Annotated chess game

Ok shoot me because I am caro kann lover but this why. White often gets to a point where he says to himself. How the hell did this happen!

its a lost game for white !

Why not 21 ... Bxc2?

Objectively that is good.

21...Bxc2 22. Rc1 and white loses just a pawn Edit: my point was that Bxc2 doesn't create the lethal fork.

Except there's no way you're going to be let get such a sequence going.

That White's chances are close to zero is true, but here's a thing: White is still looking for ways to fight. That's no bad thing at all. An attack on the dark squares aroung the Black King looks superficially feasible (nothing else does), so he gives it a crack. Busted anyhow, he can't lose any worse than he is losing already. One of these days jkarp will pull of a spectacular swindle...

Actually there are 2 ways around it. f6 and Qg6. g6 loses because of Qf6! mating in the next move by either Qg7# or Qh8#

White should play 27.Qg3 here.

Why not Bb4 as it forces another exchange (in favor of black)

28...Bb4? 29. RxQ BxQ 30. Re2 skewering the bishops.

White should not have exchanged. When you are down in material, don't exchange pieces unless it is really nessecary or it is forced. Better was probably Qe2.

The rule is exchange pieces not pawns.

Rc8 looks better 30 ... Rc8 31 Rxe6? Bf5 to threaten both mate with Rc1 and attack the rook.

But you needed to be aware that by placing the rook on e3, you offered it as a target the d-pawn could hit. Yes, the rook walks away, but where to? And while it's walking away, the pawn carries on, unstoppable, to Queen. Having said that, where was the rook to go? 31.Re2 Bd3 32.Rb2 Bc3 33.Rb8ch Kf7 34.Rb7ch Kg6 35.Rc7 d4 36.Rc6 d3 (w.t.i. 37.Rxc3? d2 38.Rxc2 d1=Q#).

White shouldn't have played ne5 in the opening and white made a lot of other more minor mistakes later. First develop/fight for the center, then attack. If there is no structural attack (a one knight army doesn't do much) then its much better to just develop. I hope jkarp will learn from this. I also feel that the b-file could have been better exploited both by black and white.

Right. Jkarp is at the stage where you still look for quick tricks and have difficulty seeing more than one move at a time. Psychologically solid defences with long term strategy will always defeat that approach. It is important for jkarp to get a better understanding of the long term coordination of moves toward an objective. My play after the opening was not the strongest, for sure.

jkarp - it's very important to notice that you didn't delay black's development at all; he prevented mate by Nf6, which was a developing move black wanted to play anyway. So Ne5 was an awful move which actually hindered your own development - moving a piece twice when you could have been moving a different piece out into the game.

@jkarp. Joe: you are getting a fair bit of negative feedback, here, but good on you for bearing up under it. There are one or two positives that can be got from this game, and in fact Black played in my view something about his 1444 rating in the manner in which he handled the early middle game (dmaestro is notoriously inconsistent, playing very good chess in one game, and horribly in the next - you never know who you are going to meet!). I think you might need to start by bringing your pieces out in a more democratic fashion. With more resources available, you might begin finding more opportunities for attack.