Road to 1200

Hello guys, 

i started playing in February being in my early 30s. I knew how the pieces move since i was a kid but didn't play a lot of games since then. Maybe a hand full of games with friends. I decided i want to improve and went from there. After dropping my rating below 800 (where i rightfully belonged) i started to learn a bit more serious and not only play fast games.

- I changed the format to 15/10 (i just can't stand longer games online )
- I try to do about 20 puzzles every day

and now i tried to do my first serious game analysis. This being said, this analysis might be full of flaws and errors. Feel free to give me advice to analyze games better. I analyzed the game on my own and checked some things with the engine afterwards (marked as ENGINE). 

I would love to get some feedback and advice from you

Analysis

4. Bf5 - Check opening database. Is this really the best move? An alternative would be Kc6, but I wanted my bishop out to make e6 possible (guarding the d pawn after Kc3)

6. Bd6 - I wanted to develop my bishop on a save square where he is still protected (by the queen), on all other square a pawn move of the opponent would have forced me to move the bishop again. Should I have moved a knight out instead? (Kc6 might have been the better move, attacking e5 and d4? On the other side, casting is priority and therefore getting the bishop and the knight on the kingside developed)

10. Kh4 was a dubious move by my opponent, attacking the defended bishop on g6 with a second knight move instead of developing. I chose to ignore it because I’m okay to trade. I was on the fence of taking back with my g pawn creating an open lane for my rook or not damaging my structure and taking with the knight.  Do i weaken my king? (I don’t think so since the diagonal is well protected by the e and d pawn)

11. h6 was more of a waiting move since I wasn’t sure what to do with my position. I might have to look deeper into imbalances. What I recognized is, that his knight on h4 was not protected a I had a discovered attack after moving the knight on the e7 square but I wasn’t sure where to move it. There was no obvious forward progress and going back felt false. I also would have removed one defender from my bishop on g6

13. After the exchange and my opponent castling kingside I chose to attack the undefended h pawn and his weakened castled king. I recognized there was no way to bring in any defenders fast enough.  

15. After my opponent brought his knight over to defend I to a while to think about this position. All the time I had Qh2+ with the support of my bishop in mind, but I had to get rid of the defender somehow. After a while I recognized that adding another attacker (the knight on g6) would put some pressure on my opponent. And well… what can I say… I just missed mate

After Kh5, the only move to defend Qg2# is Qf3. This can be answered with Kxf3#.

17. After taking the exchange and Qf3 I invested some time contemplating to just move my bishop out of the way back to d6. I decided to protect it with g5 to keep my pressure up and take some space. This might have been an error? (My bishop controls the diagonal no matter what).
ENGINE: The best move according to the engine was Bxg3. I wasn’t aware that trading would be beneficial for me. My interpretation of this that, after fxg3 I could bring my knight in and after Qxg3 and Qxg3, I get a free pawn (Kxd4) and have a passed pawn e file along with doubled pawns of my opponent. 

26. After Bxh3 I had a fork on the king and the rook and I traded up.

From there we shuffled a couple of pieces, but I wasn’t aware how inaccurate I played it. Only the engine check after my own analysis brought this to my attention:

ENGINE: After Nf5 I went in defense mode automatically and protected my h pawn with my king. The better move would have been h5, preparing my g pawn to push and after Bxg4 pinning the bishop to the king…

Well…from there it went south. I blundered 33. Bxd4. My focus was totally on „I’m protecting my pawn with that move“, not aware that I put my bishop in front of the knight. 

• I think it’s totally normal that blunders happen at my level. I have to double check such thinks even in this stage of the game, I just lost focus. After that I was so frustrated with myself and had no real attack plan, that everything fell apart. My plan was to push pawns up the board and pressure the king but I let my opponent infiltrate my back ranks and gave him a fork with my king and my rook. After that is just gave up and moved some pieces without even thinking much. I was tilt. This is happening a lot for me and will take my lifetime to get my tilt under control. 
• Before this all happened I recognized that I was way behind on the clock and had „only“ 5 minutes left. I also overreacted there I think and my moves way to fast. 

What else can i do to improve besides the stated things? I ordered the The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery and can't wait until it arrives on Tuesday

Forget the strategy crap and make sure you follow basic stuff and blunder check. It will get you to at least 1100 very easily. Most likely 1200 though.

Wow hey the way I see it is such:  Go ahead and underthink.  It won't hurt to just play for a hundred days then think about it all. You don't really have to analyze every move from every game like the pedants tell you. This is really overkill and micromanaging; you will literally wring the fun out of it all being this highly self-critical and perfectionistic.