nygren.ca

nice looking mate I must say.

That was one of the two possibilities that resulted in your checkmate within 4 moves, lol.

Now that you've made your move: your best available move was Qxc8.

Oh by the way, now that I quickly checked... Qb3 was the move I had anticipated for you, rather than Qc1. Wouldn't really improve your situation that much but had the advantage of not giving me a free move... a free move that pretty much won me this game.

Well. We've gotten so close in skill level that I'd say that the game turned in my favour as soon as I was able to get the pawn advantage on you without losing a piece. But I thought that defense through very, very carefully to make sure I could get away with it. That's all I wanted out of that sequence, ahahaha, was that pawn. Neither of us need too much of an edge to press home and win. I was a LITTLE worried for a bit there because my gambit with the bishop and my cfile pawn to destabilize your pawn control put a LOT of pressure on my queenside, causing some limitation on my ability to move around. I was fairly confident in my excellent structure for defending against any attacks you could launch, but I wasn't certain if you'd find a way to take advantage of what I gave you. I had more pieces to work with though. I think I won that exchange primarily because you were mostly just working with one bishop and your queen while I had both of my knights and my queen in the play. Your white bishop was playing an inhibiting defensive role but it didn't influence your attack at all and so it let me crush you against my defensive wall. As I said, though, I only wanted the pawn out of it... I did NOT see where I could go from there. I just recognized the superior positioning that the knight for bishop trade would give me, not realizing the followup play that I had there because I simply hadn't put any thought into what would happen after I took your bishop with my knight, ahaha.

An aside: I'm not sure that you could have anything to prevent my rook move there. It was my obvious next move, but your queen retreat was fairly necessary. You might have given me a free move out of the way it played out, I'm not sure, but it mostly comes down to just how weak your queenside is right now compared to the sheer amount of forces I can bring to bear on it, while you can barely move at all without losing a piece.

damn, and i saw that rook move too. now i'm really fucked.

Well, now that I know what was going on... you're right. I have a pretty crushing advantage. Once again, I can only win when I maintain defense, ahahaha. I play a very strong defensive-map control game. If I push it too much (like I did against Nick) then I risk not thinking things through. I've always been strongest at defense first in any game, interestingly enough. Odd that chess would be one of those games, since it's such a military game. Though I guess I'm best at defense in Civilization V too. :P

OH. RIGHT. My queen. I see it now, lol. I didn't connect the two. I was thinking that I'd be leaving my queen wide open. And that you could take my knight. Somehow it didn't occur to me that you'd HAVE to take my knight and that I'd get your queen. I only realize it now 'cuz I'm pretty drunk, ahahahaha, and my usual A.D.D. isn't in the way. :P

But you had that square defended with your bishop! I couldn't go there without losing the knight for nothing! You mean d3 right?

if I took your knight, you had my queen forked with a check, and after I take your knight, you would have taken my queen with your queen. You would have seen it if I took your knight.

As for what you were doing, I was fine with that I planned out the last sequence in advance, with you doing what I expected the whole time until this one, lol. I anticipated you taking my knight so I'm clearly missing something here. You're anticipating an attack from me that I can't see. ^^;

Your last move bewilders me. You could have taken the knight easily couldn't you have?

my discovered attack almost turned into your discovered attack.

how did I not see that?

That's okay, I think you have the advantage here.

Nick is about to beat me. :P

ah, I though it was to get my pawns all stacked up on one column.

And you have no knights, lol. I actually moved that bishop there simply to kill your knight when he came in.

wow, didn't expect that...now you have no bishops!

The difference is that you don't have initiative, you had to match me.

here we go with another mirrored opening!