Another Episode of: How Dumb Can You Be?

I find it therapeutic to share my painful losses.  There are losses and then there are painful losses. Please observe.

another episode !? how many more do you have of these episode ?

kco.  toooooo many. 

actually I've gone through it again...it's not even a well played game by either side.

This is why I always push h6 early on, while the position is still closed... it's one less thing to worry about in the endgame.

Doesn't your f6 knight defend the rook when it comes back to guard on e8?

oh no.  But...I think the rook after taking the queen would have been able to protect the knight which would have come down to block the check from the rook.  Oh my god. Somebody kill me now.

yes you could have taken the queen without fear and stayed a knight up. This is a double blunder ... whoops!

Everyone has suffered this kind of traumatic losses.In the following link after almost 4h of play i come up with a heavy blunder.

http://blog.chess.com/Smartattack/lisbon-cup-1st-round

Going to the original game: my experience is that this kind of blunders happen for three reasons:

1. you are tired
2. you are emotionally altered.
3. you have bad "moving too fast" habit

(3) can be solved by discipline. Tip: before you make your move, first think of your move, then think best opponent's reply, and then your reply to his reply. After this, check for possible errors, and then you can move! At first it is hard to do this, but when you get used to it, the process becomes quite automatic. (if it works do not thank me, but thank Mr. Pandolfini, hehe)

(1) is solved after you sleep (in CC you have some days to move, so I hope you have time to sleep between moves...).

(2) typical case: you have a winning position. Then you blunder and you think "I'm stupid, am going to lose this game?". Then you forget that you where winning and that the game may be not lost, despite the blunder. And then you start playing as if you have already lost (moving before thinking). Result: you lose. So after a blunder: rest a few minutes and relax; when you are calm, think carefully on the new position and think your next move as in (3). Never play as if you where playing a blitz game: in CC you have at least 2 days per move!

Hope this helps.

 (2) above happened to me quite recently in an OTB game. I had the better position in the middle game and went into an exchange, thinking to win a piece, my opponent made a move I had not seen, and I ended up losing a piece for a pawn, played on and lost in the end. When I looked at the position later (when the shock of the opponents unseen move had worn off) I discovered that in fact I did not need to lose the piece, material would have been even, and I still had the better position. I think trying to remain calm is easier said then done, and I have been playing club chess since the mid 70's.

AfafBouardi:

Yes, you made a serious mistake... not capturing the queen! Both your rook and knight cover the e8 square! A simple retreat of the rook following any checks would have sufficed to save you.

But hey, don't worry about it... we all miss such things!