My Memorable Games: 2020

NM CoachJKane

Dec 26, 2020, 12:03 PM | 3

Hey Chess Friends,

2020 was a strange year for my chess growth. I played nearly no over the board games, but thousands of games on Chess.com. Now I'm looking back on the year and sharing a few highlights.

Best Mating Attacks:

Not a great game, but a fun finish.

A Morphy style finish...

Boden's Mate

Legal's Mate

Best Opening Prep

I'm not particularly an opening expert, but I do follow chess news. That helped me improve on a Magnus Carlsen game the next day. The following game isn't amazing play, but it was fun to play a key novelty on move 16.

Traxler/Wikes-Barre Variation - I played a few memorable games in this insane opening. The main line here is just a complete refutation of my opponent's mistake on move nine. Check out the notes for a wild draw with former title Challenger, Sergey Karjakin.

A pretty final move: I played the following Stonewall-style attack a few times this year. This one had the cutest finish.

My favorite positional effort

This one was maybe my best non-attacking game of the year. I was able to sacrifice a couple of pawns to trap my opponent's pieces on the back rank and using mating threats to win a piece.

I hope you enjoyed these. Feel free to share your favorite games from the year in the comments.

Here's to a better 2021.

NM Jeremy Kane

Jeremy Kane is a National Master and three-time Wisconsin state champion. He is the Director of Training Content for Chess.com. He has been teaching chess in person and online for over 15 years and has designed hundreds of lessons, available on chess.com/lessons. He is the author of Starting Out The Trompowsky on Chessable and The Next To Last Mistake, a book on defensive ideas in chess.

He is the developer of the Caro-Kane Variation of the Caro-Kann Defense.

email: [email protected]

Twitter/X: @chessmensch

My Memorable Games: 2020

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