A game I should have won.

Here is a fun blitz game I played using the Reti - which I'm still just practicing with.

I had total control early on and somehow lost it. What do you guys think?

here is my thoughts on your 32nd move

Study tactics and you'll win more games.

Stop giving pieces for free.

The game is a mess.

Not saying this as a bad thing. It's just that,

You went from being much worse after the opening (after 9.Bg2, white's position is really bad), to being completely and utterly winning to being winning with some minimal effort to being completely and utterly winning again to being lost...

In other words, you could have just discarded the opening you were trying to use in the original post. It's meaningless.

(As for the opening, once you played 4.Qa4+, not only weren't you in the reti anymore, you weren't in any known opening. It's not just because it's a rare variation. Qa4 is just a bad nonsensical move).

You didn't gain control of the game because of the opening....you were in a horrible position. You gained it because your opponent blundered with 9...Nh5), and you lost it because of tactical blunders.

Too many of those were in this game.

16.Nd6, 18.0-0 (should have been answered by 18...Bxd2), 35.Ng6 (should have been answered by 35...Rg8), and 36.Nxf8 (why? this is where your position becomes totally lost for the first time in the game)

These were all blunders that white made in the first half of the game...

Whatever opening you may or may not use has absolutely no effect on your results as long as you throw away pieces so often. concentrate on tactical training and basic opening and middlegame principles rather than specific openings.

Most important thing at your level is: tactics, tactics, tactics, tactics and tactics.

If you stop blundering away things all the time, and can spot it most of the time when your oppnents do, you'll just beat all the sub 1500 players without any problems whatsoever.

I'm just wondering why did you keep playing after you lost your advanced pawn and had only a bishop for his queen... 

The only relavent thing  I will say about the opening you played is that 4.Qa4+ simply violates the principles of the opening - do NOT get the queen out early. You'll just have to shuffle it around as your opponent threatens it and gains a lead in development.

After 9.Bg2 Nc6 is simple and already black is winning a central pawn (can you see why / how? these are the things that are much more important than the opening itself).

Good luck with improving your tactics:)

thanks for all the advice. i play the 3 free puzzles on chess.com every day & i work alot on chesstempo.com to improve tactics.

I don't claim to know the Reti insinde & out, since this game I've heard instead of bringing the queen out in a traditional Reti (i guess its trad, probably not) its better to go g3 and set up a fianchetto if black doesn't play 4. ... d5xc4

this is all according to a youtube video so I'm probably way off

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHDlA3nCyl0

Well, if black doesn't play dxc4, Qa4+ just doesn't make sense anymore. Bringing the queen out early is usually a negative thing. Of course, you will happily do it if you're doing enough positive things. in the dxc4 line, once the c4 pawn is gone, white has a clear central advantage...

That said, EVEN if black takes, Qa4 is still not white's only move (not even the most popular. for example, e3 is common too. Of course you hardly see that line (black taking dxc) anymore for some reason.

That's the problem with learning opening theory before you understand tactics/strategy/principles very well:

Things you see as common or possible in one line can be totally wrong (or right...) even if you only change something very small about the position. You can't think: "I've seen it played in the other line, it must be ok here...".

That's where your chess understanding should kick in. Without it, theory can be more damaging than helpful.

Besides, you seem to give way too much time for openings...

Just for reference, when I play 1200 (usually teaching games), I sometimes give them a positionally nearly won game from the start (for example they start with d4, e4, Nf3, Nc3 and sometimes Bc4 already played), and they still lose. Despite the fact that that's a better position than you can get in any opening. The opening is just not relavent.

More than that, in ~1200 play, the loser always loses because of tactical blunders.

Who came out of the opening better has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's not that I'm saying that you should focus on tactics and middlegames (and basic endgames) and spend just a bit about openings.

I'm saying that studying theory at this point is a 100% waste of time.

I know it's the easiest thing to learn (you only need to read what others have done and their explanations...no hard thinking involved), which is why many people fall into this trap.

easy - but not effective below a certain level. (even at around my level, it's less effective than other things... but it gets useless below some point).

Also, studying openings makes you look at opening mistakes in games such as this one, which have nothing to do with the result of the game.

Hope to see you at the 2000s one day :)