Trading Queens a Losing Blunder in the blitz game

Swedish player Gianky59, a weak 1498 player, after playing better than his low USCF rating, offered a Queen exchange on the e3 square which leads to a LOST King and Pawn ending in the following diagrammed position.

After the exchange on that dark square, Black plays Kf5 to be in attacking range of White's over advanced and vulnerable 3-2 Queenside Majority. Black is easily winning because she can make an outside passed h pawn! 

 

Kuwait Player goes for too much out of Opening

Being patient enough to wait for the latent potential of King's Indian Bishop to be liberated was one of the favorite ideas of New Mexico chess talent Silas Perry. I had the pleasure of meeting Silas in Albuquerque during a National Guard deployment around a decade ago. 

Like many eccentric chess players, he has resisted attempts at communication, but that is OK since he helped me gain over 200 USCF rating points without knowing it! I did not want to admit it due to my extremely competitive spirit, but the four or five games I lost to the dude forced me to  retool my game!!

He and GM Kraai highly advocate taking paper notes in a real notebook and analyzing why one sometimes makes stupid moves at critical times in the game. 

One of Perry's favorite sayings was this guy should not be able to get away with "this attack". He won a game against Amarillo Master Simms when he felt the Texan had overreached. The game you see above where Kuwait player unexpected launched a suspicious attack reminded me of the sage advice of Silas. 

White's b2 Bishop is just oozing some latent potential  as the second player's "attack" has created an uncountable number of weak squares around his Monarch. This is sometimes OK in the Dutch Defense but not in this case as White mopped the mess up quite handily with an Ne1-Nd3 repositioning of his f3 horse which was being attacked by overextended g4 pawn

Ivan Drago pays chess!!

Dolph Lundgren,Dolph Lundgren......Dolph Lundgren the handsome studly Swedish actor kept popping into my feeble mind during this Internet Chess Club 3 minute game where United States of America player IvanoDrago11 opened with the very passive setup you see in the picture below.

However, the chess version of this aggressive pugilist was the dead opposite not placing any of his pieces or pawns beyond the third rank! Who am I to complain though as IvanoDrago11 has induced me to overextend countless times and then dominated me in one sided end games. I did manage to exploit my space advantage by crushing him and his provocative play today. He ended up castling queenside behind a tattered pawn structure and was slowly suffocated in a Karpovian endgame.

Guys like Nimzovitch  and Damian Lemos love this crouching "scared way" of playing our Royal Game in true Pterodactyl Defense style. Their mindset is good defense is as equally rewarded as an attacking manner of play, but I still wonder if people who play this way are gay bottoms? Also, solid performers and practitioners of he Hippo include  Alessio De Santis,Eric Briffoz and Gary Gifford who market their books on the opening with phrases darkly, deceitfully, dreadfully, duplicitous or even dangerously deceptive. They disingenuously recommend the White Side of the opening hoping that Black will feel the need to refute it by overextending.

Sexual preferences aside, one has to admire this Hypermodern mindset and ones willingness to risk getting blown off the board for the reward of sneering at a blushing opponent for being over aggressive! So hip hip hooray for the Hippopotamus!!!

Oh yeah, all of your got the Rocky boxing movie reference?!

The Price of Passivity

Many chess players do not like to throw the first punch. Rather, they prefer playing provocative moves encouraging their opponent to attack them. There are animals like hedgehogs and porcupines who are designed by evolution to be master defenders equipped to attack with vengeance if another animal gets too close.



Pawnstar11 of the ICC is an excellent defensive player who is frequently rewarded by pouncing on chess players who are overly aggressive. One of the drawbacks to his style of play is that his defensively placed pieces can sometimes be captured sacrificially leaving weakened squares in their wake.

In the following position, he just played Nf8 in an uncastled position in order to guard the sensitive pawn at g6. White reacted by sacrificing exchange(means to give up ones rook for either a knight or bishop).

After Black recaptures at f8, White recovers the exchange sacrifice with a pawn to boot by capturing at g6 with a fork leaving the Black King exposed in the center. In this particular game Black's defensive play resulted in a hopelessly weak/pasive position, but sometimes good defense results in a better position for the defender if the attacker overextends his position and becomes vulnerable.