Where did I go awry?

So I played several games, and as you can tell from my rating, I have been losing rather consistently (I only had 1 win out of 5...),

So my main question is... where am I going wrong in these games?  I know something in my strategy is off..., but what exactly?  Any help would be appreciated.

You self-destructed, playing planlessly. You stopped looking and hung pieces and then your king.

Can you analyze 3 moves ahead? That is a first step. Look at all checks and captures and give an outcome.

Oh I did have plans with my attacks, perhaps they are just not thoroughly investigated though.  For example, In the first game, 13. Bxd7, I did have every intention of moving the king into check, I knew the pawns would prevent further passage, and would attempt to stuff the king in the corner with the queen and possibly send the King in the corner with Rh7, followed by Qf8 or Qg8.... but was thwarted with the Knight, and after a few turns after the game seemed to get hopeless my play started to become somewhat sloppy....

In the 2nd game, Qc5 was I think one of my main blunders... I was avoiding the Queen trade off while trying to promote the defense of the other pieces with the Queen... and did not see the Rc1 coming, which I felt would give the c4 square too much support, and lead to the capture of my Queen....

Most of the problems I see here are consequences of opening errors.

Keep in mind the objectives of the opening:

• a Control the center (4 central squares + 12 surrounding squares)
  

• b Have your 4 minor pieces out (Knights and bishops)
  

• c Protect the king (by castling most of the time but not too soon)

In the first game

You spent two moves (8 and 10) moving a pawn that did not help you controlling the center (a), this pawn would have been usefull at his initial position to protect your king (c), you should have used those moves to castle instead, this you wouldn't have had the issues you met at move 15.

By not castling at move 8 or 10 you lost your LAST opportunity to do so since after 12..Qxg5 your short casttling was compromised by the opened h file and your long castling was forbidden by the black queen on the c1..h6 diag.

In the second game

at move 8 you moved twice your Knight as your other minor pieces were not out yet. (against principle b)

at move 10 you moved a pawn that would have helped protecting your king if you had used short castling (against principle c)

And again after White 11th move you have destroyed your short castle and the bishop prevents you from long castling.

To conclude, in both games you forgot to prepare correctly for castling and your king was not protected.

I hope this helps

Alex

When you are struggling to find a good move, quickly reassess the strengths and weaknesses of each players position again and perhaps try to exploit that a bit more - it doesn't matter wether you have gained an edge or your opponent has, just play to it or against it. Even if you lose, developing a dynamic strategy based on a fluid position will make you feel smarter and you'll enjoy the game more, learn more and improve more.

"There are only two ruies of strategy - Never be without a plan, and never rely on it..."

In the first game e.g, you lost (sacrificed?) a bishop but a side effect of that was black could not castle - you should have gotten yourself castled right away instead of doggedly pursuing a weak attack which your opponent had demonstrated he could easily refute. Think of it like "rubbing it in" - it can be very demoralising! As you built your attack, it was stopped dead when he marched the queen down the board to give check. After this point, I got the impression that you're heart was no longer in it. When a player is ahead on material, he often gets overconfident, so just don't make it easy and your chance for revenge may well come. Being down is depressing, but letting a lead slip away is truly crushing.

Anyway, stick with the game and you'll only get better and better (bad-chess days notwithstanding!) Good Luck!

EDIT:- It seems another was simultaneously typing something about your lack of castling. He also makes some good points about subtleties in your opening, but actually I don't feel this is your biggest failing. You have to stop putting pieces en prise first, remember defence and not just offence!

Apart from the very good comments on your opening tactics you also did a lot of blunders in the first game, practically letting blacks queen run wild down at your king, even though the match were far from over. It is amazing that you did not seem to analyze where the queen might go next in any of the moves you are doing, despite that it over and over again causes you losses.

I had overlooked the fact that these were not live games, but turnbased!

Best advice - Make frequent use of the analysis board provided and the "flip board" feature, because your opponents sure will. If you do this on every move for a few weeks, I bet you'll see a marked improvement in your rating.

To all that responded, thank you very much, (especially payet's detailed response).  From what I am seeing, my main two flaws are:

Lack of sufficient defense for my King, i.e Castling...

Lack of a good opening plan.

