I haven't won many games lately and I have to admit that all correspondence games I won during the past weeks were won due to forfeits on time... (note to my opponents: yes, I do click on the "claim win" button, even though I tend to feel bad for it). All chess games I played lately show some disturbing tendency: I do fine for a while but then, for no good reason, make the situation more complicated than necessary. That would be Ok if I would be able to play correctly in tactically challenging positions. But I am not and usually end up losing a piece or two. That happened in every single game I played lately! How do I manage to win a game every now-and-then? Well, some of my opponents get careless during their attack and give me the opportunity to apply my checkmate-pattern recognition. Take a look at this annotated chess game of mine for an example.

At the end it all comes down to playing "real chess" (pdf), being careful at every single move. I am trying hard to achieve this (except for blitz games...) but I am still not able to foresee all possible responses of my opponents. Not only that, I have some serious blind spots when it comes to visualizing some moves, particularly pawn moves. Ever since I started playing chess my brain treats them as static obstacles on the board and I am often sincerely surprised when an opponent of mine makes them move! I only hope that this will get better with experience.

Postcriptum: It seems that I am not the only one struggling with these little creatures called pawns. Take a look at this post from Blue Devil Knight's blog for some insightful suggestions.

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written by dwv16, March 17, 2007

Where's this "claim win" button? Trooperscoop hasn't moved in over a month!

I title my comments, therefore I am
written by Blue Devil Knight, March 18, 2007

I wrote a bit about the same problem with pawn moves I tend to have. My coach helped me out a bit with it. The post is here.

It won't let me post because it says it is detecting spam!

How about if I put the words medical emergency and grandmother in the post?

Re: claim win button
written by Sciurus, March 18, 2007

Sorry, no "claim win" buttons here - games at squirrelchess.com have no time limits. I was referring to my games at ChessWorld where the server enforces a limited of time/move.

Re: I title my comments, therefore I am
written by Sciurus, March 18, 2007

Blue Devil:
thanks for the link and sorry for the strange behavior of the comments software. Not only that you had to bring your grandmother in jeopardy to help me to become a better ches player, it also did not show the link properly
Anyway, for the rest of the world, here is the link to the post about pawn-moves: http://chessconfessions.blogsp...escue.html
Very interesting post, indeed. I will put the link to it in my post here.

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