Hello Curtains! I like your videos they are very entertaining

Congratulations on getting on the bestlist! These videos are great because they seem to help you and they help everyone else here watching them too.
When you analyze the position at move 19, moving the pawn to d3, first reaction I'd have is that the queen is surrounded by all those pawns and doesn't have too many ways too get outside- I know it's on a white square and the black's light-squared bishop is gone and it can be attacked by the knight only, and probably not anytime soon......just a thought..I keep thinking about such things when I play myself, perhaps there's not a lot of reasoning behind this, maybe I am claustrophobic or something, I would just be scared of getting suffocated by closing this diagonal b1-d3 for my own queen

Yeah mis3u, I thought the same thing, but only for maybe 5-10 seconds. Mainly it didn't seem there was any piece that could ever attack my queen...the black bishop cant do it, so only the rooks are candidates, and I didn't see how they could ever take advantage of it. So basically wasn't worried about it.

I'm sure I have tons of thoughts that go through my head, such as that one, that I forget to mention in the video I admit it was only a passing thought....crossed my mind for maybe 2-3 seconds, but I definitely thought of it for some moment.

Yep, your right, you should be more careful, it took 30 seconds....and no I wont embarrass you by giving it away.

Hey pobble, not sure what you are talking about

hi this is my first post . around move 22 you said '' i can take his piece off but he cant take mine ' but if Bxd4 exd4 then the queen is attacked with nowhere to go ?
thanks for the great vids ive switched to the english and hyper accelerated dragon
recently so very useful for me

Hello tuna. I believe I was speaking more thematically and not discussing the exact position. My point was that my bishop always has the option of capturing a knight on d4. Maybe it doesn't work in that precise position, but I was just demonstrating the idea. Meanwhile if I get a knight to d5, they can NEVER take it, no matter what, simply because bishop's cant change color

I beg to differ!! at my club about 2 weeks ago I walked by a game that had about 4 moves by each side completed, and white had 2 light squared bishops!!!

I had the same thought after 19. d3, that the queen might get trapped. After 19... Ng8, planning Nf6, the knight covers both d5 and e4, and the queen would be trapped. It's not so easy to prevent that and creating another square is very awkward. I'm not seeing how to do it without giving up a pawn. d4 maybe? b5 can be met by Rc8 renewing the threat. Maybe I'm just being blind but I can't see how white isn't forced to play d4

I can always play Nd5 when they play something like Ng8. When we trade the knights, I have the better minor piece in the resulting positions.

Sorry Curtains, its just my funny sense of humour. Near the end of the video, you offered a challenge of sorts, whether anyone could work out your other handle on icc. The vid gives away info on the screen, so it was pretty easy to cross referance the info, and get a result. Maybe it was a joke by you, and your handle is common knowledge. Guess I just like solving puzzles. By the way, I think your videos are great!

Yeah I realized that if someone really wanted to they could piece it out. Was curious how many people would be obsessed enough to actually go through with it.

lol, hiding your username that's hilarious ; )

thanks for the video!

Where do you get the annotated games, from your database? Do you annotate them all yourself?

NY times only showed your loss against Benjamin ? that's a shame