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Seann posted an update
I’m back up to 954 from 875, using Stonewall and Owen’s exclusively. I revisited the videos on the openings. Nelson covers a lot in those, and there were some aspects that I was overlooking before, when I was losing terribly. I’m still having some issues pulling off the rook lift. I’ve been successful a few times, but I’ve been thwarted many times as well. There are a couple scenarios I’m not sure how to handle. 1. Black fianchettos the bishop and castles kingside (with knight on f6), or Black puts a knight (instead of bishop) on g7 (fianchetto setup, only with a knight). In the later situation, i got my rook on h3, but then I didn’t know how to follow up. There was a queen/bishop battery on h4, so I moved my queen in and I had no attack. This is an emabarrasing game, but it shows what im talking about: https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/108857317414?move=44&tab=review
My other main issue, is when Blacknputs a pawn on d6, preventing my knight from jumping to e5. https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/108792640326?move=14&tab=review
I’m learning from the game reviews, but would love some advice to improve.
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Andrew and Stuart3 Comments-
Also, with stonewall, what to do when black castles Queenside? What’s the best approach? What about when they don’t castle at all? I need a better plan for both these scenarios.
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HI Sean, That’s a couple of tough games there and both your opponents made it difficult. I’m not too far ahead of you in rating terms so take what I say in that context.
In the first one you had a good set up until the queen move to g3. The blunder is because of your Rook getting trapped but thats a hard tactic to see and your opponent missed it as he exchanged pawns on d4 and didn’t push to e4 then e5 opening up his bishop onto your rook which had no escape. When they missed it, you had a nice rook sacrifice on h7 that would have led to an exciting prising out of the king. So I think in that one its more a case of spotting tactics than anything else.
The second game is more subtle and a bit of impatience trying to open the centre. Get castled before opening up the centre. The analysis shows e4, c3 etc just securing your position. Sometimes at our level it’s just a case of waiting for their mistake to happen first but in the meantime get the king safe and re position pieces into potentially active areas so that tactics can happen. Getting you knight onto e5 is the ideal set up but you won’t always get it and will have to use it elsewhere.
Re the castling queen side, you can still attack down the king side and get in that way and come across at the king from there. Other than that it’s looking for weak pieces, (backward pawns and undefended pieces) and squares to attack to get an advantage before the endgame. Nelson’s middle game videos break it down well and gives you ideas on what to do next.
I just view these openings as a reasonable start so that I have some ideas like getting my knight onto e5 or the rook lift etc but if I can’t get those then I’m in a reasonable position to chip away at other weak points.
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Stuart, Thanks for taking the time to review my games and deliver some solid feedback. Everything you’re saying makes sense. I particularly like your suggestion to deal with an opponent’s queen side castling by simply continuing the kingside attack and going in that way. Makes a lot of sense.
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