How to convert positional advantage to a victory!

I feel the 30th move for white should have been c6, what are your thoughts on this game! I sqaundered away a good bishop and queen side space. Never seem to figure out how to make use of these advantages

Please help me regarding figuring out, whether

     - my plan was decent?

     - How could I have made use of the advantages

     - Was it right to be bothered about his king side advances

you had a strong position for most of the game. you have to be aware of your opponent's pawn structure and maintain some basic disciplines. i'm not the highest rated player, but some observations that have helped me are:

- creating or exploiting vulnerable pawn structures

(moving your knight back to f3 instead of Nxe4 on move 18 would've been better and you would've maintained the initiative. instead you allowed black to fix his pawn imbalance.)

- always finding ways to maintain the initiative. this allows you manipulate how your opponents move their pieces and give you a chance to create vulnerabilities. think of how to attack good squares and not just pieces. (you did a great job of this with bishop to e5 on move 22. )

- when your opponent's king is poorly defended, keep your queen on the board. you're opponent should've lost that game after 21...f5. your target after that was the g7 pawn. if you would've targeted your pieces there, you could've created vulnerabilities elsewhere and won. but if you trade all your pieces, you don't have anything left to target it with! good game by both of you

these are a bunch of variations i got, sorry for typing so much but i hope it helps. if anything, remember the three tips i listed in the first post.

DubAce@

Thanks for taking the time for your response, much appreciated!

My general thinking was, I had more space on queen side, so I should conecentrate on queen side.

He on the other hand had better king side space, but moving pawns infront of king is always dangerous.

Nice variation by you, further looking into that.

Does this mean, his G7 weakness and kingside weakness was a greater weakness than the queen side space?

In your variation, instead of bishop e6, he protected his g7, with say Re7? I think then the game would become, double edged, if both kings are open. I actually wanted to avoid tactical lines and slowly crush, using positional advantage

Good positional play often leads to tactics! Positional does not equal quiet

I mean, it would still be equal and double edged.

Thank you for sharing your game, I enjoyed analyzing it. See annotations and comments below.

The Opening:

             The opening is often a matter of personal taste. To fight for advantage in the opening, passive moves such as e3 and Nd2 prevent white from being able to punish passive moves such as ...a6.

The Middlegame:

             To be good at positional play, one must understand how to form and execute plans. White seems to lack one! From La Bourdonnais, we must learn how to use the central breakthrough as a basis for attack. (Shameless self-plug: I touch on this in my Brilliant Combinations group, where I'm walking through Pachman's chess strategy book one chapter at a time!) A good heuristic is to develop in the opening, castle, then go on and carry out strategies during the middlegame. If the king is not safe, it is difficult to have pieces available for offensive use during the middlegame.

             I am still very much a learner when it comes to positional play, so take my words with a grain of salt. In my humble opinion, there are two main strategic outcomes of this opening. 1.) One side will break explosively in the center, leading to a conquest for central domination. 2.) Black will blockade the center, and it becomes a fight for the wings. Thus, c5 is a positional error because white relinquishes his option of breaking in the center, while black still may break with ...e5 or chip away at c5 with ...b6.

             14. Bxf5 is a tremendous positional error, for reasons explained in the annotations. At this point, white should probably be aiming for queenside expansion with Rb1, a4, and a b5 break. Preparing such pawn advances with rook development means that in the case of an exchange, your rook is the one that ends up conquering the file. Because black is missing a dark-squared bishop, Rb6 could be quite devastating.

The Endgame:

             With a blocked center and bishops, the endgame is kind of droll. White doesn't have much going for him on the queenside, since the black bishop can easily defend against a b5-c6 break. Maybe I'm missing something tactically, but if the a or be files get busted open, an exchange of rooks would pretty much guarantee a draw at that point.

