Anatomy of a blunder

Played a couple of tough games recently, there's no shame in losing to a stronger player, but the manner of the loss is a bit disappointing so I'm going to explore in a bit of detail to see if I can learn any lessons. Both were 4NCL games played at a 45+15 time control, at the speedy end of classical. Online on lichess but using my chessnut air e-board and against an opponent I know to be real (names linked to lichess accounts, I can look them up on the ECF website etc). So it feels quite close to "real chess" though I'm not actually staring down my opponent. Neither do I have to drive an hour or more to meet them as is the case for real OTB round here!

Last week I was up against one of Britain's strongest junior girls. I didn't have great expectations but did hope to give her a decent game. The opening went well for me, played a line I'm familiar with - perhaps too familiar, as I played most of it without getting my brain up to speed for calculations. I knew I had the better side of a complicated position (based on home-cooked engine analysis) and BANG suddenly I'm out of opening prep and having to think for myself. I played literally one good move past my prep, she did a move....and I sat pondering. I was supposed to have an advantage ("the engine says..") and couldn't for the life of me see where it was coming from. I dismissed a couple of obvious blunders but couldn't see a killer continuation. After a long and increasingly desperate think, I rather impetuously picked....the obvious blunder that I'd ruled out early on. Dropped a whole piece, no compensation, I played on for a few moves in case some swindle appeared but she was far too good for that. Resigned in 24 moves but the game was effectively over long before.

This is the position:

Which may even link to the game, who knows? I haven't blogged on this platform before and am not quite sure how the image/position/game insertion works.

Anyway, I sat there for a full 11 minutes - a whole third of my remaining time and 20% of the entire game - before impetuously playing the utterly tragic move d6 which immediately drops a piece to Nxf3+ and Qxg5. Game over. What went wrong?

I think the problem here may be linked to poor time management and a bit of panic. The "best" move is the obvious Nxe5 but I couldn't see a way forward after the response Bxe5. The top engine line there is the amazing Bxc4 piece sac and I probably didn't have any chance of seeing that, but there are lots of natural alternatives that maintain a strong advantage such as Bg4 or Kh1. I should never have spent such a long time thinking, it's far too long to spend on a single move at any point in the game let alone early middle game. I got myself too stressed about it and panicked and played a much worse move than if I'd spent 30 seconds and simply chosen the first half-decent option.

On to this week, and I had a game against a higher rated but not brilliant player. The opening went ok, we were both quickly out of our prior experience I believe (I certainly was) in some sort of Catalan position. I felt like I'd pretty much equalised and was feeling good about things:

I have just played Nd5 here after a long think, having foreseen the game continuation. The aim was at least to break his pawns with Nxc3 while he recaptured on c4. It played out how I expected:

In this position I played Ke7 in just 17 seconds, having seen this knight check coming from several moves back. I did consider Kd7 so that Nxc8 doesn't come with check but then there's Nxf7 Rf8 Ne5+ and he's taken a pawn and got his knight out....and I have failed to spot that I'm actually going to emerge a piece up in this line! Immediately after Nxf7 (or Nxc8 for that matter), the zwischenzug Nxe2+ saves my knight and also prevents him playing Bf4 in lines where I have my king on Kd6 or Kc7. There are a few lines to check here and it's not completely trivial to see the win, but I'm annoyed that I didn't even try. Having both thought for a few minutes over our 13th moves we then both played through 14. Nd6+?? Ke7?? 15. Nxc8+ Rxc8 very rapidly. Which, with hindsight, was a bit silly. If I'd sat at this position for a bit more than 17 seconds I am confident I would have worked out the winning move, I'd already seen the germ of the idea three moves earlier when I played Nd5 but in that position I hadn't seen far enough to realise it was winning.

Later on I relaxed too much in what should have been a totally drawn endgame and contrived to lose it. That's another story.

So what can I actually conclude from this? I could surely do with a bit more care over my time management which is currently little more than "try not to lose on time". Even without seeing a winning line in game 1 there's no reason to sit staring at the board for 20% of the game time and then snatch at a stupid move like I did, and while I'm also not beating myself up for not have seen the possibility of a winning line when playing Nd5 in game 2 (there was no guarantee my opponent was going to play down the line I was looking at), I could definitely have seen the move on the board had I thought for just a minute.