Nice game! You are a much better better player than your rating so i would expect to see your rating boost to about 1500. Placing your pieces far up the board and together in the centre like at move 26.
Night on outpost, check!
Rook on open files, check!
Central control, check!
Active pieces, check!
By far the most important rule is activity which you had no problem with here.
Sir i challenge you to a dual! We can probably learn from eachother!
I've been playing chess online for several months now, and for the past couple months I seem to have hit a plateau in rating. That all changed a few days ago, however... when I had an epiphany that immediately improved my play.
For the entire time I've played chess, I've always been VERY concerned with material. Just blundering away a single pawn made me feel like giving up, and this negative attitude caused me to lose many games that I probably could have drawn if I had just kept trying my hardest.
My strategy has always been to just play solid, defensive chess, looking for tactics and trading pieces away to a quick endgame, which is when I would try to gain an advantage. Because I haven't been able to improve recently, I tried completely new strategy: to bring my pieces as far forward as possible, and not be afraid to make positional and material sacrifices.
I can already tell my play has improved quite a bit, and the aggressive, tactical positions that this new playstyle is creating really challenges my calculation ability and helps me improve my tactics. I've realized that if I can end the game before even reaching the "endgame", material is practically irrelevent; all that matters is where your pieces are located and how active they are.
Here's a game I just played in live chess. It's probably one of my favorite games I've ever played. It has a beautiful ending: a 4 move calculated mate with a bishop sacrifice and a smothered mate to top it all off (he could have possibly delayed it to a mate in 6 by sacrificing his queen and rook, but he didn't). Any feedback / analysis is much appreciated. Enjoy =)