24.Qa5 was not a good move. You went wrong here in my opinion. 24. Rb1 is better.
Me, a National Master, and my first annotation
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I expected a long time control OTB game, not an online blitz game. I feel so deceived. 
uhohspaghettio wrote:
You should have moved 15. c5, to block off his black bishop... save you a pawn... keep your pawn structure etc..
14....c6 was a mistake by him. If you go Nxe4, he can put his bishop on d5. If you play Nc3 he can easily pin your knight with his black-squared bishop put to b4. He can also put his queen on e7 as a furthur attack of the knight that's being pinned, then what for white? He can play f5 to attack the knight furthur or ruin your pawn structure for your castling side (after what you did at the other side). He can check with the queen on h4. He can also play Bb4, afterwards c3 attacking the bishop and king if your knight is gone from there or you didn't put it there (very easily pinned earlier)... christ it was game over if he had just taken the pawn.
I thought 14...c6 was good. 13...c4 seemed odd, but after that 14...c6 was definitely the way to go.
14...dxc4 is kinda nuts... even if it does win a pawn he's obliterated his own pawn structure. Nxe4 Bb5 with the pin but Nbd2 protects it without any threat of further pins.
Even if Qe7 Qf3 ties up white too much then just don't recapture immediatly and play Nd2 straight away and white can even screw around a few more moves with 0-0 and Qe2 even and blacks pawns are doomed, no hurry. Far from winning for black taking the pawn on move 14 seems loosing...
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As for white's game,14.d4 to keep his bishop bad isn't a bad idea in principal, but it's already a bad bishop, if he played d4 you can take his pawn in e4. In the game it actually did more to block your own bishop 
If he had captured instead (13...cxd4) he gets to remove his doubled pawn and open a diagonal for his dark bishop and it gives you no pluses, so more than hurting him, it seems it even helps black a little.
I would have considered 15. Ba3 to trade off your problem bishop (maybe too early to do this), but your move 15.Nd2 is interesting, the idea is to go ahead and trade on d5 and push c4 right away which gets rid of one of your doubled pawns and highlights his weakness on e4 so your move is good... In any case 16.a3 was bad for a number of reasons. You've given black a fixed target on a3 and tied your bad bishop to it's defense. Also another pawn on a dark square is just bad in principal, should be thinking about how to fix your bishop not put more pawns in it's way! :)
After 23...cxd5 look at your position. Your only piece that's in the game is your queen... your queen is the last piece you want to move here! With moves like Ra8 and Bd7-b5 black's going to dominate the queenside and infiltrate decisively. You should be sweating trying to figure out just how you're going to get your pieces active. Thankfully there are some good moves here. You'd love to play Bb4 (same idea as my suggestion on move 15) but also to push your pawn to c4 to get a passer, but most pressingly you need to get your rook on the queenside. Rb1 with Bb4 and c4 is a great plan for white.
25. g5 -- for a kingside attack? Remember attacks don't fall out of thin air -- you need some weaknesses or at least a preponderance of pieces on that side of the board to attack with, as it is you only have that knight on g3, a lone knight can't mate that's why it didn't work 
Good game though, it's neat he found it interesting :). It's always a thrill to get to play someone so much better, no embarrassment to loose, and you can only learn something.
Woah, cool down, neither of us is a GM here, I was just giving my opinion.
Ok so here are two diagrams, the first is is what I was looking at -- and checking it with my computer I admit it's flawed.
The second one is what the computer thinks, and of course is way different from what I saw, and at the end I don't even understand why it gives the evaluation it does... but anyway...
To be fair, this is what my computer thinks, the main line is an easy move we both missed which undoes the a pin -- the computer's recommended line is the sub variation.
You played a good game and weren't disgraced in the least, well done.
uhohspaghettio wrote:
No you are completely WRONG against orangehonda, wrong wrong wrong.
Look back at my original post, I did NOT miss the pin. I TOLD you about the bishop pin on that side. But if he moves Nbd2 instead of Nc3, then white can play c3. That's what you did, you moved Nbd2, the computer missed that!!!
What I mean is if white captures immediately (15. Nxe4) followed by Bd5 Nc3 Bb4 (yes, I know you saw Bb4) it seems we missed (at least I did) the move 17. 0-0 which undoes both the pin on the rook and king at the same time. My comment made after move 17. 0-0 was about move 17 not the Bb4 move.
But because I missed this move, I thought Nbd2 was better because, as you say, white can play c3 to undo the pin of Bb4. The computer disagrees with Nbd2 and in some variations uses h5 (which I don't quite understand... I mean, I see the weak color complex idea but still don't get it really...) to make the position equal.
Wait, about my last post, maybe it's not a color complex thing, h5 is just plain old opening lines... nvm.
Oh, now I see your post... you're right the diagram wasn't working, this is the first time I've seen it. I missed that the queen simply moves back with the threat of Nf6, I didn't understand why the check mattered at all, very good.
