Refacing An Opponent

I had decided earlier in the week what I wanted to write about this weekend. I had played a game in one of the first tournaments I played in where my opponent let me play my favorite sicilian line as black, but then played a response I had never seen at a certain point! He was rated much higher than me at the time and I was disoriented and lost the game. I went home, analyzed the game, and learned the line. A few months later we played again, he played white again, we played the same line again, and this time I was able to draw!

I wanted to go over these games again thouroughly and show the importance of studying your previous games, especially ones that you had lost. Unfortunately I couldn't find the games in my assortment of recorded games and when I looked on my external drive where I thought I had saved all the games I put in my computer I couldn't find any games at all! Sadly this means I probably lost a good third of the games that I've played, but almost all of them are from the beginning of my USCF playing. I found another set of games but the circumstances are slightly differnet, I faced the same player but this time with colors reversed. Here is the first game. 

A good example for the beginner to show that gaining a little material does not mean you're winning the game, and how a coordinated bishop pair can work very effectively. I tried to keep inmind the flavor of the game and the kind of position my opponent seemed to like when we played again a few months later. 

Victory is almost never sweeter than when it is against an opponent you had lost to before :)