Relentless attack on Castled King. Losing games despite playing well.

Hello everyone, 

I played this game that has left me really dejected and frustrated. 

My problem as I see it, is that I prefer developing pieces that are spread across the board and ensure there are even pieces on both the sides. 

My opponents however, best illustrated in this game, prefer to attack my Castled king alone relentlessly. They don't seem to care about the rest of the board.

I had enough defenses around my castled king for most of this game, But the pressure from so many pieces ganging up there eventually broke the defense down. I notice in analysis that I was looking for chances on my Queen side equally and that just seems (to me) the right way to play. 

Not for my opponents though. Too often my Castled king gets harassed to submission while I am playing by the books developing pieces everywhere on board. 

I know that the last move which guaranteed a Mate was a blunder by me (I honestly couldn't see the threat and kept looking for lines to get my Queen into the Game) But for the most part, it was all fine. 

What is the ideal way to learn from these games? My mind yells at me that I am going to keep losing despite playing well, and that is very frustrating. Here's the Game:

https://www.chess.com/live/game/3373356056

Another question I have is how to get rid of the habit of playing defensive, safe and "catch-up" all the time? [Specifically when playing Black, I am always catching up] My moves are often a "Reaction" to the threats by my opponent and not a "Lead" taken by me. I wish to change my game style to Aggressive from Defensive. 

Threw the computer at the game for you...

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I wish my question was about figuring the best moves by both the players throughout that game. It wasn't. And I wish I was clueless about the computer analysis option on this website. I wasn't. Thank you for the invaluable contribution. 

There are indeed situations where you must balance defense of your king with play on the other side of the board.  This really wasn't one of them.  Play 25. rxr and black has no attack, you have an easy win after 26. b7.  25. g3 was simply a blunder. On move 29, you again don't understand the situation...qe2 and your fine, the game is interesting and balanced.  Accordingly, the best way to improve is to practice your tactics; chesstempo.com is a great place for that.  

I was trying to be subtle and let the analysis show you that maybe you didn't play as well as you thought.  It's wonderful that you are thinking deeply about the overall strategy of the game, but as ArtNJ pointed out, maybe it's a little early in your career for that.  Good luck!

I did honestly ask myself that question. I am still very new to the game and I consider myself at a level below a "beginner" player, since I lose to everyone in my range, often. I mean having played less than 200 games overall, barely constitute a number. I think I did not use the right words in my original Topic and message which suggested that I overestimated myself, but trust me I don't. I have a long way to go for 1000 as yet, and I humbly acknowledge the truth everyday. 

Now about the G - 3 question asked by you and others, On that move, I was simply petrified of the Queen mating me somehow landing on G2 in 2 or 3 moves (I only counted Bishop as the Sole defender there and not the King himself, Again a rookie mistake, but damn that King can kill a queen too). And therefore, I thought moving a Pawn up, gives my king extra space to breathe. 

And in that moment, preventing (what I imagined a possible mate) by G-3 cushion appeared more important than taking the Rook. (Not that I did not see the rook kill, but actually chose not to take it). 

Again, sincere apologies for my choice of language to all the kind seniors who have taken time out to comment here. It was my frustration speaking.

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We both commented at the same time, and you exactly read what was on my mind  

What people have been pointing out is that you were actually equal or winning for most of the game. But it sounds like you didn't realise that and became a little demoralised.

True that I did not realize that it was an equal game. I thought I was closer to losing simply because my pieces were nowhere near the opponent's king, While Black had 4 pieces ganged up a move or 2 away from my king. 

I now understand that was a flaw in the way I read the game which basically drove me to err. 

For a brief moment, I actually considered Rxr. But then I thought, the Black knight on f6 will capture it back and then climb back up to assist the already well placed  black queen and bishops in executing the coup.

I did not think I could have it easy with the B-6 > B-7 pawn advance like you mention, since the pawn also had to be defended with another piece (my Queen?) , which would have consumed more moves in comparison to the black knight climbing back up and continuing the mate attempt. (Both the Black bishops, Queen and a Knight all on the corner 3 files aiming at my king, scary ) 

So essentially, I could not calculate beyond a couple odd moves and got the math of moves all wrong. 

