It sure looks like a blunder to me. If White hadn't had that mate threat, though, Black would have had the better position, I believe. White should have advanced that d-pawn much sooner so as not to run into such problems. Probably Black was a little to eager to push his positional advantage.
Was 19...Nxd2 a blunder?
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Sqod wrote:
It sure looks like a blunder to me. If White hadn't had that mate threat, though, Black would have had the better position, I believe. White should have advanced that d-pawn much sooner so as not to run into such problems. Probably Black was a little to eager to push his positional advantage.
19...Nxd2 is not sufficiently enough a blunder. 20. Qc3 was a good try in attempting a mate, but the difficult 20...e5! stops the mate for the time being, and Black still has threats of Nxf3+. Perhaps 20...f6 also does the job.
Stockfish evaluates 20...e5 as -0.79 (-/+, minus on top of plus).
WHen black first made this move against me I thought my position was crippled so I responded with Qc3 to threaten checkmate for the next several moves and it succeeded well, I just wonder if black could have easily played against the response of Qc3 or was Nxd2 truly a blunder with no mode of equalizing after Qc3?