Learning From Easy Games

Well, after a long weekend of tough games, Tuesday night's tournament game was pretty easy for me. My opponent dropped a Bishop early and I used that advantage by trading down material as quickly as I could. One or two more bad moves by my opponent and he lost another bishop. Finally I was able to find a forced mate in 5 to win the game.

I have always been told that one learns more from games where they lose than when they win. Maybe that is because when you win, you probably made fewer mistakes to look at and review. Without mistakes, how do you know what to study and to work on? Well, I do believe that you learn a lot from games where you lose but I think that there is a lot that you can learn from games that you win.

In this particular game I was able to discover a few more things about myself. First off, my knowledge of the Ruy Lopez still isn't' where it should be. After we completed the game we went back to quickly look at what should have been played to save his Bishop. For the life of me, I couldn't tell him what the best move was even though we were still in the book at that point in time. So, one lesson I learned is that I'm still weak in my openings, even the ones that I play with as white.

The other thing that I was able to see is how I played my endgame. I was up a lot of material and I was given the option of grabbing more pawns or looking for a way to mate. I took, what I thought to be the safe path, and just grabbed his pawns. In the end this worked, this time, but in the future should I just grab more material when I'm up? I'm not sure this is always the right answer. And I do know that a few of my recently losses have been based on the fact that I grabbed some pawns instead of looking for the best move. I guess that is my second lesson or more to the point, learning point that I need to look at.

The third thing is more of an observation. Wining a won game. It's interesting how often I lose what I call a winning game. A game where it feels like I'm way ahead and should have an easy win. I guess I get to complacent and just drop the game somehow. In this case, I was able to pull it out but in game I played last Tuesday night, I almost didn't. I got ahead, grabbed some pawns and then almost lost. It was just a blunder by my opponent that let me win that one.

So, I played a winning game but I still have things that I learned and need to work on. Well, I'm playing in a team match this weekend. Two games against one opponent. Our team is lower rated on the top boards so the pressure is on for the lower boards to win.