I just wasted hours writing this but now the comments are blocked... plz suffer with me
FULL CHESS GAME ANALYSIS:
At this level, usually whoever has more pieces is going to win (unless there is a sneaky checkmate). Your top priorities should be to take the pieces that your opponent gives you for free and to not let your opponent take your pieces for free. There is no need for any strategy or thinking ahead until you get better at this. The key moments in the game are usually moments like these where pieces were left hanging. "Pieces" does not include pawns, which are much less important.
32:30 - Haachama moves her queen to a square that is covered by black's bishop. Watch out for those moves from across the board! Kobo realizes this and plays the best move, capturing the queen.
34:14 - 36:19 , Kobo misses the opportunity to deliver checkmate by moving her queen to the bottom row directly next to white's king. The queen is defended by a bishop there and there is nowhere for king to run, so it is checkmate.
36:20 - Kobo returns the favor and Haachama plays the excellent move of capturing the queen. At this point, Haachama is winning because she has an extra knight.
36:42 - Kobo moves her bishop to an undefended square where it can be captured. She gets lucky though as Haachama doesn't capture the bishop. Take the free pieces! Kobo, to her credit, retreats the bishop to a square where it is defended on the next turn. Now, if white captures this bishop, Kobo can recapture so that there is an even trade of pieces.
39:12 - Haachama takes black's rook with her bishop. Rooks are more powerful than bishops, so this is a good trade for white. Now white is up a rook (bishops and knights are generally equal). Kobo doesn't forget to recapture, which is good.
41:09 - The knight says goodnight. Now Haachama only has the slight advantage of having a rook versus a bishop. We say she is "up the exchange" when this imbalance appears.
42:17 - Kobo plays a great move! Notice that white's rook in the corner is trapped. Now the tables are turned and Kobo will have more pieces. Haachama misses the opportunity to minimize the damage by moving her knight to block the bishop's diagonal. Black would capture the knight for free, but then white's rook wouldn't be trapped and could move out of the way. This would be better than losing a full rook.
44:32 - Haachama doesn't realize that her knight can move backwards to take black's bishop. This would have leveled the playing field. Backward moves can be tough to spot, though, and it takes awhile to get acquainted with all the piece movements.
47:08 - Haachama un-defends her knight. Kobo captures it for free to increase her advantage. This was a backward move too, for black, which would have made it tougher to spot. A really good move! Now I would say that black will either win or stalemate.
48:20 - Haachama loses her last piece. Remember to look out for your opponent's ideas!
Many checkmates were not played...
1:12:55 - Uh oh! Haachama's perseverance pays off and she stumbles into capturing a rook. With the rook gone and no pawns left, I don't think black would have been able to find a checkmate at this level.
The correct idea is to push white's king into a corner or at least an edge where it will have less squares to escape to. To do this, she would have to coordinate all her pieces and use her king as well. In chess, there is a concept of "zugzwang" which says that, because you can never skip your turn, sometimes you will be forced to make moves which make your position weaker. Applied in this case, black could make progress by forcing white to move closer to the corner by eliminating their other options. White can never pass a turn, so if their only moves are to go towards a corner then that is where the king will go. To do this, it is good to make moves which restrict the white king's options. These moves are usually not checks, since a check attacks the square that the king is currently on and doesn't aim for the squares that the king might be moving to. A good way to coordinate a knight and a bishop to achieve this is to keep the knight on the same color square as the bishop. This is because a knight on a light square will attack dark squares, while the bishop will watch the light squares. Black would also have to avoid stalemates, which is a scenario when white can't move anywhere (because the king would walk into a check), but white is also not in check, so it is not checkmate. The game is a draw if there is a stalemate.
Kobo played much better than a total beginner, and finding that bishop move to trap white's rook was really great. And Haachama did well considering that she wasn't sure how the king moves or the pawn captures. It is tricky to get from a beginner-level to a place where you can start to learn and improve. It's a mysterious jump. I think the only way to get there is by playing more. Chess is just a game though and the important thing is to have fun.
