Missing a key concept of some kind

Hello,

I am currently rated 1200 and want to get better at chess. I started to prepare a bit of Theory which increased my chances of not loosing in the opening. However, the situation becomes very dire shortly after.

I played a 10+0 Swiss Style Tournament today and I want to share two games that I lost.

1.) as white: 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nce7 4.f4 d6 5.Nf3 h6 6.fxe5 Ng6 7.b3 dxe5 8.Bb2 Nf6 9.h3 Bd6 10.Qe2 Nh5 11.Qf2 O-O 12.O-O-O Re8 13.d4 exd4 14.Nxd4 Nf6 15.Rde1 Ne5 16.Qe2 a6 17.a4 17.c6 a5 18.Nxc4 Qxc4 19.Be5 Na2 20.Be6 Nxe6 21.Bxb2+ Kxb2 22.Rxe6 Nb4 23.Qxa5 Re2 24.Rae8 Rhe1 25.Qc7 Qc3 26.Nxe4 Qf3 27.Qe5+ Kc1 28.Qa1#

Once my pieces are placed and ready for attacking, my strength rapidly declines. When I say "missing a key concept" I mean that I do not quite understand what I should base my strategy on. I only know a few theory moves, but the opening phase is very straight forward in my opinion. Black put up a solid defence but my pieces were positioned to commence an attack at the king. However, as seen in the game, I do not know how I can capitalise on such a space advantage. I started to manoeuvre my pieces across the board in hopes of finding a crack of some kind. It all went south after move 15. During the game, I remember being clueless as to what I should do next. What are my opponents weaknesses, how should I infiltrate, where should I build pressure and so on.

I do know that the problem is the understanding of the midgame. However, after watching a few Videos on midgame strategies (basically breaking down positions I never reach due to a different repertoire), I still don't know how to improve.

2.) as black: 1.e4 e6 2.f4 d5 3.d3 dxe4 4.Nc3 Bb4 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Nf6 7.Be2 O-O 8.dxe4 Nxe4 9.Nf3 Qxd1+ 10.Bxd1 Nxc3 11.O-O Rd8 12.Be2 12.Nxe2+ Kf2 13.Nxf4 Bxf4 14.Rd7 Rad1 15.c6 Rxd7 16.Bxd7 Rd1 17.Bc8 Rd8

Again, I had the upper hand going into the midgame (Blundering the Knight on move 13 was pure tunnel vision filled with greed). But again, this is where everything went south. The pawn on c6 was now under pressure by Bf4 and I tried desperately defending it with 15. Rd7. I do know that the move in general is not purely bad. However, I think this shows my lack of understanding the position and again the overall strategy from this point on. The engine suggests Na6 and I'm sure I would have still won the game if I had found that move (but just due to the pawn majority I had).

In conclusion, does anyone know where the deep problem in my failure lies? I know (somehow) what I'm missing. A repetitive mistake is not just a fault, it's an error of thinking and I do not yet know how to fix it.

Thanks in advance!

You're asking for a concept, but looking at the games what I see is calculation or visualization mistakes, I don't get the impression you're missing a key concept.

In the first game moves 16 and 17 were defensive moves you made in anticipation of what your opponent was going to play, but then move 18 gives away the a pawn (the queen can capture it).

In the 2nd game moves 4 and 6 defend your pawn, but move 17 not only is checkmate in 1 move, but even if it weren't mate, you'd lose the bishop and knight after white checks you.

So sometimes you're seeing what your opponent can do, but other times you're blind to it, so you immediately lose. In both games you walked into checkmate.

In some ways it's unfortunate, because the solution is so tedious, but the lower the rating, the more improvement comes from developing good calculation habits. It's tedious because with a board full of pieces, there are a lot of things to be aware of. Lots of different pieces control lots of different squares. For example your opponent's move 17...c6. This is a pawn move to a light square... but the move attacks a dark square too. It attacks a5 by uncovering the queen. So visualizing whether a move is safe 1 or 2 moves in advance is tough, but it gets easier with practice.

Sure, calculating is part of the problem. However, I believe the root problem is much deeper. Because I can't quite calculate and outmanoeuvre my opponent, if I do not understand what to look for. If I can not prepare an attack of some kind for my own pieces due to a lack of ideas, how can I anticipate what my opponent is planning?

Every Video of higher rated players (let's say >1800), whenever they play a move, they have a direct response as to what the best move for their opponent could be. I do understand, that that sort of thinking happens and is gained over time, but you have to start somewhere.

They always try to include some tactics, basic attack patterns. And that's also missing on my end. I try to do a bit of puzzles, I bought myself a book but I just won't improve.

Maybe try to find an opening that fits your style? for both sides. Try to understand what do you want to achieve from that opening through engines and databases.

