Targeting 1500 and Preparing for Tournament

Hello, everyone. Evan Lutz here. Allow me to give a bit of an introduction: 

I am currently a freshman in college and began playing chess seriously about two years ago. In two weeks, I will be playing in my first rated tournament in almost a year. I am a relatively low rated player, around 1380 in online rapid and around 1150 USCF (I think - I haven't checked or played in a tournament recently). Over the next two weeks, I'll be playing 1-2 online training games per day for my upcoming tournament and posting the games with my analysis here in the chess.com forums. Another goal of mine is to reach an online rapid rating of 1500. Any tips and help with analysis would be very much appreciated. 

Without further ado, here is Training Game #1

Impressive that you post a loss when asking for help. A lot of people wimp out and post a win.

I don't have a lot to say, just a tip. In queen pawn games usually the c and d files open up, so it's common to put the rooks there. Combined with cxd (you can play it before or after) will give you something to work with. In the game Qb6 and e5 was a bit awkward.

Not being sure what to do isn't always a flaw of the player, sometimes it's the position's fault  In that case, even though it seems to make sense that you'd analyze a position where you were unsure, it makes more sense to analyze how you got there in the first place. I know it's asking too much that you choose your opening development moves to coordinate with a good middlegame plan. It's not like your a master  But I hope my tip about queen pawn openings helps you coordinate around a good middlegame plan a little better in the future, at least in positions that look like this.

More than anything though, you're playing long games and analyzing them to find mistakes. That alone is a strong sign you're on a good path to improvement.

I would have thought that 19. … Qc7 was a more consistent way to meet White's idea of opening the b-file. It would allow you to maintain your Pawn on c5 (answering 20. b4 with 20. … b6, and answering a doubling of Rooks on the b-file with Bc6 covering all potential invasion squares).

There is a defensive principle called "economy of weakness", which dictates that you shouldn't make positional concessions unnecessarily... in this case, there is no need to concede White the excellent d4 square for his Knight.

Above is Training Game #2. A quick note: I am deciding to keep my opponents anonymous unless they give me permission to do otherwise, All other info about the games are available, though. 

Tactics, tactics, tactics. Even in your annotations you missed the simple 19...Bd4+ winning a piece. 

Good job for going through the games, although the analysis was much more like just a commentary, often the moves that were mistakes didn't have alternatives offered or concrete variations - it was very much just 'playing by general ideas' that were sometimes good, sometimes questionable, and sometimes just overlooking basic tactics, and not much anticipation of the opponent's possible resources. For example as the earlier poster said, ...Qb6 was quite clumsy, he could probably just ignore it with Nc3 anyway (I will leave you to work out why you can't take on b2 there).

With that having been said, the first game was a reasonably decent effort (despite the later mistakes), the second game was just a poor game by both sides, that was decided mainly by who played worse.

Actually, i'm interested in something else for a reasonable price. If you want to know what, message me.

Will he work for cheeseburgers and fries? I'm a great cook! 

I didn't realize great chefs specialize in cheeseburger and fries haha.

Yeah, I get the impression you're pretty comfortable with calculating your threats, but you're a bit blind to where your opponent can move... which is completely normal. It takes a while to overcome this.

Here's something of a puzzle inspired from your game that might help illustrate.

Black to move, and black calculates Rxh2 Kxh2 Nxg4+ Kg3 Nx rook so black has won a pawn.

Now without moving the pieces
1) tell me why Rxh2 is a bad move.
2) tell me why Rxh2 is not bad in your game

It takes time and practice, but spotting these sorts of moves consistently will make your level of play much higher. It's all about developing the mindset of calculating moves for your opponent that work against you. Find the most annoying move your opponent can make, don't calculate a cooperative move for him 

Training Game #3

I realize that I need more practice with endgames. Under time pressure, I blundered this game away when an easy draw was available.

Yeah, I checked that out and your right.  Qb6 was just a clumsy move.  I think he played it without thinking.

Get a good game collection.

Here is one: The Fine Art of Chess

Both on the third game:

You can find your fatal error of 54. g4+ in an endgame manual with a transposition of moves referred to as a trebuchet.

Why didn't you consider 30. Qf1+ taking the queen's off without losing a pawn?

There's an old saying that the art of winning a won game is reducing your opponent's counterplay.

You grabbed material and his passed pawn got mobile. I think that's the main lesson here.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/targeting-1500-training-game-1

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/targeting-1500-training-game-3

I would say analyse.

Take a strong engine, free Stockfish comes to mind, input one of your games, and start going through the moves with Stockfish. Whenever you are in doubt about a certain move and ramifications, input the new position to Stockfish and see why certain moves are good and others bad. 

Rinse and repeat with many other games and positions.

You learn twice faster and especially muh more accurately what concerns objective assessments, when you learn from far stronger players.

And Stockfish is a super-GM in disguise!