Grinding Chess: Queen Blunders and Knight Forks

Hello and Welcome to my blog.

Magnus Carlson is still the best player in Chess and proved it again by winning the Norway Chess Tournament. I didn't see the matches but I was following the news. Many top chess grandmasters were competing including Hikaru, Caruana, and Din Liren. But my favourite among them was the young man from India, R Praggnanandhaa, who performed quite well in the tournament. He beat all the top three players, Carlson, Caruana and Hikaru, and was placed in third place. Beating all the top three guys in a single tournament must feel amazing.

Enough about the top grandmaster and let's come back to me, the Blunder Master. I played more Blitz games since the last time I shared my progress here. But this time there was no progress in terms of rating. I didn't play as well as I wanted to and it sucks. I will show you some of the interesting games from my recent Bltiz sessions but first, let's talk about the Position of the Day.

Position of the Day

Black to Play and win!

Knights are tricky bastards, they get so powerful when they are close to the centre of the board and are ready to fork so many pieces.

Black's knight has infiltrated and just picked up a pawn. Both team's backrank is weak and now it is Black's Knight's move to do something and win some material for their team. Can you see the move?

The correct move is Ne2+ which looks like a heavily guarded square but our target is to become at least an exchange up. But Black can get more than that for sure. I will leave the position for you to analyse and see how it exactly plays out. But it is an interesting position for sure.

Converting Space advantage to material advantage

I was playing with the White pieces in the following game and got edge right from the opening stage and I never let go of that small edge and ultimately won this relatively easy game. Game link

I always go for d4 then c4 and most of the time this time Black was ready with the Dutch Defense. I don't know much theory facing this defense so I just played intuitively and grabbed a lot of space in the Queen Side with my pawns. My aggressive pawns contained Black's play and they never went out of that grip.

They sacked their 'e' pawn just to get some breathing space and activated their Rook. Their Knights and Bishops were really passive and I sure took advantage of it. I was slow and knew that I had the advantage so didn't go for any fancy sac or action-packed lines. Just played slowly. I aimed to slowly push my passed pawn and win the game. Well, I tried to do that exactly but my opponent gave up and left the match. I won it on time. It was a hopeless position anyway.

Oh No! MY QUEEN!

When will I stop making Queen Blunders? Maybe never! In this game, I was playing with the Black Pieces and hung my Queen in broad daylight. Game link

I wasn't too unhappy with my opening in this game. It was a Sicilian Defense which I thought I managed to equalize the position. It was an open position which I loved but ended up being too greedy and got my Knight trapped just for an extra pawn. But even after this big mishap, I was still putting good pressure on the White King. Their Kingside was quite weak, the 'g' pawn was missing and I had my eyes on this file.

I even managed to get a good attacking position but got too busy calculating all the moves that I missed a simple one. I hung my Queen and it was a real shocker. After working so hard to get a good enough position and losing like this is gut-wrenching. That's why I always say that chess is Brutal.

2000 Blitz Rating Goal is quite far

I have a goal of reaching a rating of 2000 in Blitz Chess on Lichess.org but I have been hovering close to 1800 for so long now. You can even see a slight dip in the chart at the end. Last time I reported the rating of 1806 and now I have gone down a few more rating points and under 1800 after a long time. I should practice more tactics and solve more puzzles. I hope I can find more time to do all those things.

Thanks for reading...

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• Text dividers from @cryptosharon.