Day 494: Playing chess every day until I reach a 2000 rating

[@the0crowd258]

The main break in the Caro Kann, c5 was screaming out to be played in the opening, to fight for the centre. But 22... exd5 looks very bad positionally, White's backward d5 pawn is a clear weakness you can attack. Rxd5 could've kept this attack alive and you're likely winning

[@BigFoxyChess]

Two in on day? Yes, very much. ☕

[@willbollman6246]

Gg Parick. This one was a complex nail biter for sure! Fun to watch but I imagine not so much fun to play😊

[@oscarsteinhauser2088]

Hey Patrick, great game today just wanted to point out that the real reason playing 21.e5 was so good for you is that it undermines his central pawns and weakens the c5 pawn, so if he takes on e5 you can play Bxc5+ followed by also recapturing on e5 (depending on the line). Oftentimes if you can attack the base of your opponents pawn chain which in this case is the d4 pawn, then you can weaken and possibly win the other pawns in the chain as well.

[@bobTom37]

Not to be mean but i like to see you blunder its hilarious

[@HunterHunter-tr3it]

Just focusing on not spending 2-3 minutes on moves in the middle game is a weapon in itself, it seems. Nicely played! Cazad0r75

[@daggillberg660]

In your analysis you missed the big weakness of your opponent: the black diagonal towards the king. Your king was pretty solid, but he pushed the pawn in front of the king, so you should always look for ways to exploit this, i.e. get your bishop or queen on there and break up the pawns. Both your mistakes had to do with this diagonal, but you missed it in your analysis. First keeping your queen on this great diagonal and instead push the pawn to break it up (rather than retreating the queen around 7:10)

[@benbeizer5207]

Wp Patrick tough but instructive loss. You played a kind of exchange caro but it resembled an advanced french with the light squared bishop out(which is good because the light squared B in the French is usually bad). One common idea in these French-like structures is to attack whites weak and backward D4 pawn. Because you have a lot of pawns on light squares, your light squared bishop isn’t as valuable as you may think, and you can look to take the Knight on f3 to relinquish a defender of that d4 pawn. Also the knight in these kinds structures really wants to go to F5 to also put more pressure on D4. Then you can follow this up with Qb6 and all of your pieces are coordinating well to attack whites weakness. Try looking for these general kinda holistic plans if you can but good game

[@markneubieser8484]

Yes to this comment. You, Patrick, often push a pawn that creates a weakness in your camp. Here your opponent played c5 creating an easy target on d5. The idea is to put pressure on that pawn and win it or tie your opponent down trying to protect. The idea is not to push your e pawn to open the e file which will not lead to you having ownership of that file. In that position you are still thinking about mating the king and using the h file to do that. That idea is way too easily defended and will take you forever to get there on the h file. Instead build up on the d file with your rooks. If you do that, often your opponent's d pawn will become pinned which may lead you to taking the pawn on c5 with a bishop or rook even. I'm not sure how you can learn all this with no training and playing just one game a day, but you are making progress.

[@AreaElf]

You're commenting on the wrong game. I'm guessing it was meant for game 493.

[@benbeizer5207]

@@AreaElf yes

[@andrewd666]

I don't mean any disrespect, but have you considered additional training, or at least playing more games, or making your one game a longer game than 10 minutes (so you have more time to think), or playing over the board tournaments, to gain more expertise and experience?....Starting your Day 394 match you were rated 1526, starting your Day 294 match your rating was 1507, but at the end of Day 494 you are rated 1426... unfortunately what you are doing currently doesn't seem to be working for you and it doesn't look like you will ever hit your 2000 goal. You seem like a nice guy, and I don't want to discourage you,, I am just suggesting you have a rethink as to what you need to do to progress your game.😊

[@scottwilson940]

Yes I agree. I would get a lichess account and start playing blitz 5+1 and 3+1. One game a day with some puzzles isn’t going to cut it. Unless you’re naturally gifted you need thousands of games to see positions and understand what the weaknesses are.

[@Underdonetoast]

It’s true, once you’re at the 1500 level you need more than games and puzzles. You need notes, heavy analysis of your own games, and constant studying from grandmaster on KZbin

[@dimifisher]

@@Underdonetoast Take it easy man, i ve seen young girls playing on 1700 elo rating without much effort, sometimes it's about innate spatial vision, you can't do much about it

[@stephenwestland942]

Good win. I agree that your tactic of getting up on time paid dividends. Towards the end they were winning but you put them under time pressure and good things sometimes happen then. 16:55 I didn't like the idea of Kh7 and then putting your rook on the h file. Yes, I can see that you want to play Qh3 and attack h2. But it's direct and simple an idea. It is ideal rebuffed. And the cost is that you give up the central files and this ended up allowing them to trap your bishop. As you realised in the analysis, with their bishop still on c1 you had a gain in development and you should have just opened up the centre.

[@marlowemarlowe4893]

Interesting idea. I'll come back in about 5 years to see if you are anywhere near your goal. Or if you gave up. Good luck with it.

[@JosephSherman172]

I'd like to help you improve.

[@steve.k4735]

Win but terrible positional play, he had a horrible backwards pawn on a open file on d4 which you could pressure tying his whole army up, when you played PxP instead of RxP you just blocked your own pressure. You fixated on getting your rook to the h file in doing so you lost control of the open file which he doubled on. You failed for ages to get that bishop onto f6 where it would hit at that weak d4 pawn .. oh and you missed that BxP would be check so that if he played RxR you were trying to premove RxR for the love of god slow down in exchanges and look at least calculate if the intermezzo BxP check works maybe it does maybe not but you need to see the possibilities … if you don’t know what to do look at your pieces and ask which is do the least and move it to a better square Sorry to say but this game you didn’t win he lost

[@JetLagRecords]

Chess with Patrick, I love this! Can we be friends?