Learning from this lost game help - Chess Forums

FearlessPawns

Jun 22, 2021

0

#1

Hello! Lost this game with white pieces and against a lower rated player. So actually I feel pretty sad.
Anyway I'd appreciate your help to try to extract lessons from this and hopefully learn something and prehaps improve.

I'll comment my thinking, it was a 3:0 game so of course there are mistakes on both sides (keep in mind I'm a lower 1800 player and the opponent is 1600, closer to 1700).

This was my idea: play the Danish gambit with white. But I started badly. And ended worst and got checkmated.

I'm not sure but I feel that I was intending a game that didn't happen a Danish Gambit and I instead adapting to that game that was happening on the board I tried to go for it. My position started to worsen. Then castled the wrong way. And after some bad moves there were no possible recovery.

Here is my game as I saw it

ok so far
3. Nc6 He's afraid to take the second pawn and defends it while developing, not exactly what I was expecting to face. I knew that taking cxd4 would be better but I wanted to play danish gamibt so I ignored the chance to have both pawns in the center
4. Bc4, if you don't take the pawn ok, but I want to start developing my light square bishop. dxc3, I still don't care, wanna develop my pieces fast, so
5 . Qb3 and opponent plays Ne5 attacking my bishop to get rid of my developed piece, and defending g7 at the same time. Very Annoying!!!
6. I spent a couple of seconds thinking here to play the awfull Be2 retreat. At that point I didn't see Nge2, but to be honest I wanted to keep my bishop on the board
. He played Nf6, super natural
7. Finally I get rid of the hungry pawn with Nc3 and I defend my e4 central pawn. He responses bc5, pointing to f2.
8. h3 (I know might be tons of better moves and probably I paid the price of this second bad move, first I felt kinda wrong was my Be2 retreat, but I thougt that was needed). This one was in order to avoid any possible complication over f2 I his night was intending to enter my kingside.
He short castles
9. Bg5 pinning the knight and developing. Black goes h6, he doesn't want complications either and kicks the bishop out
10. Bh4 I maintain the pin. Ng6 he really heats my bishop there
11 Bg3 my only possible move since I want to keep my bishop pair
This far I haven't achieving anything at all. He goes d6 opening the way to his undeveloped bishop
12 Nf3 developing my knight. Black plays Be6 developing his bishop with tempo on my queen.
13 Qc2 I have to move out of there. He plays Re8 improving rook.
14 0-0-0 long castle and I regret that. During the game I felt it has sense.because black has 2knights and 2 bishops pointing my kingside. And I have 3 pieces to defend. Now I felt it was wrong to long castle. What do you say and why?. He plays a6 (I suppouse he wants to pawn storm my king)
15. e5, I push my central pawn, he can't take with pawn because of the xray attack on the queen, so Nd7.
16. exd6 My instint says I have removed 1 of the defenders of the castle and I'm clearing attack lines towards the king opening the position. He answers cxd6
17. bd3, battery, and opening the e file for my h1 rook, he goes Ne7. What do you think of that black move?
18. Here goes my rook I'm trying to improve my pieces to maximize their power but the e file is not so open right now. Bb4 this is annoying.... since I long castled, can't capture with queen once he trades bishop x knight.
19. Re3 I feel sad about this move..... I guess Kb1 would be more reasonable. And probably it was a "hope chess" move, wishing he don't trade immediatly so I could recapture with rook, which is impossible right now because my bishop on c3 is on the way. Black goes Bxc3, my "hope chess" paid the price, now I have to destroy the castle in a horrible way
20. bxc3 at this point my possition is so poor, he goes Qe5 and my sad a2 pawn is under fire
21. Another bad move.... how I ended like this....? N5 he goes for the trade
22. and I took with this rook (I'm not thinking anymore, that was a very bad recapture, but everything went wrong at this point. Taking with my e3 rook probably sligthly better but I can't avoid the pin anyway

1) Should I've been for taking the central pawn in the very begging of the game and forget the Danish?
2) Should I've castled short?
3) Was my h3 a doom for me
4) All the rest of the game is just pain

Finally should I avoid to try to play that kind of games agains a lower rated player, and go positional instead. I had better results agains him in past (we played 13 games, I won 9, he won 4, but normally is not easy to win against him)

Dzindo07

Jun 23, 2021

0

#2

First of all you could have saved the game on move 25 because 24. ... Nf5?? is idiotic. You play Bb4 immediately and basically one way or the other a lot of pieces get traded and you end up more or less equal.

1. Probably. The Danish is still fine especially in blitz.

2. Yes. First of all there is no c pawn and you're lining your king and queen on a semi-open file. There is also the problem of blacks Nh5 and Ngf4 and you're getting steamrolled, especially since your f pawn is unprotected.

3. I think Bg5 was the bigger turning point, it just wastes time. h3 isn't really a bad move but it's still kind of passive. I mean you're playing a gambit and giving black all the activity.

tygxc

Jun 23, 2021

0

#3

#1

"Lost this game with white pieces and against a lower rated player." So you clearly did something wrong.
"extract lessons from this and hopefully learn something and prehaps improve." That is a good attitude.

"it was a 3:0 game"
++ Play longer time controls if you want to improve.

