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Patzer's Corner

A Blog for the Rest of Us . . .


    • Instructive Knight vs Bishop Endgame

      This is the winning idea that wasn't played in HouseofCook vs Me, a game featured in my previous blog.  Discovering this in the post-mortem made the whole game much more valuable to me as a learning experience.  Enjoy! | Read More

    • Narrow Escape

      This is a Closed Sicilian in which I get a pretty good position out of the opening and proceed to nearly self-desctruct, inch by inch.  There are quite a few comments but not a lot of analysis until we get to the Bishop vs Knight endgame, which w... | Read More

    • Dutch Debacle

      Lessons from this game - PLAY ACTIVELY! Passive play against the Dutch will getyou run over on the K-side *** Don't give up the 2 Bishops for nothing. *** Don't move a piece to the edge of the board if a better square is available in the cent... | Read More

    • King's Indian Defence

      This one is a KID where White plays a new move, but NOT a TN  Call it a mouse slip, if you prefer, but despite the lost pawn we manage to get into a pretty level and interesting middle game. A very tense standoff on the Kingside which abr... | Read More

    • Instructive Endgame Loss

      This is the endgame from an earlier blog.  The game itself was pretty undramatic, but the endgame was extremely instructive, at least for me.  If you were Black,  what would you play on move 30?  The move I played seemed natural and obvious, b... | Read More

    • Help with Blogging 101

      I'm a new blogger and could use a little help from experienced bloggers with Blogging 101.  I've posted a couple of games with a ton of variations and analysis, but I suspect nobody will bother to look because it's all buried in the move list. ... | Read More

    • This One Goes in the Patzer Hall of Shame

      My favorite chess author, Dan Heisman, suggests keeping a personal "Hall of Shame" containing your most instructive blunders, and then reviewing it on a regular basis to make sure that you really benefit from all that pain and suffering  So here... | Read More

    • Trying to Learn from Each Painful Loss

      Here we go folks, the long, rocky road to being (someday) a decent OTB player.  Trying to learn as much as possible from each painful loss.  This game was in an on-line league with a time control of 45 minutes for the game and a 45 second increm... | Read More