Thanks for start, Giri, but seems not quite the thing which was intended.
It's a bit more personal view than necessary, but studying chess openings is not the way to make you play better. Understanding principal ideas, like gaining initiative, not being slower with pieces development, etc are ways to improve.
He probably don't need things like in this position this move was bad. He needs overall ideas, which can be applied to most of games.
And seems this were long games, which means this requires quite high rating to give good directions. I'd propose 2400+ classic teachers. Please come into this thread!
Not clear what your preferred openings are. I assume you play e4 as White, based on the 3 games, However, each of the examples given do not provide much to go off.
Do you have a preferred line in mind for each of Black responses?
A good book , bit dated but one I found very useful, was "Attacking with e4" by GM Emms. Using that book as a baseline, I have developed my own repertoire with e4.
It takes time, but it allows you to focus on the various themes and setup's. When you get familiar with these, then you will get to understand the opening phase better, and get to understand what pawn structures and endgames you like and do not like.
Of course, the opening is just that. If you do not work on tactics, and understand basic endgames then it is a waste of time working on opening theory. However, do not switch between openings because they are not working for you.
If you can, take the openings you play. Look at the position when you think the opening is over. Now take all the pieces off the board just leaving the pawns. Then think, where am I best putting my pieces - put the pieces on the board where you think they best belong. Next - work out how you get from the position you started, with that ideal position in mind .....
Of course, your opponent is trying to STOP all of this. However, if you do not have a plan in your mind first, then you will play without a plan. Once you are happy with what you want to do, then work out, how do I stop my opponent at the same time :)
It will mean a lot more losses - but you do not learn unless you lose !
BTW - I never liked the Petrov, having to remember something for the "odd" occasion you come across it ... result, I play the Bishops Opening instead. Stops the Petrov, Bishops Opening tends to lead towards Italian and Two Knights setup .... but it means I am on my territory not my opponent. It is not everyone's cup of tea as they say - but funny enough Top GM's have turned back to the Italian, since they are tired of the Berlin in the Spanish :)
hal9k, I agree with you; and I was indeed thinking of general ideas, so much that I recommended an article on openings general ideas. But first I had to point out the particular problems so that he could see concrete examples of what is wrong with his play. And it was from those examples that I could understand his problems. But he also needs to look at some openings even though studying openings is not 'the way to make you play better' as you mentioned. I think nobody can escape studying some openings at some point.
And to avoid confusion, Drawish_Giri is my other account. I use it to practice some ideas.
Thanks guys, yeah the early games (which are closer to the beginning of the list) are ones where my opening prep wasn't as good. I do e4 in hopes of playing the Scotch (which I am 3-0 with in OTB, although not too many people go e5 on move 1 against me). Yeah, like with the Petrov game I just didn't know how to play against it, but now I go Nc3 after the f6 knight takes on e4 with an easy game. I showed some of the early games to one of my college friends who is close to 2000 USCF and he talked about the positional aspect of the first game. How instead of a3 when my bishop was being attacked in the middlegame to go a4, giving a nice outpost for the knight eventually. And just the tactics stuff too, he talked about looking out for undefended pieces on both sides and to always look for your opponent's threats: checks, captures, threats, as well as looking at your own. That would have helped with not blundering my queen in the later game and not losing my bishop in the 2nd game
I just did a quick google search and found that Larry Evans has had a lot of editions come out on a book called 10 most common chess mistakes. I think I'm going to check that out. Sometimes I play games with no blunders but in some games I blunder once or twice. So hoping that I can have no blunders from now on
I haven't checked your games but I can see that you are a beginner. And as a beginner you must understand that 'quick' analyzes from even high rated people won't help very much.
The best and fast way you can learn chess imho is reading books. As a beginner you must prioritize strategy! that being said, you should start first learning the basics endgames .
As I was a beginner once, I can recommend you a few books such as Modern Chess Strategy- Ludek Pachman and Stohl - Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces.
If you read these books properly, I am sure you will reach 2000 FIDE very easy! You can think of improving further once you have read these books.
Ok. I mean I've read a lot of books but I'll look into those as well. I've looked at game collections of Tal, Fischer, Alekhine, Karpov, Rubinstein, Capablanca etc... I've read My System, Chess Praxis, Silman's endgame book, Dvoretsky endgame manual, Shereshevsky's endgame book, opening books, tactics puzzle books, Silman's Reassess. And I feel like I'm close to intermediate now. I'm 1584 and in last tournament went from 1492 to 1584 by beating a 1835 and a 2050. So we'll see