Benoni Defense — Loss
Tuesday, October 6, 2026 · vs cmji · View game on lichess ↗
- •White side of an Old Benoni where your opponent handed you a great position for free early on... and then you handed it right back with a wild three-move stretch. Rough one, but very fixable.
- •The knight to c7 check is the one to study: a flashy-looking move played in seven seconds that actually just loses material. Next game, give yourself a few extra seconds on anything that looks like a 'cool tactic' to check it actually wins something before playing it.
- •Knight to b5 here looks like it's heading somewhere scary, but it doesn't actually threaten much — black just gets time to consolidate. The engine wanted pawn to e5 instead, ripping the center open while you're still ahead in development. This is the moment the advantage starts slipping instead of growing.
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Takeaways
The knight to c7 check is the one to study: a flashy-looking move played in seven seconds that actually just loses material. Next game, give yourself a few extra seconds on anything that looks like a 'cool tactic' to check it actually wins something before playing it.
- ›Knight to b5 here looks like it's heading somewhere scary, but it doesn't actually threaten much — black just gets time to consolidate. The engine wanted pawn to e5 instead, ripping the center open while you're still ahead in development. This is the moment the advantage starts slipping instead of growing.
- ›Knight to c7 check, played in just seven seconds — and that speed shows. It looks like a fork but the knight just gets stuck and lost for nothing, a five-plus point swing in one move. Your opponent had actually just blundered the move before with knight takes on e4, so the position was still yours for the taking; queen to e2 keeps everything tidy and you're just winning.
- ›Rook to c1 came after a real sixty-six second think, with your clock down to its lowest point of the game — so this wasn't a speed issue, more a case of not finding the most active idea. Queen to d3 was the engine's pick, centralizing and keeping pressure on; rook to c1 is passive by comparison and lets black's position breathe again.
1Blunders
7Mistakes
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