what the #$%^was he playing and how did he win?

Ok, that solves that, we have a couple of ways to do it now. Thanks

Hey Somebodysson, just to give you a nudge in the direction, why white didn't play Nf3 but Ne2 instead: If 7. Nf3, the knight blocks the bishop g2 from defending the pawn on e4, which is under attack by the Nf6. For example 7. Nf3 Nxe4 8. Nxe5 d6 9. Bxe4 dxe and black opened the path for his bishop, Re8 and Nc6 supporting the pawn on e5 look solid. Basically a whole other game comes on the board which white probably wanted to avoid (e.g. because of opening preparation or play style).

I'm not a strong player either, but that's what I guessed from a quick look (and I'm curious to see if my guess makes sense from hearing what the stronger players think).

Btw, fantastic thread, I'm following it since day one and hope you keep improving! Good luck on that. Happy holidays everyone :)

hehe, yes, Effdeh, I didn't think of that, but its so obvious now that you write it out. Thank you, of course, the Nf3 would block the Bg2 and as you put it, 'a whole other game'. Cool, thanks, glad to hear you're enjoying it. Me too! Why don't you try annotating aronchuck's game above? I think your insights would be nice. I had such a good time annotating his game, and since then I read over my annotation, and already see mistakes in it, so I'm going to do it again when I get a chance. I'm starting to think annotating is verrrry important. I didn't do it before. happy holidays to you and yours. 

Yasser Seirawan says that one of the big things in improving his Chess game was writing down his thoughts immediately after his games then when he analysed it with his Coach, friends etc he could explain what his thoughts were behind his moves. This would go hand in hand with actual annotations which are more technical. So you are correct annotating is verrrrry important & knowing your thoughts & reasons behind it add another dimension.

Also you can only annotate as well as you can calculate & as good as your knowledge base is, so it evolves just as you do.

If you don't know what the English opening is for example you cannot annotate it like someone who knows it extensively, yes you can do it according to what we are working on here but it is going to vary according to what your level is & your approach to the game.

Merry Christmas everyone, its already here in Australia & I got a pair of socks!!!

@Somebodysson

At some point in this thread you posted an idea about formulating a thinking process with special focus on targeting. I think that you have gone to the crux of what we are seeking answers for in this thread. My contributions to that thematic idea are as follows:

1. Learn from others mistakes by reading. Don't be a second Columbus and rediscover America. Don't re-invent the wheel. The books that I will share are ones that do an excellent job of guiding any chess player in formulating a thinking process. They are Nimzowitsch's, "My System"- "Pawn Power In Chess", Kmoch or "Pawn Structure Chess", Silman. I would read and study Kmoch's and/or Silman's books first. These 2 books will explain how being aware of the pawn structure and how to formulate strategy based on pawn structure will go a long way toward streamlining the formulation of the thinking process. Only after reading and studying those 2, then read and study "My System". What "My System" will do is complete the formulation of the thinking process by explaining the "why" of every step in the thinking process that you have formulated. At the center of the thinking process is a central concept of Siege Warfare. Chess is Siege Warfare on a chessboard. Every step in the steps of the thinking process is based on the 3 methods of Siege Warfare on the chessboard (restrain, blockade, and execute the enemy).

2.Writing down the steps of your thinking process and personalizing your written steps (checklist) of your thinking process will enhance your understanding of it and cement in your mind every step and it's rationale.

Regarding your question on post #550 concerning 8...dxc4. I will post an analysis with annotations a little later. This project at work has become an all consuming death trap from which there is no escape.

Ok, I also analyzed aronchuk's game. Honestly, I found it difficult, but it was interesting. The final sequence of moves was way out of my ability!

jojojopo, I'm thrilled you analyzed aronchuck's game. I'm going to have a second go of it in the next couple of days, and then I'll read your and eventually aronchuck's annotation. 

@QueenTakesKnightOOps, thanks for the vote of confidence. The cool thing is, even though my annotation of aronchuck's game is elementary, certainly very flawed and shallow, I enjoyed doing it, and by annotating the game discovered another love...and another avenue for learning. So its' all good. 

QTKO, do you want to post a game of yours, without telling us which side you played?

jojojopo, do you want to post a game of yours. Let's see if we can get three or four or even five games going at a time, being annotated. It will be a lot of work, but everybody will be able to do however many they want, and the person who played the game will be able to teach us, and hopefully learn something too? I can't imagine aronchuck learning from me, but if he's interested in how beginners think I guess he could learn that from me!

@ Somebodysson

I'll see what I can find to post, last few days the computer games have been rubbish either an early blunder by me or weird stuff from the computer where everything is a target. As soon as I get something even if it is a loss I'll put it up

@jojojopo, its interesting what you write 'the final sequence of moves was way beyond my ability'. Without going over the game again, I remember being surprised by the final sequence from Black. However, I wonder if we should annotate the way I did, without even going through the game once. It was harder the way I did it, looking at it as a 'Guess the Move' without even playing through the game first...I just don't know if it was necessary. I wonder if QTKO or aronchuck or Yaroslavl or any of the other more experienced players have an opinion on that?

