Learning from the chess.com lessons

Really enjoyed this game and feel it really shows the benefit of taking advantage of the many chess.com lessons. I used to be very cautious about destroying the structure of my kings side pawns because invariably this is the side I castled. In this game, against a player 250 points higher than me (1180 vs 1440 - approx), rather than a passive response to 3.. Bg4 I went aggressive and responded with h3, g4, f5 pushing the black Bishop away and threatening an early trap of the Bishop, but also knowing this would likely result in a queens side castling. 

I felt at this stage I had forced black to lose some tempi and a lot of kings side space, while also still having decent control of the centre. I then elected to ultimately gambit a pawn with in the 9th move for continued development and allowing me to exploit the space I had. I also knew it generated threats I could possibly later use on the g and h files.

12 qe2 was less than ideal but I needed to give myself freedom to castle and couldn't do that with the queen in the way, qa4 probably could have resulted in b5 and would then have had to retreat back to the starting square. 

By the 14th moves I feel I had enough compensation for being 2 Pawns down and had the outpost for my Knight on e5 in my back pocket.

I did get a little bogged down at this point and lost a bit of the initiative, however overall I never felt I was behind, just probably even overall.

By move 30 I was definitely bogged down but the pawn structure, rook position, and what I felt was a safe king vs less space and a more vulnerable king meant I was still the better placed player, I just needed to figure out how to exploit my position.

move 37 e4 I feel was my move of the game and the one that proved this.. what looks to be a useable but no more than adequate move, I knew was going to be followed up with a 3 way knight fork, and ultimately turning the game into a material advantage for me.

Not sure what black was thinking with 42.. Kh6, but it gave me a pin I could exploit to blow open that side of the board and from then on it was just trying to get the win. I may have been able to win more quickly from that point but I still managed it in what I feel was one of my best games.

https://www.chess.com/game/daily/966703285?move=7

Cool nice game

( i read all of this text )

Let 's play