A Puzzling Error

In round 1 of the MCC Winter Warmer Swiss this week, I ended up with a draw in a game that I should have won easily, and that I deserved to lose. I want to explore the “should have won” part – in particular, a most puzzling error.

To lead up to the error, let’s start with this position. (I’m White.)

After 8.c5

In playing c5, I was thinking that there might be useful checks coming up along the a4-e8 diagonal, by either my bishop or queen. Play continues 8…Nbd7 9.Be2 Nxf3+ 10.gxf3 Bh5 11.Be3 g6 12.Qd4.

After 12.Qd4

Despite my busted kingside pawns, I was pretty happy with this position. White is well ahead in development, the c and d pawns might just walk down Black’s throat, and Black is scrambling to achieve some measure of king safety. To deal with the threat to his king rook and prepare to castle, Black now played 12…Nf6.

After 12…Nf6

Here’s the puzzle: I didn’t play 13.Bb5+, which wins practically on the spot. I didn’t even really consider it! Now this is really a very strange error, because I already had this kind of check in mind several moves earlier, after 8.c5. Also, as Dan tried to pound into my brain repeatedly, I ought to be looking seriously at every possible check on every move.

The point of examining one’s errors like this is to consider why they occurred in order to prevent a recurrence. My best hypothesis here is a kind of “already-considered-that-move” blindness. I considered the possibility of this bishop check earlier, but didn’t get a chance to play it. So now, several moves later, I fail to reconsider it.

Does this resonate with any of my readers? (All two of you.)

Anyway, to me this is obviously a thought process flaw. No amount of tactics practice or Pawn Power or Dvoretsky is going to fix this. So I’m back to thinking about thought process again. That’ll be the subject of another post.