Slav gone badly

This past week I have made some adjustments in playing, I am working on the Ruy Lopez as a second opening to 1 e4.  So far I have played about 5 games on ICC and have been stomped unmercifully.

Recently I have made some changes to where I am playing the majority of my chess games, I moved back to ICC for some variety. I still play in the TeamLeague on FICS and play slow chess/CC chess on chess.com and ICCF.

With the US Chess Championships going on this week it has been a great week for chess, and has consumed most of my free time. I made the switch to ICC in part to be able to play in the USCF rated events. As I wait for that to start I will go over my last debacle.

I have been working on learning the Slav defense for the last few weeks. I have been studying the Modern Chess Openings 15^th edition by nick de Firmain, and The Slav: Move by Move by Cyrus Lakdawala. I love the Lakdawala book, the book is set up like you and Cyrus are sitting at the board having discussion about the games. It is very informative and helpful. MCO is good for seeing which lines are equal or poor and is a great quick reference. Unfortunately this morning I had a hard time remembering the correct move order for the Slav and I was quickly lost in the position. The following game was played this morning on ICC and lets me know that I MUST keep working on this opening, as I was routed and resigned in 13 moves. Looking at the game afterward I was down a piece but should not have resigned.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

lemanofzorn - Caseylj

1-0, 2015.04.04.

[#] 1.d4 0:15:05 1...d5 0:15:00 2.c4 0:15:05 2...c6 0:15:04 3.Nc3 I had gotten a little confused on the proper move order at this point, I know I want to get the bishop out and eventually e6 to get the Bishop or Night on b4, so I waited on Nf6. 0:15:07 3...Bf5 0:15:02 4.Bg5 No big deal here just chase him out 0:15:08 4...h6 0:14:46 5.Bh4 0:15:09 5...g5 0:14:17 6.Bg3 0:15:11 6...dxc4 0:14:07 7.e4 0:15:11 7...Bxe4 We’re playing a 15 5 in this game so I made this move in 5 seconds, not too sure what I was thinking because this is a terrible move and I should have seen the Night taking but I didn’t even considerate that option. I was getting tunnel vision of b5 to save my extra pawn. 0:14:03 8.Nxe4 0:15:13 8...b5 Now that I have “saved” my pawn I have created a nice home and weakness for whites e4 Night on c5. 0:13:39 9.Be5 0:15:05 9...f6 I played f6 here which was losing, especially when I don’t play the optimal defense. Stockfish has Qa5+ Nc3 then after about 5 minutes it changes it to Nf6 either of these is obviously much better than what I had played :) 0:13:33 10.Qh5 0:15:05 10...Kd7 0:13:16 11.Nc5 0:15:06 11...Kc8 0:12:54 12.Qg4 0:15:06 12...e6 At this point I am pissed at myself for such a poorly played game, even someone at my rating should have played much better than this. I pushed the e pawn out of frustration Nd7 may have allowed me to survive a bit longer and at least get to an endgame a piece down. 0:12:42 13.Qxe6Obviously this is where you resign if not several moves before. [1-0] 

This was probably the worst game that I have played in a long long time. I have to remember to look at all the possible moves and the imbalances in each of the positions.  I will probably post some more later today or tomorrow with some of the 12 3 USCF rated games from this afternoon.