Yasser Seirawan's Tactics

Originally posted by RahimK
I just quickly ran through the whole game and the endgame just didn't seem right to me. The way the queen's side pawns and rooks came of the board just seem to wierd. I would have to look at the game again but in the ending couldn't your opponent have drawn by moving his king to get opposition when you had a K+P vs K? I would have tried to keep some of the qu ...[text shortened]... because of the pressure and the crowd etc... so I understand if the endgame wasn't textbook.

He could've easily drawn in a number of ways. Trading rooks was the biggest blunder which led to my win. I think it was just as a result of moving too quickly since he was frustrated by giving away his pawn earlier. But as soon as he traded rooks, the game was won for me.

I wanted to exchange down on the queenside because I was playing for the draw at that point. I think a general rule is that the less pawns there are, the more likely there is to be a draw; your opponent cannot create two weaknesses.

Well it was just a game at the chess club so there wasn't as much pressure. I think I would've played the same way here with regards to my queenside play. However, I think I may have slightly erred with some of my kingside moves.

But I think my biggest mistakes were in the middlegame. I just managed to hold the draw at that phase.

I wrote some comments in the other thread. After looking at the endgame again, you played well.

Draw is more likely with less pawns, true. I thought you were playing for a win though. You need adequate material to win. K+2N vs K draw. I actually used to trade stuff of against stronger players when i first started playing OTB chess. My theory was, that you need enought pieces to win. I had a similar game where my opponent had a K+P vs my K and played the wrong move, I grabbed the opposition and drew a 1870 player in my 2nd game of my first tournament and because of that i got a provisional rating of 1748. Since then i've been hovering around the 1700 mark for the past 1.5 years.

What time control were you using for the game? For our actual rated games we use Game in 110 minutes with 30 sec increment and our fun quick games which don't count are 30 min games.