Tips will be appreciated.
Probably moves 18 and 30 are the most instructive in terms of positional play.
On move 18, the worse square for the bishop is b2. It's better on c1 or a3.
> Yes, I may have been thinking that the bishop on c1 was badly placed because it was on its starting square. But Hikaru Nakamura once said that in chess at first you learn rules, then later on you learn when you can break them.
-
30.Nc5+ is really bad. When you have 1 good minor piece and 1 passive one, rushing to trade your good one only hurts yourself... although it's a very common thing to do so I'm not trying to demean you for it... but it's very useful to notice how, no move 30, the b2 bishop is passive garbage. If you want to get out of the b-file skewer and trade minor pieces it was much better to play 30.Ba3 because it trades away your "bad" bishop. The knight might redeploy Nc1-d3-f4 for example, where it's pressuring both e6 and h5.
> So I want to keep the knight because it's active and trade my bishop because it's bad or inactive. I suppose for a knight being near the opponent king is generally good? I eventually found the best move 30. Kd1 by trial and error; I suppose it's moving to eventually cover the knight on b3.
Would I expect you to make this plan at 1100? Of course not, but the concepts behind these ideas is accessible even to non players: pieces that control more squares, and pieces that attack weak pawns are more valuable than pieces which lack scope, and lack pawn targets. On move 30 what's your b2 bishop's dream role? With no queens you're not going to use it to mate, and with none of black's pawns on dark squares you're not going to use it in an endgame... it's worthless as anything other than a passive defender.
> Your feedback is very much appreciated.
I've been playing the Arjun bot for 2 or 3 days, mainly the Nimzowitsch Defense and the Borg Defense, with me as white and Arjun as black. I feel I may be improving slowly in positional chess: or I'm starting to get the hang of it: getting good squares for one's pieces and denying good squares for one's opponent's pieces. I'm including a game in the Borg Defense where I held my own for some time, then I made mistakes in my attack. At the moment, I think I should study (1) attacking chess, (2) tactics, and (3) positional ideas.
Tips will be appreciated.