or FIDE master or any master as White in this position after 25.c6?  I don't think you have a positional feel for this complicated position and evaluating it wrong. Just because there are 2 pawns on the queenside for White and only one pawn on the queenside for Black, but no passed pawn, does not mean an easy win for White.  You would either draw or lose.  Try the positon as White against a strong computer and see if you can win.  So if you were Black and you played 23...Rd8 accidently, you would resign, even if he is a 1700 rated player like you?  Where is the win for White?  I think Black can hold easily.  Where is your analysis?  After 25.c6 bxc6 26.Qxc6 Black should be able to hold on almost any move.  I think Black can at least draw with moves like 26...Kf8 27.Qc5+ Qe7 or 26...g6 aiming for 27...f5 (perhaps best for Black) or 26...h6 or 26...Be8 threatening 27...Bxa5 or 26...Bb3 or 26...h5 or 26...Qd4 or 26...Qe7.  Cry_Wolf, this position is not lost until 25...Qd5.  And Doig does not give an alternative to 21...Bf7.  It is a good waiting move that does not lose, perhaps just draws, but not a forced loss.  Perhaps some other master or better can add his own input as to these positions and what is lost or not.  At this level of play, anything can happen.

I think you played too agressively but thats just my opinion

My whole point here is that you are scaring a player or giving advice by saying just give up.  You wrote "23...Rd8?? Oh no I gave him the file! I have to get it back with my queen! After 24.Rxd8+! Qxd8 25. c6!! you can take the paper sheet and write 1-0."  And I disagreed. 

I encourage the forum.  Whenever I annotate games here or at www.chessgames.com, I usually say "perhaps such and such is a good more or better move or best move."  I do not know with certainty.  Everybody sucks at chess unless they are a 2500+ grandmaster.  I sometimes don't play with a plan a few moves deep or sometimes make a waiting move, but seem to do OK until I hit the 2300 players. But I just don't think 21...Bf7 is losing or 22...Rxd1 is losing or 23...Rd8 is losing, especially at the under-master strength level.  I thought it was an intersting game and only thought Black messed up at 25...Qd5. 

Cry_wolf did not know where he went wrong.  He wrote "I think I made a mistake when I exchanged the dark bishop for the knight, but other than that I really can't find a spot where I played inaccurately."  I pointed out the losing move was at his 25th move and tried to explain why.  You thought the mistake was way before the 25th move.  It could be at move 5 at the GM level.  I just never saw a big mistake to lose the game for Black way before the 25th move.  You then pointed out 21...Bf7 asking "Huh? Why? Why why why? Did you roll a die which told you to move the bishop, made a coinflip to choose the diagonal, and another die to see from how much squares?  There is only one mistake that lasts the whole game: you played without a plan. You did not try to achieve anything, so you achieved nothing. It's all that simple."  I then tried to analyze 21...Bf7 and say why not?  It is a nice waiting move, and in my opinion does not lose by force. 

You put a lot of work in analyzing from move 9 up.  Great.  Good work.  I can't understand half the super GM moves, mostly waiting moves that, to me, does nothing.   But they seem to win or draw.  It is not forbidden to give analysis in a forum analysis and am glad you contributed to the discussion.  You gave your analysis, I gave mine.  Anyone can ignore it.  You did the right thing in highlighting interesting things to talk about, but if you say a move is winning and I think it is not, I feel obligated to give my reasons why.  You wrote, "I talked about c6, which is ANOTHER move, and which seemed at this time for me to be winning. Because IF I'm WRONG, then there are other people, way better than me, who can correct me."  OK, i tried to correct you and tried to provide analysis to show it.

So don't ever leave the forum and please contribute as much as you can.  I apologize if I offended you and will try to be more neutral in my notes.

10... dxc4 to keep the pawn count equal (from the comment above about the queenside pawn majority).

otherwise I think its good to have minor pieces and rooks to tackle passed pawns in case they promote.

