Let me share a blunderful otb chess game with all of you.
This was in the last round of an otb tourney.
en.lichess.org/Ab4Inh1e#29What happened was that I had been struggling with fatigue during this tourney. I could not sleep on time, and arriving in the tourney hall I would feel exhausted. In that last round I didn't feel so very tired, so I was a bit relieved about that.
My opponent was late, maybe 20 to 30 minutes. I should have ignored that because we played with increment. In an earlier round I already had not been in the rhythm of increment chess, playing too fast, and thinking that my opponent was in serious time trouble (It was with increment not that bad).
I tried to prepare for this opponent, and got the impression that he would play 1.e4.
When he arrived at the board, he played ... 1.Nf3.
That was a little surprise, but I played a Hedgehog setup which I've played in many games, even with white.
Then my opponent started to think for a really long time at move 7.
Because of all of this (opponent late, thinking really long) my confidence started to grow. But I kept playing too fast.
After my opponent traded his Bg2, the confidence grew. White had exchanged his main king defender, and I no longer had to worry about any tricks over the h1-a8 diagonal ... or ?
At move 14 I started to realize that black was not so "okay" as I thought and here something interesting happened.
I saw that with Rfe8 I would block the way back to e8 for one of my knights. I thought about Rd8 instead, but the idea that Rfe8 is "the move" to make (to prepare e6e5 push and possibly pressure versus the white e4 pawn) was strong. I could not stop myself from "thinking" that Rfe8 was the "best move".
Well, it was not, it was the introduction of a blunder.
One move later, playing again too quickly, I put my queen on the h1-a8 diagonal thinking it would be great for black. Being able to push for b5 or d5, and black was perhaps going to profit from the white king on that diagonal ?
Then a surprise followed : white played e5! after which I had to trade on f3.
And then my opponent played a brilliant move (After the game he told me he was planning Nxf3 initially), he captured with Kg2xf3!!
And then I lost it. I thought I had a lost position, and I could not find any stubborn defense. I basically had given up already.
It was embarrassing to lose so quickly in such a miniature, especially in a last round (I do lose more often in last rounds) but the good thing was that I learned something new in the game and the post-mortem, and later at home I started to do some more opening preparation, which I happened to use right away in the next otb game a few months later.