We need more amateurs to post their annotated games.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?node=24528

Click on the leftmost button on the top of the reply window. Then you can paste your PGN in there.

So from a quite a few days I was playing players rated lower than me. They hanged pieces in almost all the games and I was winning easily. So today I decided I will play players rated above me. So here is my game against 1350 rated player, 70 points above me.

Just a quick game (15/0), but I'd be interested to see what people think of the sac.

I had a dream position so it was probably unnecessary, but I had so many threats.

Brilliant Scott. I would probably play an immediate 18.d5 and then I don't know what. 18...Bxd5 19.cxd5 Nxd5 20.Bxf4+ for example or something...

Yeah looks like d5 immediately at least wins the exchange. White is so much better at move 17. That is probably better and safer, but are there better defensive moves after the sac?

For black? I don't think so. At least I can't find anything. 18.Nxc6 Qxc6 19.d5 Bxd5 20.cxd5 Nxd5 21.Bxf5+ Hmm...

Actually maybe that's enough. Big mistake then. Just d5 with Bb6 looks easy.

White is better, but I've spoiled my positional (and pawn) advantage:

That still looks like a losing position.

How would you follow up?

Never mind. Black is screwed.

The sacrifice is sound, by the way.

White just regains a piece with interest.

Is it? Even considering I was a pawn up with a better position? Engines say it's OK? Because in the line I showed I'm not a pawn up, and my position seems like it's less dominant than before the sac.

You are white, right?

Yes.

Not sure what my race has to do with it.

Hi, here is a game i played yesterday. My general plan was pretty clear to me, and i generally don't struggle with creating a plan, but a big problem for me is to find a concrete way to finish an attack.

I wonder is there a specific way you guys turn a  plan into a concrete attack (besides pure calculation?) I sometimes get into the habbit of "hoping" that the situation will work out instead of being sure about what to do.

Oh.

I thought you were trying to find a defense for black.

@ Attox:

Once you decided to attack on the K-Side your attack seemed to go okay.

However to me your main bad positional decision was that on move 13 you chose completely the wrong side of the board to attack on!

Everything in the position was suggesting a plan of Na4 and c4-c5. That was the side where you had the most space, and where your pieces were pointing. Also his K-Side counter-play at that point looked non-existant. In fact a plan of f4 more than anything makes his dormant pieces suddenly much more active.

I would expect you to play at the queen side after having played 7.... e5 8. d5. Playing d5 says imo that you want to have a space advantage on the queen side. You enforce that strategy with 10. b4,  11. 0-0 and 12. e5. So why play Qg3 and f4?

Without any deep analysis come the moves Na5, c4 Rad1 and Rab1 to my mind. Not necessarily in this order. Black has not much manoevring space at the queen side, hence you might have more ways to put the pressure on black then black has defense.

@Sanu:

You pointed out your major mistake in the opening yourself. 8. Nxe5 and you're just a pawn up without ever having to worry about this very annoying and dangerous pin. It's a pretty nice pattern to remember, with e3 and g3 your pawns cover no light squares on the kingside, you need to think about this pin and also about potential mating threads on g2 and even e2. This is especially important if your own light squared bishop is traded off or busy on the queenside.

That being said, I think you did a good job of getting out of trouble with the nice Qa4 move. It's very easy for you to get a lost position if you just play some standard moves. you saw this was an urgent matter and used a tactical threat to solve it. Black still had a bit of compensation for that pawn, but he made some mistakes and you really punished him for it.

If black plays 10...Nge7 and stops your Qa4 tactic, you could be in big trouble. For instance 10...Nge7 11.Qe2 0-0-0 12. Bd1 Nxe5. Or 10...Nge7 11.0-0 0-0-0 12. Kg2 Nxe5. It's so hard to get out of this pin.

Ideas with h3 look promising if black takes, but he just develops and you look silly because you can't take on g4 anyway.