Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Routine Moves

Keeping the concentration for the length of a game is difficult. So imagine the huge effort that top players have to do throughout a whole tournament. And what can we tell when speaking about a complete chess career?
We know extraordinary examples of successful chess performance. For example, Magnus Carlsen who stayed 111 games in 19 months undefeated; or Sergei Tiviakov, 110 games in 11 months.

Nevertheless, there is an important difference, because Tiviakov played against opponents with a rating below 2200, while Carlsen has always played against top opponents.

Those records are obviously far away from club players and one important mistake for putting at risk an acceptable chess performance is to play routine moves.
This is what the player with Black did in the following game:

This game shows one of the most common types of a kingside attack, with a pawn avalanche over the opponent’s castle. Obviously Black was not aware of this possibility and played routine moves on the queenside, far away from the battle.

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