I think I will have a lot more success when I learn to look ahead up to 4 moves.

Thank you for the kind words and advice. I am making notes from all the inputs in this thread. Coming from an IM, it means a lot.  

You're thinking strategically, not tactically. Best way to avoid blundering and missing good moves is to first consider as many options as possible, and try to consider your opponent's intents, which may not be immediately obvious. The game was thirty minutes, but it ended very briefly, so my advice is spend at least 2 minutes on moves, and consider as wide range of possibilities as possible. Doing a lot of tactics sort of works but playing game with tactics in mind improves a lot.

Furthermore, when you consider a line, consider it deeply. If you see an option available to you, don't just skim it, see what happens after it.

I recommend "Think like a grandmaster" in this instance, and some perunovic videos.

"I prefer developing pieces that are spread across the board and ensure there are even pieces on both the sides.  My opponents however, best illustrated in this game, prefer to attack my Castled king alone relentlessly. They don't seem to care about the rest of the board."

Your philosophy is WRONG.  To win the game you often need LOCAL material superiority and that means aiming and/or concentrating your pieces at a key part of the board - often where the enemy King is.  Note the fourth of Chessmaster Fred Wilson’s 4 principles from his excellent book Simple Attacking Plans where the 4 principles are demonstrated by 36 annotated games:

I have come to believe there are only four essential, even primitive, concepts which you must learn and understand in order to play successful, attacking chess - Fred Wilson

1. In the opening, whenever justified, relentlessly attack the weak squares f7 or f2.
2. Most successful kingside attacks are directed against the squares h7 or h2, and they are often preceded by eliminating or driving off its defender. Corollary: most successful attacks require a long queen move.
3. If your opponent’s king is trapped in the center, make every reasonable effort to open and dominate the e-file, and sometimes the d-file also.
4. If possible, point all your pieces at your opponent’s king.

Here's an example of the fourth principle from a game where I blundered, fell behind a Rook, and knew I could only win by achieving local material superiority in the vicinity of my opponent's King:

I find the best way to know what to do in a situation is stick with the same opening either it be black or white, and take your lumps and you will start seeing patterns in the way your opponent will attack your opening then after the game analyse your game and see where you were unsure what to do and have the computer help you recommend what your next move should have been, really no easy answers, just have to learn your opening, and then your middle game that extends off of that opening

For what its worth, there really isnt reason to spread your pieces all over the board or both sides as you said. You pieces should have one aim which is to attack the opponent's king. In all games that is not possible of course. However when you deliberately are placing your pieces all over the board as you say then you are not helping yourself.

Ask yourself where is *this* piece going to help me most. If it could help you launch a mating attack place it there, if upon evaluation you find that the opponent has enough defense and a mating attack isnt' on, then place the piece where it does something else meaningful, like help defend against the opponent's attack, or help defend a pawn or help attack a pawn or a piece.

You should never put pieces on both parts of the board because you want to. Where you put a piece should have some purpose behind it.

Also you are missing tactics and best defense. For instance at the end you fell for a rather obvious # in 2 threat. Do tactics.

The reason that you lost is that you didn't spot basic tactics which is often the case for players at your level. In the opening overall you develop your pieces sensibly. Don't listen to all posters above who seem to claim that putting the pieces on one place of the board is always good. There is no way which is always good. In some openings you put a lot of pieces on one side, but there is always a good reason. Pieces like bishops and rooks are long-distance pieces and can attack from the other side of the board. You can't use general rules and really have to look at the positions.

In this game you didn't lose because you scattered pieces. You simply missed basic tactics. Two examples from game:

The possible for beginners counter-intuitive 13 g4 would have trapped the queen forcing black to play Nxg4. The knight can cover e6 next move if the queen goes there.

On move 25 there are only two moves which are clearly best. Capturing the rook with check Rxe8 and b7 to promote the pawn. Both are good, because black isn't threatening anything. Rxe8 Nxe8 b7 and the queen has to go back and cover b8 to stop promotion. 

