Ouch!

See right away, I'm not sure why Black plays 8. ... a6? as there is no immediate and/or future Queenside threat coming on b5. The Queenside Knight would probably rather head towards d2 and the light Bishop is already off of the f1-a6 diagonal. I guess if Black wants to gain space on the Queenside by playing b5 in the future, it's okay, but more than anything, this is a time where it looks like White gains a free move.

8. ... Nxg4! looks pretty good. And so does 9. ... Nxg4! and and . . . I'm glad you played 11. ... Nxg4! :p

I'm just giving you a hard time :)

I'm late today, so I'll try to comment more soon.

Bulla,

Very nice game. You're game seems to be getting strong; we'll see how the ratings go.

As you said, that since his Queen is trapped, after 16. ... Nxf3 desperado Knight, 17. Qxf3! g4! 18. Rxh3 gxf3+ 19. Kxf3 and White is the one who is up a pawn (or at least now only down 1 pawn since you were down 2 earlier). Actually, now that I think about it, 14. ... Nxh2!? doesn't look so bad since after the proper exchange, material is dead even.

Frank713

Why did you play 20. Nxf5?! The Knight wasn't hanging. That makes TWO desperado Knight moves in one game. Though the first one was very nice, it was the second that led to the series of moves that ultimately lost the game.

I think Frank played 20.Nxf5 in hopes of creating 3 passed pawns.  If it wasn't for the fork 22. Qf3, I might've had some trouble stopping those pawns after he brought his other rook to the kingside.

Brandon

I actually looked at 17.Qxf3 during the game but I didn't really want to trade off my queen.  I realized that I would still be down a point after playing 17.Rxh4, but looking at the pawn structure I felt that I would have a bigger advantage keeping my queen on board.  After I exchanged my bishop for his knight, black's bishop pair would have a difficult time trying to play through all those pawns.