A plan worked out against the Reti

Hi there,

In this thread I'd like to share a game whith you guys which I'm slightly proud of. As a more or less intermediate player, I'm usually struggling through the opening resulting in a sound or even a little better position as my oponent and stumble through the middle game trying to improvise some useful combinations forcing a material advantage exploitable within the end game or even a mating attack.

This game I'm presenting here was a little diferent, it felt like it all came together, I had a startegical plan from the very first moves leading to a great positional plus and finally to a beautiful mating combination. 

The opening was a Reti, I think, a little bit like a Queens Indian but in an inconventional move order, so I'm not sure how to classify it properly. From Black's first move on, b7, it was clear he planned a queen side fianchetto and I had to prepare for a heavy fight about e4. So my plan was to build a strong center starting with d4 and e3 and prepare the push to e4 with my pieces. If it worked out, Black's queens bishop would be cut off and had a hard time to get into the game. Nothing unusual, so far, but it worked out very nicely. 

Guided by this plan I was able to build a strong moveable center which cut off not only the defender's queens bishop, but all of his minor pieces from the king side. To prepare an attack on the dark monarch I even played a move only to provoke a weakness in his castle which provided tactical motivs which indeed came to an execution in the mating attack.  

Enough said, here's the game! 

Thanks for following me so far, I hope you enyoid it and I'm looking forward to your comments!

Cheers,

Spielkalb

Well done, that does look like a rather neat game all the way through to 17... Bxe1. I'm still learning my openings so it's nice to have a narrated game to browse through with some interesting positional analysis. More of this please and I'll follow you.

Thanks a lot, mate! This encourages to post some more stuff. Probably not a showcase next time, but a loss or draw on the forums "Game Analysis".

Hey pfren, thanks for your input, much appreciated! 

According to your analysis my "lemon" tactics only worked out because my opponent didn't find the refutation after 16.e5, am I correct?

What I do not comletely uderstand is why you deem 18.Bxh6 as a critical Blunder. (You wrote 17.Bxh6 but it was the 18th move, but we're talking about the same position, aren't we?) 18...Nf6 wouldn't  cover the threatening mate Qxg7, would it?

I think pfren was saying that 17.Bxh6! should have been played instead of 17.Qg4. He scores your move -- 17.Qg4?? -- a blunder and offers 17...Nf6 as black's correct response to Qg4. I've looked this over and after much calculating and chin stroking I've concluded that, yep -- whaddya know -- the IM is right! Honestly 17...Nf6 leads to quite a sharp position which isn't the easiest to calculate continuations from. The best I can find for white is down the exchange without compensation -- perhaps pfren saw even better for Black, but if so I didn't find it. 

Thanks, now I got it! 

I like the possibility of 15 e5 as well.

I also fail to see the resemblance of that opening to the Reti.

I simply trusted the clasification of my chess program, SCID, to call it a Reti. Maybe some weired move transpositions, don't know.

Well, that's a stretch...but okay.