Game Analysis Comparison Part 3 | Another 1850: French Grind

It's been a while since I've done game analysis comparison, but now we're back in business. 

Last time we compared my "2000 rated" analysis to an 1850's analysis and found that they were similar but had their differences in many ways. You can check that out here: (https://www.chess.com/blog/colorfulcake/how-differently-do-an-1850-and-a-2000-think-game-analysis-comparison-part-2). Now we're diving back in to find out if that's really true.

Yes, we're looking at another game from another (different) 1850-rated player. @chamo2074 has been reading and commenting on my posts for a while, and showed me a game of his that was very interesting and instructive, and now it lands here.

Whoops. Forgot something.

DISCLAIMER: I'M NOT EXACTLY 2000. NEITHER IS chamo2074 EXACTLY 1850 EITHER.

Just for those particular people for whom precision is the key to life. chamo2074 is rated 1819. That's close enough, we can agree on that, to call him an 1850. As for me, I'm currently 1987, but am working my way back up to 2000 where I feel I belong. Unfortunately my only rating gain in the past few days was a pathetic +2. Not going as fast as I like. To fix that I started the chess.com study plan and will be using that to speed up my improvement. I have a series on that and will be posting once a week with updates, make sure to take a look at that.

Back on track now. chamo's peak blitz rating is 2026, which is not bad at all, 80 points higher than where he stands now, and is the reason why I'm calling him an 1850 rather than an 1800. 

Time to get to the analysis comparison. 

First of all let's remember something. Not many people would like to spend a lot of time analyzing one game. I actually enjoy annotating games, like most chess players, and am willing to spend time to do it. When chamo was analyzing this game I would guess that not a whole lot of time was spent analyzing it but as you'll see most of the annotations are at critical moments, which is good, although in my opinion there are some places where more could have been explained. I have to say that my analysis might be a bit excessive, but that's just me. But let's save this discussion for afterwards.

Note that this game was played a few months ago and was not played on chess.com, so the ratings might be different but we'll stick with chess.com's blitz rating as this game was played at time control 5|0. 

Here's chamo's analysis first. After reviewing it we'll comment on how it was done.

Some comments and observations:

• Light comments on the opening operations. Shows good understanding on move six with 6...bxc6, commenting "towards the center, because now we wanna play cd cd c5! and the center problems are no more" That's absolutely right. 
• On move five however when 5. Bb5? is played, chamo says that people don't know how to react to the French which is why it's giving him results. This might be correct for where he stood on the rating ladder when this game was played on play.chessbase.com (he was rated about 1750 at the time on chessbase.com), but as you get higher you can't expect your opponents to be ignorant of French theory and ideas.
• As I said before this game was quite lightly annotated, for example there were no comments from move 7 to 17, but that's to be expected for the reasons I said earlier.
• On move 19 chamo says that he goes into a nice ending down a pawn. But in that position he was actually up two pawns, with a great position. Going into an ending a pawn down usually won't be very nice for the record.
• Explains his own thought processes during the game, something I can't do because I'm not a mind reader. But I can infer from the moves what his thought processes were, though.
• On move 34 chamo says that the win might not be easy "because it's kind of good knight vs bad bishop." When looking at the position you can understand this, with the bishop on e8 being hemmed in by the pawns on c6, d5, e6, and f7, but this is an illusion because the bishop can be freed at any moment with c5. Also the knight isn't very "good" if it doesn't have anything to do.
• Shows that he understands that c5! was the best move and gives clear reasons. Easy win.
• Also understands that 41. Nh2? is not good, however everything else was losing too. But Nh2 made the win easy or easier.
• Understands that 42. d3! has a lot of benefits and explains why it is best.
• I forgot to say earlier: there are no variations at all.
• And last of all shows that he knows why the king and pawn ending is winning. Not too hard to understand.

All in all, not bad! Chamo made good use of the amount of annotations that there were. If you want you can compare his analysis to sleeping_giant1's analysis in my previous game analysis comparison by yourself.

Now to my analysis.

Comments on my analysis:

• First things first. I was probably too excessive in analyzing this game. I'm used to annotating thoroughly for those who may not understand what is happening in the game, but this time I think the reader might be drowned in the blue sea of annotations.
• I explained some ideas in the French and gave third-move variations. Maybe too overboard.
• Literally commented on almost every single move until the endgame. Again, that's probably too much, but at least it gives insight into what's going on.
• Focused on both positional and dynamic features of the position. 
• Explained why how some moves might look at first glance and then showed why they might not be what you thought.
• A lot of variations. 
• I went a bit in-depth about the ending for readers who might not understand as much. Again this is just a habit of mine since in previous blog posts I wanted for everyone to enjoy and understand my annotations.

Our annotations were similar and different in many ways, but I'll say that both of them were good and had their strengths and flaws. Probably the main problem with mine was rambling on and on too much about too many different things, and that chamo's was the opposite, having not enough explanations. We both understand the opening (we're both French players) and the endgame, but the middlegame is where it was most different. 

So, as last time, we can say that 150 points does make a difference when analyzing games. 1850's and 2000's both understand many similar concepts and ideas, but 2000's may be able to express and explain those things slightly better. Also in this case specifically I think it made quite a large difference that we spent different amounts of time analyzing.

If you enjoyed this and want the series to go on, send me your games! It would be convenient for me if you could send me one copy of your game annotated by you and one copy untouched. If you've been waiting for me to analyze your game, as I said before from now on we'll have to work together and you'll have to analyze the game too so that we can compare analysis. It's much more interesting to have two different annotations that we can compare instead of having me just annotating your game.

Thanks for reading! Until next time.