             Alternatively, white can try to create some play on the kingside by creating a passed pawn. b2-b3 forces a capture, relinquishing the h-pawn. The h-pawn can then move to force an exchange, freeing up the g-pawn. Black's king is unfortunately already in the fray, so it might take some psychological voodoo magic to confuse the player of the black pieces to ignore play on the kingside and move the king to the queenside before white pulls off this strategic ploy. In other words, I think it's objectively drawish at this point, but OTB I'd try to trick the black player by moving the white king towards the queenside, shuffling rooks around the queenside to pretend to have play, then do the kingside pawn stuff if the black king follows my king to the queenside. 

It seems you are criticizing good moves that do not fit your style.

3. e3 is the London and is solid and Stockfish 5 64 SSE4.2 on depth 20 rates it at 0.26 compared to 0.22 for Nf3.  

Nbd2 is flexible and prepares both e4 and c4 while your suggestion of c4 immediately doesn't give a significant edge over Nbd2. (0.72 c4, 0.70 Be2, 0.66 a3, 0.65 Nbd2)

Your suggestion of 7.c3 and moving the pawn to c4 actually gives black an extra tempo. The knight appears to be offside on b6 except that it allows black to play f5. [On white's 7th move depth 20 gives 0.83 for c4 and Bd3, 0.79 for a3, 0.77 for Rc1, 0.75 for e4 and only then 0.69 for c3.]

The move 9.c5 is regarded as a mistake in similar positions. 

14. Bxf5 fixes black's problem with the inactive f8 rook being given the e-file and the dark squared bishop gets an extra square rather than being confined to c8 d7 and e8. One of the important points here is about space. Black has none after Bf4 or Be5. This cramps black enough that after h3 and g4, Black's position is actually lost. It seems the question here is about how to actually convert this positional advantage. The fact of the matter is that black will eventually have to give up some material or end up in zugzwang and lose material. Black could play passively and lose a pawn simply to h3-g4-Bxf6-Bxh7 or give up a pawn with Ne4 Bxe4 dxe4 Qxe4. This is one of the hardest concepts to grasp in chess. 

19. Kh1 is fine since the extra tempo is worth nothing. 

On move 30, black is in zugzwang after Ra4 while c6 allows Bc8 and you aren't able to play Rba1 and win the a5 pawn. 

Utter rubbish. Fight me... in chess!

Just kidding. e3 and Nbd2 are a perfectly respectable moves used by many great players. Objectively, they are fantastic moves, as verified by your engine. What I failed to communicate as clearly as I would have liked was that the alternatives that I mentioned subjectively allow one to better capitalize on mistakes during the opening, with results reminiscent of the sharp play of the Romantic Era Italian school of chess. With correct play, everyone gets through the opening unscorched.

In hindsight, I realize that the OP mentioned a preference for positional rather than tactical play, so my recommendation would not suit his needs. I stand corrected. Thanks for sharing your engine's analyses.

Interesting! I did not realize this option for black. What if black played 7. ...Nb6 in the main line? Would the black bishop be out of place for an ...f5 push? Hmm. Perhaps the bishop is poorly placed on b4 to begin with, since it is on the color opposite to that of the black pawns. But then the white knight on d2 serves the useful purposes of supporting potential c- or e-pawn advances.

What are black's potential strategies in this situation?

After 7...Nb6 in the main line, c5 forces Nd5 or Bxd2+ followed by Nd5. The problem again is one of passivity. White controls the center and Black's dark squared bishop only has d7. There comes a point when Black runs out of good moves due to a lack of space. The root of why Nf6 is better can be explained by the differences between the two. e4 is not possible after Nf6 because the Nd2 is pinned. Nb6 wastes two tempi (one to move back to d5 after c5 and another for Nf6 after e4) and Ne4 is no longer possible after Qb3 (Qb3 covers c4 in the case of c5 Nc4).

As it stands, Black's position is worse but I see no clear way to convert a win and I would just play according to opening principles as Black. (develop the bishop to b7, rooks to b8 and e8, queen to d7?)

