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Awful beginner games

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could help me dissect what my problematic chess areas are.
I'm new to the site and to the game, so in what few games I've played, I've lost most of them and got myself a nice low rating!
I know that I have many weaknesses, so I'd like to get a handle on a few of them.

These two games were both played against the same player who used an aggressive, quick style to outplay me in both. At least, that's how it seemed. Any helpful advice is greatly appreciated!

en.lichess.org/QVDHcjvc7E1f

and

en.lichess.org/Dv23vDQAyOZ7
For a beginner you're playing well. In the first game you lost a pawn and gave up too early, which in my view was a wrong decision. There's little to say about that game.

In the second game you were winning some material but you missed that after 25... Nxc6 the white pawn advances attacking the knight and, if the knight moves, the pawn forks the rooks. You were a bit unlucky in that game. However, you could have saved a rook by sacrificing the knight for a pawn. You would be down only a pawn; position is probably lost but you should always try to play the best moves.

A beginner like you should focus very hard on blunders. Try to reduce them and your play will improve a lot. My advice is: spend part of your time in checking if your move is ok. Think twice before you move a piece. You can read all the books you wish and learn a ton of things, but if you don't reduce the amount of blunders all efforts are useless.
Use Lichess' engines to analyze your own games and study your mistakes. Do a lot of puzzles to help get you into the mind set of thinking about consequences of your moves.
Not that I'm any good at the game myself, but I'm gonna have my say anyway :)

Mind you, all my ramblings are solely based on the very rudimentary strategic concepts, I’m totally unaware of the comp’s opinion but I hope the mere ideas I’m about to share might be of some help.

First game. First 9 White's moves seem perfectly fine. Without consulting the comp I would say that the evaluation after move 9 should be up to +1 just based on your superior development and center control. Black plays an extremely committal 9.f5. Now some rather obvious drawbacks of Black's position come into view. First - their queenside is still in deep slumber whereas White has most of their pieces well-developed. Second – Black moved every single pawn in front of their King instead of developing the queenside pieces - this must weaken the position of their King. Third – Black has played b6 in order to fiancetto the bishop but for some reason left the diagonal vacant, which makes the rook on a8 potentially vulnerable. So the logical thing after 9. f5 would be to damage the f-g-h pawn chain, cracking it completely open if possible (looking for an onslaught on the black king ASAP). It also might be a good idea to use the basic principle “If your opponent attacks on the kingside/queenside, you should strike back in the centre”. If the pawn chain gets closed (which happened in the game), White will have a hard time attacking immediately and Black might recuperate with time and even stand better due to their aggressively placed pawns on the kingside. I would take on f5 on move 10 almost without thinking. Don’t see any immediately winning tactical blows after that, but either placing the f3 knight on e5, enhancing its attacking potential, or even sacrificing it on g5 for some pawns and a seemingly dangerous attack doesn’t look too bad. After that it’s still anybody’s game, but White’s king is safe and sound for the time being, whereas Black’s king – not as much.

Second game. Here you played havoc with White’s position as you should have after their mediocre opening, but after winning a piece got carried away a little bit. In winning situations like this the first thing you should think about, apart from avoiding blunders, is depriving your opponent of any counterplay chances. That means that you probably shouldn’t have let him take your b-pawn unless he wants to give up his strong bishop for a knight. Therefore, capturing the free pawn with the d-knight seems more logical. Then I would consider activating the rooks and pressuring opponent’s advanced pawns.

Generally, your level of play seems very decent to me, especially in the openings. You obviously have some right ideas about what you’re doing, should just keep your head cool at all times, practice, and you will inevitably improve.
That hippo defense in Game 2 @Runero....rough stuff :)

But overall, that isn't a bad place to start. Your rating is just below average, not that big of a deal. You understand basic chess principles, and can do much more than what i did when i first started. But let's not talk about me.

Tips on improving: Tactic puzzles (it worked for me, I know its a debated topic), videos, and lots of playing, preferably slow games like correspondence.

Correspondence allows you to take time to analyze positions and predict things. At least, thats how it helped me.

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