Introducing 1. d4

I am generally an e4 player, but slogging through Closed Sicilians all the time is getting to me. Seeing that my opponent played the Sicilian in the few games I found, I decided it was time to switch and settled on Trompowsky which I always thought was excellent (1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5).

This was the fifth round of a six-round G/120 swiss at the Pittsburgh Chess Club (I posted my narrow 4th round escape last week). My opponent happened to be the 2nd seed and current leader with a perfect score. This was not the best pairing given that I was stuck at 2.5 with a bunch of other Class A players (all playing each other!) and needed a win to stay in contention for prizes.

This is the longest I've ever taken for the early moves (although could be expected due to my lack of familiarity with the opening). Nevertheless my game began unraveling around move 20 (I had 40 minutes to my opponent's 27) and I never recovered. I thought I had promising attacking chances out of the opening and was pretty disappointed.