Looking for some HELP

7. exf6 doesn't work out well; bg3 is the move there, but its too complicated to explain if I'm going on so lets leave it
9. bb5 is quite a poor move, dooming your bishop to be a big pawn.  
13.  why on earth would he take the pawn?  you are playing hope chess here.  After 13. ... h3, the gpawn will fall eventually.  Or black just ignores the useless weakening move and goes about his business.

19.  b4 weakens the cpawn and doesn't do anything useful since the black bishop will remain active and powerful.

20.  bxd7 is indeed not helpful, but the bishop is weak enough and your position difficult enough that ideas are hard to come by.  Stockfish prefers (among others) c4, though the pawn will be hard to recover after pxp, rc1, rc8 and black is still doing very well.  

21. 0-0-0 -- at this point, castling doesn't serve a point and kd2 is best, centralizing the king and linking the rooks;

24. nf4, yes, this is bad.  Permanent weaknesses late in the game.  More than enough to lose since your two rooks are not coordinating and are no more active than his.  I agree the game is depressing after this and will stop here.  

Thanks a lot, I appreciate the help.  21.Kd2 would of been a million times better I agree! 

Hello mister userfriendly2.

A short message from Riverlandjack.

I wonder why you annotated this game. Because it was not an spectacular game. You played many games on this chess site.So why did you choose this one. Maybe there is a special reason or did you roll the dices?

Greetings from Riverlandjack. 

Bobby maybe you will publish your best game on this blog. A lot of people are interested in "best games "

Well just a proposal.

Greetings from Riverlandjack. 

Hi Riverlandjack,

Yeah I agree with you that more people are interested in "best games" but I find I learn a lot more from my bad games which is what I am interested in. I don't really care to show off my best games when I'm looking for help to improve because usually I played well and made very few mistakes although you can certainly learn from winning games too.

Thanks

I think this game was a good choice. There's a lot you can learn from it. I assume you posted it because you wanted to learn and improve.

After Black's 5. … h6 move, the most common line for White is to retreat 6. Bd2 Bxc3 7. bxc3 Ne4 and now 8. Qg4 begins strong pressure on the K-side.

Exactly, I know there are no dazzling tactics or dubious sacrifices that failed on the last part of the combination. It's pretty straightforward game and I done my best to highlight exactly what was going through my mind at the time right up to the point when I realised I was lost. A better player would of seen it sooner and possibly avoided or switched up strategy like @blueemu says. I did actually learn quite a bit from this game even though it was a "quiet" one.

Well, one thing that went wrong for you in this game is that you stumbled into the MacCutcheon Variation of the French Defense, a very complex and difficult line for both sides. You clearly didn't know what to do--and there's nothing wrong with that! It happens to all of us. After a game like this, you should make a point of learning what the opening was, and what some of the important ideas are. This is one of the best ways to improve.

Totally agree Laskersnephew and thanks for the helpful info - I'm playing a while and i'd like to think i'm very good at certain parts of the game but my approach to openings was all wrong - trying to learn variation after variation by brute repetition.. Totaly counterproductive because if you come out of theory you're screwed. The middle-game ideas that evolve from an opening are totally the way to go. 

6. Ndb5 is far more common (and also a better move) than 6. Nb3.

I just had a look there, I did see that as an option because I did have to move the knight somewhere but I seen 6...a6 and just completely fobbed it off as a bad move. I've looked at it deeper and I can say it is actually a very good move - It's quite natural I think to play 6...a6 to kick the horse but then 7.Nd6+ Bxd6 8.Qxd6 completely ties up Blacks position or at least makes it difficult..

Yes, a typical continuation would be:

It looks like you are better in strategical / positional understanding than tactical. It also displays your lack of opening knowledge. Had you known the theory of French defence opening, you would have been able to direct your plan more clearly and it would save you from all those extra efforts at the beginning. You need to work on tactics and opening theory.        

Thanks Ancient-Bot. I usually hear the opposite, that I'm better tactically than positional-wise but you are most certainly correct about the french defence, perhaps the lack of theory on the opening hampered my tactical vision. I'd like to say i'm going to head off and do loads of work on the french but i'm totally into the colle at the moment and I just don't have time for an extra opening right now - but it's defo on my list. Thanks again

The typical continuation of blueemu is main line Sveshnikov .

I have written a blog post about your game. You can find it here. I hope you find the analysis useful.