Bullet Chess #10: How to Lose Your Advantage But Still Win

After my first Lichess bullet game, I had two rematches with the same person, all of which I won. This is the second of those games and it was pretty one-sided for most of the game until we reached the final position above at which point, I wasted all the advantages I accumulated throughout the game and the computer's assessment dropped from a winning position to a drawish or even a slightly better position for Black. So let's see what happened in the game.

In the opening, we played the Pirc Defense which isn't something that I have usually faced against so I have fairly no knowledge on it but it seemed simple enough. Black's response to e4 is d6 which is a flexible move albeit a passive one. Instead of opposing White in the center, Black intends to quietly develop his pieces and wait for the right moment to attack. However, one downside is that White is able to take control of the center and if he's aggressive enough, harass Black's pieces early on in the game, which is what I did.

I have always loved the big center and advancing my pawns even more when Black doesn't contest it so that's why after a few developing moves, I immediately went for an e5 push. Just to give a little more background, I pushed three pawns: the d-, e-, and f-pawns in the center. I was able to push e5 because it was supported by both the d- and f-pawns. If Black hadn't played passively and allowed me to do that, then I would have had a much tougher time to maintain the initiative. After a few natural-looking developing moves, Black found himself caught in a tight position.

After move 7, I already had more space and better squares to place my pieces. And so I continued with development and exchanged a pair of minor pieces at the same time dealing damage to Black's queenside pawn structure. I already felt more comfortable after that. With the groundwork laid out, I just continued to move my pieces to squares where I felt they would contribute the most while my opponent had been slowly losing ground. By move 16, Black was already in a sticky situation, losing one of his pieces. But in the following moves, he slowly gained back his momentum due to my inaccurate moves.

The last part of the game witnessed my +4.5 advantage dwindle down to a measly +0.25 and as I said, after the final position of the game, it went to 0.00 and another engine even evaluated it at -0.19. I was quite inexperienced as I said and I only won because my opponent lost on time. Why did I lose my advantage so quickly?

First of all, I was impatient and I didn't know what else to do in the position. I had no plan of attack moving forward and I just didn't know where to look in the board to see where my next goal would be. Because of that, I just made aimless moves without really improving the position of my pieces. As you will see from move 19 onwards, I gave away two of my pawns, got my knight pinned and didn't really achieve anything new. I could have added more pressure on Black's center pawns or put my other pieces like the rooks on more active squares. I shouldn't have pushed my a- and b-pawns too rashly instead holding them back until I would need them later on.

That was the second game.