Also, recommend you find a chess teacher to help you improve.

also this might give you some idea chesspage1's video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26174PF9Gmw

Aren't they all extremely expensive? Chess is just a Hobby, I don't really want to spend a lot of money for it.

Here is a game from today. I tried to be more aggressive. However, at some point my attack came to a halt and I made sacrifices for nothing. I don't understand when you can incorporate tactics like these and when not.

1.) 1. e4 e6 2. Nf3 d5 3. exd5 exd5 4. Bb5+ Nc6 5. O-O Bd6 6. Re1+ Ne7 7. Nd4 Bxh2+
8. Kxh2 Qd6+ 9. Kg1 O-O 10. Bxc6 bxc6 11. d3 Nf5 12. Nxf5 Bxf5 13. Nc3 Rfe8 14.
Rxe8+ Rxe8 15. Be3 h5 16. Qxh5 g6 17. Qh4 d4 18. Bxd4 c5 19. Qh8#

make sure to take into account what xtreme said and don't play things that you didn't exactly calculate properly. the correct mindset to find tactics is to think of how you can attack the enemy side of the board.

also what was the idea on move 17? evaluation boosted to +5.7 from 3.2

It's a big mistake to dismiss a horrible blunder with fancy words like "pure tunnel vision filled with greed". That blunder was the single reason you lost the game. Take it seriously. Don't ignore it.

In that first game, your chance came on move 13. Black's move 12 ... Re8 removes a vital defender from their f pawn, which is attacked twice (directly by your bishop and also x-rayed by your queen. So you should be looking at 13 Ng5, 13 Nxe5 (neither of which work) and saccing the bishop with 13 Bxf7, which does work. The game could continue 13 ... Kxf7 14 Nxe5+ Kg8 15 Qf7+ and you regain the sacced material by capturing his knight on g6 with either your queen or knight (whichever wins you another tempo, depending upon where his king went). With your queens' bishop pointing right at his king, and an open file ready for your rooks, you have a winning attack.

Ok, I can chat about concepts, because honestly concepts are fun, and calculation is not fun, but I will say that even when I want to do well at a tournament, I'll incorporate daily calculation exercises in the form of solving difficult puzzles and writing down the solutions, then checking my solutions manually. It's a long process of mostly sitting in front of a board and calculating.

As for concepts, a quick checklist of things we'd like a move to do would be something like...

-

1. Can't easily be chased away
2. Is on a square where the piece has high mobility (can move to many other squares)
3. Is defended
4. Makes a threat
5. Is blocking a minimum of friendly pieces
6. Is moving to the area (kingside / center / queenside) where you have a natural positional advantage (more developed non-pawns and/or more advanced pawns)

As for the evolution of a piece, it'd be something like this:

-

• First (in the starting position) a piece is not mobile and not centralized.
• Then a piece gains mobility (can move to many empty squares)
• Then a piece infiltrates to the opponent's half of the board and / or--
• --the piece comes into contact with a target.

-

Positionally speaking there are only two types of targets. Squares near the opponent's king, and pawns that can't be defended by other pawns (so isolated pawns, or pawns on the starting square, or the base of pawn chains).

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So for example, in the first game when you defended with 20.Na2, that just looks wrong because the knight is less active, less centralized, etc. Normally my advice would be when you see a threat (black threatened your d4 knight) then find ALL the ways to defend that threat.

For example a quick count by me... there are about 14 ways to defend the knight. (6 moves of retreating, and 8 moves that add a defender). In an OTB tournament game I'd take 1-2 seconds to visualize each move (no matter how bad it might look at first, e.g. 20.Ndb5) to see if any of them stand out to me. What stands out to me are 20.Nf3 and 20.Nf5 because those best satisfy the numbered list at the start of this post. Notice, for example, that 20.Nde2 fails in multiple ways, including #5, it's blocking friendly pieces (like the rook's defense of the pawn).

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But you can see how, from my point of view, this might not be useful advice to give when you're giving away pawns by not noticing a square is attacked (move 18 first game) giving away pieces by not noticing a square is attacked (move 13 second game) and giving away mate in 1 because you can't see your opponent's checks (the last move of both games). For those reasons more typical advice is to tell you that even beginners check whether a move is safe sometimes. Your goal, as a more advanced player, is to blunder check 100% of your moves in 100% of your games, and in all honesty this is really hard. It takes a lot of practice and habit building. It's hard because other things distract us. You have to be honest about your thought process, identify what you missed and why and also come up with a technique to resolve it. I give more detail about this when I answered someone's question here.

For example, one thing I used to do was I'd look at all of my opponent's non-pawns one by one. For each I'd trace the lines of their movement all the way to the edge of the board. For example for a rook on a1, I'd move my eyes all the way across the a file, and the 1st rank (even if it crossed through many pieces). A technique like that would have helped you avoid the 1 move blunders... but again, this obviously takes a lot of time and effort, and is not very fun... it's much more fun to talk about concepts as if high rated players are rated high via some simple trick of knowledge...