I don't understand your opening? The advantage of playing known openings is that they have good coherent plans that you can try to use or borrow from.

Effectively, maybe I did get upset for no real reason in my previous message. I was effectively offended to see an apparently strong player not giving a lot of advice to a player asking for, and just waking up to break another player's analysis trying to help. In fact my tone in the previous messages is far from being neutral, and even aggressive, mostly in my first appearance in that thread, I apologize for that. My first aim was simply to try to strike him so that he will never play again without a plan (even if he hates me from now on, that's no big deal if he improved). However on the second I kept that tone which was far froim accurate to exchange calmly ideas. The tone you used and that offended me was simply provoked by mine I think.

The reason for which I first opposed to the fact that the only losing move is 25...Qd5? is simply that he went from a good position in the early middlegame (in my opinion) to an inferior one in the end of the middlegame (once again, in my opinionà. This is for me clearly showing that bad moves were played. Either only one with white exploiting them, or either several inaccuracies, but something went wrong. Maybe my analysis of his middlegame play is not accurate, and the problems comes from the earlier moves, but here again as I'm not familiar with that opening I won't enter into its analysis.

To me, a losing move is not necesarily a move that ends the game right here, but any move that allows the opponent to consolidate a stronger advantage. 21...Bf7? to me gives up the only thing that can keep black active: his grip over the center. The first rook exchange does the same. The second rook exchange takes back some control over the center, but there are not enough pieces anymore to use the center to counter white's queenside activity (with his b5 to follow, not c6 effectively). In that way, 21...Bf7 gives up any chances of counterplay for black, so that he doesn't fight for a win anymore but for equality. 23....Rd8 allows white to enter an endgame with a strong advantage, and is therefore a mistake in my view.

Maybe it is tougher than most chessplayers would evaluate, but not allowing bad moves is the way I found to get better the faster, and it works for me. Not especially in chess since I don't train seriously (mostly because I don't have enough time), but all those aspects I learnt from chess are useful for me in a lot of other areas (music as I'm still learning to play my instrument, and in a great way in my approach to my PhD, where that 'tougher" way of thinking helps me a lot). To show that in my notation, ? indicates a move that to me is bad for some reason, but does not allows the other side a winning position (or to equalize when the other side is clearly losing). ?? Is used only when a move gives the game away. I also try to use ! and !! as less as possible, because one thing I don't like in some books analysis is the fact that they give ! or even !! to moves that are only exploiting the opponen't mistakes. In reality, any other move should be noted as ?, not those ones as !. But this seems like a diggression.

Because of so many waiting moves and moves that don't seem to have a plan in positional chess at the GM level and beyond our understanding, I tend only to look for the losing move and not question the moves that seem illogical or no plan.  I have been studying Fischer's games recently (especially Fischer and Larsen match ups) and it seems like half the moves were played with no plan (Kg1 to Kh1 or Bd5 to Ba2 or Bg8 or Ne3 to Nd1).  But somehow, they seem to be the best moves after you play a half dozen more moves.  I agree with the notation of ! or ? or ?! or !? or !! really doesn't apply to anyone except at the GM level. 

I have played the opening 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 c5 6 times as White and 6 times as Black, winning all my games, but not due to the opening, but due to the lack of position judgement of my opponents, or just plain trappy moves.  As White I usually do not take the pawn.

Bill Wall (2300)-Guest521, www.zone.com 2004

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 c5 3.c4 cxd4 4.cxd5 Qxd5 5.e3 Bg4 6.Nc3 Qa5 7.exd4 Nf6 8.Bc4 Ne4 9.Qb3 Nd6 10.Bxf7+ Nxf7 11.Qxb7 and Black resigned.  1-0

This post appeared on "tracked topics" ... anyway I thought I'd take a look at playing through the moves, here are some of my ideas

In your note to 9...d4 you give the e6 pawn after 12...Bb7.