Keeping the advantage

I don’t know anyone who can throw away an opening advantage like me 😑 lol

Could anyone give me advice on keeping the advantage? I need to improve my midgame badly. This is the third time I played the top player at the club & had a decisive advantage in the opening just to blunder it away in the midgame. So frustrating.

Any advice on improving midgame play / keeping the advantage would be greatly appreciated.

The pgn for tonight’s game is below. (If anyone can like it that would also be helpful lol)


[Date "05/29/2019"]
[White "Me (1590)"]
[Black "adversary (1892)”]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e5 5.Nb5 d6 6.N1c3 a6 7.Na3 b5 8.Nd5 Bb7 9.Be3 Nf6 10.Bb6 Qd7 11.Nc7+ Ke7 12.Nxa8 Bxa8 13.Bd3 Nd8 14.Qe2 Ne6 15.f3 Nf4 16.Qd2 Qc6 17.Be3 Ne6 18.O-O-O Nd7 19.Nb1 f6 20.Nc3 Nc7 21.Nd5+ Nxd5 22.exd5 Qxd5 23.Qa5 Qb7 24.Be4 Qc8 25.Bxa8 Qxa8 26.Qc7 Ke6 27.Rd2 d5 28.Re1 Bd6 29.Qa5 Rc8 30.f4 Rc4 31.a3 Bc7 32.f5+ Ke7 33.Bc5+ Kd8 34.Qb4 Nxc5 35.Rxd5+ Qxd5 36.Rd1 Qxd1+ 37.Kxd1 Rxb4 38.axb4 Ne4 39.Ke2 Nd6 40.g3 Nxf5 41.Kd3 Kd7 42.Ke4 Nh4 43.gxh4 Ke6 44.h5 f5+ 45.Kf3 e4+ 46.Ke3 Kd5 47.c3 f4+ 48.Ke2 f3+ 49.Ke3 Bf4+ 50.Kxf4 f2 51. Resign

https://www.chess.com/a/pZeLBcB8q8oY

Hi Joseph,

This video series by GM Melikset Khachiyan helped me a lot with planning and ability to evaluate my position with a logical narrative in my head. Clearly noticed my improvement during the last couple of months - the lower number of mistakes and zero blunders! (actually, if I have zero blunder and less than 4 mistakes in a game, I'm happy even if I lose).

I try to play longer times (mostly 15/10) and take my time to evaluate every move with arrows, red squares and other features available on chess.com like Zen mode and flipping the board with x key.

Also if you're interested in books, I suggest "The Amateurs Mind" by Silman. I'm currently reading this and I can say that it's awesome. It's totally different than other learning materials online or on paper as Silman wrote the thoughts of his students on each move and you'll be amazed about the similarities that you may find. The fear, the excitement, the false hopefulness and the downfalls are almost the same among us the amateurs; since reading this book (and also Silman's articles on chess.com) I could replace my past thoughts (a bit) with a logical narrative, being able to talk to myself while drawing arrows on the board and marking the critical squares. Another habit which I'm trying so hard to develop is to be able to write my thoughts on at least the critical moves after the game on the Analysis page, it's an awesome feature not only you can write curse at your stupid moves but also you can insert annotations easily.

Cheers  

18.0-0-0 makes it unnecessary difficult to convert it in my opinion, but you are still completely winning. You can't use your pawns on the queenside if you castle long. 18.c4 is a much better move. If black captures you can bring the knight back in the game on c4.

The real mistake is indeed move 28 like the computer pointed out.

After the match that was what my opponent pointed out as well. 18. 0-0-0 was a poor decision on my part. I made it because i felt his queen side was weak, and I could maneuver my knight to a strong outpost on d5. Also, he could open the g file pretty easily with g5 Bxg5 Nxg5 and then have a long term attack on my king side. I did not want to help him in anyway opening up his kingside rook or dark square bishop so i felt at the time connecting my rooks would of been a sound idea by castling long. I see that c4 was the much stronger move.

My plan on 28 was to prevent him from playing d4 by pinning the e5 pawn to the king. It didnt look like an awful move at the time and still dont understand how it was such a losing move. playing Rhd1 seemed like it would leave me in a cramped position after d4 and i wasn't sure how my queen would get free once d4 was controlling c6. but move 28, 29, 30, and 31 absolutely killed me.

I figured restricting his pieces and improving my pieces was the right path to take in the middle game but still ended up losing the match. Is there any middle game principles that you can share with me or anything i can study / watch on youtube that may help?? I feel my openings are strong (last three times I played him, I had a decisive opening advantage but lose it in the middle game (the first game i won a bishop for a pawn, the second i had spacial advantage, and this one was up the exchange and has his pieces restricted). Also, i do understand a lot of endgame patterns. The middle game is without a doubt my weakest area now.

I think that you lost because you didn't see all tactics. Before move 28 you sacrificed a pawn in the center which was a good way to play. However you have to play precisely to justify the pawn sacrifice.

27.f4 and possible g4 next move is the most straightforward way to open the position and it threatens f5+ to win the knight. 27.Rd2 is also good, but you really have to answer d5 with 28.Rhd1. Otherwise Rd2 doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The idea is to answer d4 with Bxd4 and you can check all tactics with the computer. If you didn't see that, then you played Rd2 with the wrong plan in mind. You missed 28...Bb4 when you played Re1.

27. i played Rd2 with the intent to play Rhd1 right after. Then he played d5 threatening d4 messed me up. Is there any way to get better at this? It sucks losing a game when you have the advantage, especially when it was going to be a big upset.