Spanish Torturing Myself

This is the first in a series of articles where I analyze my games and share my analysis and thoughts with you. Although it is highly personal in terms of my analysis and how I see the game, I hope that you will find it instructive and perhaps entertaining as well.

In this particular game, my opponent and I play about 14 moves of theory, I get to a position that I was not comfortable with. I play a couple natural looking moves, but then find myself in a position where my pieces are awkwardly placed. Fortunately, my opponent wasn't able to capitalize on his position advantage and I was slowly able to equalize. Unfortunately, all of my efforts spent a lot of time on the clock, and in time trouble, I blundered and soon had to resign.

When I was analyzing this game, I found a few games with the idea of Ne3, b3, and Bb2. Here is one played by GM Maksim Vavulin. His opponent is rated over 300 points below him, but that doesn't take away from GM Vavulin's clean and efficient play in this line. In particular, notice how the bishop's placement on b2 (as opposed to e3) exerts pressure down the center through to Black's kingside position.

I hope you enjoyed my analysis. Every game contains lessons if we take the time and effort to find them. This particular game was painful, but held many lessons that will serve me in the future.