the potency of a counter-attack

maybe 26..... Nd7  for black  will hold.  But nice open board onslaught you've done there.

indeed, I made another thread analyzing another game I played that ended in 9 moves and then I theorized whether or not the game was in fact over out of that position starting with 6. Bxc5 from that point forward. http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/opening-trap.

I spent about 20-25 minutes and the best position I could make for white was to 14.Qb6, and then I just decided to play out the rest of the game for fun to see if there was any clear win for black, but since nothing was decisive and I didn't want to make boring moves, and white looked worse I just played the most exciting moves, and then was stunned at how quickly black got into a mating threat at Re8 after playing a standard positional move to attack the e-file and the queen, pinning the knight, but that was clearly not a good move.. with a rook sac coming to exploit the black king.. lol. 

I even though that 17. Nxg4 was a sensible sac, completely opening up the white king and having a bishop attacking the queen diagonal and the danger of having a rook on the e-file next move if white didn't compensate. But I thought Rf4 was great freeing that potential fork (Re8, Bxe2 forking queen/rook) and attacking the bishop, and after 21. Qg3 black's position had fallen apart and there was already a mating threat on g7 after Bh6.  26. Rf2+ would save the mating threat, exchanging the black rook and queen for white's queen, and I think evening material. I didn't knotice this before.