We need more amateurs to post their annotated games.

No way of stopping mate........what about 33...Rb7?

All the moves are forced.

I wonder about that too, but after Rb7? Qxa6+! Ra7 either Qxa7 or Qxc8 is mate. What a great game Ken !

@yereslov :

if you meant the sequence of the variation yes, but I think g3 was the mistake though..

You are correct that had White played for the center to open up, Black has a hard time catching up. Whether or not he was taking the game seriously or not remains to be seen. Our 2nd match of the TM Tournament is a bit more balanced at the moment. I honestly cannot be certain why he played as he did as this was highly unorthodox to me and I simply had to evaluate between "natural" moves (which in the opening were almost nil) and intuitive moves. White's last chance in the line he played was to take on c4 with the Queen instead of the pawn and then he would have had a minor advantage. Sadly, the game did not play to the variation mentioned though that was a line I was constantly worried about as the combination wins the exchange and likely the game here.

Is there anything to correct - both sides? :)

9. h3, to stop the pin on the f3 Knight, may or may not be a necessary move but really I have found that if 8. c3 Bg4 9. h3 Bh5 10. g4?! (a common idea with the thought of Nh4 to follow) can be met surprisingly by 10. ... Nxg4!11. hxg4 Bxg4 and White has the pin on him still with the castled position opened up. Go back to move 8 for White here at 8. c3. Now, with the Bishop at e7, the Queen cannot come into play without a tempo being spent to remove the Bishop from its line. Therefore, Bg4 could be allowed and playing for d4 instead of h3 is a good choice and very well researched as well.

Take a look now at Black's 16th move, 16. ... Qd7. How many pieces are aimed at White's castled position? Only the Queen is directly affecting the King side at the moment. The f6 Knight has no outpost opportunities, the e7 Bishop is passive, the b7 Bishop is not only stopped by the e4-d5 pawn chain, but is behind the Queen side majority attack. Without an f5 break, there is no way to bring all the pieces to become active immediately. White has 3 pawn islands, an undeveloped Bishop on c1, a restricted Bishop on c2 holding the a4 pawn and the f1 Knight is passive. Your weak squares are b4 and c4 here. What is wrong with 17. N1g3? The Knight would have played a more active role here, holding f5 and h5 as well as support the e4 pawn, restricting the b7 Bishop as well.

I think White could have put out a stronger fight here with 22. Bc3 as well as 22. ... b4?? is met by 23. Ba4!! winning the exchange and effectively killing Black's Queen side pawn storm. At that point Black might have at best, 22. ... Bc7 to help balance out the e5 break here. This would have been even more convincing to the position with a Knight on (surprise) g3.

Finally had the draw not been agreeed upon, how would you have played the position as it is if Black sacrifices the Knight on f6 with 25. ... Nxd5!? A possibility is 26. exd5 Rxe1+ 27. Qxe1 Bxd5 and White might find himself in a 2P vs minor piece endgame, possibly winning but likely able to draw against exact play.

Aside from those 2 moves, I think you had a decent position and a draw was fair here though if I have the White pieces, i am usually content to play out the position until the ending is reached and I can see a lot clearer if there are fewer pieces to analyze, just as it is easier to navigate under clear skies than cloudy.

GG though either way.

Ah okay, I missed Qxa6+.

well this kind of maneuvering game is not my type of play :(

I can give some suggestions, like trying to put the knight on d4, because it can jump to f5, exerting some Kside pressure.

I saw the e4 pawn was well protected, you probably need the other knight to join the att.

I ran this through an engine and at move 24 you missed a move Bc3, keeping the advantage! for example, a natural move like Rc8?? is a blunder because of Bxf6 if gxf6 then Ng4!, so the best move was Nh7 for black then Ng4 Rac8 Qd2 with advantage to white, but this kind of games to win are hard, probably in the master's level. And your games do not represent your current rating (1500) lol.. 

Anyway gg

Thanks guys!

@PortlandPatzer, I think that on our level of play, kind of harder endgame should be winning for white in case of Nxd5, exd5 and so on. But it would be definitely interesting! I thought of 26.Bb1 though. :)

@learnateverygame, your lines are very interesting, it would be worth of trying it! :) I put 1500 rating, because I don't have FIDE and I don't know where the number should be in real world. :) I'm still waiting for my first fide event. :)

@laeg:

I saw Bc3 as being a good hold on the advantage at move 22 as well though move 24 is certainly a viable option. Could you run both game versions through an engine and see what the evaluation scores are and if they differ greatly from whether or not White plays Bc3 at move 22 vs. move 24 and tell me how the advantage truns out? Even if the positions are set from those points and played by engine to engine, I think it should be an interesting analysis to see.

