Understanding the best move

Hey chess.com community. 

I started playing chess about a month ago, and its all fun and games, but i decided i want to improve and therefore started to analyze my games more closely. 

I have a question about the the move 6. (after qe7). Why is rd3 so much worse engine-wise then the recommended move kxe4?

I mean, i have to move my rook again after d5 losing some tempo, but after kxe4, xe4 i have to move my knight on f3 too. Is there anything obvious im missing?

Thank your for the discussion!

I don't understand what position are you referring to. Rd3 was never played in the game (there was an engine line with Bd3 on move 6 after the recommended Qe7, but engine says that Bd3 was the best move there so that is probably not what you are referring to). Kxe4 didn't occur in the game (that would mean king taking something on e4). There was Nxe4 a few times in the game (knight takes on e4, but it wasn't that early either), so it is tough to determine what do you mean.

👍

Oh i got everything messed up. I mean: Why is bc4 so much worse then nxe4

It is a bit more complicated, but you will get 1 pawn and you will have a better position over all. Look at this:

Wow thank you very much! Phew, there is so much to learn, i wouldn't have seen this on my own. I appreciate your extensive feedback!

Not a problem.  And don't feel bad for not understanding every evaluation shift, that happens to all of us. Try to explain to yourself why is some move better, play with the engine and see if there is some material gain. In many cases if the evaluation shifts from 0 to 2 there will be something concrete. Sometimes it will just be something positional. For instance if king is exposed and the center is pretty much open, sometimes there will be an evaluation of +4 or even more, because it will be impossible for the opponent to defend that position if you play the best moves (which can be hard from time to time). 

Yes, i need to go through the computer lines a lot more. Just understood that :-D Anyways, thank you for clarification

Yeah, but if you don't understand don't force it too much, memorizing some computer stuff without understanding will not help you out. Rule of the thumb is: If you can explain to yourself rationally why is move A better than move B, you will gain something out of the arrangement. If you don't just skip it and move forward.

I don't really get it why are you so focused on that moment. You could have won a pawn maybe, yeah, that is not a big deal. The interesting part of the game is moves 10-16 when there are much higher stakes and more expensive mistakes on both sides. (Almost every move in that period is a mistake).

Perhaps he understood the other stuff (if those were more obvious, it makes sense) and this was unclear to him.  I didn't check the rest of the game though, just the moment he was interested in.

i think in general its not an ideal place for a bishop, remember they usually attack from the distance, dont let them play a pawn style centrum game as how you play them here, because you can easily loose them by a pawn strike. rather try to move tactical forward in your game.
I rate horses of slightly less value and their great to do mid game fork attacks, your bishops are more handy in the end game so try to spare them (sure you can setup combo strikes) though i preffer keeping those rules in mind.  

Hey guys, thats exactly what happened. I understand my obvious blunders, im just to stupid in the moment -.-. But i couldn't make sense of this sequence, so this is why i asked.

When we are at it. Maybe there is no answer, and probably the answer is different for every person, but there are some questions you ask yourself, to not do this obvious mistakes? Im unfortunately no prodigy "who just sees it". Does this part get better when being more experienced - "intuition". Or are there any measure which can be taken actively to prevent those errors. I recognized that i do less blunders when in take more time (no to surprising), but for me it is a common patter to be up a pawn or even more material in the early and middle game and then give it away later, mostly out of time pressure or even loosing because im out of time.

One thing i have on my list, which i want to focus more on, are "middle or end-games?" with only pawns, a couple of rooks and maybe a minor piece on either side. In this stage of the game i struggle most.

Yup, I noticed before that you are playing 10 minute games, but as your question wasn't about improving but a concrete one I didn't want to be off topic.

You noticed the real problem, 10 minute games are too short for most of us to have a quality game. Some people can improve a lot by playing these games, but for most of us that isn't optimal. The shortest you should play in order to improve optimally is 15|10, and if you can, play even longer games if you find the time. 

Quality beats quantity, it is better to play 1 quality 60 minutes per side game than 6 shorter games. Apart from that, it will be easier to analyze 1 game than 6 games, so you would likely save time. If you don't have the time, you don't even have to play every day, skip some days in a week, it is fine. 

