anyone's thoughts on a game I lost

That's the gambit. The Halloween Gambit is a dubious opening in which White sacrifices a knight in order to push Black around. If Black plays correctly, often giving back the material, Black usually gets an advantage. Defending well in time pressure is difficult if you are not prepared. It's useful in blitz and even rapid. I wouldn't play it in a slower time control.

He should've fight on, but I understand that he didn't like the position. His king is unsafe but I think that both would benefit in playing out at least for a while. I played 1.... e5 as a kid, since I restarted playing last year, I play Sicilian for variety and because open Sicilian is a challenge with both colors and can be an interesting long term project.  

The Sicilian was my main reply to 1.e4 1977-2003. The last few years of the twentieth century, I became enamored with the Sveshnikov and Kalashnikov variations--both feature an early ...e5 and a hole on d5. The problem I ran into was I was spending too much time memorizing lines and failing to understand the positions. When my opponents took me out of book, I usually blundered.

When I switched to the French, my results improved. My approach to opening study emphasized understanding of the ideas more than learning lines. Of course, after tens of thousands of games, I have learned a lot of lines pretty well too.

Now, I often get to the Sicilian Kan, Paulsen, or Taimanov when White does not play 2.d4 against my French.

here's a game I played, and lost somewhat miserably. I'm not familiar with the opening my opponent used, I was fiddling with a Dutch opening for the first time and didn't really know what I was doing. somewhere in the middle game I feel like we were in a position I think might be described as " sharp. " in analysis there was a whole bunch of possible moves that were all blunders and only a few good ones. there was one point where if I had calculated correctly and made the pawn break I think it would have decided the game in my favor, but I was preoccupied with keeping the queen and dark bishop penned in and miscalculated the position. any thoughts on that game would be most interesting to me and appreciated 

Just do better next time

Personally, I disaree with nklristic who dishes the opening. Openings don't matter. Blundering pieces is the only thing that matters.

As for the game, there were 3 moments that are worth reviewing.

On move 19, white hangs a piece to a combination, and you win it. Great! You are clearly winning.

On move 23, you blunder the piece back for no reason. Why? I don't get it.

On move 33, you blunder the rook, and game over.

It seems like that you play pretty well, then you start hanging pieces. Were you in time trouble? If yes, then you should stop getting into time trouble on move 23.

I don't dish it, I dish when someone starting out don't follow principles if he can help it. I stated some instances when he and his opponent could follow principles a bit better. Not following principles leads to blunders as well, and being lost very early. Of course, concrete lines do not matter much , I just speak by experience that playing with the f pawn when below 1000 can lead to some bad things - here it didn't.  

Not playing with quick development can lead to some quick losses, because some defenses are a bit more difficult to handle.

 A year ago for instance, I had a game where black tried queenside fianchetto defense, I think that it is called Owen defense. I ended up pushing his pieces out of the middle of the board and capturing his queen. The game was won in around 10 moves just because he tried to play a bit unusual opening as if he has some pawns in the middle. You could say that he lost because he blundered, but he blundered because of now following principles, choosing a bit unusual opening and not handling it with care.

The point is to show some general plan to follow in the opening that can help him out in games. Of course, when we hang pieces or a checkmate, everything else becomes meaningless, but following principles is a good idea for novice players.

Magipi: move 23 was a total miscalculation. I saw the threat to the knight and for some reason it seemed like counter attacking the rook was a good idea, obviously not since he could just exchange pieces and win the knight, but that was faulty thinking at the time. On move 33, that was a sheer blender, no explanation for that. I often find I tend to get tense in the mid game and not know what to do, I think often during those times is when I see myself miscalculating and hanging pieces. Sometimes it's because I'm running out of time, but that's only happened to me twice.

Nklristic I thought had some good criticism on my opening. I thought the Dutch was a good one to try because it's so similar to the King's Indian which I have played more. I'd never used it before and I didn't know how much trouble at f pawn would cause. He pointed out quite helpfully later in the game where that continued to add complications to my position. Frankly it added complications from the beginning because white was able to comfortably put pressure on the d5-g8 diagonal  and I felt the need to continue to reinforce the d pawn it to protect my king, highlighting the issue of king safety he also pointed out.  I don't think I'll play dutch again for a while.

Forgive the dictation errors

To be fair, you actually handled the position well out of the opening. You had a good position and you didn't get into trouble due to  that f pawn at all. That f pawn could've been a nice resource to open things up, in the middle game when it was up the board. It could exchange itself (and some other stuff on the board), simplify and have an easier task.

But that comes with experience. You will have some losses where you were winning, we all do. At certain point when you are up in material you will automatically ask yourself 2 questions:

1. Do I have the means to outright attack and finish the game that way (or win further material without a risk)? If you do, great. If not, then the next question is:

2. How do I simplify in order to win the game with the least effort?

Because when you are up in material, simplifying can be a good strategy if you can't finish the game or win further material in some easy way. But that takes time. Even 2 000+ rated people can mess up "already won" position. Yesterday I won a long (60|0) game where my opponent was almost out of time, I was a pawn up and had a protected passed pawn in a heavy pieces endgame (even though it is just a pawn the engine showed something like +4 because it is completely winning, and we both knew it during the game). At a certain point the opponent threatened checkmate and I almost didn't see it.

Luckily I was able too stay vigilant, exchange queens and he had to exchange a pair of rooks in order to not be more than a pawn down and I won. But there are certainly many games where I manage to lose such a game in some way.

"anyone's thoughts on a game I lost"

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As White - play the London System / or Jobava-Rapport System - whatever you find more interesting.

As Black:

Against e4 - The French Defense.

Against d4 - The Budapest Gambit.

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Godspeed

I hate you.

lol

In my opinion, a novice player shouldn't play London as a beginner. Closing your eyes and playing similar moves every time as white is neither fun nor that great for learning.  It is just a false sense of control, without exposing yourself to various responses by black.

It is a viable option, but if someone wants to change what they are playing afterwards the transition is a bit more difficult because you are actually changing 50% of your repertoire. For someone who tried out different stuff and knows a lot of other things, this is not a problem obviously.

If a beginner starts with London and wants to change things up, he will find out that he has no experience in other positions and it will be pretty difficult to play something else without sacrificing a lot performance wise. The transition will be pretty bumpy in that case.