Chess Grind is still on! Chess is Brutal!

Hello and Welcome to my blog.

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There are so many sports where a small lapse of concentration can change the consequence of the entire game and one such game is the game of Chess. For me it has to be one of the most brutal games, you could be making 40 good moves in a row and on your 41st move you just played the move without much thought as the position looked familiar then comes a surprising move from your opponent which you somehow missed and all that you worked for the past several minutes if not hours in professional sport, just feels like a waste. Chess is Brutal but it has its beauty.

I started playing chess quite late, only in the 2020 lockdown but since then I fell in love with the sport and now I fully understand its beauty and why it attracts so many people from all around the globe.

I love to watch some chess games played by the top grandmaster which impresses me a lot. I wanted to get back to improving chess little by little so I started this chess series on Hive where I share some of the games I play from time to time and analyse some positions from my games too!

Let me share some of the recent games that I played online but before that let's talk about my favourite section, Position of the Day!

Position of the Day

The following position is from one of the games that I played today. The material is equal but the white rook has already entered into the 7th heaven (aka the 7th rank). Black wants to push the white Knight from the centre of the board and just moved his f pawn to attack it.

Can you see any way to take advantage of this move, is there a sacrifice lingering in the position or do you go back with the Knight or something else is more juicy?

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I hope you found a way to take advantage of blacks' weak 7th rank.

White has a good position and they can just ignore the pawn push and sacrifice the Knight as the Black king can get in a checkmate pattern. Connected rooks in the 7th rank lead to deadly attacks and Rc7 will threaten the Blind Swine Mate. This is one of the most famous checkmating patterns with two rooks where the king is blocked by their own piece on the f8 square (typically their rook) and the White rook can the checks on g7 and g8 squares as both support each other and it leads to a pretty mate.

In the above position, the best move for blacks would be to give up their Queen for a rook and Knight which would prolong the game but White will have the advantage.

A Chaotic game ended in a peaceful Draw!

I was White in the following game where it seemed that I got the advantage out of the weird opening. Game link

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It was a game full of chaos, we traded a lot of pieces early in the game as I had a great centre with 2 connected passed pawns. But as time gone I lost one of them for free and that reduces my advantage. I tried to hold on to the last passed pawn but their king was too active. Also, I got afraid of their 3 connected pawns and traded my passed pawn to get rid of that threatening chain.

I have lost a lot of games in the endgame phase so I don't take much risk there. I suck at both the opening and endgame. I don't know what I am good at chess at this point...lol

What a Mate!

I was feeling sad to lose some rating points in Blitz, I was under 1700 now but this last game made me feel so happy. Game link

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I went with my favourite Queen's Gambit line and right out of the opening, the position became so sharp. Black just threw their king-side pawns at me trying to exchange my Bishop for a Knight. But their king was still in the centre and I took the advantage.

I started an avalanche of Checks and sacrificed every piece I could. I sacked a rook, Knight and a couple of pawns to deliver 9 checks in a row and the final position is an unusual place for the Black king to be checkmated. Black King managed to get all the way to h1, straight into the enemy territory all alone, such a brave king... XD

This was a funny game, when I later analysed it to see how many things I missed in this game (I miss a lot of stuff, especially in this shorter Blitz (3+0) time control). I saw a missed mate in 1 and had the Black king not taken my Knight and gone back, they would have better position. But when you have this exposed King in this time control, it is not an easy task to find the only moves. The pressure was too much and I got a satisfying victory at the end.

I managed to get up to 1730 in Blitz on Lichess.org but got back to under 1700 after 2 days of bad plays. I think I am just playing and playing and not focusing on learning new openings and practising tactics.

Hopefully, the next time I talk about chess I will be over 1750. I need to take a step back and focus on studying more, especially my openings and endgames. That's all from me.

Thanks for reading...

Until next game...