Indeed, 5. e4 is the engine move, with well over half a pawn advantage for white. I think the problem comes of a lack of really
thinking about the opening. Playing d4 so often, I should have some understanding of the semi-slav, but I really don't. I think I'm a bit more versed in the Queen's Gambit, either variation, the normal slav, the King's Indian, the Grunfeld, etc. I even thought about 5. e4 but it didn't look like anything I'd seen before, like I had this dogmatic idea in my head "well, you don't play e4 in this system, you play e3". But I suppose the reason is that black doesn't sit around twiddling his thumbs with some bull like h6 but clamps down on the e4 square with Nf6. I always play e4 in King's Indian structures for instance and I recognise its strength. At least I know what to do if ever faced with this ridiculous opening again. A problem, I think, in regards to this is how many traps and tricks there are in openings. I've been caught twice (fool me twice, shame on me...) in queen's gambit accepted lines where the rook skewers the queen and bishop after we've opened everything up on the queenside, I've been rekt by the fried liver on some rare occasions when I've played black in e4-e5, having forgotten the theory...I'm just wary of being aggressive in openings lol.
Yeah, I can see it from their point of view. Especially since they may have rightly felt that they'd had an edge all game, and with the pretty sizeable rating disparity had lots of rating points for incentive. I dunno, in a blitz game, I wouldn't care so much. But the longer the time control gets, the more class I expect.
One could argue that I had used a lot more time up to that point than him as well, and that he had a right to exploit that.
The volume of words in my posts is growing at an alarming rate lol. Anyhow, I'm not sure it's that hard. The captain of the D team (who is now president) I beat very quickly in blitz, I think it was the second game I ever played at the club. I've played other guys who are on the lower teams, I think, and I'd say they tend to be slightly
better than me, though I dunno if they play for D or C (A and B team players just destroy you lol). I was basically
asked if I wanted to join a team and I pretty much gave a "maybe" and not much more came of it; I don't think they're too fussy. I get the sense that if you want to play competitive chess, and you have some degree of competency - and obviously, you've a lot more than that - they can get it done. I missed a lot of sessions and became somewhat estranged from the club in favour of pool, which ran sessions at the same time, which might explain why there wasn't any follow-up on my saying I was interested.
It's often the case that strategy is unsound, but in certain structures, everyone knows the plan. For instance if you end up in a typical Sicilian Dragon (I am aware that there are less dynamic ones, but we're talking the main main lines here), a 1600 knows that they can just play g4, h4, h5 smash open the kingside, and kill you (problem is, of course, that you're trying to kill them too) If you play the King's Indian everyone and their dog knows that black prepares for an f5 break supported by a rook and an ensuing bishop pair-supported kingside storm while white tries to dominate the queenside. If you play an Open Sicilian, we all know that white takes aim at the weak d5 square, hoping to plant a knight there. At least, most of the time players seem to go for these key strategical motifs against me.
Oh yeah a tactical "sac" which regains material (or checkmates) is a no brainer. Positional sacs are the ones that are hard to make I guess. Except for those juicy exchange sacs for black against the Queenside castled position in the Sicilian to open the b file, love making those.
(though I suppose this is half positional, half tactical)
Ah that's nice to hear, cheers.
I enjoy it, chess has been a good thing to keep me feeling driven/like I'm doing something in the absence of jobs living in the middle of nowhere, and the absence of study.
Yeah as I said before in this post I get it from his position. Certainly it wasn't the most inaccurate game ever, I had 5 average centipawn loss lol. But it was more a matter of "playable" moves as opposed to good moves. Hence a draw occurs. Certainly I had to keep on my toes to control the squares in the early portions of the endgame; it's easier to mess up stuff like that than you might think (hence my constantly baiting my opponent to push his pawn for a check and relinquish dark square control - computer checked this and this one little pawn move indeed shoots the evaluation up to over +2 for me, sadly my opponent was quite smart).