Games from Saturday

In case you were wondering about your opponents' ratings:
Name..Beac Metc Befr Aft
Thomas.unr 1501.1267.1235
Anton..643 1778..816..825
Frank..451 1328..787..789
Josh...437 1026..719..689
Magnus.unr 1319..718..721

The good news is that you guys played absolutely terribly!
Why is that good news? Because if you had played well, we might have had a chance against Metcalf - although looking at the ratings above, they are clearly the better team.
Maybe next week we can do better.

Here's a couple of mistakes that cost games. (I'll add some more positions soon. and recalculate ratings.)

PROBLEM 1. Here Josh falls for the oldest trick in the book. I'm sure I've shown you this. Maybe this time it will sink in. 1. e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Nxe4 4.Qe2 This is called Petrov's Defense or the Russian Defense.
What's the danger to Josh playing Black? What can he do to prevent disaster?

PROBLEM 2. Max, Magnus's opponent, has just played Qa4 in this position. What was wrong with that? What do you think Magnus did?

ANSWERS

1. If Josh moves his knight, White plays Nc6+ with a discovered check that wins the queen. Josh needs to play d6 attacking his opponent's knight. Qe7 will follow shortly and all will be well.

2. Max is just inviting Bd7 setting up a discovered attack which resulted in the early loss of the Queen and the game. Other things wrong with the move - develop knights and Bishops before the Queen. The queen prefers a central location not stuck on the side of the board. After Black plays Nd4 (a move set up by Max when he moved c3 to c4 on move 3) the queen must retreat to d1 thus totally wasting 2 moves. (Incidentally, two moves later Max castled by moving his king to b1 and rook to c1. Magnus did not object.)