Coming Down The Spiral

wow well played!

Instead of 42. h5 white can play 42. Ke2 and 43. Kf1. This way black is unable to promote. White just promotes the a pawn, then you don't have to worry about forcing the queen exchange.

Both sides seemed way to eager to trade pieces. As soon as any opportunity to make a capture arrived, the capture was made. It's very hard to get an advantage when you play like this.

18. ... Rg8. What's the point of this? 18. ... Rc8 attacking the weak c-pawn was much better. After 19. Rc1 we see that white's rook is passively defending. Black can play 19. ... b5 immobilizing the white c-pawn making the white rook sit and defend forever.

Instead, black let's the white rook stay on the very active d-file, and allows his own queenside pawns to become weak when he trades bishops. The end result is that black loses a pawn and later another one.

Why does white keep pushing his kingside pawns? Why not play a5 and force the black rook to passively defend against the queening possibility.

I was also confused why he played 18. Rg8 in the game. At that point I had maybe 30-40 seconds less time than him, and so I didn't have time to figure out his strategy there. The only combination I saw for that was Bh3, threatening 19. Rxg2+, however I could easily defend against this. I decided for g3 regardless of his move, to give the king some luft.

42.h5. Yes I realized Ke2 would work better when I looked at this in analysis afterwards.

And you're right moving the Queenside pawns would have been a much stronger plan. On the topic of being eager to exchange pieces, I can only say that each time I made an exchange it was to my benefit because its resulted in new pawn islands or doubled pawns for him.

What about the move 7. Nxe5. After Black plays e6 and the pawns trade, there is no poor pawn structure from black. I think it would be better to continue to develop at move 7 instead of exchanging.

What about 9. dxe6, this allows your opponent to recapture with a devlopming move. You could play 9. Bc4 preparing to castle.

What about 10. Qxd8. This just allows your opponent to recapture with a move that brings his rook to the open d-file.

13. Bxf6 gives your opponent doubled pawns, but there was no need to rush this capture since the knight is pinned. Also, you give your opponent doubled pawns, but they are difficult for you to attack. In the meantime he gives you an isolated c-pawn that would be easy to attack since the c-file is half opened. You could have prevented this with 13. Bd2.

Oh from what I saw that was a well played endgame, the forced queen trade was beautiful to me.

Yes I did not realize that until I inputted this into the Nalimov Endgame Tablebases right after the game.

44... f2 is a draw, while Black playing 44... Kg2 gives White a win in 39 moves with perfect play.

Saccadic, I admit I didn't look at that line.

I do stand by the fact that you don't need to capture on f6 right away because the knight is pinned. And that the captures on moves 7, 9, and 10 are not so good for you.