Eliminating the Opening

Here is a game from the 2008 National Open, GM Nakamura - NM Santalla with full annotations and commentary:

In this game we saw white employ a very interesting strategy in the beginning of the game. He chose to just play some very slow and solid developing moves and avoided any time of standard opening position and opening theory. This seemed to give white the psychological edge throughout the game and eventually black gave in to the pressure and made a decisive mistake to give white a winning position. Sometimes the opening stage and opening knowledge is not the most important factor. This game shows that it is more important to know how to play an overall good chess game and not just specialize and know more than your opponent in the opening.