About This Blog

This blog is all about mistakes in chess - what they look like, why we make them, and ultimately how to avoid them.

The audience I have in mind is club players in the ELO range 1500-1800. That's where I am, and most of my opponents are. At that level, practically every game is riddled by mistakes. If we don't study those mistakes, we're just making yet another mistake. It's very tempting to focus on your won games, and attribute your victory to some brilliant plan.

This is common even at the top levels. If you study annotated Grandmaster games, you'll find that they are all annotated by the winner, and they all revolve around brilliant moves and plans. You'll get the impression that all GM games are determined by brilliances, and none by mistakes, but that's not the case. Grandmasters make mistakes too, only less frequent and less obvious than the rest of us.

One reason for this is embarrassment. It's embarrassing to lose a game by a mistake, but it's also embarrassing to win a game by your opponent's mistake, as this tends to diminish your accomplishment.

These thoughts made me study my own games with focus on my own mistakes, trying figure out why I made them. I will not try to smooth things over, my mistakes will be displayed in all their splendor.

It's great fun for me, and I hope that you'll enjoy it too.

Since I inevitably expose my opponent's mistakes, they are anonymised to avoid unnecessary embarrassment.