Blunder day - cheap pieces for all!

Sciurus proudly announces that yesterday's "Blunder Day" at ChessWorld was a great success! After leaving a few pieces en prise in the best spirit of hiding Easter eggs, the day culminated in giving a won game away in the great match chess blogger vs. chess reader. After building up a nice material advantage (see position), I decided to keep it simple; the basic idea was to win the game by forcing exchanges. But instead, I gave my honorable opponent the opportunity for a mate in three, which he promptly used (See the annotated game for the continuation).

Looking for some distraction to soothe my soul, I started browsing over the list of my favorite chess blogs and stumbled upon the artice "No justice" - the topic? Of course blundering. Learning to avoid blunders is probably the most important thing for chess novices. Therefore, many chess blogs contain articles either ranting about last night's blunders or discussing cures. In fact, I vowed to get into the habit of a clear thinking process not too long ago. What happened to that? In short, my plan was to go over a short checklist, before making a move. In contrast to over the board play, having a checklist would be even legal in correspondence chess games. However, it is always so much more exciting to analyze what I can do to my opponents then to figure out how they can beat me. Conclusion: setting goals is not enough to improve. From time to time one has to look back and figure out what is going wrong. It is time to get back to the discarded checklist!