All,

I played an interesting, simple and instructive game last week. Below is the sequence of comments in a discussion analyzing the game. @dacster13 is a strong player from the Philippines who is on our "team" in the Dan Heisman Learning Center group.

hreedwork

All, I had an enjoyable game against MonofWestLake. I am disappointed that I was multi-tasking (packing for a Thanksgiving (U.S. holiday) trip).

No excuses though.

I botched the middlegame (at least). Even hung a piece for good measure. I was alarmed when I saw it immediately after making my move... However my opponent didn't see it, made some other move, and the rest is history. But let this be an example that all of us can hang a piece at one time or another.

See if you can spot where I got twisted into knots and hung a piece... there might even be more than one spot... (complicated tactics).

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dacster13

Don't worry about it too much Harvey, even Anand blundered badly in the recent WC match.

Anyway, here's my annotations of the game in case you are interested.

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hreedwork

Chess notes: 11...Qd6, I agree and debated. The reason I moved the Q was to get it off the file in preparation for the exchange. However that takes an extra move. 12.e3 I was thinking about the weakening of the shite squares, but never took advantage of that. Q3.c5 I was relieved to have the tension released so I could focus on the kingside. And white's minority attack never materialized. 14.Nb3, I agree, I was looking for the minority attack, but it never materialized. Now the knight looks out of place. 14...e4, I love the discussion. Some of this I was thinking about, a lot of it I didn't think about. However this validates the times when I do consider these topics in other games. 16...Ndf6, thank you! At this point I was losing the plot of the game. I should have gone back to the basics of the pawn structure. 18...Bg4, yes I looked forward to doing the pin. Quite annoying. I agree 23.Ne5 would be much better, that is what I was expecting in any case. 27...g5, thank you again. I wanted to talk myself into 27...Re3 or 27...Ne3, which would be more assertive, but then I backed off, and played what I thought was defensive (27...g5) but you are right, this opens black up to risks. I agree that 30...Re3 is a massive blunder. I saw it right after I moved. I saw some, not all of the alternative candidate moves... For a moment I had a huge dose of panic. 31.a4, and I was thankful for the reprive. I vowed to pay much more attention for the rest of the game. 32...Nxd4, I didn't consider that as a candidate. Much better than my game move. 33Rxe5, I was starting to focus again, trying to solve various positional problems. I agree that 36...Qxa4 is losing the plot, should focus on the King! Your candidate moves are spot on, and I did not conider them during the game. 37...Qd1, and this is where I need to resist that part of my brain that said "you have a passed pawn, you need to simplify"... and "give myself permission" to play chess and go for checkmate. 44...a6, you are right this is pointless. I think this was probably a slip of mouse, I fully wanted to position this pawn to promote, and the white King can't get to it. 47...Rxc5+, you are right, this is losing the plot, better to promote a pawn. 56...Qe4# as a "candidate" move. You are too kind, I was spacing too much!

Thank you so much for your analysis!!

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dacster13

@Harvey you're welcome, there are probably some gross mistakes in my assessment though according to Houdini.

14... e4 - Houdini considers this best it seems, maybe it is seeing a specific line where minority attack is too slow, or black's attack on the kingside would be faster. I definitely need to look into that so I can try to learn from it as well.

27... g5 - Houdini seems to like this as well, I can't calculate things as accurately. So my comment about it being a bit more risky is more of a general assessment.

14... b6 candidate move is apparently bad according to Houdini because there's a possibility for white to capture on e5.

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hreedwork

Interesting, if you have the Houdini result and can post it, that'd bea great way to compare general human assessment with particular computational peculiarities in specific positions :-) I'm especially interested in computations to determine if the minority or King side attack is faster.

Thanks again!

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dacster13

Well here's what I have so far from Houdini, I skipped over some moves and just looked into Houdini's opinion on parts that seem less clear. I didn't want to put in too many variations that could make it confusing though. Normally, I'd go over my finished games with Houdini to see if I missed any critical candidate moves, and try to figure out why I missed them.

A good example of that in this game is 20... Nf5 instead of 20... Rxe3. Sometimes when we see a free piece our minds seem to automatically want to capture it, and that pretty much falls under conditioned responses or automatic responses which our brain does as a shortcut.

Anyway, all the variations included have been analyzed by Houdini up to a depth of 20 ply, which should be around 10 moves for both sides if I'm not mistaken. The long variations probably aren't as helpful though because they're difficult to comprehend, instead I normally stick to observing why I miss certain candidate moves and try to connect them to specific ideas. Like with the 20... Rxe3 move, the e3 pawn is already backward and there should be no rush to capture it because it's difficult to defend anyway, instead looking for potential threats would probably easily lead to the 20... Nf5 candidate move threatening a fork.

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hreedwork

@dax, Thank you so much. Very instructive game it looks like. The ideas were "simple" (still hard for me, lol) and therefore easy to see if I (or my opponent) was following what the pawn structure demanded. Again, thank you so much!

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dacster13

@Harvey I think you played quite well actually. It is quite instructive to understand the chain-of-events that lead to white's bad position though.

Firstly, by playing 13. c5 white concedes some control over the central tension. This gives black the luxery of what to do with the center. Black can then decide how best to proceed. Theoretically, this shows that maintaining the tension keeps options open, and releasing it limits one's possibilities. This is why it is best to maintain the tension as long as you can, unless forced to release it.

Secondly, white doesn't follow-up the c5 move correctly, the main advantage of c5 is - it gains space on the queen-side. Therefore, white can easily gather more forces on that side of the board compared to black. So white should aim for the opening of the queen-side to create highways into the black's position. By not doing so, white had nothing to attack thus having no counterplay, and was merely waiting for the opponent to make a mistake (hope chess).

Thirdly, facing king-side pressure white plays 19. f3 which helps black accomplish his goals on the king-side. The only consolation white has is the freeing up of space, so his pieces can then help out with king-side defense to neutralize black's activity. Due to this, the pressure is alleviated slightly and the nature of the position changes. Normally, a re-assessment of the position should be made and new plans created thereafter.

As a summary I think the important points to understand from this game are :

Maintaining tension keeps your options open.
One needs to have good reasons for releasing the tension.
You can build-up more force on the side where you have more space.
A theoretically bad move can be playable as long as you follow-up with moves that put emphasis on its advantages (i.e. 13. c5 followed by building-up force on the queen-side).

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hreedwork

Excellent summary, thx!

Simple Chess

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