When you delay a chess game for almost 4 entire years...

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Shaikidow

I never thought I'd find myself in this kind of predicament, but...

Once upon a time, my father and I decided to play a chess game... against each other. Then, after a couple of moves, our game was interrupted for reasons currently unknown or unrememberable to me (I'm guessing you just have to pause a time or few when the time control is indefinite Laughing), so I took a picture of the (preliminary) final position, and then we took a break... but for how long?

In the days that followed, my father would occasionally ask me when we'd resume the game, but it was all always somehow down to "wait 'till I find the saved position again and get a decent chessboard as well, then we'll continue". Days and weeks and months went by, and even though I knew I had transferred the pic from my now retired cell phone to my PC's hard drive, I didn't even bother trying to really find the file, view it, reconstruct the position accordingly, and resume play. So I continued to live in relative chess peace (no pun intented, oddly enough) and ignorance...

UNTIL NOW.

See? Well, that was some story! Now my dad and I can go back to a different board and fight it out like we should've... yes, almost FOUR entire years ago. As my computer data shows, the above picture was taken on August 19th, 2011! And it's quite funny too, what with my dad mixing up the Kings and Queens and all! I also have no idea whatsoever where I put that board. It wasn't as tiny and practical as my current board, but it wasn't really bad at all either. Ah, memories... but that's not the only reason I called you here.

If I'm to record this little gem after we finish it, I should really write all the moves down, but that's just the thing - I can't tell exactly what moves each side played prior to the position in the pic, at least not by just taking a quick gaze at it! Therefore, I thought it'd be fun to ask you all to help me to unravel this mystery: What were the moves that led to the position in the diagram below?

I'm sure of two pieces of data, though: I'm playing White (because it's just like me to play the kind of position White's already got, with delayed castling, better development and more neatly aligned Knights xD), and it's White to move.
trysts

This is an interesting puzzle, good luck:)

Shaikidow

Yeah, what trysts said, good luck to everybody! And I'm not even pretending for the sake of the story, so I've really got no clue how we arrived at this position, meaning that I haven't got any solutions to this problem either. If I manage to solve it myself, I'll post the solution here, but until then... get back to work! Laughing

EDIT: I've got one idea about how it might've gone down:

So, any significant alternatives you've noticed?
trysts

That seems to work!

Shaikidow

I've figured out what seems so wrong with my solution... 8... exd4 was way better than 8... 0-0, so that's the really off bit.

Then again, if Black can do such a Bishop shuffle, he can also play a pretty poor 8th move, I guess.

But I'm still not sure this is the only way it could've gone down in general. Another idea regarding the pawn structure? For example, a scenario with exd4 actually having taken place?