Sudharshan's Chessboard

Chess is a war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.

[shanschessboard]

Breaking the 800 barrier

Finally, after about another 3/4 weeks, I rose another 100 in rank points which is a major milestone for me. The next major milestone is ofcourse the 900 milestone but for now, I’d like to show off this Caro-Kann game I played which was very neat and tidy.

This position arises from the advanced variation with e5 played by white. After the release of the light squared bishop, we have an improved structure with a pawn triangle but without the trapped French Defense bishop.

The interesting thing about this game is that there were no major blunders by both sides, it was a gradual improvement of my position until I secured a victory. This is particularly encouraging because I won by my ability and not by the mistakes of others.

The first mistake that white made was to offer a trade of the light squared bishop. As black, I am happy to trade off white’s good bishop especially because all my pawns are on white squares. It also ruins the white pawn structure by creating doubled pawns on the d file.

The mating position was a fork as well, and I quite enjoyed this game because I could see the progress I’ve made over time. The intuitions I had gained by playing were all coming together slowly and I look forward to getting better and better.

[shanschessboard]

6 blunders and a lost game

Today, I lost horribly in a game and I thought it apt to analyze and see the reason for my consecutive blunders. I was playing a rather strange opening off the bat, with a Exchange Caro-Kann with white’s light squared bishop on c4.

And, a couple of moves later, I detected a pretty smart tactic with the move Qa5+ to which white responded with Bd2 and the move Qe5+ from that position is simply winning the rook.

This is where the trouble really started, white had initially defended the king from the check with the move Ne2, and after the rook capture, white follows up with the move Qc2.

At this juncture, there were a couple of problems. First of all, a move like Bc3 from white, traps the queen with no escape which I was quite wary of. I actually didn’t know how to counter such a move, but in my naive ways I went ahead to play Bg7 and fianchetto my dark squared bishop. Interestingly enough, Bc3 was not a tangible threat because after the move Bf5 a queen trade is pretty much forced. Any alternative leads to fairly troubled variations for white.

This I think was my key weakness in this game, my wariness of a trapped queen made me play rather illogical moves which then could’ve been potentially exploited by my opponent. However, white did not particularly use those moves and we arrived at a position which should be completely winning for black.

In this position, the plan is simple. Castle, double up the rooks on the d file and simply crush white on the kingside. White has very little counterplay, except after the move Qxe3 and Rxe3 I ended up blundering my queen for no apparent reason. Even then, my position was fully winning with my double rooks but I then ended up panicking and blundering another rook too :/

And after that, it was simply a bloodbath with not much further detail required. Eventually, I did end up getting a lot of black pawns and creating many passed pawns but the checks from the queen kept me from doing much before I got mated.

Goes to say the importance of a level head in a game, this was an easily winning position which was entirely wasted.

[shanschessboard]

Shenanigans in the London System

A rather tight game in the London system in one of the strangest variations I’ve played.

Opened with this where I made the first and only mistake, which was retreating my bishop instead of simply taking the pawn, because I didn’t feel too good about the double pawns on the e file.

The game proceeded, with black allowing me to march my b-file pawn all the way up the board until it queened.

It then proceeded to become a very cramped game on the king side with black’s pieces attacking me. Especially when my kingside knight was still on the first rank, and my king had lost castling rights due to a check 😅

Finally, I decided to force a queens trade so my king safety isn’t compromised and then black resigned.

[shanschessboard]

Marching Pawns

So I was playing a simple London System against a lower rated player, and he decided to simply march pawns forward instead of developing his minor pieces.

After a couple of moves, my pieces were way better positioned and controlling key positions. And then a quick Queen move started checks and opened up the black pawn defense.

Eventually I won in a knight queen mate that I think is pretty sexy.

[shanschessboard]

Queen-Bishop battery madness

Honestly, Bg4 has been hanging for the last 4 moves and I’ve been not taking it on tempo reasons. The assembled queen-bishop battery is aimed at the a2 pawn and threatening a mate in one.

The only principled move in this position would be Rf4, defending the a2 square and the light square bishop at the same time.

My response (now a blunder) was the move Qg5 which threatened a double attack on the rook by the bishop and the queen. Because in this sideline, white can play Bxc3 and capture my bishop, and after Bxf4 taking the queen and exf4 recapturing my bishop, white has a tempo on my queen on g5 which requires me to retreat.

A more accurate response would be Bcxg4 which captures the hanging bishop first. Because, even though the rook is “defending it”, the rook is pinned by the mate in one.

Anyway a couple of moves later, he ran out of time on a 30 min rapid game and the game ended on this fork. Good game tho.

[shanschessboard]

Ah yes controlling half the board, how did I even get to this you might wonder.

[shanschessboard]

when your blitz is more accurate then your rapid

Ever seen a +132 in a single game. No? Same, until now.

We were also clearly busy blundering 5 times each. But somehow, my accuracy on blitz is higher than my accuracy on normal chess. And I made a strangely high number of good moves, based on just pure instinct.

[shanschessboard]

AH, i need to stop having unintentional Botez Gambits (losing the queen accidentally for the uninitiated)

Still won tho :P

[shanschessboard]

this is how it starts, at 100, to infinity and beyond

pivoting this tumblr blog to something I’m more casual with, as a 680 elo chess player looked to get to 1500 by next years :P

I’ll post some interesting positions, fun games I had and chess memes, while at the same time documenting my rise in rank xD