Day 425: Playing chess every day until I reach a 2000 rating 

How's everyone doing?

At 31:18 you try to blame the loss on being unfamiliar with the opening played, but it wasn't the opening that cost you the game.

This one was really hard to watch, the pawn was hanging for 2:30 minutes. The queen fork winning your knight was so obvious a 1265 played it within one second. Blunderinig the rook for nothing was the icing on the cake.

Again, not castling early ended in trouble.

Your idea of getting better at chess is memorizing openings. Would memorizing openings have allowed you to see that free pawn that was there for several moves? No

calling you out as requested how many `I didn't see that's` were there, when you AGAIN decide you KNOW why a piece moved or its effects SO He plays h4 you miss g4 is hang for 3 moves He moves his pawn attacking your rook with his queen on a diagonal, you decide you already understand he is doing a pawn attack and miss it You missed your d5 pawn was pinned to your queen allowing his knight to swing over you missed that when you took the e3 pawn he had a check with his queen winning your knight you study opening it does NOTHING about any of that, you MUST improve your board vision and your tactics you can get through the opening you can not miss the stuff you are missing over and over again

Hey Patrick! Haven't commented before on this channel but have been watching all your videos! No worries about all the losses, they are just hurdles to get to the final goal! Trust me, to get to 1900 ELO, where i am right now, I lost many many games but then learned from them and did better later. I know you are tackling a job while playing chess so it will take longer than others to reach 2000 ELO. But don't worry, you will get there! ❤

Patrick the pawnnapper left his rook hanging 😢

Keeping up with your journey, and rooting for you! I think the biggest thing that will take your game to the next level is looking more than one or two moves deep for threats. Too often in these games you make a threat that is easily parried and ends up improving your opponents position. Good luck!

OMG this game was so exciting with the time pressure at the end. Great entertainment.🎉🎉🎉 I can’t believe you didn’t take the free pawn at the start

I respect your learning focused mindset :) Once you decide that long term progress is what matters, the individual losses don't feel as rough, as you know you will get better eventually :)

What's with the obsession with one-move knight threats I've seen in game after game? Knight b4 did nothing besides push away his queen a square but you left g4 just hanging. Board. Vision. You'll get there! Hopefully, with fewer losses to 1200s.

I would change your challenge settings to -25 and +400. When you play people with 200 less points than you, you are risking way more than they are. You'll climb the ratings faster playing ratings higher than you.

Your opponent had a pawn hanging for many moves. You didn't see that. If you can't take advantage of their mistakes, you will keep losing.

I agree with @danielward7008. It was not the opening that cost you the game. If you go down the route of thinking that you just need to know better openings I really don't think you will make any progress Patrick. If you believe you can know the right move at 7 moves deep for any opening you may come up against you are making an error. Sorry to say that Patrick. You know how much I love your channel. But it simply isn't the opening. You miss a free pawn at move 8 which you should see no matter how well you know the opening. And at move 21 you play a lovely knight move. You are 1.8 ahead and about to win a piece. White plays 24 f4 and you are nearly 3 points ahead and we are in the middlegame. How can you blame this on your opening? But at 36:13 I just knew you were going to blunder. You played Nxe3 blundering a piece. You should have played Nxa3. In the commentary you said, if you lose this maybe you were never a 1500 strong player. I disagree. You were (and are). You have played some great games. But you have a very very serious flaw. You make basic tactical errors not because you don't have ability but because you focus too much on what you can do and don't consider what your opponent can do. Nxe3 looks a great move - it threatens the opponents rook. And then you can come back to f5 (which I remember you saying in the game). But you are forgetting to consider what the opponent might do in between. I am sure you know the advice - before you move check, does your opponent have any checks? Do they have any captures? It is hard to have the discipline to do that every move. I certainly cannot manage it and I am higher rated. But for goodness sake - at least consider the checks. In this case, after Ne3 they have four checks: Qe7+, Rxd5+, Qxd5+ and Qe5+. Three of those can be quickly discounted. But Qe5+ is a serious problem. Until you start thinking about what your opponent might do next rather than focussing on your own next move you will keep losing games like this. All that said, I still enjoyed the contest and it could have gone either way until you blundered the rook (which was time pressure I think).

Ive been watching for months now. I like the content! It's become a pretty regular thing in my life lately and I like it. Thank you! First time reading the comments - interesting to see all the hot takes. I want to see you run the rubric of checks, captures, and then tactics. Over the last couple weeks you've missed some moves. I think sticking to that rubric on every move will help. Seems like you're going straight to tactics a lot of the time before checking the basics across the board (both sides). But you are a higher rated player than me! Good luck!

