MY CHESS SUCKS!!

Bottom Vulpes liner you give me games that you want me to analyze.

Your problem is that you dont capture enough of your opponent's pieces before he captures yours

Some suggestions:

1. Play only opponents who are at least 200-300 rating points above you.  If you want to become a 2100 player, play 2100 opponents.  

2. Do not have more than 5-6 games simultaneously.  Don't waste your time on making puzzles, posting, etc.

3. Play only standard (live 30 minute or online).  Forget about blitz games.

4. Don't worry about blunders.  Even the world champion made a silly blunder recently.  Just don't make it a habit.

WRONG: I spend 80% of my time outside chess.com.

20% of your time is spent on chess.com?  If you're still in school that's probably close to 100% of your free time

I'm not in school

Vulpes, what knid of stories do you write? I can't see your blog.

Maybe you should be?

I'm in grade 13, technically, but I get this semester off.

You'e in college?

I looked at your game against JustinTenz. What I see is that you do overlook short combinations, like 11.a4 and 24.Qb5+.

I also don't see you playing with a plan. I can understand tactically why you play Raf8, but I would have preferred Qe6, because I would like to bring both rooks into play. It might not be that problematic to lose the pawn on h6 as the king is placed on h1.

After 13... Kxd7 would I expect you to make some reordering moves, by which you improve your overall position. I would expect you to make a choice to put your king safe on the queen side or the king side and have some moves making that possible and have an idea where to place your pieces.

You could have continued after 14.d3 h6 15.Na3 Qe6 16.Nc4 Bf6 and your knight is free to go. Now could you start playing with your king side pawns backed up by your rooks starting an attack on the king side. The pawn structure is good for it.

I looked at your game against JustinTenz. What I see is that you do overlook short combinations, like 11.a4 and 24.Qb5+.

I also don't see you playing with a plan. I can understand tactically why you play Raf8, but I would have preferred Qe6, because I would like to bring both rooks into play. It might not be that problematic to lose the pawn on h6 as the king is placed on h1.

After 13... Kxd7 would I expect you to make some reordering moves, by which you improve your overall position. I would expect you to make a choice to put your king safe on the queen side or the king side and have some moves making that possible and have an idea where to place your pieces.

You could have continued after 14.d3 h6 15.Na3 Qe6 16.Nc4 Bf6 and your knight is free to go. Now could you start playing with your king side pawns backed up by your rooks starting an attack on the king side. The pawn structure is good for it.

no

still in high school - although technically I graduated.

I need to do more HS courses before heading off to university.

My suggestions, continued:

5.  You should study endgames.  Silman has an excellent book, so study the first four chapters and focus on king and pawn, and rook endgames.  This will help you to craft your game towards a winning game, and give you more confidence.

6.  Work on understanding on how to create a good plan and how to implement it.  There are several recent excellent videos on strategy -- including how to evaluate a position and create a plan.  Look at Kavutskiy's recent videos on the three basic steps of developing a plan.

I suggest that you go thru all of the lessons in Silman's "Art of Exchanging Pieces" and "Roots of Positional Understanding".  You will begin to see the board as a grandmaster sees it.

I had suggested that you do a maximum of 5-6 games, and now focus your time on these lessons.  You will discover that, as you improve your planning and positional skills, it will be your opponents that are making the blunders instead of you.