As for what to focus on, here is something I've written just for questions like these:

https://www.chess.com/blog/nklristic/the-beginners-tale-first-steps-to-chess-improvement

I hope you'll find it useful, this basic guide should give you the answers to most of your questions for now.

You are a gentleman sir. It takes a lot of time and commitment to provide this kind of content to other people. Thank you for sharing it. I will work my way through it over the weekend.

It's funny how we are in similar situations. You teared your calf, i can't roadbike with the team currently, so we both went back to chess in our 30s.

It's no problem. You're welcome.

Yeah that outdoors stuff will suffer a bit. If you are a professional, I can only imagine the problem. I liked watching Tour De France a lot, I did it less these last few years ... just a stage here and there.

Improving Your Chess - Resources for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/improving-your-chess-resources-for-beginners-and-beyond

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell

Can I just add that I also failed to spot the Qe5 double attack? I'm writing this to say that there are mistakes and then there are mistakes. I don't think not finding the whole forcing tactical line up to Qxc7 at move 6 is such a big problem. Yes, we should be able to find it, but games aren't decided on these kind of tactics at the lower level. Maybe not even always on my level. What I find much more serious is 13. Nxa8?. Here white could have tried 13. dxe5 and 13. Nxe5+. Both take the black knight before taking the rook with an in between move. The old advice still stands: if you see a good move, try and look for a better one. Always try and find more than 1 candidate move. Look for other options!

If you're going to analyse your own games, I would suggest that you try and look for moves that win or lose pieces. Look at combinations 2 to sometimes 3 moves deep. When you gain more experience, it'll become easier to go deeper than that. Discard the longer combinations for now. Discard engine lines leading to winning pawns too. I suggest limiting yourself in this manner, because you won't become overwhelmed by all the suggestions, while you might not know which lines to discard. Especially lines ending in winning a pawn might not be right for us humans, as the resulting position could be too complex or we gives chances to opponents that we don't need to give. 

For improving, I think middle game strategy would always be useful. Letting stronger players look at your games is also very useful. They might point out typical mistakes that you might not know you're making. For example move 23 and move 24. You spent time defending the pawns, which is inefficient: it's not moves that you would be making if you had a free choice of moves. 24. Re1 is not doing much right there: it looks at your own e-pawn, while rooks want open files. If I look at the position on move 23, I see that my rook is on the open file. I know that it's typical strategy to want to get control over the 7th rank with my rooks when I control an open file. I'm also aware that a move like 23. c3 is not very efficient: it's not a move that I would like to make if I don't have to. All of this combined makes me look at a move like 23. Rd7. And I will try and make it work, cause that's the move I really want to play from a strategic point of view. In this instance looking at this move and not stopping at black just taking the pawn might make you spot that black can't move the queen away at all, because checkmate on f7 is threatened. In this sense you're combining small tactics with strategic goals.

Not spotting 23. Rd7 to me is also a bigger problem holding you back from improving than winning the pawn at move 6. It's in fact a typical mistake at your level, which you might find a lot more of if you know to look for it. It can also take the shape of unnecessary pawn moves in the opening (...h6 or ...a6 mostly). moving pieces twice without having to do that, defending something when you can make a bigger threat and going defensive/passive when you have an active choice.

It's not always easy to improve at chess. I hope that with this post I was able to show you that with focusing on bigger strategic concepts like efficiency or what you would like to do with rooks you can also still make big steps in improving your own game and that it's not necessary to focus on really difficult and detailed computer lines that, frankly, a lot of stronger players might also fail to spot in a quick game.

Hey RAU4ever,

im sorry i took a while before read and answer your feedback. It is much appreciated. I just replayed the feedback you gave. 

Somehow i come out on top often from the opening and then the middle game comes up, and i can't find any way to attack my opponent. So what i really struggle with is what you called "middle game strategy". What exactly can i try to improve here? Can you recommend any ressources/books/whatever? Is it only tactics? Is there anything i can learn specifically?