BLundering against BLoomes

Last night I played the final club championship game of the season against Bert Loomes. When I've previously played against him with white he used to play the Philidor, but this time he played the French defence, with some moves that totally threw me. I was lost very early on.

When he played 4...Ba6, I just carried on playing the standard Kings Indian Attack, but in this case I should have altered the plan, playing Be2 so that I could castle safely.

In the position below, I miscalculated and played Bf1, overlooking that taking back with the Knight leaves me unable to castle. I could have in fact trapped his bishop by playing b4 followed by e5.

I then blundered by moving my Queen instead of taking back the bishop, thinking I'd discovered a way out of the mess.

DeanMaddenvBertLoomes_0.pgn

Peter Brace

I played Peter Brace for the first time yesterday. It was an okayish game but I was pretty disappointed with myself for never really getting any advantage in it. I was impressed with how Peter managed to usually pick the right move and didn't appear to make any major mistakes. The big mistake was from me when I allowed my knight to run out of escape squares.

I attempted to play the closed Sicilian as white for the second time, but soon forgot what I was supposed to be doing. I decided to give up my fianchettoed bishop to give him doubled pawns. Still not sure whether it was the right thing to do as it left him with the bishop pair and I had weakened pawns on the kingside.

I made a mistake in the position below:

I played b3 without thinking about how it lines up the Queen and a1 rook for a skewer. It's little things like that what I need to consider more, I tend to not think about them, that and making sure my pieces always have adequate escape squares.

The e4 knight was then trapped when attacked by a pawn, and once moved he could execute the skewer.

I played on for a bit since I still had two rooks, but Peter played accurately enough to force the win.

DeanMaddenvPeteBrace.pgn


Before the game, Ian had me, Martin and Bert playing some weird team game where if you take a piece from your opponent, you can give it to your partner for his board. So lots of silly positions arose.