Der Alter Goniff

Here's my first-round game from last weekend, a loss to IM Jay Bonin, I've played Jay...13 times, says my database, since 1978. Once in a while I nick him for a draw.

Normally, I'd clean up a game before posting it, but this time I wanted to give an idea of what my post-game analysis looks like, in case anyone cares. This is about 5 hours worth of work; I'll try to go back and do another couple of hours on it after I finish with the other games.

There's a couple of things to notice about this game. First, I had plenty of chances to get an equal or superior position, and missed them. Bonin just hung in there, kept playing decent moves, and waited for his chances to come--and they did. This is the same thing I did to Ali in my first post. In short, he outplayed me.

The other thing is that the main reasons for my loss were _not_ tactical. Yes, I missed a simple tactic (the decoy-and-fork at moves 30-31), and a tactic I probably wouldn't have spotted in Black's best line at move 29 means that I would have been struggling for the draw even without that one, but more important were psychological errors (I wanted to simplify the game, so I offered the exchange of Queens with 24...Qxe5, instead of the superior 24...Bxe5; exchanged on d4 before playing e5--thus freeing his QB--instead of playing ...e5 immediately; and avoided the complicated line starting with 18...Bxf2) and dogmatism (trying immediate action in the center with 6...Ne4 when I should have been developing instead, because acting in the center is "what you do" when the opponent starts a wing advance).

Analysing my two wins should take less time, and I expect to do them this week.

// posted by ed g. @ 10:17 PM