Also 27 Bxh5 is an illogical move. The bishop does a good job defending and you trade it for a knight on the edge of the board? You can see the consequences after that move you quickly lose. Yes you could have defended, but you put yourself in a worse spot with that move.

You are making a mistake I often made at your level.  You have learned an opening sequence and your playing it regardless of your opponent's moves.  There is no such thing as a good move in all situations in chess.  Every move is situational.

A good example here is 5 e3.   e3 is a concession to your opponent where you defend your d4 pawn and create a space to develop your light bishop because of the pressure on d4 on e4.   You are blocking in your dark bishop temporarily in exchange for buying yourself more time to develop before playing e4.  In the actual game on the board there is no pressure on d4 or e4 at all!  You are wasting  a move and making a position concession to defend against an attack your opponent isn't doing. What attack is your opponent doing?   Well he's lined up his queen early on the b8-h2 diagonal so that he can checkmate you in the corner.  You will block that starting on move 9, but only in exchange for giving him an equally good plan.   He warned you on move 3 what his development plan was and you were focused on executing good moves you memorized against an opponent who was playing the opening you wanted him to play.  If you were going to move the e pawn the right play was e4.  Now you can argue for e3 in this position if you were going to follow up with a quick cxd4 and punish your opponent for bad development by ripping up the center. But you don't do that.   Similarly the 9 a4 10 Ba3 attack you spend two tempos to force your opponent to move his queen once to any number of squares roughly as good as d6.  Why?   6 Be2 was more damaging you are absolutely dominant in the center and you are developing your bishop quickly so that you can castle from a place your king is perfectly safe into a place that's harder for you to defend.  

Lots of people will tell you that memorizing opening moves is a good way to stay bad at chess.  What you should learn from that game is that those people are right.  And trust me I understand the frustration.  Opening theory is so elegant and so much fun to learn... It is so much more fun than drilling tactics, then end games then pawn structures...  But if you want to get better you need to start learning to see the board you are playing and not the one whatever grandmaster taught you that sequence was playing.   You aren't playing your opponent because you can't yet see your opponent.  

Safe to say that I am easily learning more from this single thread than many of the training articles and YouTube videos I keep watching. 

DamonevicSmithlov advised me here yesterday to calm down, slow down and not react to weak threats referring to the supposed mating on G-2 in my mind from where I lost the plot. I got reminded of it when I was analyzing a separate game here, rather amusingly, when another of my opponent had about three "Mate in 1" chances in the game given I did not make the right defense move playing as white. I assumed the Engine would have read something like - 25 in Black's favor on those moves, But astonishingly the reading was + 5 for me and I was actually doing just alright. So, the engine considered I will play the correct defenses and rated my overall game position as better. The reading was about +2 odd throughout that game for me but still, I eventually lost exactly under the same pressure as this game. Perhaps that "calming down" is the most valuable takeaway

I am humbled and grateful to all the Seniors here who are being so kind in taking time out to pitch in with their inputs.

I am taking notes from every single post here and shall try my best to improve. 

That it is a common pawn structure was my point.  I'm not saying he got the moves in that common structure wrong.  What I was trying to show him is that this common structure is a response to moves his opponent didn't make.  He wasn't looking at his actual opponent's moves he was playing a common move sequence.  Setting up to counter things that weren't happening and not responding to the things that were happening.  The original question had been about development and I was pointing out that in the development while not losing was demonstrating something he should be aware of in his play. 

While you are right that e4 is better, e3 makes sense too and isn't that much worse. I think you are focusing on the wrong things. Players at his level simply can't make the most accurate moves. I would focus on the bad moves they make, not the slightly inaccurate ones.

9.a4 is in fact a good move. 9...b6 was bad, black had to respond correctly to the Ba3 threat. The queen is badly placed on e6. Even if black defends better, a4 gives white the opportunity to play Ba3 later to develop the bishop. Also it captures space on the queen side.