Help Learning Strengths/Weaknesses

Primary Goal: improve tactics and learn middlegame/endgame positional themes and planning. Text: Jeremy Silman's Reassess Your Chess (text and the workbook), plus his endgame book. For tactics, A Course In Chess Tactics by Dejan Bojkov and Vladimir Georgiev, plus The Giant Chess Puzzle Book.

I'm hoping to get a more objective look at my current strengths/weaknesses, what ideas I'm missing/struggling/innacurate with. That way I know how to prioritize my study time.

In the past week, I've begun limiting my openings in order to minimize variables and have a common point of reference. For white, I've been opening with the London system, 1. d4 2. Bf4. For black, I'm using the French Defense against e4, and I'm undecided against d4 (suggestions? approve/disapprove of my opening choices? alternatives?)

Anyway, onto a game. I chose this one because it is one of my most recent, so I remember my thoughts from during the game. In the future, I'll try to focus on a loss.

1. d4 up to 3. Nf3

Learning the London System via GingerGM YouTube videos. His advice was reserving Nf3 until after ...e6, locking in the light-square bishop

4. h3

I wanted to avoid losing the dark-square bishop from knight moves. premature?

5. c3 to 6. Bh2

Annoyed with myself. Felt like I've completely mishandled the bishop movement and have wasted moves, plus blocking rook support of an h-pawn advance in the future.

7. e3

wanted to complete the pyramid...but concerned about black pawn advance on queenside. I've been burned by mistiming pawn movements in other games against similar moves.

8. Bd3 to 9. a3

trying to complete development for an e4 advance, and trying to limit black pawn/piece movement on queenside

10. Nbd2 to 11. e4

development for e4 advance

12. Nxe4 to 13 Rxh2

was expecting a Knight trade on e4 with my bishop recapturing knight. Forgot about the bishop standoff...had the rook there for exactly that reason, but annoyed I forget about it.

14. Ne5

didn't want to capture f6 yet because was nervous about Queen recapture on f6. Maybe unfounded and silly. Still, was happy to get my Knight onto e5, where black has no convenient means of dislodging it, and it allows me to begin attacking on the kingside.

15. g4

perhaps I should have played Nxf6. Again, didn't want to invite black queen to f6. And I was hoping to destroy blacks pawn structure, not chase or defend against his queen.

16. g5 to 17. Bxe4

This will sound stupid...but for all the worry about the queen entering in, I didn't think black would recapture the pawn with the queen (shouldn't expect opponent to destroy its pawn structure on my behalf)...and now time to deal with the queen. Keeping rook on a5 in mind, especially if black plays b4 sometime.

18. Rg2

I was unsure about this move. It is protected by the bishop, but it feels like a lucky defense I didn't account for. Just happened to be there.

19. Qf3

It took a few minutes to think of this one (something I should be doing more often...my moves are too quick, as was kindly pointed out in another thread a few days back). My idea is to either trap the queen or force it to retreat so I can attack the king's position. Trying to avoid queen exchange if possible.

20. Qg3

Black queen retreated, so setting up an attacking threat of Qxg7

21. 0-0

should I have done this before moving the queen to g3? still worried about queen exchange blunting any attacking chances.

22. h4

played quickly and felt hasty. but the idea is that his kingside pawns are not really protecting the king at all, so if they can be cleared, I can get all my major pieces into play against the king.

23. hxg5 to 24. Rf1

I was not sure where to place the rook at all. I knew it need to be an "active" piece in some way, so I lined it up with the black Queen, and with the idea of pushing the f-pawn to clear away black's g-pawn.

25. f4 to 26. fxg5

I'm an idiot. I got so excited about clearing black's g-pawn that I blocked my queen/rook on the g-file and hung my knight on e5. At this point, I got pretty angry with myself and got up to get some water and calm down. Lesson: Fast moves = bad moves.

27. Bh7+

when I got back to the board, I took a long time to find this move. At first I was worried about black's e5 pawn giving black pieces life in the center. But after I calmed down, it occurred to me that black's king was so wide-open that there had to be a forced mate somewhere. So I sat until I thought I found it.

after Bh7+, black's king could only move to g7, h8, or Kxh7. I tried to envision my g2 rook moving eventually to h6, and my queen to e5. If black captured, I'd move the rook first. If on the dark squares, queen to e5.

28. Rh2+ to 30. Qxe5+

Here I briefly panicked when black played Qf6. Despite "calculating" for a few minutes, I had forgotten to take into account what pieces black could throw in my way other than scrambling his king around the board. I felt fortunate that it was still a forced mate, but again very frustrated for missing the opponent's potential moves. In other games, this will cause losses.

31. Qxf6 to 32. Qg6#

On one hand, I partially felt good about this game, especially "mostly" (ugh...) calculating out the forced mate, since I've been trying to picture movements visually in my head better. But overall I actually didn't come away feeling very good. I know I'm playing too fast and seem unable to slow down, i'm missing moves the opponent could make, and I feel like I'm generally getting lucky by not getting punished for hasty, lazy, or inaccurate moves.

******************

Thanks in advance for reading and/or any help.