... when I was prepping for a recent OTB tournament, I had the goal of working on 10 (difficult) puzzles a day... that turned out to be a little too much because 10 puzzles was taking me a little over 4 hours. Solving them was only about 70% of the time spent. The other 30% was reviewing my thought process. "Why did I miss what I missed? What will I try different tomorrow?" That's the "trick" that makes people good at calculating... a lot of difficult work. By the way, at that tournament I beat a master and was pretty proud of that

That post turned out to be really long when I wasn't planning on that... well anyway, that's as honestly as I can answer the question

For what it's worth I don't think that's true whatsoever, even if you look at the truly greatest players actually analysing normally and not just smashing out 'content' you will be surprised how self-deprecating they are a lot of the time "I have no clue what's going on here" "this position is a mess" or whatever. But what they are good at is keeping the game within somewhat familiar contours so they can regroup easily (and they're great of course).

Certainly for my part as someone way weaker than those guys but still quite a bit better than the 1800 rating you mentioned, I can tell you I'm often fumbling around in positions cluelessly but probably what I do better than you do is I don't make positions worse or weaken myself or just blunder or get ideas that can't possibly work and so on (sure it happens but not as much as a 1200) as much during the times when I have no idea what to do. I wouldn't say I am great at knowing lots of secret concepts

I agree with all the earlier posts that highlight lack of board vision. I don't think its a missing concept. Have to work on visualisation/calculation and getting some cohesion in your play. The first gam was incredibly random: opened f-file quickly but then instead of the logical 0-0, went for some cumbersome queenside development, threw in a randomly weakening h3, then some more random moves later such as Qe2 lining the Q up with the rook, random a2-a4-a5 in front of the King's position blundering it then finally walking into a mate in one in a positon that was dubious but at 1200-level still somewhat playable.

TLDR: If you focus on tightening up and improving what you're already doing you should improve. There are things you're doing right so it's not all bad news. Good luck

As a general rule you want at least 3 attackers for a king hunt to work.

As a general rule, if you divide the board in half (kingside and queenside) you want your number of non-pawns to outnumber the opponent's number of non-pawns on that side of the board (attackers outnumber denfeders).

As a general concept, there are two ways of removing pawn cover from the castled king. The first is pawn breaks, the second is sacrificing pieces. Your move Bxh2 opened the h file and the h2-b8 diagonal. This would be part of an attack if you could quickly bring multiple attackers to coordinate on the squares around white's king, probably starting with h2.

Attacking the king before you've developed your pieces rarely works. Attacking with your king still in the middle of the board rarely works.

I understand it's not glamorous, but sticking to the basics goes a long way. In the opening, develop quickly and castle. Place (and usually maintain) a pawn on one of the 4 center squares. In the middlegame, do your best to not give away anything for free, not even one pawn.

Moves like 18...c5 (the move before white checkmate you)... I tend to call these moves "hoping I get to move twice in a row." No. You don't get to move twice. In chess your opponent gets to move too. Even worse, you seem to have missed the mate again.

If you play chess by ignoring your opponent's moves, and hoping you get to move twice in a row, you wont end up with a very high rating... but again, I understand that it's not easy, and also that "proper" chess can be somewhat boring.

Anyway, work on the basics is my advice. Concepts like sacrificing to attack the king are not only too advanced at the moment, they're also unnecessary.

You need to base your plans on the position. What are the weaknesses? What is your worst placed piece? What is your opponent's idea? The ideal would be to pressure the opponent's weakness by activating your worst piece while stopping the opponent's idea. That can't always be done, which is when you'll have to judge what you give up and what you take.

This is the classic psychological trap of taking things for granted. At a 1200 level it's like a blind man walking without their cane, stranded in a wild expanse. Yes, you can tell the blind man that he simply shouldn't stumble into that crazy wild animal's den but it will be a bit hard for him considering that he's blind. The 1200 player needs to work on being able to see before they can avoid stubbing their toe on the corner of the bed. The only way to do that is by peeling back the curtain little by little. So yes, they blunder a pawn here, a piece there but most of that is simply them stubbing their toe because they're blind. The concepts and patterns that are second nature to you are brand new to them. You see see the threats easily because you know what isn't a threat. To a blind man stranded in a strange new environment, everything might be a threat. That leads to an increase in hanging pawns and pieces.

How is that taking anything for granted? I said the same thing you're saying. I said it's hard because there are a lot of pieces that can move a lot of different ways and it just takes practice.

"Don't blunder" is indeed useless advice. My post wasn't about not blundering, it was about why the OP's question wont lead to a useful answer.

As for a useful answer, i.e. as for how not to blunder, I give that later in the topic, and even link to a longer post where I explain in more detail how to go about it.

I also humor the OP by answering the concept question the way I would if I were trying to help a higher rated player.