critique my opening?

Can one of you experts give me some feedback on my opening here, especially with the bishop capture of knight at the beginning and the subsequent follow up which led to victory?

I'm curious if/where black made a mistake somewhere given his 2100 rating.

Game 5796116

Originally posted by @uzless
Can one of you experts give me some feedback on my opening here, especially with the bishop capture of knight at the beginning and the subsequent follow up which led to victory?

I'm curious if/where black made a mistake somewhere given his 2100 rating.

Game 5796116

I think he needs the most help with his opening. That is just an opinion of a nobody so hopefully someone much better comments.

My 2 cents, for what they are worth.

PS I am probably not competent to comment on miller’s current level of play.

Originally posted by @uzless
Can one of you experts give me some feedback on my opening here, especially with the bishop capture of knight at the beginning and the subsequent follow up which led to victory?

I'm curious if/where black made a mistake somewhere given his 2100 rating.

Game 5796116

People worry about giving up a bishop for a knight like this. On the one hand the bishop moves twice for a piece that hasn't. Two tempi are lost, the bishop is no longer there to exploit the weakened white squares after f6, and you give the opponent the two bishops. On the other it wins a pawn and messes up kingside castling. As usual you have to try and exploit the positives of your strategic choice. The BxN idea can be found in the theory of more recognized openings such as the QGD Baltic defence, Calabrese Counter Gambit. According to the explore games Miller tried 1.d4 f6 4 times with one win, the other 3 were against the same player, not the OP. At the time wasn't there a thing going on about the Hammerschlag?.

For the first 3 years here miller was finishing 50 games per month at 1400 to 1500 level but by 2010 was hitting 1600 to 1700 regularly. In 2011 he slowed down to finishing 50 games in three months or more and his rating improved further.

Originally posted by @thaughbaer
I'm no good at opening critiques.. but your opponnent wasn't a 2100 at the time of the game. His rating graph between Jan 2011 and Jul 2011 is interesting.

Originally posted by @sonhouse
Interesting like those bad games were before he fired up the engine? Hard to believe a 2100 player would EVER produce games like this one.

Originally posted by @sonhouse
Interesting like those bad games were before he fired up the engine? Hard to believe a 2100 player would EVER produce games like this one.

"The game posted was played back in 2008/2009"

That is what I was wondering. Why wait nearly 10 years before asking?

anyway. Here.


The g8 Knight is looking pretty gloomy where it is.

5.Qb3 threatens mate which given the first few moves of Black is a possible shot.
This too wins a pawn, a good central pawn. 5...e6 6.Bxe6.

Chances are Black may have played 5...Nh6 which has been seen
on here a few time from a similar set-up. Game 10591446

So nice. Ne7 is checkmate too.

Moral to the story: In the opening develop your pieces instead of pushing pawns.

Thanks all. Just getting back into chess. Took several years off. Found it hard to complete one move per day chess with vacations etc and was timing out alot.

Originally posted by @uzless
Thanks all. Just getting back into chess. Took several years off. Found it hard to complete one move per day chess with vacations etc and was timing out alot.

Originally posted by @greenpawn34
"The game posted was played back in 2008/2009"

That is what I was wondering. Why wait nearly 10 years before asking?

anyway. Here.

[fen]r2qkbnr/pppbp1pp/2np1p2/8/2BPP3/2P5/PP3PPP/RNBQK1NR w KQkq - 0 5[/fen]
The g8 Knight is looking pretty gloomy where it is.

5.Qb3 threatens mate which given the first few moves of Black is a possible shot. ...[text shortened]... Game 10591446

[fen]rn1qkbnr/ppp3pp/5p2/4p3/2B1P3/1Q6/PPP2PPP/RNB1K2R b KQkq - 0 7[/fen]