Rocking live chess

You sit there with tension in your shoulders, an intense glare and focus on what you are doing. Your opponent made an unexpected series of moves, and you realize you're lost. You'd love to get a break - take a timeout, but your opponent strikes you with a rematch. The logical thing to do would be to decline. Your hand goes 'accept' long before your brain cuts in with common sense.

Playing on live chess can be exhilarating, and I'm happy to say I'll be playing lots of games there in the coming months. I hope to see you there too, either as an observer or an opponent.

I am acting as an ambassador for chess.com in their quest of getting even more quality players and trainers to the site. That includes me giving feedback to the chess.com team on the site's features.

If you have a great suggestion for the site, feel free to share it with me, and if I love it as much as you do - I'll personally lobby it up the food chain!

For this blog, I would like to share how blitz chess doesn't rule out good chess. It's possible (if rare) to play an excellent game on live chess. I first have to apologize to everyone who's beaten me: You will not be featured in this post.

In order to preserve my own ego and selfesteem I'll only present my own wins. I might show some lost games some time in the future, but I'm going on a long trip to Philadelphia next week, and I need my confidence!

So here it is; I call it "How to utilize a pawn majority and put your opponent's bishop out of play by commiting your pawns to the 'wrong' color." 

Here's a quiz for you: How did black win with his advanced queenside pawns?