Breaking Through?
Finally, an interesting game (and win!) after a little bad patch. My opponent played a kind of fixed setup opening beginning with a series of small pawn moves - I run into players using this approach in plenty of online games, but don't always manage to break through…
I suppose I know to grab the center and continue with development, but honestly didn't find it too easy to find a safe way to open the position and take advantage of those pluses. I caught a few breaks with slow and weakening moves from Black, and seemed to come up with a better position after trading some pawns.
Now, the plan of moving my queen through e1 to the open f-file looks pretty obvious in hindsight, but the best feeling I got from playing this game came from actually having a plan like that to execute, rather than just reacting to my opponent's moves. I suppose having the time to cook up those plans is one of the luxuries of having a big space advantage. After trading queens, I was left with a strong rook attacking several undefended pieces on the sixth row and then doubled the rooks on the file, leading to a nice combination.
What I want to know is about 12...c5 - is this the right way to break up black's structure? Is it even the right idea to try to open holes in a game like this?
Here's the game with some notes on my thinking through the game.