I just want to say that although you don't have the highest rating right now, don't let it get you down. As far as the opening is concerned, I think you did a great job developing your pieces and applying early pressure. You also played very well even when you got into time trouble. Really glad that you didn't let it rattle your nerves and that you didn't get flagged in a winning position, b00mshaka

I think you are burned out

That was crazy at the end, both with only a couple of seconds to play out a mini "hyper-bullet chess game"... A tough loss to take but a learning experience nonetheless, difficult to keep pieces on the board when you are met with these "tricky" openings played only to confuse the opponent and make the game difficult for them to play

You are right Patrick, knowing a bit about the different openings and being prepared to scupper whites plans are key. The opening played by your opponent is the jobava London. The main concepts are knight to b5 which you knew about and stopped. The other is to attack the white bishop with a pawn storm on the kingside and castling queenside. You can scupper this plan either by keeping the bishop on it’s starting square temporarily or trading it off. You can then plan whether to castle queenside yourself or block up the kingside and attack their queenside. Your opponent did mess up by offereing a free pawn with their kingside attack and you obviously made some blunders, but knowing these concepts for future opponents should help you.

You loose less points if you set that you just play with stronger opponents or slightly below your rating. I have the setting at -25 and open + If you win you get more points and waste less time

Day 666: Playing chess every day until I reach a 200 rating

Cheers Patrick. Hope you find your confidence back. You are a worthy player, everyone around our elo is blundering at times. Leaving a rook hanging is quite a big one but they happen man.

Good effort, Patrick. When you were up a knight, I would have just focused on simplifying by trying to trade queens. Not pretty, but effective.

dont be discouraged by the negative comments brother, your content is still enjoyable to watch and can definitely be informative to others still! keep enjoying chess!

When I am the dark pieces,I tend to use the Pirc defense when my opponent opens with the queen pawn. It works fairly well, when you understand the theory behind the Pirc.

Just wanted to say the music is beautiful and makes these videos even better than they already are! Keep up the great work mr. Patrick

The free pawn at the start!

Why not take the hanging pawn on g4 threatening a fork?

There’s no shame as a 1500 to lose to a 1200- there’s nothing in it skill wise- usually just they play like 1800 one game then drop a piece the next

you have to take a few steps backwards to go forwards sometimes :) keep going my friend

SPOILER BLOCKER AAAAAHHHHHH

Sad to see Patrick lose... Happy to see Jobava London win (even though he tripped up on pawn storm)

Coming back after roughly 100 days, seeing not much has changed... I can honestly tell that you know more about openings than I do, yet my blitz rating is 1950. Forget about openings, learn endgames, tactics, and general ideas. And play less and more focused. This format is bad for learning, there is no coach that will tell you otherwise.

I am a 1260 player playing the jobava London, I believe Nc6 is not a good move as it prevents you from playing C5. I am following you from a few weeks now, and I believe you have a bad record against the jobava London. Check out Naroditsky's tutorial on the jobava London and you'll understand better how to fight this opening

Dang dude. Chess is not your Game.

Please stopp training openings, learn middle game strategy’s to get into a good endgame or do puzzles because it it will help you see things earlyer

hey Patrick. If you're reading this, please don't be so fixated on knowledge of opening theory and don't despair.

Urr what boomshakalaka went and done to keep his bishop you could have done , although if you kept your bishop we wouldn't have a clue what the game would have looked like then....

So ok, in time trouble you left the rook hanging. That happens tho you should ask yourself every move what new is attacked and what squares are left behind that were previously defended. My main comment is actually on 24. NC4. You had the advantage (3 points material, 2.something by the engine). Why not move the knight backwards? ND7. It wont be the best move. But it is defensive and when you are 3 points up, just stabilize, defend, trade. Simple chess. No need to win another pawn unless its 100% safe. At that point he has to win bc all endgames are winning for you.

Worst loss in a LONG time.

Although you are losing, I see that you are getting better. in the openings jut do classical moves: First central pawn, then knights, then bishops, then castle, and let the queen for the last. You will improve a lot of ELO doing classical. Let the advanced openings for experts

I think you should relisten to your commentary you gave during the game about what you were thinking. I'll bet more than 90% is devoted to what you can do and less than 10% to what your opponent can do - that's not a good relationship.

1575 to go. Not laughing anymore I bet.ps ..g4 hanging on move 5 hitting f2 next move.

This is too painful to watch, sorry! Wish you all the best!!

lol @ thinking your lack of opening knowledge was an issue.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t think any 2000 rated player has ever lost to a 1200 player after the age of 13 or so