Reflecting on what the first poster said, its very true that my opening has no plan, rather I am just moving what seems to be strong, focussing less on the controlling the center and more on the chasing away those knights...

One of the players I played against suggested I attempt two of the following openings:

White: Ruy Lopez, primarily because most players seem to follow with pawn e5, then knight c6..

Black: Sicilian Defense... I need to check into this one more though...

And heres 2 more games, maybe they could provide further insight into what I am doing wrong?  Once again, thank you everyone with the help thus far. :)

Payet is right. The 5 most important factors in the opening are:

-Pawn Structure: Basically if you have doubled, isolated, or backwards pawns you have a bad pawn structure.

-King Safety:self-This refers to how safe your king is from attack(castling)

-Time:How quickly you can develop your pieces

-Material: Pawn-1 pt, Bishop+Knight-3 pt, Rook-5 pt, Queen-9 pt. If you are up in material, this is usually an advantage.

-Space: The amount of space you control past your half of the board; controlling the center is usually key to this rule.

In your games, as payet said, you moved piece twice sometimes in the opening of the 2nd game, in both games you didn't protect your king, and simply lost exchanges (knight for a pawn). Basically, you were losing on Material, King Safety, and Time.

The openings of your second two games were a hell lot better than your first two.

I won't annotate every move, but you still made a few blunders that your opponent took advantage of (or didn't) that cost you.

You should analyse more carefully, and look at a position twice before deciding your move.

Remember, you have plenty of time, so use it!

After playing a few games looking at all the possibilities, you'll be much better.

P.S. Don't play when you're too tired or sleepy, like I'm doing right now.

Let me preface by saying that the others commenting are better and smarter.  I only give my thoughts because I think that my approach may help you specifically.

This may go without saying but you are playing players who are much higher rated than you.  I do this as well.  Expect to lose in these situations.  When playing over your head like that maybe don't be so brave/aggresive. I read a quote recently... "You must resist the urge to be brilliant beyond reason."  If you find yourself saying, "This would be great if they do that," then you're playing wish chess which doesn't win against better players.  Make moves that work no matter what they do.  If I make a questionable move I need a plan whether they do what I want or not.  If either scenario results in a negative for me it's a bad plan.

It seems that you really like to throw you queen into the fray.  Make sure that if you're throwing pieces out there that you're going to receive compensation for the tempo that you're losing.  You're not just taking a free pawn you're compromising your position and using up time.  Sometimes snatching a free pawn away from the action may mean that your queen is nowhere to be found when their well planned attack comes down on you.   This happened in your first game.  Make sure that when you trade you stay equal (or positive) in the point system.  Don't trade when you're down unless there is an obvious advantage or you have a specific plan that's going to work. If you get an advantage you can try to trade down equally so that you still have that advantage in the endgame.  Sometimes that is more effective than trying a "brilliant" attack.

Keep in mind that I'm not that great so I could be wrong about all of this stuff.

Anthony

I'd say

Watch your pawns, you seem to give them away quite freely while making piece moves. This combined with your open king makes it very easy for your opponent to attack your king.

In game 3, when you play Rc5 protecting your d5 pawn, I don't see any benefit to this as your Nf6 is already protecting that pawn and your B on d6 was blockading the d pawn even if they did capture, so playing b6 or castling would have been stronger as after cxd5 you could play Rc2! which would make their life very miserable. In the Petrov Defense, Nxe4 is standard, your c6 doesn't seem to accomplish anything except prepare for d5, which already was supported by your Nf6 and your Q.

Later Qb6 again only threatens Qxb2 which should be considered an outside possibility at best. I am not sure if you were trying to be more aggressive with your queen in response to being beaten by other peoples queens in other games or what, but in general, try to leave your queen out of the action until things have finalized more. Be7, Bd6, Bc5 all are good choices at that point, and all allow you to castle immediately afterward.

In game 4, instead of 18...Qd6 you should have played 18...Bxf3 which would weaken their kingside structure. And 19...g6 traps your bishop after 20. g4! So playing either 19...Bg6 or 19...h6 driving away the knight would be good alternatives.

And your whole Bd8 Bxf6 Bc7 series seems strange. I assume you noticed Qh2# and were going for that but you should have recaptured your N before hoping their were oblivious to that threat.

