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Originally Posted by RoundTower
8. Nf3!? certainly looks strange, decentralising your nice knight. I think Bb3 might be standard in that position aiming to avoid any tricks with b5-b4 and Nxe4 (not the end of the world as you can retreat the bishop to d3 instead, but the a2-g8 diagonal is maybe nicer)
Yeah, I'm still trying to learn how to tell the difference between a "nice" knight and an "overextended" knight. I get nervous in positions like that, which is the only reason I retreated it.
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once you win the bishop pair (pretty easily) you shouldn't be so keen to give it back. 11. Bf4?! gives back the bishop pair after Ne5 and turns his potential weak pawn on d6 into a solid central pawn on e5. Again Bb3 comes to mind, or maybe something like Qg3 eyeing d6 and g7. Maybe you thought you would get some pressure on the d-file, but it's totally illusory - as you see Black controls d8 so he can occupy the d-file and neutralise you before you get anywhere. I expect the position after 14. Rd3 is about equal, if you had played something else on move 11 both sides still have chances but there are some simple things clearly in your favour.
I didn't really have a specific plan to pressure the d-file, I was just trying to get my last minor piece developed and that seemed like the best square I could put it on. If I do play Bb3 (which Firebird agrees is best), and if I want to avoid Bf4 in order to keep the bishop pair, then what is my plan for developing the bishop here? It has to come out somewhere, eventually, right? Am I looking at something like Be3 later?
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17. Ne2! looks like a good move, coming to some good squares on the kingside. it provokes Black to play the possibly weakening ...g6 before it's really necessary. I'm not sure what the best way to take advantage of this is though, if you should still go 19. Ng3 or if there is something better, it's not easy for the knight to reach g5 and if you play f3 to hold the e-pawn it won't get any easier.
I don't know why 19...a5, if I was going to lash out a pawn it would be the b-pawn putting it on a light square and stopping your next move.
After 21. a4 it looks like you should be "better" since you are attacking something and he has two pieces defending it. However he has no other weaknesses and the pawn structure is totally symmetrical, with opposite colour bishops and pawns starting to get blocked on the colour of their own bishops. Also you can't attack f7 any more, the knight on g3 is now looking kind of silly just defending e4. So I'd say this position is totally drawn.
Probably. Of course a "totally drawn position" doesn't usually mean a draw, at my level. Someone wins about 95%+ of the games I play, lol. Silly tactics
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Then you both shuffle around your pieces a bit, this is good because you give him the opportunity to make a mistake, and he certainly seems to play aimlessly. Maybe he has to be a little careful and Qe7 is also a mistake, because Qg4 looks very strong, your Q is going to penetrate to the 7th no matter what (if 26...Nf6? Nf5+ Kf8 Nxe7 Nxg4 Nc8! wins). I think he has to go 26...Kf8 Qc8+ Qe8 but then Qb7! and White must be on top, after Bc5 you have the idea of b4 creating a passed a-pawn (Ne2-c1-d3 looks tempting but I think Nf6 would force your knight to go back to the e-pawn). If Firebird thinks it's OK maybe there is some flaw in my logic (don't have an engine on this computer) but for a human, I'd rather play almost anything else rather than 25... Qe7. I think I'd like Bc5 with ideas of bringing the Queen to the d-file.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, your intuition is right. The mistake of his that I was referring to is Qe7, at which point Qg4 does give me a better than 1.00 edge in Firebird's estimation. He doesn't have to immediately drop the queen, but that's not the point, Qe7 was where the game swung for the first time.
As for the piece shuffling, my initial plan was to try to get my queen behind the b-pawn and aim for a b4 break. Once it was set up though, I re-evaluated and decided it didn't really do anything good for me, so I played Qd1 just to keep his queen tied to the bishop. And he blundered on the next move and then again much worse on the move following, and that was that.
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It's very easy to play a "tactically perfect" game when your opening seems to lead to such sterile positions, in the end you got lucky that your opponent made such a horrible blunder. I think if you had played a move other than Bf4 you would have had a more interesting game and he would have had many many more chances to make a mistake, based on this game you are clearly better than him so you should be looking to put him in those positions.
Yeah, if I manage to play a more complex game that is still free of major tactical blunders I'll definitely post it. In the meantime though, this is all I've got. Thanks for the input!