Chess game :)

Hi guys and girls, I just wanted to post one of my better games and any comments regarding my gameplay would be EXTREMELY helpful :D. Any mistakes, blunders, inaccuracies or simply better moves that i made if you could point them out i would be super appreciative of :).

I think you played well for your rating. Neat little tactic with that diiscovered attack on the queen.

I also just looked through the game, and it looks like you played everything ok. Nice job!

Posting games which you have lost will allow people to give much better criticism and advice. It's hard to determine your ability to deal with threats and organize an attack when your opponent leaves his pieces en prise.

Here are my comments though.

You give up a pawn in the opening for no good reason. Unless you are using it to accelerate your development, then you should retain all your pieces and pawns. The f pawn can be especially critical. For example, on move 10, you bring your queen to e7. Your opponent could have developed his bishop for free to g5, threatening your queen and winning a tempo. This would also have prevented you from castling queenside immediately. Depending on where you move, he can either follow up by taking your knight on c6, making you recapture with a pawn to open up your queenside, or develop the queen to d3 and swing the rook behind it.

You did a good job of creating threats, which the opponent did not respond to, but you left yourself quite open as well. At any point before move 16, white could have simply played Bxc6 followed by Bxa7, ripping apart your defenses. It's important to look for places to attack, but you must also ensure that your pieces are defended. If a piece has minor protection on it, like the a7 pawn, you should be wary for an attack that removes the defender, then wins that piece. This is more critical for the more valuable pieces, but even pawns should be protected. Getting to an endgame scenario 2 or 3 pawns down is not good.