Crushing Your Opponent SLOWLY (Instructive Annotated Game)

Recently, I played a Sicilian f4 opening as white in rapid game, which I lost. The analysis of the game showed that my opponent (black) was able to neutralize my piece activity with well-timed positional moves designed to slowly neutralize my central control, which I learned from.

In this game, I was playing on the other side, facing an f4 Sicilian - although the material was equal for pretty much the whole game, my opponent was dead lost for many many more moves, after I completely neutralized the activity of all of his pieces.

I was happy to be able to play this nice game - although the moves were easy to play/find, I think it's really an illustrative game. 

"This move was because I didn't know what to do".

Pretty instructive commentary, thanks.

I had to be honest  

When you don't know what to do, you can make some small, random improvements in your position, which is what I tried to do.

17...Nd4 looks more to the point, at least for me.

17...b6 is a normal move, but we should always look for improvements. (Im saying this in general, not sure if 17...Nd4 is better).

Anyways, for me that is not the definition of crushing them slowly. You had a very good position after d5 in the opening and you won without really squeezing (or crushing slowly, however you want to say it), your piece activity was overwhelming, that is not slow at all IMHO.

This is what comes to my mind when someone says "slowly crushing".

Yes - ...Nd4 almost always is a possibility. If played on move 17, black would also still have a large advantage, but I believe white would feel a little more comfortable.

The reasons I didn't play it here:

(1) I wanted to avoid exchanges - I have more space, more good squares for my pieces, so I didn't want to ease the tension on black.

(2) Knights are good at occupying weak squares - hence it makes sense for me keep knights on the board when I have fewer weak squares than my opponent does.

In such positions, doing "nothing" is often the "right" choice - making small improvements, but not committing to anything, and waiting for your opponent to mess up, is often what I find easiest to play. 

Later on in the game, for instance, I was able to land my knight on a great square - even though the opponent had a knight to trade it off, he was unable to.

And the reason I named the forum thread that way was because the Backyard Professor, who I really like for his chess instructional video parodies, made a video called "Crushing Your Opponent SLOWLY - Because the Board Tells you to"

The truth is, my game is pretty far from a "slow crush".

Really? After 17....Nd4 18. Nxd4 Bxd4 I thought White was left with horrible pieces and a pressure on b2, those were my main motivations to play Nd4.  Again, IMHO, you are a stronger player than me and I'm not trying to sound mean or rude, I just want to have some lively chess discussion so I can hopefully get some good knowledge from spending my time on the internet.

I think you are joking about the Backyard Professor, right? I have not seen his videos but I heard they were all serious (tho bad. Seriously, what is a patzer gonna teach another patzer?)

We should sue him. 

(1) Yes I have been watching them! They're really funny videos, and he has a lot of enthusiasm. The professor would've made a very good teacher to beginners had he learned chess the right way. The first thing I thought of when I finished this game was that video by the professor

(2) There's no problem - I consider only the ideas/moves, not the player suggesting them. 

Black is no doubt better after ...Nd4 and the exchanges - that's certain. But black is already much better in the initial position.

If you look back to when black played Nxd6, and I said that was a mistake - it's kind of similar here: white's Be2 is a horrible piece, and white wants the Nf3 gone so the Be2 can be on f3, where it's actually very active. White's pieces are getting in each other's ways because of the poor pawn structure he has - immobile and full of weaknesses to be defended. 

Of course, white doesn't actually want to *lose* the Nf3 - he would like to get rid of one of black's active pieces in return. So avoiding exchanges this way increases discomfort in the white position. 

Anyways, that's how I would think of it. I've noticed that I've become much more of a "waiting" player after looking at a lot of Magnus Carlsen's chess games. 

Yeah, it makes sense. Maybe Bd7 or Re8 was better, now that I think about it Nd4 wasn't that good.

I think Silman would actually approve of my play! Hopefully...

"Although it's not bad or anything"

It turned out to be! When he misplayed it

The downside of 17. ... Nd4 is it just as hard to develop the queen's bishop for black.

I'm confused; why did he pile his rooks up on a closed file, where his pawn was sufficiently blockaded by your knight?

The rook on c2 was going to be chased by ...Nd4 sometime, so my opponent decided to just move it before I did that - unfortunately, it had nowhere good to go except f2, because I didn't exchange too many pieces, keeping white's position cramped an unpleasant. 

Basically - because he had no other good moves.

"These kinds of "aimless" moves are often OK in these positions where you have a lot of permanent advantages - weak squares and pawns everywhere to target."

Arguably, it is not always OK - structural weaknesses usually come with compensation (e.g active piece play). In that case, your moves show have one goal: to neutralize the activity your opponent has.

You're right - in dynamic positions you need to act quickly - if your opponent has immediate threats, you need to deal with those first. That, however, was not the case in this game, where my opponent eventually almost ran out of moves that didn't hang material immediately. 

"When in doubts, push pawns"

Avoiding non commital moves, especially when you don't know what you're doing, is a good rule to live by.