Annotating, as QTKO points out, is usu. done to one's own games, and in that case one obviously knows one's own thought processes during the game, and in that case annotating is probably done as a post mortem, to expose faulty thought processes. 

I'm just wondering aloud. I'm still going to re-annotate aronchuck's game without reading jojojopo's analysis, and then read his analysis. 

I was also surprised by aronchuck's final moves. They seemed subtle to me. I would have made more obvious, more risky moves; aronchuck was consistently careful, right till the end, more careful, more sure, slowly building up the attack. Yaroslavl has referred to this as siege warfare, blockade, attack, execute. The implication of siege warfare is, I think, no need to rush; as the siege tightens the enemy will slowly but surely die. 

I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on the beautiful metaphor Jaglavak used a while back, about the chess game as more a search for truth, a co-produced search for meaning, for poetry, for truth, than a killing. I wonder what people reading this could add to that. Again, please don't comment ad hominem about Jaglavak, but about the proposition that the chess game is a co-produced search for truth and or beauty.

Thanks everyone. Off soon to volunteer to serve Christmas lunch to poor and mentally challenged people, our people.  

Alejandro. 

Somebodysson wrote

I wonder if we should annotate the way I did, without even going through the game once. It was harder the way I did it, looking at it as a 'Guess the Move' without even playing through the game first...I just don't know if it was necessary. I wonder if QTKO or aronchuck or Yaroslavl or any of the other more experienced players have an opinion on that?

Yaroslavl wrote

In my opinion the way you did it is the best way. Because you are testing your own thinking process against a stronger Player's thinking process. It is an excellent way to find the holes in your present thinking process.

Somebodysson wrote

"...Yaroslavl has referred to this as siege warfare, blockade, attack, execute...".

Yaroslavl wrote

The 3 methods in Siege Warfare are: restrain, blockade, execute the enemy.

Somebodysson wrote

I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on the beautiful metaphor Jaglavak used a while back, about the chess game as more a search for truth, a co-produced search for meaning, for poetry, for truth, than a killing. I wonder what people reading this could add to that. Again, please don't comment ad hominem about Jaglavak, but about the proposition that the chess game is a co-produced search for truth and or beauty.

Yaroslavl wrote

Yes, unlike in real life, there is no lying in chess that, you, as the opponent of the liar cannot detect, uncover and refute. Where else in life can you study a position/ situation and by analyzing discover the absolute truth.

beautiful Yaroslavl. Thank you for your response. I'm going to continue to annotate games on this thread by the guess the move method. I will get less sequences correct, but I will be training my thinking method, which is the main thing I need to do. I assume that by training my thinking method on guess the move annotations my thinking methoid otb will also improve. 

I also plan to do my tactics puzzles differently. I read a post by wafflemaster on another thread just now; he recommends doing tactics puzzles by visualizing the whole sequence before you make the first move, and pick your move based on an entire visulaized sequence. 

I had been picking my first move based on the most forcing, and I've recently, as posted a coupole of days ago, by looking for my opponent's  best responses, and choosing on that basis. That did dramatically improve my success rate; aronchuck called it falsification, and by that I guessed he meant looking for a refutation to my move that would prove it false, or wrong; and if I cannot falsify, i.e. prove my move wrong, then it is likely right, although not necessarily the best move, but it is a candidate move. 

then, by collecting a small bag of unfalsifiable candidate moves, I will somehow try to pick the best one, and to do this, which of course I have never done yet, will mean slowly trying to visualize the resulting positions from each of the candidate moves and evaluating which is the resulting position I most want to see. And doing this means visualizing by choosing the opponent's best move always...which I find very difficult because when I do imagine my opponent's responses I almost always imagine my opponent making the worst response!!

So I'm thinking that I have to slow my tactics puzzles way way down. I already ignore the clock, but I don't fully think out the sequences, and certainly don't assemble a handful of unfalsifiable moves to choose from.

So I'm afraid that slowing down the puzzles will mean learning less patterns, learning to recognize patterns less quickly and efficiently...but I'm thinking now that the opposite is true,i.e. by slowing down my puzzle solving and doing more thorough vizualization, I will be learning the patterns faster, not slower. 

Anybody who has any opionions thoughts about this is invited to comment. I simply don't know what to think at this point and will defer to those who do know. 

Thanks, and I don't think I'll be on the computer again today. A joyful Christmas and holiday season to everyone. Alejandro. 

ah, Yaroslavl, I just understood your correction. Not blockade, attack, and execute, but restrain, blockade and execute.

