After having a horrendous second day at the USATN I started my Sunday off right with a win.
That brought me to my final game…
I sat down at the board feeling confident, and was quickly up a pawn, and then it went smooth, to quote some Norwegian dude.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
(any donations received go towards lessons)
I’d give 7. 0-0 a question mark. There’s no reason not to play 7. Nxe5. Not only is it a juicy central pawn, but you would also eventually get to play d3-d4, establishing total dominance over the center. You have to prove some actual compensation for your opponent when you opt against winning material. Lucky for you, he didn’t protect it and you wound up winning it anyway, but you probably won’t be as lucky against stronger players. Everyone makes mistakes, but those committed by stronger players will be such that they will be harder to spot and the window of opportunity to exploit them will be small.
Your analysis and annotations are very detailed. You do a great job on these. Could they even be a little too good? After all, a 1400 player isn’t really trying to find “compensation” or “complications” when down material. He’s probably just trying to win back the material in a relatively simple way, or at least not lose any more.