Analyse Your Won Games!

The best advice for improving you play is to analyse your games. This makes a lot of sense, but how many of us actually do it consistently? Personally speaking, I do not. But that is changing this year! The best way to analyse your games has 4 stages:

• Post-mortem with opponent
• Analyse yourself, investigating alternative plans, missed tactics (for BOTH sides!)
• Go over your analysis with a stronger player (grab that mentor from LeChess Club!!)
• Only THEN do you turn on the engine to see what you all missed tactically

This is a must for all long games. But you can even benefit from scanning your 5-min games through Fritz just to check any major blunders (or missed opportunities!). Many people make the mistake of not analysing their won games, thinking they played perfectly otehrwise they wouldn't have won. THIS IS AN ERROR!! There will be plenty to learn in ALL of your games, which I found out today. In a side variation Fritz found one of the most beautiful moves I have seen in one of my games....

JimGrange (1897) Vs joegal (1915)




1) d4 d5 2)c4 c6 3)Nf3 Nf6 4)Nc3 g6!? The Slav/Grünfeld: Schlechter variation. An interesting alternative, one which I have never faced. I just continued with normal development. 5)e3 Bg7 6)Be2 O-O 7)O-O Nbd7 Like in most Slav/Caro formations Black tries to free his game with ...e5 or ...c5 8)Qc2 Re8
Black is aiming for ...e5. White needs to decide where to place his dark Bishop. It is quite OK to play Bd2 and go for Queenside play with a Rook to the c-file, b4, a4 etc. However, with the position opening up with ...e5, Blacks Bishop would be unopposed down the long diagonal. Therefore I came up with a common plan in a new position to oppose the Bishop and make ....e5 harder to achieve. 9)b3!? Novelty. 9)Rd1 is common here. ...e5 10)dxe5 Nxe5 11)Nxe5 I wanted the Black Rook on e5 to expose it to a timely Bg2 with tempo ...Rxe5 12)Bb2 dxc4 13)Bxc4 Rg5
I felt I had much the better position here; I have a lead in development in an open position with two very active Bishops and a Rook coming to the open d-file with tempo. Although at first I felt my lead in development was negligable due to Balck being able to play Bh3 connecting rooks with tempo, I managed to see that this plan was dubious due to f4! Therefore I tried to make my temporary imbalance (lead in development) into a more permanent one (control of open d-file). 14)Rfd1 Qc7 15)Rd2 Bh3?! 16)f4! Bf5 += 17)e4! Nxe4 18)Nxe4 Qxf4? It would have been a lesser evil to trade on e4 then on b2 admitting that Black just loses a piece. The text loses immediately.
19)Bxf7+! Kxf7 The only move. 19)...Kf8? gets mated in 8 by Qc5!, but what about moving the King to h8?
If the move Fritz found doesn't convince you it is worth going through every one of your games, WIN or LOSE, then nothing will! Can you find it? (Answer at the end of this post). Back to the game after 19)...Kxf7. 20)Nxg5+ Qxg5? Another example of it being better to lose material (here with Kg8) than to get mated!
21)Qc4+! Be6 22)Rd7!+ Kf8 23)Bxg7+ and Black resigned due to mate next move.
An eye opener for me that it is important to look at all of your games; some beautiful moves can be found in side variations that weren't played, and these would be lost forever unless you take the time to mine the gold in your games!

Solution to puzzle: If you spotted the amazing, heart-stopping 20)Qc3!! then you have earned my deepest respect! Qc3 mates in all variations, or Black loses his Queen.

A Positional Problem

Below is a position from one of my recent games (I was White and was on move). During my analysis I missed a very instructive positional plan, which Fritz was screaming for when I later reviwed t with the engine. What I find most pleasing about the solution is that tactical threats create a positional advantage. Its very easy to think that strategy and tactics are distinct, but this is wrong: they go hand-in-hand! The solution will be posted in a few days.