Skip to main content

Twitter chess tournament R1

Here is my first game from the Twitter chess tournament (I know, they come in the wrong order). Before the game, I had looked at my opponent's profile on Lichess, and saw that he liked to play the Spanish and Scotch. So I chose to give my Scotch repertoire a chance to come out and play. Up to move 10, I was still in preparation, and I got a really good game.

After 13 moves, I had a completely winning position, and I felt it. I even thought to myself that this would be an easy win. But I guess this made me lazy, and I failed to consider my opponent's possibilities and counter threats. At move 20, I saw the opportunity (or so I thought) to win an exchange by pinning his queen to his rook. But the counter-pin Qg6 saves everything and throws away my entire advantage and gives it to black. After a few defensive moves, I killed the game with a horrible blunder. I was only looking at my own options, and failed to recognize my opponent's threats. That is not a good approach to chess!

Oh well! There is nothing to do about it but go over it and learn from it.


Comments

Popular reviews

Not only for kids

Do you read children's books? If you're and adult, you will probably steer clear of any book that has the phrase "for kids" in it. Since it's for kids, and you're not a kid. Right? Well there are some exceptions, and this is one of them. Author Jeff Coakley has written a number of books "for kids": Winning chess strategy for kids , Winning chess exercises for kids and Winning chess puzzles for kids (vol 1 and 2). Although the titles suggest otherwise, these books are highly instructive and useful for players of all ages. In this review, I have chosen to focus on the first book in his series, Winning chess strategy for kids . What can you expect from this book? Immediately when seeing this book, you will realize that there is one major feature that is "for kids", and that is the artwork. Apart from that, there is no reason to assume that this book cannot be used for adult improvers. I used this book as a part of my tactics training p...

Chess tactics for champions

Chess is 99% tactics. At least, that’s what some people say. Whether that is correct or not does not really matter, because either way you slice it, tactics is a central aspect of chess. Especially at the patzer level, games are often decided by a missed tactic. Working through a tactics book can extend your chess vocabulary and can be great for establishing and reinforcing patterns until they become a part of your chess intuition. So for a chess player, tactics training is like going to the gym. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? As many readers probably know, Susan Polgar was born in Hungary and is currently living in the USA. Susan and her younger sisters Judit and Zsofia were all famously trained by their father László Polgár as an educational experiment as kids to become chess prodigies. And, the experiment was a success. Susan is the former women’s world ch...

Estimating playing strength

Have you ever felt like your chess rating doesn't represent your actual playing strength? Sometimes we want to be able to estimate playing strength based on individual games rather than rating (which changes more slowly). During the past few months, I've been taking a number of online courses and learning python for data analysis. In one of the courses, the final project allowed me to choose my own dataset. So surprise surprise! I chose something chess related. (Not really surprised, are you?) When we play games online, getting a computer evaluation is just a few clicks away. And a commonly used statistic is the average centipawn loss, or simply the average deviation from the computer's best move. Many of us tend to think that centipawn loss (CPL) is a good estimate of playing strength. And, of course, it gives some indication, but it's far from a perfect predictor. Fellow chess/statistics blogger Patrick Coulombe has investigated the correlation between rating and CPL ...

Master of strategy

During the past two years, I’ve been working on improving my strategic/positional play. In this process, I have read a number of books, and two books that have long been on my reading list are the strategy books by Johan Hellsten. So when the Swedish chess federation requested reviewers for two of these books, I didn’t hesitate. I am happy that I was given the opportunity to review these books, and hope this review can be of help to you as a reader. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from these books? Johan Hellsten has created a name for himself as one of the leading experts of chess strategy in modern times. His series of strategy books ( Mastering Opening Strategy , Mastering Chess Strategy and Mastering Endgame Strategy ) have received glowing reviews from many parts of the chess world. So it feels good to finally dig into these nuggets. His endgame book is still in my boo...

Reassess your chess

Some books don't really need an introduction. And this is one of them. But a blog post needs one, so here we are, in the middle of an introduction. How to reassess your chess was one of the first books in my collection. I first read it around 2014, and decided to reread it this year. And now I am finally ready share my thoughts on it with you. I hope you enjoy my review! If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? In the beginning of my chess studies, I read The Amateur's Mind and saw a tremendous increase of my chess understanding. My playing strength increased dramatically and I felt more confident than ever. I also enjoyed Silman's writing style, so I felt that it was a good idea to take a deeper look at what he had to offer. Considering the amount of praise that can be found (basically everywhere) of How to reassess your chess , I felt that this was a no...