Jamiebubs vs. LindseyAnn 0-1

This is my first win since coming back to chess. It isn't pretty and I make a lot of mistakes. A day or two later, I lost a game terribly, so be expecting that to make it's way here soon enough.



[Event "Let's Play!"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.07.05"]
[Round ""]
[White "jamiebubs"]
[Black "lindseyann"]
[TimeControl "1"]
[Result "*"]
[ECO " "]
[WhiteELO "1216"]
[BlackELO "1247"]


{Termination "lindseyann won by resignation"}
1.d4
{What's hilarious about this move: even though I love opening with 1. d4, I HATE playing against it.}
1...d5 2.e3 Nf6 3.b4 Nc6 4.a3 e5 5.Ne2
{He's not doing the best job of getting his pieces out quickly and the advantage is shifting toward my favor.}
5...Bd6 6.g3 O-O 7.Nec3
{While this was pretty much the only square this knight had to go to, he has now
blocked in the other knight.}
7...Be6
{I enjoy putting my pieces in this formation whenever possible. It might not have been all the best moves on my part, but look at it...}
8.Nb5 Re8
{It probably would have been best to play the breakthrough 8...dxe4 with all my pieces super active. But, I like to keep things as orderly as possible for as long as possible.}
9.N1c3 Be7 10.Bd3 a6
{At the time, I thought this move was really clever. The knight appears trapped, and indeed my opponent goes along with my flawed logic. However in truth, he had the response dxe4, ruining my plans. Better for me would have been to first play 10...e4 and then my plans work out better.}
11.Nxc7 Qxc7 12.f4 exf4
{I missed 12...Nxb4 winning the pawn after the discovered attack on his knight.}
13.exf4 Bg4
{I'm not sure why I did this instead of the obvious Nxd4. The computer seems confused as to which move is better.}
14.Be2 Bd6
{A pretty weak move, considering I had either Nxb4 or Bxb4 instead.}
15.O-O
{I've begun to slowly give away a lot of my advantage and it's a good thing that I was already up a knight because I'm about to make a stupid mistake.}
15...Bxe2
{I thought this move was totally brilliant because I totally overlooked his knight on c3. I think this is one of those moments where I wanted the tactic to be there
so bad, that I ignore the fact that it wasn't there at all.}
16.Nxe2 Re6
{Looking to play Rae8 and Qe7, with domination over the e-file. But, I over looked the obvious response...}
17.f5 Re4 18.Bg5
{Kind of a silly move, since my knight is much happier on g4 anyways.}
18...Ng4
{While I do like my knight on this square, Rae8 was a better way to start things off.}
19.Nc3
{A mistake.}
19...Rxd4
{...and I finally win that pawn that's been waiting to be taken this whole game.}
20.Qf3 Ne7
{I moved here to protect the d-pawn, but it would have been more effective to play Nce5, attacking the queen. Sometimes offense is the best defense.}
21.Nxd5 Nxd5
{Better would have been Qc2, threatening Qxh2#}
22.Rad1 Qb6
{Once again, Qxc2 was the best move.}
23.Kg2 Ne5 24.Qh5 f6
{Doing a good job of realizing that all was not completely safe in my camp.}
25.Be3 Nxe3+
{In all my years of having the computer auto-analyze my games, I have never seen it
use the phrase "quadruple-fork" and I must say, it's pretty awesome. I have to give more credit to my opponent than to myself, but at least I didn't miss it.}
26.Kh3 Nxd1
{The computer like several moves more than this one. I wanted to get his other rook away from his king and win this game. It didn't cost me much of my lead, so I'm not too concerned about it.}
27.c3 Rd3
{While I could have just played Nxc3 and it would have been objectively better, I like pins.}
28.Rf4
{And he can be mated several different ways from this point, but it doesn't go that far.}
28...Nf2+ 29.Kh4 g5+ 30.Qxg5+
{I think I enjoyed forcing him to give up his queen a bit too much.}
30...fxg5+
{White resigns. Join me next time for a terrible loss.}
*

Jimbua vs. Lindseyann 1-0

You may have looked around this site and noticed that a majority of my games are wins. This isn't because I don't want to publish my losses, or that I'm particularly good. It comes down to one simple factor... I'm almost always playing below my actual rating, because of timeouts during my chess breaks. This isn't the best way to get better. But, it just sort of works out this way. Well, I've been playing more on Chess.com lately, and I'm not playing very far below my true rating, so expect a few more losses to show up on this blog.

This game is a great example of how careless I can be. I resigned early, mainly because of self-outrage. So, learn from my mistakes and always keep an eye on how far apart your queen and king are, and beware of knight forks...



