Chess Simul

I just attended a chess simul which was held at Maggie Walker's Governor Simul in Henrico Virginia. I was playing against GM Sergey Erenburg and i missed a tactic which would have given me -5.8 advantage. My intuition was telling me to calculate the sac but my pragmatic side said to play it safe. This is the game I want to share with you. Although this guy is in the 100th percentile of all chess players, I am so angry i missed the sac. I blundered 3 first place tourneys, failed to qualify for magnus event, and now i missed this sac because of my pragmatic side. I hope you guys can find this brilliant sac (without using engine)

Well played early game I thought. I wouldn't worry too much about a missed sac. It's generally not a good idea to play them on intuition. If you calc it out and shows an advantage, play it. If not I might look for something better.

There's an excellent video on youtube about Kasparov calculating. Not a bad example to follow.

In the posted game at 19.g3 you look better. White's pawns are weak Qside, K & R need a tempo, and plenty of light square holes with potential. Plus you have a protected passed pawn. Could be a good time to come up with a plan. Given White's light square weakness getting rid of his KB on d3 is worth considering plus gains a tempo. Maybe something like 19...Bxd3 20. Qxd3 Rac8 21. Bd4 Nf5 looking to exchange with advantage and then targeting the Qside pawns might be really good for Black. Plus the more pieces exchanged the stronger the passer. 

Thanks for your input. i was considering Bxd3 but i wanted him to take first. Ng4 was a great move because it exploits the pin and if he takes the knight with his queen, it will more or less be better. After ng4, I was happy with my position but after bd4 i completely missed rxf2 followed by rf8. Literraly all my pieces worked together to make this sac work. My mind kept telling me to play rxf2 followed by rf8 but i had no idea why. I was not even calculating this idea against the gm. The idea just came to me

Since I play the french, its interesting to me how the GM got to such a lousy position in the middlegame.  I'll try to look at theory later, or at least my Watson book, and figure it out.  Do you know?

Looks like the novelty is 11. . . . f6.  About 30 games at 365chess.com with other moves, most won by white.  Looks to me like white's mistake was playing nc5 before castling.  Strange mistake for a gm to make, its not like the sequence you played was anything but natural.  

well it was a simul so it def wasn't how his strength should be valued. After a3 in previous moves i thought cxd was the accurate line based on what dereque kelly presented on youtube. 

Cxd isnt one of the main moves per 365chess, and Watson didnt even cover it in the (older) edition of his book I have, but maybe its trending.

It doesnt look like your novelty of 11. . . . f6 was bad to me, but I think white would have gotten a nice game by taking care of basics and castling before nc5.