Something I need to work on is putting an end to wrong thinking during games. Here’s an excellent example of that.
This is the position from my game Thursday. My opponent is a kid playing his first rated game. His strength is perhaps 500-600, so clearly the game is a mismatch.
My opponent castles
This hangs the e pawn, so I immediately give up the bishop pair
Except…I played 7.Bg5 here. Why? Here is the answer from my notes to the game:
“This is just wrong thinking. After chopping the knight to win the pawn I chose not to follow up properly because I feel that perhaps the extra tempi aren’t worth giving up. But there’s no place for feelings here. Just calculation. Which of course tells us that winning the pawn is the correct way to go since the extra tempi count for nothing in a position where Black can’t get to White and White controls the entire enter.”
So if I’m truly going to get to 1900 this year I’m going to have to stop this behavior. The thing is, I’d have snapped the pawn off in an instant against a stronger player.
Something to keep in mind.
Til Next Time,
Chris Wainscott
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