Chess Update: Still far from my Blitz Goal

Hello and Welcome to my blog.

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It has been almost two weeks since I shared an update on my online Chess grind. I am not delighted to report that I didn't play much Chess during this, at least not as much as I would have liked to. Other games have taken over all my gaming time during this week.

And I missed the Hive tournament again. I have been missing a lot of them lately. I want to blame it on the time zone but the truth is, I keep forgetting about those.

But that doesn't mean I am not following Chess. Seeing young Praggnanandhaa defeat Magnus Carlsen in the Classical format is inspiring. Why wouldn't he be playing well after all his best buddy Gukesh won the Candidates last month? I still feel Praggnanandhaa's consistency is still missing. Undoubtedly, he is one of the most talented players to come out of India, but he has yet to perform consistently on the big stage.

Enough chit-chat, let's talk about Chess and analyse some of my recent games. But before that let's start with the "Position of the Day".

Position of the Day

Black to Play and win!

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Queen endgames are always explosive and interesting. Predicting even a couple of moves is such a headache with so many checks and squares available for it to go.

In the above game, White looked comfortable with an extra pawn and wanted to stay with it after being checked by the Black Queen. But their last move (Kg5) is a huge blunder. Can you spot it?

The simple move f6+ hits the board like a thunder strike and the only square left is to capture the pawn (Kxh5) but this will be the last King move as the game ends badly for White. What can we say? Chess is Brutal.

Salvaged a bad position

I was playing with the White pieces in the following game and messed up something in the opening stage. I had to play with a bad pawn structure and an exposed King. But it all worked out in my favour at the end. Game link

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I always go for d4 then c4 and most of the time Black declines this Queen's gambit which is fine but sometimes when they do a counter gambit like this, I forget to play it accurately and end up in bad positions. I knew where I messed up after analysing the game but now, I see a couple more good moves after this Albin countergambit.

Anyway, after that bad start, I was able to work out somewhat as we exchanged Queens and now my pieces were a bit more active than my opponent's but I got that activity at the expense of a bad pawn structure and somewhat exposed king.

I tried to hold on and hoped for a mistake from my opponent and they did make a big mistake and ended up giving away their Rook for my Knight. I had to give one more pawn away to exchange the last Black's Rook. After that, it was Knight against my rook with pawns on both sides of the board and it was never looking good for my opponent.

Whoops! That Pawn was Pinned!

In this game, I was playing with the Black pieces and had a good position out of the opening but I blundered and missed an easy tactic, eventually costing me this game. Game link

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White was a bit too aggressive in this game. I was surprised when they just went g4. I had to sit down and analyse if I had missed something. In hindsight, it was a 'good enough' move but the follow-up was a big mistake. Getting Queen out this early got to cost something...right?

But I got too greedy and picked up the g4 pawn which was a blunder. If not for the mutual blindless, my Bishop was gone there. But both of us missed it. However, I would blunder again and forget that the pawn is pinned to the King and is not protecting my Bishop. The White Queen finally got something good. I couldn't recover from this blow and the whole game was trying to defend my position until I ran out of time.

These were Blitz games and I was under so much pressure in this one that I took a lot of time for calculations after that bishop blunder. Well, I couldn't save the game but it was not one-way traffic.

What happened to the 2000 Blitz Rating?

My 2000 Blitz rating goal on Lichess.org is not looking easy. At this rate, it would take years for me to improve that much. I am not dedicating enough time and energy to it now. I wish to spend more time analysing and learning about Opening theories, practice more puzzles and improve my tactics and learn more endgames which I am horrible at. Let's see what I can do.

Thanks for reading...

Until the next game...