"Then castled the wrong way." O-O is nearly always better than O-O-O

"cxd4 would be better but I wanted to play danish gamibt so I ignored the chance to have both pawns in the center"
++ So you reject a good move because you want to enforce your gambit...
"4. Bc4, if you don't take the pawn ok, but I want to start developing my light square bishop." ++ 4 Bc4 Nf6 is good for black. 4 Nf3 or 4 Nxc3 make more sense: knights before bishops
"5 . Qb3"
++ This is a mistake: you bring your queen into play prematurely and she will have to flee. The general rule is to bring pieces of lower value into play first: first 2 pawns to open diagonals for the bishops and to secure squares for the knights, then knights as it is clear which squares are optimal for them and as they are much more powerful on f3/c3 than on the back rank, then bishops, then castle to connect rooks and bring the king to safety and last but not least the queen. From that logic 5 Nf3 and 5 Nxc3 were the 2 candidate moves.
"opponent plays Ne5 attacking my bishop to get rid of my developed piece, and defending g7 at the same time."
++ Ne5 refutes the premature queen sortie Qb3
"I spent a couple of seconds thinking here to play the awfull Be2 retreat." If you play a gambit and you have to retreat something was done wrong.
"At that point I didn't see Nge2"
+++ Nge2 is bad. Most sense makes Nxc3, but you lose the bishop's pair.
"I wanted to keep my bishop on the board"
++ All right, but why did you play it Bc4 instead of a more logical knight move Nf3 or Nxc3?

"1) Should I've been for taking the central pawn in the very begging of the game and forget the Danish?"
++ Yes, either Nxc3 or Nf3 make more sense than Bc4
"2) Should I've castled short?"
++ Yes, it brings your king to safety and brings your king's rook into play
"3) Was my h3 a doom for me"
++ h3 is generally a bad move, weakening and loss of tempo, but you were already doomed
"4) All the rest of the game is just pain"
++ yes but the pain originated from Bc4 and Qb3

"should I avoid to try to play that kind of games agains a lower rated player"
++ You should play all games against players of all rating just the same as if it were a game against Carlsen. If a strategy is good against stronger players, then it is also good against weaker players. If you play the same way against weaker players, then those games will help you against stronger players.

king5minblitz119147

Jun 23, 2021

0

#4

it's hard to take 3 minute games seriously, analytically speaking, win or lose or draw. you can diagnose tactical blind spots here and there but everything else is hard to do in this fast-paced game. you can't think much here. you're basically relying on patterns you know, most of them tactical. so if you make tactical mistakes (and there are other kinds of mistakes you made here but again it's hard to play correctly at this speed) it boils down to not having that pattern in your bank yet or not doing enough training to ingrain it in your head so that you can see it in at most 3 seconds. there is the fixated thinking about playing a gambit regardless of whether it was better to change track, assuming you knew of the other track though. you could have taken on d4 after nc6. but it's mostly tactics. play longer games so you can think better, and that will also help you play faster games better, ironic but true. you need experience to play well fast.

FearlessPawns

Jun 25, 2021

0

#5

Dzindo07 wrote:

>>First of all you could have saved the game on move 25 because 24. ... Nf5?? is idiotic. You play Bb4 immediately

But that threat doesn't make a difference or does it?, since his rook on e8 takes mine with check Re8xe3,

2. Yes. First of all there is no c pawn and you're lining your king and queen on a semi-open file.

Agree.

>>f pawn is unprotected. > Why? My Bg3 is protecting the f2 pawn

>>3. I think Bg5 was the bigger turning point, it just wastes time.

You mean 9. Bg5? Why? Cos later h3?. What would I play instead to activate that bishop?

>>I mean you're playing a gambit and giving black all the activity.

Agree. But cos of 6. e2, 8.h3 and 9.Bf5 , are we in the same page?

Thanks for the feedback!

FearlessPawns

Jun 25, 2021

0

#6

tygxc wrote:

#1

"cxd4 would be better but I wanted to play danish gamibt so I ignored the chance to have both pawns in the center"
++ So you reject a good move because you want to enforce your gambit...

Yes. My question is: should one discard the idea to play a gambit and adapt to one kind of game I didn't wanted to play as white, because a good move shows up?

I indeed tried to enforce a Danish gambit (with bad results of course).

"5 . Qb3"
++ This is a mistake: you bring your queen into play prematurely and she will have to flee.
"At that point I didn't see Nge2" Stockfish suggests that move...

++ All right, but why did you play it Bc4 instead of a more logical knight move Nf3 or Nxc3? Because those moves are not commonly used in Danish Gambit where you go for open game and bishops in long diagonals, often queen and bishop battery.

"1) Should I've been for taking the central pawn in the very begging of the game and forget the Danish?"
++ Yes, either Nxc3 or Nf3 make more sense than Bc4. So one must not insist in playing the kind of game intended when playing with white pieces. Could that be the idea?
"3) Was my h3 a doom for me"
++ h3 is generally a bad move, weakening and loss of tempo, but you were already doomed. Ok! But Sicilian Najrdof contains a similar idea. You mean it works for another kind of game or you consider is a bad move because of castle's weakening?

Thanks a lot!