The first game shared in this post was played over nine years ago in a correspondence chess site called Red Hot Pawn. This game is yet another addition to the games where I get outplayed by my opponent. This game was actually quite well played by both players until I played 23...h6. It was a terrible idea to weaken my kingside pawn structure without any provocation. Like it has been stated many times before, you can't move your pawns backwards, therefore it is very important to make sure you want to move them in the first place. Culpistar played 24.h4 in reply, which was also a bad pawn move, much stronger was 24.d4. Despite of the sloppy pawn move, my opponent should be favored in the position.
I was able to play reasonable moves and stay in the game until it came time to make my 27th move. It was then that I made the worst move in the game, which ended up being the final mistake that meant a loss for me. I took the pawn on e5 with my queen, not noticing that it would be replied with 28.Nf4.
The knight from f4 attacks both the rook on e6 and the pawn on g6, I can only defend one, not both. I actually took the pawn on e4 and sacrificed the exchange, which is the preferred move according to Stockfish 8 64 POPCNT, but it should be clearly losing nonetheless. I tried to hang on as best as I could, but ended up being mated on move 45.
Game number two. The game below was played in the first round of a tournament called Ruy Lopez. The time control in this tournament is 14 days per move which is also the longest thinking times you can get at Chess.com. This has been my best tournament at Chess.com and I have still avoided losing a game. I won the first round group with a score of 21.5 out of the possible 22 points. On the second round I have gathered 13.5 points in 15 games and three games are still unfinished. I am currently leading the second round group, but only due to tie-break. The first time when my opponent's position started to collapse was when jcsk8 played 8.d4.
I replied with the move 8...exd4, which is actually not the strongest move, the move to play was 8...Rd8. The move I played gave me a small advantage, but 8...Rd8 would have given me a clear advantage. My opponent's position deteriorated even further with his or her next move 9.Nxd4. It was a really bad decision to take on d4 because of my next move 9...Rd8. It was a better idea to just move the knight to a4. Then jcsk8 made a third mistake in a row by placing the bishop to g5, ignoring the threat to the knight on d4. It was the final mistake, after that there was no way for my opponent to avoid defeat.
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