Hovering around 1700 Blitz for some time now!

Hello and Welcome to my blog.

I have been playing chess again fairly regularly and trying to improve my intuition by playing more and more games. I don't usually study openings and endgame theories, I used to do that in the past but not anymore. I have a couple of openings with white and a few with Black pieces. However, I often get in bad positions with the black pieces, I might need to look for another opening with Black.

Anyway, here is me trying to show some of the nicest games that I played recently but first's let talk about a position which occurred during my games and see if you can spot the best move in that position. I am sure it is going to be educational.

Position of the Day

The following position is from one of the games that I played today. Black just captured a pawn on e5 with their bishop and seems to be unaware of a big threat looming in this position. White to play and win!

Have you heard the saying "Loose Pieces Drop Off" (LPDO)? Can you spot a loose piece on Black's side? Yes, the queen is loose and if we magically remove the bishop and it still is our turn then we could win it...right?

Well, we can do that exactly with the move Bxh7+, this move comes with a check so they don't have time to move their Queen or capture my Queen with theirs and they end up losing the Queen. One should calculate twice before moving their Queen on an unprotected square, especially in the early game.

Mating with a Discovered Check!

I was White in the following game and got a great start which I almost messed up but in the end, everything worked out beautifully and I managed to get checkmate by moving a pawn! Game link

The game started with 1 d4 d5 and 2 c4 I usually play this line which is the famous Queen's Gambit and Black usually doesn't take but this time they captured the pawn and it led to a sharp position quickly.

I got myself in some trouble when their Queen got in with a check supported by their Bishop and the Black Knight was close to my king too. I was scared at that point... I found a couple of good defensive moves and managed to hold onto it a little longer. Once the Black bishop got off from the diagonal where it could have saved the Black King, I moved my pawn to c7 and this move must have come as a surprise for black.

A pawn move, leading to a discovered mate is a cool mate, we don't see these fancy mates often and it was a great feeling, checkmating my opponent like this!

Strong Defense by Black!

I had lost a few games before and was not feeling well but this next game was a lot better for me and I held on to my nerves and outplayed my opponent with Black pieces! Game link

I played the Accelerated Dragon in Sicilian Defense as it is the only opening with black that I know how to play. I managed to get a great position out of the opening and ended up forking two minor pieces with a pawn. Pawn forks feel so nice.

But the game was not over as the Rook came down to the seventh rank, but I had the double bishop advantage (even though I hanged the light square bishop which Black missed). I had two bishops pointing at the White King and their Kingside was much weaker. My Queen was pressuring the h pawn as well and they finally made a blunder and missed the fact that the h pawn is pinned. The final blow was a fork from the other bishop which made White resign.

If you leave the one-move blunder from me then it was a pretty nice game, I had pressure on White throughout the entire game and it was the result of that pressure and superior position along with a piece advantage that I managed to win this one very convincingly.

I am still hovering near 1700 in the Blitz rating. I just finished the last session at exactly 1700 rating. I don't know how long I am going to be stuck in this rating range. I might need to learn a few more openings, especially with Black and see if it helps my rating. Also, doing puzzles is never a bad idea. I need to practice those as well! It might take some time to get this improvement reflected in my rating but until then I am enjoying playing chess again. Chess is LIFE!!

Thanks for reading...

• All the content is mine unless otherwise stated.
• Screenshots and GIFs from Lichess.org and banner created in Canva.
• Text dividers from @cryptosharan.

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