As you can see you have space disadvantage on the king side. This means it's quite suicidal to close up the center and the queen side especially when your king is on the king side. This means you have zero counterplay and ontop of that you will probably lose the fight on the king side because of lack of space and defending forces (= a quick mate.)
So whats the lesson? You need counterplay. To close up on the side where you have a space advantage is generally bad. To close up the whole board except for one area where you are at a disadvantage is evern worse. If you are strong on the queen side your objective is to close king side and center so you'll have a free hand on that side of the board without giving your opponent any counterplay at all.
Closing the game wasn't the answer here. The point wasn't that you had two knights vs. two bishops - the point is that you were up a rook. In that case, you should just do your best to trade down. Even if you were afraid of the bishop pair, you could have afforded to sacrifice an exchange and still end up with an extra knight.
Instead, you retreated back to square one with all your pieces. Inactive pieces are just as good as absent pieces. Instead of closing up the game, if you had instead opened up the center and aimed to exchange the queens (e.g. with 10... d5 or 11... c5 instead of d6 and c6), you would have won the game.
7Bg2 was a big blunder ; I played along until 16b5 I saw an equalizer. 17e5 gave me a chance to equalize on position vs. your rook advantage. By pushing back two of your developed pieces I had temporary freedom exploiting you weak king side; I had all developed the potential of my 2 bishops. Sacrificing my knight was a gamble since now your 2 pieces ahead and I was hoping to draw otherwise. Your forces was not evenly distributed in this Queen Indian Defense so when I was able to neutralize your advantage it was to late for you to counter punch. That was how Manny Pacquiao wins. Exploit the weakness when you are behind.
Closing a position should not be an option when your just resign away from victory. I This is a rare occasion when you get lucky in chess. 7Bg2 was a big blunder ; I played along until on 16b5 i saw an equalizer. 17e5 gave me a chance to equalize position vs your rook advantage. By pushing back two of your developed pieces I had temporary freedom exploiting you weak king side; sacrificing my knight was a gamble since now your 2 pieces ahead and hoping to draw otherwise. Your forces was not evenly distributed in this Queen Indian Defense so when I was able to neutralize your advantage it was to late for you to counter punch. Your offensive attack was not relentless after you captured my knight. You decided to play the role of the turtle when you could be ruthless.
You decided to play the role of the turtle when you could be ruthless.
LOL!! Thats exactly right. I was up a rook and then I for some reason thought, OK I can take my time and now work my knight vs bishop angle and eventually my rook advantage will come into play during the end game. And the post above about my missing the point. I'm a rook up!! Open it up and trade down. I'm going to go buy a little statue of a turtle to remind me of this game for all eternity. It was a valuable lessoned learned.
