Game Analysis #5: A Stroke of Luck

Final position, 1-0

When I started playing chess online, I thought I'd do well because back then, I had fared well with the people I've played with over the board which wasn't a lot because not many people played the game or had the time to play the game so I was left with some kids around the block and my cousins. But online chess gave me access to a whole world that opened my eyes to the reality that there are many better players than I am and that I did not know much about chess as I thought.

It's sometimes frustrating to lose to someone especially when you don't even understand why. For the most part, in this game I felt somewhat short-sighted a lot of the time and I only looked at the position at hand without having any foresight of how my moves would affect the outcome of the game, that is, if my move would make it or break it for me in the long run. I played a relatively common opening here, the Spanish but I only knew the first few moves because we had a chess program that my uncle gave us and I saw the position many times over so I thought maybe I could give it a shot and I did but I had no idea what I was doing.

Hindsight is 20/20 and looking back at this game, it gives me a little bit of hope that I can improve more from my current state in chess because I was such a patzer and you'll see it here. Even though my opponent was lower rated than I am, he put up a good fight but as you'll also see, we will both commit a lot of mistakes but essentially, the one who commits the last big mistake will lose the game. The score is shown there so you know I won but the circumstances will indicate that I didn't really win based on a superior strategy, rather it was almost dumb luck that got me the win.



Again, playing and studying chess would probably be frustrating if what you want to do is simply to increase your rating points and become a master. That's a fine objective but it takes a lot of perseverance and dedication and commitment. It would take a lot of time and you have to be patient with it and if you really want to be on a par with the contemporary masters, you need to take it as seriously as you can but it's difficult especially if you start late. There are other things that we focus on as well so that will factor in on how much you can improve at a given amount of time. The best players today have been playing chess all their lives, so it's natural that they would be really good at what they do. I guess for the rest of us, taking it one step a time and having fun while we're at it would be the ideal thing to do.