Here is a Scandinavian Defense game played about a month ago at 10 mins per game.

My only question in the game is: would it have been better for White if he plays Bf4 instead of Bg5? If you guys can confirm with an engine and tell me the evaluation scores on both moves, it would help greatly. Thanks.

@PP

11...cxd6 (17|+0.48) 12.Bf4 (best move) (17|+0.45) [12.Bg5 (17|+0.20)]

Depth: 17 moves (34 ply), "+" is advantage for white.

For everyone, to refresh your minds! ;)

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/crushing-the-kings-side

thanks. that reaffirms my belief that 12. Bg5?! was dubious though not inaccurate.

My best win in correspondence against a teammate and the weirdest one i have played. not enough time for comments but can someone help me figure out what the heck white was playing here?

Credit to my teammate for giving me a great game with 19 moves and no captures and a wildly unclear position to think about. GG ZG

I think he was too passive, I haven't check, but if 13. e4, will it be good ? threat is e5 then pawn storm on Qside !

I had this other idea as well, 13.Ne5 with idea of f4 next move, then if Nxe5 dxe5, what black play to attack e5, I play f4, then Nd4 maybe later, blocading d5 pawn ! I only need to remove the other knight, and I will had very strong d4 knight vs dead c8 bishop !

I haven't check this idea against engine, but it might be a good one because I saw the e5 break is what black hoped.

accirding to the chess.com analysis, V69 here btw, e4 actually gives White a major advantage here, almost swinging the initiative to White. The fact that the position was closed and he knew I was in unclear waters, i believe he was playing conservative and positional waiting for an error on my part. this sequence with my e4 push puts White into passive position throughout the game. On f4, this was a total inaccuracy on my part and had Zeke played the odd looking gxf4, computer shows it as White with advantage. exf4 was removing a key defender here as well. My better move in place of f4 was simply Nf6, consolidating the position and from what i saw, winning in nearly all lines. The 2000 level analysis showed the game with 8 inaccuracies and 2 mistakes with no blunders. 

Apparently (we chatted through the game as well), the idea behind White's opening was to reach a catalan opening that could transpose into a reverse Benoni or even a reversed Dragon here. I firmly believe that e4 on move 13 was White's best way to exploit the game but please run the game through and see if this proves correct.

Nevertheless, this was an amazing game that was also my best showing to date in correspondence games and yet I give tremndous credit to my teammate for pushing me to try to find an advantageous line that really for the first 20 moves could have gone either way.

I'm getting worse and worse, can someone give me tips to improve?

Also, the name of the opening I ended up playing as Black in the correspondence game was the Neo-Grunfeld Defense, Original Variation apparently.

Look closely at you positions once you leave the opening. White had a good position in What turned out to be a tricky opening (Nimzo-Indian Defense: Moller AttackVariation). This is very sharp line and you played it well up to move 12. Once the Queen retreated to e7, you needed to look for weak sqaures and pieces. How could you defend the h6 pawn on White playing 13. Qe2 here? The threat was 14. Qxh6 so only the King can protect here, given White has a light Bishop, defending on h7 is bad so Why not move to g7? This protects the hanging h pawn and gives you a solid defensive position to play from. From Qxh6 on, Black has no real initiative to speak on and so loses very fast here.

i also think that though moves 10 and 11 were playable for you, you needed to develop your final pieces and get you Rooks connected. 10. ... a6 did not substantially help the position while 11. ... g6? seems to be a mistake unless you thought having pawns on the light squares helps interfere with the Bishop and Queen. ANY TIME A PAWN MOVES FORWARD, IT CREATES A HOLE BEHIND IT THAT OTHER PIECES MUST GUARD AND COVER!!!!Unless you are sorming an attack or getting ready  to develop a Bishop or major piece, focus on making as few pawn moves as possible, especially around your castled position. Playing g6 weakened your ability to control the dark squares as evidenced by the capture at h6 and f8 here.

I would say you played really well the first 9 moves, a bit inaccurate the next 2, and the 12 move was a mistake that forced you to be on the defense. Kg7 would have given you a nice position and a way to attack the center.

Again, alway look at the board closely, especially once you retreat or a piece moves to a new open diagonal, file or rank.

Good playing