The final position would make a very difficult tactics problem indeed, If I had seen Qh5+ it would have been with the idea of Ng5 with a fork on f7 -- if black doesn't play Bf7 to block though the computer follows it up with f6 and wins tons of material somehow.
well, 1.f4 wasn't the best option there, but I won't go into that line. Seriously though, against an NM, the Bird's is just not going to work.
I'm just going to say a couple things now, with more in-depth responses to come tomorrow as I'll not be 2 am'd again.
@moopster -- I wasn't trying to play to his weaknesses, I was playing to my strengths -- the line I chose leads a lot of people to give the comment "interesting" or something similar. It's not one of the more popular lines, but I like it because it does the job for how I play chess normally.
As for 24. Qa5 and after, I was flying by the seat of my pants not to lose on time -- so I'm not too worried that I played poorly there. Yeah, there was some good solid poor play after that, but it's not a big worry for me as I wasn't able to give myself thinking time before each move. I think I might've taken 20 seconds from Qa5 to the end, with only a second or two left over.
I think around Bxa3 he commented something like "Space -- the final frontier."
HotFlow wrote:
Chances are that you'd get beaten by a NM no matter which opening you play, so it is good that you played an opening that you like in order to learn more about it.
Exactly! It was a very different game than most of the other one's I've played with similar lines.
tonydal wrote:
moopster wrote:
well, 1.f4 wasn't the best option there, but I won't go into that line. Seriously though, against an NM, the Bird's is just not going to work.
LOL
I still can't believe you won't play an unrated game against me using my 30 doller hand held chess computer with a TOP rating capability of only 1750!
uhohspaghettio wrote:
orangehonda, I think I'm looking at this position a lot more than you are and aside from that you're still not reading my posts fully.
orangehonda, I think I'm looking at this position a lot more than you are and aside from that you're still not reading my posts fully.
As I said already, if he moves Qh5+ then black should move. Fine, I said Kd8, make it Kd7 so he can't create complications with Ng5 and the possible fork.
I don't know when you would make f6 because it would just be met with Nxf6.
White is definitely down and never looked (to me) like not losing material. True that he can tease it around a bit more than what I thought at first, but he must be down material.... whenever you have a pin on a piece like that with a bishop and a major piece behind it and more moves to back it up, it's very unlikely you'll be able to get out of it.
Anyone who's learning to play chess right should take note of that.
True also that white gets a pawn so even if he goes down a rook for a piece and a pawn, he is still only -1 on material and has an attack. However black's position is still quite strong and can't be underestimated because of white's defence is poor also.
I wouldn't put much faith in your computer since it couldn't even find Nbd2. I doubt Rybka would say white has an advantage... but *even if it does*, you really have to take it back to the very beginning because we possibly missed extra extremely convoluted stuff along the way for either side, for example Ba3 at some point drawing the queen. Remember that Qe7 was a waste of a move earlier. Put it into Rybka 4 (or the best version you have) after the initial knight takes pawn and see what it makes of it. Personally, I can't see an attack for white but I can for black. But who knows what crazy things Rybka would try in these wide-open situations... if it's something a human would never find in a blitz game you have to ask yourself if you'd prefer to have a position that is definitely advantageous when playing against another human or definitely disadvantageous when playing against a modern, calculating obscenely-rated computer.
Thank you for your posts orangehonda, you have helped me gather my thoughts on the matter and try to make sure I was right as best I could and led to an interesting discussion on fairly important middle-game concepts. I am sure it is a big plus for black after Bd5, whether it's necessary to skip the time-wasting Qe7 move or not.
I appreciate your level headed reply. In blitz we often have to rely on our gut feeling and pattern recognition as there's no time to calculate all these tactical lines. My gut said to not take the pawn and I didn't like the pawn structure. You showed with some lines that the pins are indeed strong and taking the pawn,especially in a blitz game, wasn't an option to ignore.
The tactics are wild and like you say way out of scope for a blitz game therefore while I do trust computer lines in tactical situations I believe I was getting somewhat off topic. If black moves his king in response to Qh5 white has the additional fork threat of Qd5 (after playing f6).
The computer doesn't seem to mind Nc3 Bb4 because white can play 0-0 to remove the pins as I posted earlier.
I don't mean to misread your posts, when you commented on it I did go back and re-read them. As you said there was one post that was giving you a lot of trouble and there were some re-posts. (I've had the same maddening trouble when it eats my posts again and again, now I always copy my whole post to the clipboard before commenting so that I can paste it back if the site eats it).
I appreciate the fact that you probably have looked at the position more, I only looked at it briefly and then threw it into a computer as my posts have shown. That said if there's still a line you want to discuss let me know -- however I think we're mostly agreeing at this point so analysing on our own from here might be just as good.
Just played a 3-3 time control a game last night (2am) against a National Master, I'd love to get some feedback! Where did I go wrong? What do you think of my analysis? What did I do well? Did I make the wrong move for the right reason any time? What about the reverse? Any other commentary that you guys wish to add!