As promised, today I’ll be showing of some of my most atrocious blunders of the last year. Maybe we can learn something from them, or maybe we can laugh (I can’t).
First up, we have a game from April. I’m Black, it’s the last round of the tournament and we’re the last game still going. A win will take me over 2100 for the first time and I would tie for first in the tournament (I would lose on tiebreak but whatever). I’ve played a pretty decent game so far, grabbing a pawn and then defending against an attack. At this point, I’ve survived the worst. I should simply be converting.
To make things even easier, I’m in check, and it’s actually quite hard to blunder here.
Except I flagged. With a 30 second increment. I mistakenly thought I was getting more time and… well, this was very painful. I have never been so annoyed at myself after a game.
In this game from March, I have a pretty nice position. Black is solid but cramped. My pieces are more active and I have a target on b6. It’s definitely possible to find a blunder here but my mistake was even weirder.
I spent 5 minutes calculating a plan involving moving my rook from f1 to a1, followed by Ra8 or doubling rooks on the 7th. I’ll let you figure out why this plan is suboptimal.
Finally, in a more… normal blunder. After a long game of going back and forth against my 2100 opponent, I somehow managed to find…
…the incredible Ra5?? walking into Rf5, which wins either the Queen or a full rook. I did, somehow, go on to win.
There are excuses I could make - I was tired, hungry, the sun was shining in my eyes, I don’t ever fully know where my pieces are. But the reality is sometimes blunders just… happen? In two of the games I managed to recover from my deeply flawed thought process, though it’s quite hard to recover from being flagged. I still haven’t. THERE WAS AN INCREMENT.
The lesson is probably that we’re all going to blunder sometimes and if we accept that, we can adapt to the circumstances and just keep going. But seriously… with a 30 second increment.
Now that I’ve set up the pretence that I’m a modest and self-deprecating player, I’ll be showing off the Best Game I Ever Played in the next episode.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Sunway Sitges Chess Festival 12th-22rd December
Secret Special Event 4th January
The Sligo Tournament 2025 31st Jan-2nd Feb (Emilia’s first tournament!)
Isle of Wight International Chess Tournament 18th-23rd Feb