A Tale Of Two Cities - Mine Burned Down!

I almost never see opposite side castling, within the 900-1100 pool. My opponent's city was on the upper west side, and mine was on the lower east side, and it burned all the way to the ground. My king went from safely castled to stripped naked. 100 percent vulnerability.

You can ignore my poor opening play, as well as the last death blows. This is the analysis/tips I am most interested in:

1. What are some basic strategic ideas for opposite side castling?

2. How should I use my queenside pawns? Do they march down the west side without escort and just knock on the castle wall?  

Thanks for any help in advance. 

After just 15 moves, I didn't know what to do. Should I push my queenside pawns some more? Do my pieces need to shift more to the queenside? What files should my rooks be placed on?

The game.

In race situations with opposite side castling, you simply must spend each move efficiently throwing the kitchen sink at the enemy king.  If you must play a defensive move to cover your own king, only do so if you calculate a forced win for your opponent that occurs FASTER.

Pawn-storming the enemy king with pieces behind them is usually the key ... I've noticed that it often becomes a deadly game of chicken, where both sides go nuts on each other's king and suddenly one side hesitates and wastes too many moves on defense (that were not analytically warranted) and usually ends up getting crushed.  

This is usually the case when a player prefers to lazily hand-wave a defense rather than calculate it out to see if that move is really necessary (instead of continuing his own attack)

Update: This caveman "chaaaarge!!!" strategy is so effective that if you are down material, castling on opposite sides may even be encouraged if you can get more pieces + pawns on the enemy king before he can to yours.

Hey Musika.  At move 15 you have so much space advantage on the queen side it is just fantastic.  Why didn't you play 16 b4.  Also the Black queen is in front of king making suitable for some tactical play, pin it and win it!  Moreover with that dark square bishop at a3 moving it to point to the long castle would have been a good idea because then pretty much you have all your pieces coordinated with space advantage, a total winnning position.  Keep in mind that long castle is harder to defend because it uses more territory.  Cheers.

Edit: at 17 if you knew you didn't want to trade your dark bishop then I think 16 c5 would have been a better for the purpose of keeping the other fella's bishop less usefull.  But quite frankly I would have gone for the dark bishop trade when he offered because it would take several moves for you to make yours better and now at 15 or 16 we want to pawn storm

I should have played 16.b4, that's for sure. Thanks for the feedback, to you and Shivsky!

Hey Musika.  You should have played 16. b4 not 16. b4?

16.b4??