Thanks a lot NachtWulf@ for taking time to annotate your analysis. Thanks a lot minnesotachesscoach@ in analysing the game as well, ur efforts are much appreciated! I have not entirely understood all the ideas mentioned, so will go through them again and respond.

But the main ideas were these

-Get the dark colored bishop outside the pawn chain and direct him towards queen side.

- Now expand queenside, with the help of rooks and the pawns.

Bxf5 was indeed made because it was cramping my dark squared bishop!

Also the opening system used London system is often called boring system, because it doesn't rely on getting an advantage during opening.

The main idea of using London is have an equalish position and developed pieces in the middle game(can be used against many black's responses, so don't have to bother with many opening variations), which can be used to slowly take advantage in the middle game.

How does Bxf5 relieve the cramping of the bishop?

Perhaps you feared that black would capture your bishop on g3 with the knight.

White should be more than happy to exchange the dark-squared bishop for black's knight, for a number of reasons:

1. When you have pawn chains in the middlegame, one of your two bishops is good, and the other bishop is bad. The bishop that is on a different color than your pawns is good because it can still access all of its original squares. The bishop on the same color as your pawns is bad because all of your pawns are in its way, as you may have noticed. Here, your d3 bishop is excellent because your dark-squared pawn chain is not in its way. Your bishop on g3 is bad because it is limited to half the board by your pawn chain. It is perfectly OK to lose your bad bishop here.
2. Bishops are better than knights when the center is open because they can move quickly and far. Knights are better than bishops when the pawns are locked because they can leap over pieces when the bishops are blocked. Black's knight on f5 is a better piece than your bishop on g3. It is OK for you if black exchanges his better piece for your worse piece.
3. As minnesotachesscoach explained, in this particular position, black's rook is quite useless on f8. The reason is because it lacks open files to dominate. By capturing with Bxf5, the e-file suddenly because half-open. Black suddenly has a nice spot on f8 for his rook to control the semiopen file.

Indeed. For me, knowing what I do about chess axioms, it's really just common sense. Controlling the light squares, dark squares. Majority on the queen side, backward pawns. Open position, bishops rule. Queen & knight in symmetrical positions. White maintaining the initiative, black trying to equalize first, before "fishing for something". Basic.

It seems to me, your Opening strategy & lack of experience is your main problem. Or, you are too concerned about winning. Accept that playing chess well is going to take time and while annotating your own games, know that your perception is going to change as you gain more knowledge & experience. There are no secrets in Chess.

Palin's the thing

8)

Er. Edit

Playing's the thing

NachtWulf

I agree that the bishop on g3 is the bad bishop

-But the initial maneuver of first getting the bishop out and then closing the pawn chain, was done to make the bishop useful with an attack on queenside.

-Also I wanted my rooks to be pointing to the queen side, hence wanted open files there, since I have space advantage there and didn't want to scatter my attack all over. 

Please do give feedback on this

The theme of the attack was queen side and I was making sure that all my resources are utilized there.

PS: This is not my playing style. Just am trying out stuff.

I agree with your eventual strategy of attacking on the queenside. Bringing the bishop outside the pawn chain did indeed make it more useful, and its spot on g3 looked fine to me. I'll highlight the main positional errors that I and others previously mentioned:

• An attack on either wing is viable ONLY after the center is locked. If the center is not locked, the correct strategy is to conquer the center instead of playing on the queenside. The move 9. c5 was an error because it is still possible at that point to break in the center and not lock things up. Pushing the pawn to c5 only locks things up on your end, but black can still break the center free. If black eventually breaks with ...e5, after a few pawn exchanges, you will have a backwards pawn on c4. Suddenly, you will be playing defense as white.
• It was a good idea to locate rooks to the queenside to support your expansion of space there. The only problem is that they should have been moved sooner. For example, 14. Rab1 would be one option, or 14. a4 with 15. Rab1 in mind. The idea is that white plans to break open the pawn chains with a supported pawn push to b5. For example: