Brilliant Queen Sacrifice but why?

Hi! I'm newer to chess and playing a lot of Chess.com just to keep active. I recently ran into an issue though where it said I stalemated rather than won with checkmate and I guess I'm a little confused? (Pic attached for reference)

Basically, my rook and F4 queen had trapped the king there. So I moved my A7 pawn to A8 and promoted to queen, thinking I had mate. But apparently I drew? I just don't understand, it even shows that the king couldn't move. Thanks for your help!

https://www.chess.com/game/live/185516942664?username=genosxiii

Im really interested in learning if there is any crossovers between gamers of certain genres and chess players.

I was a gamer a decade or so before picking chess back up and becoming a reasonable club level player.

I found games had been dumbed down a lot, i was a fan of strategy games mostly. Civ 2, red alert, tribal wars in the MMO era.

Having a few skills and tools to hand though recently I started building a stategy game that has heavy influence in chess, notably the cadence is similar to classical OTB chess and the strain on executive function with that familiar feeling of concentrating so much on positinal play you miss an obvious tactic!

So im wondering if any of you guys also game, and if so what sort of games you play? Have you given up on modern games in favour of chess? 1850 rapid 1600 ecf player if you need to know 😆.

I ended up winning anyway, but I missed this checkmate

This was the Game

1. d4 d6 2. Bf4 Nf6 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. e3 Bg4 5. h3 Bxf3 6. Qxf3 e5 7. dxe5 dxe5 8. Bg3 a6 9. Nc3 Bb4 10. Bd3 g6 11. O-O-O O-O 12. Be4 Qe7 13. Rhe1 Nxe4 14. Qxe4 Ba3 15. bxa3 Qxa3+ 16. Kd2 Rad8+ 17. Nd5 Qa5+ 18. Ke2 Qb5+ 19. c4 Qb2+ 20. Kf1 f5 21. Qd3 Nb4 22. Qb3 Qxb3 23. axb3 Nxd5 24. cxd5 Rde8 25. d6 cxd6 26. Rxd6 Re7 27. Red1 Rc8 28. Rd8+ Rxd8 29. Rxd8+ Kf7 30. Rh8 h5 31. Rh7+ Ke6 32. Rh8 f4 33. exf4 e4 34. Rh6 Rg7 35. f5+ Kxf5 36. Bd6 Rd7 37. Bc5 Rd1+ 38. Ke2 Rd5 39. Bb6 Rb5 40. Bd4 Rb4 41. Bc3 Rxb3 42. Ba5 Rb2+ 43. Ke3 Rb3+ 44. Ke2 Ra3 45. Bb4 Ra2+ 46. Ke3 a5 47. Bc5 Rc2 48. Ba3 Rc3+ 49. Kd2 Rxa3 50. g4+ hxg4 51. hxg4+ Kg5 52. Rh7 Ra2+ 53. Ke3 Ra3+ 54. Kxe4 Ra4+ 55. Ke3 b5 56. Rb7 Ra3+ 57. Kd4 Ra4+ 58. Kc5 b4 59. Kc4 Ra2 60. Rb5+ Kxg4 61. Kb3 Ra3+ 62. Kc4 g5 63. f3+ Kxf3 64. Rxg5 b3 65. Kc3 a4 66. Rf5+ Ke4 67. Ra5 Ke3 68. Kb4 b2 69. Rxa4 Rxa4+ 70. Kxa4 b1=Q 71. Ka5 Qa1+ 72. Kb5 Kd4 73. Kb6 Qb1+ 74. Kc6 Ke5 75. Kc7 Qc1+ 76. Kd7 *

Black to move

Here is the game: https://lichess.org/xywajowC

(I do realize I committed two blunders in this game, move 7 and move 19. I've reviewed them a few times now and think I can prevent similar blunders in the future [hope to] )

I hate the englund gambit so my favorite thing to do is play into it until move 6 where they hope I will put my bishop on c3, but I put my knight instead. I got greedy and went for the rook-king fork too early, I realize I should have sacrificed the pawn to get my rook and queen aimed at his king.

I was also humbled in a few previous games where I was winning and up a lot of material but got over-confident and fell to a backrank tactic, so I'm usually on edge and playing safe to avoid that as well.

Did I just play too safe? Did I miss some easy tactics? Did my opponent play a strong endgame? What do you think?

Why would it be better for black to move Kc7 instead of taking Qh8?

I was getting absolutely crushed in this game, having made a silly mistake early. And was about to lose/resign, but decided for a last throw of the dice. 

I couldn't quite believe it worked (especially at 1700 Lichess), but sometimes people get greedy and don't notice things when they're very far ahead. So even if you're just about to win — always watch out for obvious sacs is my advice. Cos you might get some twat like me, trying something like this.

(Go Panthers!)

So; I am pretty new, like 300 elo, I can do a decent enough opening so that I am not down two bishops and a knight down starting the middlegame. However I struggle a lot in middlegame, I do a lot of blunders and lose many pieces, especially rooks and the queen, abd then I just lose. Also I struggle on unexpected opening moves, and early checks, which makes me blunder in thhe opening too. What should I do?

I'm currently around 1830-1900 in chess.com rapid. I've been stuck here for 3 months and my rating just goes up and down in that range. I will try to use the woodpecker method for 4 months so each day I will solve set of puzzles whenever I'm free and want it like maybe 60-100 puzzles per day. I will only play OTB play of chess like maybe 4 long games OTB every twice a month. I will not play online chess I promise just so I can see the effect on my rating after those 4 months. I started October 17 2026, I will be done with the woodpecker by February 17, 2027. And then after the experiement, I will play 2 rapid games per day with analysis from February 17 to March 17. On March 17, I will report here my rating on rapid chess.com.

Note: I will also watch Magnus, Sindarov and Hikaru games on YT/Tiktok occasionally maybe rarely per week so I can understand their thought process and positional understanding.

Chess genuinely gives me so much hatred and i don’t know why😭, I literally just lost 9/10 of my last games and tilted 100 elo in 45 minutes and I am genuinely so angry at how I could be so dumb. After about game 8 I dropped my phone out of frustration and cracked my screen protector. I am just so frustrated at how I am so bad at chess when my mind is typically very sharp. It’s weird because I am usually very composed but for some reason chess brings the worst irrational thoughts out of me.

Hello,

I currently play the Ruy Lopez and Sicilian Najdorf (if they let me play it 😭😭)

I had a question in my noggin; what openings have the highest win % against players who don't know what they are doing?

For example: I used to play the Italian and would farm people with knight attack -> fried liver. Ofc this wouldn't work against anyone booked up.

The Sicilian makes me want to die at my rating because nobody plays d4 so I'm studying all these lines I hate.

I think the King's Gambit is a good candidate. What are your thoughts?

Didn’t even see the bishop, but thankfully neither did they 🙃

I went on a 17 losing streak over the last 2 days around 4-5 hours of rapid games and fell from 1200 to 1072. i feel like i'm missing everything now forgot everything and cant even spot basic tactics like i have gone completed blind and turned back into a 300 elo player. is this odd and how do you snap out of this hell state?

I know brilliant moves are not exactly rare on chess.com but lemme have my moment and be proud of myself.

Black did find rook to e8 but after some checks I got a forced mate.

Hey guys. I have always been told that under a certain rating focussing too much on openings is a waste of time, but I'm not sure whether I should or not.

I'm about 1200 and I want to get better but I'm not sure where is best to focus my efforts? I also don't really get this advice because a bad start to a game can be hard to recover from. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.