[Event "Let's Play!"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.07.05"]
[Round ""]
[White "Jimbua"]
[Black "lindseyann"]
[TimeControl "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteELO "1444"]
[BlackELO "1197"]

1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.Qxd4
{I normally love when players do this, because I'm usually pretty good at navigating early queen threats and turning them into an advantage.}
3...Nc6 4.Qd3 Nf6 5.Bg5 Be7
{I always make this move, and it is usually a bad idea. It didn't really hurt my position, but there were other more productive options.}
6.Nf3 O-O 7.Nc3 d6 8.O-O-O
{At this point, white has gotten back the advantage and I completely failed to capitalize on his early missteps.}
8...Nd7 9.h4 Nc5
{Trying to win some space with tempo, but it would have been much smarter to play Nde5 instead--centralizing the knight.}
10.Qc4 Bd7 11.Nd5 Be6
{It is all down hill from here, much better was Bxg5+ There were so many tactics for him to take advantage of, and although he didn't work it out immediately, I soon slip up.}
12.Qb5 Qc8 13.Bxe7 Nxe7 14.Nxe7+
{Well, there it is, by leaving the bishop on g5 alone and moving my queen to the stupidest square ever, I have lost here.}
14...Kh8 15.Nxc8 Raxc8 16.e5
{And, because I don't see the point in playing a lost position, I resigned. This was a really sad game for me.}
1-0

Status Update

Well, school knocked me out of my chess zone yet again. I'm back at it, with a couple months of summer vacation looming on the horizon. I've also decided to make this blog public. I avoided it for a long time because I know I'm not the greatest or smartest chess player (hence, the name of the blog), but I've decided that I don't really care.

Part of me feels like this site is like a blog of bad poetry--however, I'm not going to let that deter me.

It will be a little while before I post any more new analysis. I'm catching up on the 25 or so games that didn't get analyzed when I was whisked into the world of a six-week intermediate accounting class.

I'm also converting a lot of the playable games into the Chess.com viewer. I feel like I'm cheating on Chessworld.net, because I've been with the site for so long... but, the integrated analysis is just too cool not to use.

I'm currently playing around 8-games of correspondence chess, and when some of those wrap up, hopefully I'll get around to analyzing them. I do have a few school obligations left, but I'll be free and clear on July 14th.

Jay8172 vs. LindseyAnn 0-1

[Event "www.ChessWorld.net server game"]
[Site "www.ChessWorld.net "]
[Date "2010.3.26"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "jay8172"]
[Black "lindseyann"]
[TimeControl "-"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C68"]
[WhiteElo "1263"]
[BlackElo "1440"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6
{I am really not a fan of the Ruy Lopez. I usually manage to make a mess of things. Let's see how this works out.}
5.Nxe5 Qd4 6.Nxf7 Qxe4+ 7.Qe2 Qxe2+ 8.Kxe2 Kxf7
{Turns out he made a mess of this. I was probably beefing up on my openings when this was played. Now neither of us are able to castle, but at least I'm up a piece.}
9.d4 Nf6 10.Rd1 Bg4+
{Developing my bishop with a skewer that is easily defended.}
11.f3 Re8+ 12.Kf2 Bf5 13.Nc3 c5
{I probably should have just taken the material with 13...Bxc2. But, I was trying to get my dark-square bishop into the game. He could have protected the g1-a7 diagonal with 14. Be3, but he didn't.}
14.dxc5 Bxc5+ 15.Kg3 Nh5+
{This move was no good and gets me into trouble in a minute.}
16.Kh4 g6
{I miss the completely obvious response 17. g4}
17.g4
{At this point in the game, I was completely convinced that Be7 would be mate. I did not notice his bishop quietly waiting to come to the defense.}
17...Bf2+ 18.Kh3
{Now I realize his bishop can come to the defense. I actually wrote in my notes during the game: Bxc2 trying to trick him into playing Rd2, then my mate works. This is what happened, but its never good to rely on your opponent to make a big blunder to win.}
18...Bxc2 19.Rd2 Nf4#
{White king mated}
0-1

LindseyAnn v. ccdd5 1-0

[Event "www.ChessWorld.net server game"]
[Site "www.ChessWorld.net "]
[Date "2010.3.26"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "lindseyann"]
[Black "ccdd5"]
[TimeControl "-"]
[Result "*"]
[ECO "C14"]
[WhiteELO "1171"]
[BlackELO "1264"]

{Termination "Black resigned" Mode "ICS" DateLastMove "2010.3.29" Board "6741508"}
1.d4 e6 2.e4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e5 Nfd7 6.Bxe7 Qxe7 7.f4 O-O 8.Nf3 a6
{This may be one of the longest book openings I've ever played. 8...c5 would have kept us in book.}
9.Bd3 Qb4
{Here he should have played f6 to prevent my playing Bxf7+ and destroying his king side.}
10.Rb1
{So I didn't make the correct response of Bxf7+, which is sad since I've been reading all about kingside attacks in 'Logical Chess'.}
10...Nc6 11.a3 Qe7 12.Ne2
{Preparing to swing over to the kingside for an attack, but it still would have been better to play Bxf7+ here.}
12...f6 13.O-O fxe5 14.fxe5 Nd8 15.Qe1 c5 16.c3 c4 17.Bc2 Nf7 18.h4
{I played this to have better control of g5, but Qg3 protects it twice which is alright at the moment.}
18...Nh6
{He might have wanted to get some counter play on the queen side here.}
19.Ng5 Rxf1+ 20.Qxf1 g6 21.Qf4
{Trying to set up some sort of discovered attack on the knight.}
21...Qf8 22.Nxe6 Qxf4 23.N6xf4
{Slightly better is N2xf4 which is completely obvious as I look back on this game.}
23...Nf8
{He decides not to defend his pawn so I decide to take it.}
24.Nxd5 Bf5 25.Ne7+ Kf7 26.Nxf5 Nxf5 27.Rf1
{Black resigned, though I'm not sure if it was completely necessary to resign. I was only up 4.5 points according to the computer and this guy has no idea how terrible I am at endgames.}
*