Bumping this. Need some information!
Next step to improvement?
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ChessTempo is good. Have a look at Dan Heisman's articles on ChessCafe once a week, and you're done 
hicetnunc wrote:
ChessTempo is good. Have a look at Dan Heisman's articles on ChessCafe once a week, and you're done
Hehe I would really like some more ideas than this. I can spend about 30 mins - 1 hour a day studying chess and perhaps play one 30min game. I am curious about how I should approach that 30 minute session.
Dan has the answer !
I have just looked through the first game, will look through the second one later.
You need to be more consistent tactically. Make sure you see all possibilities, this might have to do with either your thought process (what aren't you thinking about during your move that leads you to missing things) or due to your vision (you need to learn more patterns). You can work on both of these things by solving tactical problems. You want to be doing problems that take you from anywhere between 10 seconds and a couple minutes -- if you don't get the solution in 3-4 minutes, look it up and learn something.
Second is that you could use a little positional work. You knew you were allowing your opponent the bishop pair on an open board, but you over estimated your compensation. The weak pawns around the king were only important if you were going to get a mating attack or attack the pawns themselves. But you had no real way to attack those pawns.
I think you simplified to the wrong endgame. 41. Nc7+ intending to trade the minor pieces. His bishop has no targets in your position. It is not a danger to you. It has limited mobility because his pawns are on light squares. Better was 41. Ne3 where his king is sealed off. You went to K+P when you were a pawn up, but black has a situation on the queenside where his one pawn stops the progress of 2 of yours. Also, black has a passed pawn and you don't.
Don't just let the computer tell you 0.82 and figure that's enough to win an endgame. The computer has a hard time figuring out if you really can make a pawn break. You are +1 in material and the computer thinks you have less than a +1 advantage. Unless you can actually see a way to queen a pawn in this ending, you don't really know if it's winning. If black had played 46. ... h5 is it really so easy?
Following Loomis excellent wrap-up, I'd suggest analyzing the position after 46...h5 (without a computer) as an exercise !
One way to think about computer evaluations in the endgame is that in a K+P endgame you have to be able to promote a pawn to win, so if you're winning, shouldn't the computer be telling you +9 or something? (ok, sometimes you're winning and the computer can't see all the way to promotion, but clearly it's not a time to trust computers.)
Loomis wrote:
I have just looked through the first game, will look through the second one later.
You need to be more consistent tactically. Make sure you see all possibilities, this might have to do with either your thought process (what aren't you thinking about during your move that leads you to missing things) or due to your vision (you need to learn more patterns). You can work on both of these things by solving tactical problems. You want to be doing problems that take you from anywhere between 10 seconds and a couple minutes -- if you don't get the solution in 3-4 minutes, look it up and learn something.
Second is that you could use a little positional work. You knew you were allowing your opponent the bishop pair on an open board, but you over estimated your compensation. The weak pawns around the king were only important if you were going to get a mating attack or attack the pawns themselves. But you had no real way to attack those pawns.
I think you simplified to the wrong endgame. 41. Nc7+ intending to trade the minor pieces. His bishop has no targets in your position. It is not a danger to you. It has limited mobility because his pawns are on light squares. Better was 41. Ne3 where his king is sealed off. You went to K+P when you were a pawn up, but black has a situation on the queenside where his one pawn stops the progress of 2 of yours. Also, black has a passed pawn and you don't.
Don't just let the computer tell you 0.82 and figure that's enough to win an endgame. The computer has a hard time figuring out if you really can make a pawn break. You are +1 in material and the computer thinks you have less than a +1 advantage. Unless you can actually see a way to queen a pawn in this ending, you don't really know if it's winning. If black had played 46. ... h5 is it really so easy?
Loomis - this was a great post and has helped a lot. I've definitely decided since reading your post to concentrate on tactical problems on chesstempo and also to continue revising my books on positional play (Seirawan's Winning chess strategies and Gelfer's Positional Chess handbook) on the top. I don't need any more opening knowledge at the moment, and your post has helped a lot.
In reference to one point, "Make sure you see all possibilities, this might have to do with either your thought process (what aren't you thinking about during your move that leads you to missing things) or due to your vision (you need to learn more patterns)", I have noticed that this is a weakness for me. I've decided that I should force myself to evaluate an extra move than I would normally and if anything, it will improve my analysis ability.
Second game:
In your sideline with 10. ... Nxe5 you miss 15. ... Qxc3+ at the end of the line.
Overall the second game seems to be played without a plan.
One part of the game that jumps out at me is 19. ... Bb4 and 20. ... Bxe3. With no provocation you went and captured a knight that literally was doing nothing and couldn't be moved. Maybe you were trying to remove the defense of c4, in which case go ahead and play 21. ... dxc4
After 11. ... bxc6 you note the possibility of playing ... c5. So what's wrong with 12. ... c5. How does white defend the d-pawn? 13. b3 cxd4 14. bxd4 Bb4+ and now 15. Nd2 Qxd4 or 15. Kf1 seem pleasant for black.
After 23. Bd6, you want to try to trade your knight for the bishop. Maybe Re6, Nf6, Ne8.
Here are a sample of two of my recent annotated games - one I lost, one I won, so there's a balance. I would appreciate ideas for improvement since I am going back into my final year of school and will have limited time to work on chess. I need a proper plan for chess development if I am to get anywhere during this year.
I am ranked around 1700 turn based, and around 1550 live (60 mins games)
With no further ado: Game #1
Game #2:
Thanks for everyone's input - just a reminder that I really need specific things that I can work on with limited time periods. I do some tactics training on chesstempo already, and read some annotated games collections [Zurich 53] but I have postponed my opening study for when I am better ready for it.