need advice

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Avatar of CrownOfHorns

so after watching the games what is it I should be working on to get better?  I feel like I have been and the same stage for a year or two now.

Avatar of b1_

Game 1

I didn't like your opening play. There didn't seems to be any plan there. At move 5. I would have been looking to suppress the g7-bishop, stop e7-e5, prevent Nf6, attack his weak spot f7. Black's development is slow and you didn't punish him. I really wanted e4-e5 to stop his knight and suppress his bishop so maybe 5.Bf4 is better than 5.Be3.

You castled queenside right into the path of his g7-bishop without even attempting to deal with a1-h8 diagonal, then removed all his pawns on the queenside so he could attack your king? You wasted a tempo shifting your king to b1 from c1 to protect a pawn that was not attacked? I would have definately castled kingside. When kings castle on opposite sides of the board then it usually hell-for-leather attacks on both wings, and I think you let Black have most of that - your kingside attack didn't even get off the ground.

Your attempt to open the center because he hadn't castled was feeble, and in the attempt you weakened your perfect central control, which he took advantage of immediately by advancing his knight (when you've got a center like that hold it in place until you can gain a tangible advantage from it because it removes from his pieces his best central squares, c5, d5, e5, f5).

Instead of 7.0-0-0, I liked 7. bh6 then 8.BxB to really mess up his soon-to-be castled position, or even stop him castling all together (there's no point opening the center if his king can just castle to safety - stop him castling, then open the center, or open the center fast so he has no time to castle).

There are some brief comments on mostly the start (really it would be better if you posted your slower time-control games that you understood better and annotated more thoroughly). My advice is: think more about suppressing your opponent's pieces by blocking their reach and keeping them out of your half of the board; you also need to plan more. In other words, you need to improve your positional play. With regards openings, I would advise you use some positional concepts and apply them to your openings on top of the opening principles (you don't even need to need to know the names of the openings, let alone memorise opening lines, to do this).


Game 2

Analysing games against computers is silly in my opinion so I'm going to skip this one.

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Disclaimer: I am a booked up beginner.

Avatar of CrownOfHorns

thanks i wasnt expecting something that detailed it helps a ton

Avatar of CrownOfHorns

ya Qxa3 was definitly best move lol

Avatar of bhandelman

Just a general recommendation, try developing one side before the other.  When they say knights before bishops, they don't mean both knights before both bishops, they mean first the knight on the side you plan to castle, than the bishop on the side you plan to castle, then castle, than the other side.

Instead of castling queen side, king side really is a safer and better position, especially for a week player.  Castling queen side only really works if there is a reason to not castle king side, it leaves a gap preventing it from being as safe as king side and forces you to waste either a piece (in this case your queen is spent defending your king instead of attacking) or a tempo to fix this problem.  To give you an example, 10. Kb1 was a waste of a tempo when your opponent was scrunched up and barely developed while you had all your pieces out.  I would recommend you adjust for now and play a standard kings pawn opening.

A lot of the concerns b1_ brought up would be helped by playing a standard opening (and I don't mean this in a "learn a ton of openings" way, I mean it in a "learn the standard kings pawn opening used in every beginner book and recommended for everyone until they know what is going on in the opening" way), don't worry so much about strategy and position until you have all of your pieces developed.  One thing my instructor makes really clear to me is that until you understand the tactics clearly, and the opening, worrying about position will cause you to focus on the wrong things and miss the important moves.  Positional moves should be the tie breaker on deciding on a move after any tactics or development are worked out.  Priority should always be to tactics, then development, then position. 

Another big thing, you need to pay attention to safety.  This might be a consequence of playing blitz, but you made some pretty crazy bad moves starting with 19. Qa3.  If you had taken a few moments to work out the tactics you would have seen this really quickly.

One last thing, when you know a piece is lost, like your queen on move 29, don't waste move 30 moving that piece.  You would basically be up a rook, a knight, and 2 pawns at this point for his queen, and the extra tempo allows you to trade off for another pawn using hxg6.  Being up a rook, a knight, 3 pawns, and the protected passed a pawn, for a queen is a pretty even trade off. 

Play slower games, like 30 30 or 45 45 so you have a chance to consider these things, and the tactics involved.  Once you do that it will give you a much stronger idea of what moves are bad or not.  Use your study time to focus on tactics, and after every game you play, first analyze it yourself as you did here, then go over it with a computer so you can catch where your blunders are so you know what areas you need to pay more attention.

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