Dan Heisman's Improve Your Chess
Quick Endgame Moves Turn Win into Draw Into Loss

National Master Dan Heisman is a name that is synonymous with excellence in chess coaching and teaching. Dan authors the award-winning Novice Nook column (winner of three Chess Journalists of America "Best Instruction" awards), aimed at improving adults, for chesscafe.com that are clearly written and offer very practical advice and tips on how to improve your game . In the new Improve Your Chess series, Dan provides instruction by reviewing amateur games played on ICC and showing where the players went wrong and how to improve.

Today's show: Black gets a slight advantage in an Exchange Variation of the Gruenfeld. In the middlegame White blunders a piece to a "sneaky pin" but Black makes a quiescence error and misses the easy win. Black then exchanges down into a superior endgame but decides to (correctly) break through before activating his king, creating a win, but a dangerous one. He then makes a further critical decision to trade into a won king and pawn endgame, but not because he figured out the tricky win. Black then assumes he only has one plan, and starts moving quickly, even though he has a lot of time. In one three-second move he throws away the win into a draw and a second three-second move immediately thereafter turns the draw into a loss! A grievous set of time management errors from which anyone who is prone to this type of "quick endgame play" should learn..

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