@jojojopo, I think this correction from Yaroslavl will help us in our difficulty with aronchuck's final sequence. He continued to slowly restrain and blockade, continued to cut down the opponent's options, slowly and carefully cut off escape routes, cut down remaining defenders. This was all restraining and blockading. He wasn't bothering to 'attack' in the way I would have, he was too busy limiting the enemy's options. It was a very interesting and instructive finish, and one which showed me the importance of patience in shepherding, if I may use a Christmas metaphor for chess. aronchuck shepherded the victory, he didn't bash and slash the victory, he shepherded it. 

You are on the right track. Guess the right move? I would look at it more as calculate the right move & that is the 1st thing you look at. Then you can take it further. Look again at the opening, has he followed the principles behind the chosen opening? Then look at weaknesses, were they exploited? Look at targets, were they identified & exploited? Depending on your level & ability this is how you build up a total picture of the game & how it was played. Also you should do this from both sides, where did the loser go wrong? What could he have done to avert the loss, sometimes analysing from the other side gives insights that you may not get from analysing from the winners side.

You won't be able to do all this immediately but it is what you aim for. Of course we are all limited by our ability. If you want to test this try it on Bobby Fischers "Game of the Century" if you haven't already seen it, or pick another famous GM game. Then compare your analysis with that of the "Real Experts", the other GM's who have analysed it at the highest level.

If you want some suggestions I have a few in mind, let me know if you want them

thank you aronchuck. I soo appreciate your putting time into commenting on my and jojojopo's annotations. jojojopo, isn't this fantastic?!! jojojopo, when you get the chance, post your game. And qtko, post yours. And I will re-annotate aronchuck.s game over the weekend, using what you said aronchuck. Yes, a blind spot ab out rook placement. And a miscalculation of some tactics. And I will study jojojopo's annotation too. Thank so much. 

@aronchuk

First of all, thank you VERY much for taking the time to review our annotations and giving detailed explanations about what we got right and what we didn't. You clarified a lot of things that I didn't grasp or, as you said, misunderstood. For example, respecting the early ...d5, I thought that Black was maneuvering to make it stronger even if it was already playable, but didn't pay much attention to the fact that opening the game were going to hurt the worst developed player, and this is something that I think happens to me as Black very often. I am very surprised to read the reasons behind 17... Na5, 19. Qd2 and 24. a5, now this moves make much more sense to me. And when I say I found the last sequence difficult it was because I spent a lot of time trying to understand it. But a lot of the patterns on this game were concepts I had never seen before, so as I practice more I'll get quicker. By the way, congratulations on your game!

@SBS

It is really interesting to do the analysis with the "guess the move" approach, I didn't do this before, and I'll start to do it from the next game I annotate. Then if I didn't get the move right I'll go back and see why that move was played. And I also want to say that the "restrain, blockade, execute" is also a great concept in that, at least to me, makes you think of attacking in a much broader sense. In some way, you are waiting until you can completely maximize the effect of your aggresive action. Easier said than done! But the first step is to be aware of that. Perhaps we can say "ok, I have this idea that is strong, how can I prepare it to be the strongest it can be?" and not saying "ok, I have this idea that is strong, let's play it". This adds a whole layer of complexity, since that idea makes me think that there are probably two kind of ideas, those that can be prepared and improved with time, or those that have to be executed immediately because if you give time the opponent will be able to prevent it.

I think that this approach of sharing games and annotating them is really productive. Also, I notice that applying the thought process we are discussing here is slowly starting to show it's effect.

haha, yes, perfect, "waiting until you can maximize the effect of your aggresive action"! And wasn't aronchuck's game such a fantastic example of that 'waiting until...maximizing effect of aggresive', of Yaroslavl's 'restrain' blockade, execute'.  I learned so much from playing over his game, learned so much about how chess can be played. And yes! about aronchuck's very generous response to our annotations! And yes! to the guess the move annotations, and go back after we hear the right answers. and yes! to this awesome thread, and the generous people that have made it! and yes! to jojojopo for 1. being emotional and 2. for being a better chess player than me. At least I know, from you jojojopo, that being emotional is not inconsistent with becoming a better chess player! 

So we'll post games without saying which side we played, until after all the annotations are in!

@QTKO: Nice. You write a lot here in very brief form.  Do you think its good to know the result of the game before you start annotating it? My thinking is that the less you know about the game before you start the annotation, the more objective the annotation will be. I almost wish that we could post games for annotation without even showing in the game description who ultimately won it, so that the annotators could have maximum objectivity. 

@ Somebodysson

You are correct, the less you know the more objective you can be, it just seldom happens so I wouldn't worry about it.

I have a game almost ready to post, I'll put it up without the result, though it will be obvious when you get to the end but if you don't read ahead you won't know until the last moves who won

Here's a game I found from my past. See what you make of it, I'll add my annotations after everyone else has had a go at it