Improving Chess by playing regularly!

Hello and Welcome to my blog.

Getting Back to Chess is not an easy task, but it is fun! I have been playing chess for not a long time, I would say for 3 years or so but in that time I have improved a lot. I must have played more than 15K games of online chess on a variety of online platforms. I used to play on lichess.org too and it has been my favorite site to play.

This last year has not been very productive for me in terms of my chess improvements as I almost neglected this sport which I loved so much. But for a few weeks, I have been trying to regain my lost ratings and confidence and practising almost daily by playing chess.

I have also decided to participate in the ongoing HiveChess Tournament and I played in the last round too. I got lucky in that round and even got to the top5 which is a new thing for me.

Anyways, here is me trying to show some of the nicest games with you but first's let talk about a position which occurred during my games and see if you can spot the best move in that position.

Position of the Day

The following position is from one of the tournament games that I played last Saturday. We are in the end game, Black has 4 connected passed pawns and has a pawn majority on the queenside. But Black's last move b5 is a huge blunder. Can you see why? and how can you punish this move?

If you see the position carefully, you will notice that the White King is attacking the g5 pawn which is currently being defended by the Black King. But it has no other move to stay in contact with this black pawn so we can take advantage of this and try to force a move from black.

How can we do it? Well, just push a5 and lock the position and now Black is in zugzwang. Black only has two moves left and both moves have their disadvantage. So, Black would ideally want to give the move back to White. If Black King moves then the g5 pawn is lost and that would be a lost position.

The other move is the pawn push c5 is losing as well because after dxc5, white would have two passed pawns which the King cannot stop. And White would be winning.

Too bad White missed the a5 move and I was the one who won this end just by one tempo. This goes to show how complicated these pawn endgames can get.

A lucky win on Time

I was White in the following game and got an amazing start but it was all about to get worse! Game link

This was one of the best positions I got out of the opening, I managed to win two pawns, had an amazing centre and got exchange up, all out of the opening.

But I started to panic as Black lined up their remaining pieces looking at g7. I dropped my Queen all the way back to h2 to protect g7 but missed a deadly Knight fork. This loss of an entire queen with the h pawn coming down the board was so scary and I was almost lost But the only thing I had in my favor was time.

This was a 5+0 match and my opponent couldn't find a mate in 3 under time pressure. And they lost on time. What a lucky win from a mate in 3!

A 'Discovered Check' ended the game!

I lost a couple of games after equal evaluation endgames but winning a clean game like the following just out of the opening feels great. Game link

I went with my favourite Queen's Gambit line and won an important pawn at the centre with my opening. From that point on it never felt like I was out of the game. Out Kings were still in center but Black's is the one getting hunted now.

My central pawns helped in the attack and one reached c5 square which the Black Queen tried to block but Queens are the worst blockader of pawns and a simple Knight move and Queen had to move followed by c7+, a discovered check that will drop the Rook and this is the time where Black surrendered knowing that this position cannot be salvaged now.

I am still hovering near 1700 in the Blitz rating. It feels like I am stuck in that range but I am getting better and better each day. It might take some time to get this improvement reflected in my rating but until then I am enjoying playing chess again. Chess is LIFE!!

Thanks for reading...