Blitz Chess #4: Turning Things Around

There are games I've played in which I just made so many blunders and mistakes in every phase of the game that there just seems to be no hope. In this game, that wasn't completely the case although it was a really messy game and it wasn't supposed to be so complicated because I could have made moves that would have been beneficial for me but instead, I made the worst possible moves I could make. Despite that, I was still able to emerge victorious in the end and that was because my opponent made mistakes which they weren't able to recover from due to the big advantage it gave me which I capitalized on.

Based on the computer's evaluation, I made more blunders than my opponent but the only difference was that I had turned things around. My position was still good until move 15. I made a miscalculation which slightly turned the tides for my opponent but I wasn't completely in a worse position, albeit I was in an uncomfortable one. Nonetheless, I continued and I was able to somewhat get a stable footing in the position. Of course, I lamented the fact that I continued to make mistakes instead of consolidating my position but I didn't have time to worry about the mistakes I made in the past so I just tried to make the most out of my current position.

Thankfully my opponent didn't see how to take advantage of my mistakes and I was able to get out of some of them relatively unscathed. However, against tougher opponents, I would have probably been decimated right there and then, at the moment I made one seemingly innocuous mistake, and there were several moments wherein that happened. But I forged on and we continued the game. My opponent was probably pretty confident in their position seeing that their pieces were very active and they had a lot of control over key squares and opportunities for attack. But I had counterplay and I tried to play the cards with which I was dealt, although they were mostly my doing.

I tried to be tricky. So around moves 20 to 25, you will see so many dubious moves that I made which, if my opponent had rightly spotted, would have been my downfall. For example, the move Nc4 was a blunder. Although it was attacking White's bishop which, if neglected and captured, the knight would then attack White's queen, White had a great response to that with g3, letting the bishop be captured but maintaining a very strong attack in the queenside. White's pawn would be rolling its way down the board and all of White's pieces are poised perfectly to support it. Meanwhile, Black's pieces are awkward and clumsy, and will continue to be constricted.

Alas, that was not what happened. And the great thing about the following sequence of moves is that the computer gives so many tactical alternatives to the moves that we played which just makes it look as though we had no idea what we were doing, which is true in my case because as you will observe from my play, I didn't make the best moves, quite the contrary, I was making the worst moves. But things turned around at a certain point.

And that point was from move 26 onwards. So far, from the recent games I had, this was probably the one with the most tactical points throughout the game but in the end, the one who made the last mistake loses. Fortunately, that wasn't me.