In general, making moves that only work if your opponents blunder will lead to your defeat more often than theirs. Try to make moves that do good for you even if your opponents don't blunder.  I'm not quite sure how your opponent in game 4 has a 1413 rating. I am assuming they resigned at the end of that game because they didn't see Rxe8+ and after Kg7 or Kf7 they could sac their bishops on either f6 or g6 for a check which would get their queen in the game, or they could play Re1 giving their king an escape hole or they could play Kg2 giving their king f3 as an escape hole.

I hope this hasnt come off as too hostile, and good luck at studying and analyzing your games. Being able to look at your games and find where you made mistakes is an important skill to train, so that during your actual games you can go through the same process before you make a move.

grey_pieces wrote:

I had overlooked the fact that these were not live games, but turnbased!

Best advice - Make frequent use of the analysis board provided and the "flip board" feature, because your opponents sure will. If you do this on every move for a few weeks, I bet you'll see a marked improvement in your rating.

 -I never use the analyse board ;) You should learn how to calculate variations, solve puzzles 3-4 times a week helps! Start with the basic tacktics.

-When you know how to calculate a couple off moves, you should take a look at the endgame and basic strategic themes.

You will find that knowing what to look for,  will make it easyer to calculate many moves ahaead.

"Dont move pices around before making your move, it's like cheating and it dosent make you a better chessplayer"

LisaV wrote:

1. Pawns.  Maybe try this for a couple of games and see how it works for you.  Move your d & e pawns to control/contest the middle, and keep the remaining pawns back until the last possible moment when you need them to move forward.  Save them for the endgame when you can promote them to queens.  Remember, you can always move them forward, but you can never move them back--do you really want to open up the space behind an advanced pawn for your opponent? 

I will try this strategy, unless someone tells me otherwise.  I think my playing style tends to push pawns forward too often, which often turns to candy for my opponent to eat later on...

 I would like to comment on all of your games, but I only have time at this moment to talk about the last game(white 1413 vs. you).  23...f6 better was 23...Qxg3+ leading to 24.  Kh1 Bf3+, 25. Nxf3 Qxf3+, 26. Kg1 or Kh2 ...cxd4 with the promise of getting the rook on a5 over to the g or h file respectively. At the end of the game, white did not have to resign.  Trading material on e5 was an option that white didn't entertain.  Yet, he should have because he's up so much material.  When you played Qg3+ it came a move late.  White's rook on the e file should have negated any plans you had on the h2-b8 diagonal, but white didn't consider it.

In general, I would say that your understanding of the middle game is subpar.  Part of which does include king safety.  You have to protect your king and take the time to protect your king.  If you feel that you have a promising attack, check on your king's safety to make sure your opponent doesn't have any counterplay.  Your exposed king is killing you.  Take the time to protect yourself.

Well, I just drew a game with a higher ranked player... and I was curious, what could I have done to change the outcome of the game?  I drew the game because... well, besides sacraficing a bishop, I did not see any possible movement that would have been "good".  But, tell me what you think, hopefully my thought process is logically sound...

I think my opening/mid game have somewhat improved, I paid more attention to protecting my King this time (*sighs*), but the end-game was what got me.  Tell me what you think.

With 40..Be1 he offerd a draw I guess ;)

"Never accept draw's unless it's a dead draw position"

Your position is easy won, if you dont know how, you must study the endgame, start with pawn endgames, when you know about "the rectangle" "opposition" "key squares" and other basic pawn endgame themes, you can take a look at rook endgames. When you know how to move your rook, take a look at bishop endgames and bishop vs knight. Knight and queen endgames is easy when you know the pawn endgame.

Actually, 40 c5 I offered draw, he made one more move by accident and then sent an additional draw request.

But I was truly stuck.  The pawns on the left side were not going to be moving any time, his King was stuck between my two bishops, and the pawns on the right were trapped.  My King was pinned between g4 and h3... hoping to take a piece, the game seemed stuck to me.

Nothing is stuck, your pices can move all around the board. Bishops is long range pices, so there is no need for your king to stand still, since you have a extra bishop his pawns will fall it's just a question about time. Since you have all the advantages in the position you have "all the time in the world"