I play at a web site called GameKnot. I just won this game. All because of a simple pawn move by my opponent. As soon as he made it, I knew the game had turned in my favor. Prior to that point, I was playing pretty damn poorly.
Can anyone tell me when my opponent made the bad pawn move?
Play chess online!
Can anyone tell me when my opponent made the bad pawn move?
c2-c4, white moves pawn up, black takes pawn by en passant- thus handing the game to black. a2-a4 would be slightly better, however- white was not as strong as you think they were from the get go.
Definitely Pawn c-2 to c-4. I'll be sure not to make that mistake in our own match...
Ditto. But I don't think it's the Pawn play that gives this game its special flavor. It's the Knight play.
Knights don't belong on the edge of the board, because they have fewer squares available to them there. (That's one reason why, in the Yeager game, your position is not yet comfortable. You've moved your Q numerous times, while your poor QKt has not yet been allowed to stir.) Yet early in this other game White kept his KKt on the edge, by moving it to KR3, and then later you had a chance to kick his other Kt back to the edge as well, on QR3, by playing ...P-QR3 after it went to QKt5. That would've left you with the unusual, happy, and comical choice of knocking off both his misplaced Kts with your B's and leaving him with doubled isolated P's on both R-files, a total disaster for his endgame. Or, maybe even better, you could've just left both Kt's languishing there, almost out of the game. You did chop off one but not the other, and that QKt went on to work with its Q in eventually leaving you a whole Rook behind, a margin so large that possibly, just possibly, White could've survived even after your en passant shot, if he had played K=B1 instead of K-Q1.
But anyway thanks for showing us this wooly game.