What a fight. Unfortunately, your opponent continued far too long. But maybe there was time trouble involved.
Dismantling the London (again)
Sort:
The time control was 75 min + 30 sec increment but no bonus after move 40. I was in some time trouble rather early in the game, down to 10 minutes around move 25, hence the draw offer after ...Ra2, but ended the game at about 7 minutes, so I practically almost played the rest of the game on increment and didn't feel uncomfortable, but of course didn't look for the most elegant finish.
However, my opponent seems to have hoped on me being in a haste and set up a stalemate trap around move 58, but after I didn't step into it, he could have resigned.
The game is actually an interesting lecture in time management with "short long time controls", which seem to be increasingly common. And I recognized another chess psychology problem which I call "sympathetic speeding up". My opponent started blitzing after move 25 despite having lots of time left and still had almost 30 minutes when he was checkmated, but, as in real life, you can't take the time with you once it's over. You have to invest it, and this means explicitly before the game is decided - otherwise it's a bit like "I am not moving this piece, but spare it for later". In the very moment when he should have taken this one deep think to find Rb8!, he just panicked.
Of course, there was a bit of a risk involved in investing that much time early in the game, but it paid off. It helps to play blitz and rapid a lot in order to manage this time management strategy, though.
Here`s another amateur league game with the Modern against the London (I recently learned the term "Pensioneers` London", Rentnerlondon in German), this time with a very early h3 by White which took a lot of venom out of the ...e5 push and irritated my a bit in the opening. The take home-message is, however, that Black seems to be able to get away with almost everything as long as they keep the London bishop under control. Enjoy!