My first offline game

So I'm currently taking part in my first ever tournament IRL, in a <1000 rated grouping. First match didn't go my way, but I'd like to get some thoughts on where I went wrong, and what options I could have considered along the way, even after I was in trouble.

Be kind, I may have a lot of games under my belt in chess.com, but I am very clearly a rookie chessplayer and had the added stress of my first live tournament

Congratulations on entering your first tournament.  When you go over these games, you should go online to an opening database to look up what you should have played.  That's how you will learn it.

In this case, it's not difficult. After 1 e4 d5, you take the pawn and presuming he takes back with the queen, you hit his queen with your knight. You gain time. If he doesn't take back with the queen, he will try to take back with the knight.  That takes time. There's really nothing else for him to do. If he does, you develop.

If you don't take, you end up losing the right to castle. You know that's bad.

11 Ke1? There is no prize for giving the first check. Why not Bc4 first attacking his f pawn, then Ke2 clearing the way for both rooks to get to the d file?

27 Bxb5 was a pretty good move. 

Good luck with the rest of your games.

Thx for your comments... yeah, will deffo study that variant on the opening, getting a bit tired of reeling from it

At move 11. I wasn't even thinking that much about the check, I just wanted to get to that open file quick. Bc4 looks pretty decent there, and with the added bonus of connecting the rooks I should deffo work to find those, thx for pointing it out...

Any tips on what I could have done at 14. or around 29./30.? At those points I feel I still had a chance to get back into it, level considering...

Sorry!!! I spent half a hour + giving full anylisis but It glitched and crashed: I no longer have it.

I can do again later if you like...

every chess player played that level games in the beginning

play a lot and watch some non-bullet time control master games

make sure your king is castled and safe as soon as possible and develop rest of your pieces

Your position wasn't too bad at move 14, especially considering that Black was willing to play ...Bxf3, which restored your pawn structure somewhat (from doubled isolated pawns to merely doubled pawns). Black actually made a positional mistake by pinning your knight with his bishop on a side where he fianchettoed. Fischer massacred Benko when Benko made that mistake once in a tournament. Therefore 14. h3 would be really good, which either forces the bishop to trade (to your advantage), to back up and get trapped & lost (very much to your advantage), or to retreat and lose a move (to your advantage).

After that your goals should be to get your back rank pieces out of the way (developed), get your king to a relatively safe location, and double rooks on the d-file, say via Kf2, Be2, Rhd1.

Its a shame but you went wrong at move 2 and continued with a series of terrible moves until you lost. Put it down to nerves and don't play passively as white. Personally I like to take D5 in the same situation and get D4 in early. If you do take, don't try to hang on to the pawn but just develop instead. The scandinavian gambit relies on getting quick counterplay as black and you just need to play solid developing moves as white to enter the middlegame a pawn up with an otherwise fairly equal position. Good luck with your next OTB games!

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/queen-pawn-counter#

This may help with queen pawn troubles