Lost after slight advantage..

A quick note on how I thought the game went: after he played c3 (instead of the "standard" c4) I wanted to launch a minority attack on the queenside (b5, b4`, bxc3, prying open the diagonal, also Rfc8 and maybe Rab8), but after he took my knight and my bishop my structure was more apt for a central breakthrough. I was very happy with my position up to 23 ... e4 ("mobile pawn center" is the technical term?), but then I realised that my d5 pawn now needed constant supervision so I didn't know how to carry on. Nc4 was a pretty trick and it got me psychologically. I can still get a rook and a knight and perhaps a slight initiative for my queen but we didn't have much time so I just tried to play it simple. Then I let him exchange queens and it was curtains. I'm interested in what you think of my attacking plan and why don't you think it really came through? What should I do differently next time? Thank you

Your opponent played the opening horribly, doing exactly what Black should try to avoid against the Dragon (trading off Light bishops, developing dark bishop to g6 instead of the much stronger e3). Also, he should have played 6. Nc3 instead of Re1. I don't believe you capitalized on those inaccuracies well enough, and even allowed the painful Yugoslav-esque Bh6. 27...Rxb2 was also a mistake, but hey, everyone makes mistakes. I make them in all of my games, the main reason why I still suck despite my knowledge of theory.

The problem here is that your pawn centre is not really mobile at all. Instead after 25. Ne3 white has safely blocked these pawns and already holds an advantage imo as those very pawns are now targers for an attack. It's quite possible that there are improvements for black between moves 15-22 but I'm not completely sure about the evaluation of the position after 15... e5 either as white can quickly create pressure on the centre.

The morale here seems to be that this kind of pawn advance (d5) in the centre has to be evaluated very carefully as the advanced pawns can just easily turn out to be weak as a source of strength.

by the way, my houdini 1.03 for double core, which works very well (I mean high depth) tells me I had a little advantage (-0.1 or -0.2 depends when) more or less throughout the opening, but Crafty 23.01 that I have in my ChessBase Light says White had +0.4 or so. Whom should I believe in these cases?