My first Lichess LoneWolf League match was this morning! Andy (Elo 1752) shredded me (1442) to bits, but I’m happy with my play.

 

Andy and I had a quick post-mortem. He did some homework on my play style, so Bird’s opening didn’t throw him off like I hoped. He missed my blunder on move 24 but caught it on 27 and the match was essentially over. I found a sweet tactic on 29 which should have booted the queen and won an exchange, but missed the fatal Ne2 threat. I laughed for a while and changed my goal from “win” to “win that damn exchange”. Mission accomplished!

I haven’t analyzed the game yet but my first thoughts are…

  1. I spent way too much energy maintaining pawn structure.
  2. My attack plan amounted to “wait for Andy to mess up”, which is too passive when punching up. Better to try something creative and learn something.