@AKAL1: Thanks very much for analyzing that game and I really appreciate your comments. The main reason that I wanted to avoid the Queen trade on move 9 was because (as I saw it) it would have given me a Berlin Wall type pawn structure weakness, but without the Bishop pair to compensate. Although I agree that the lines in your analysis don't look too bad for Black. Also, I wanted to play aggressively and put him under some pressure in the middlegame - I didn't want to trade down to an endgame too soon.
It's an interesting move, but I'm not sure I agree with your analysis after 16.b4!? I think 18.0-0 would be a mistake:
19..Bb3 would definitely have been a very good move, and I like your idea of attacking d3 - that would have put White under a lot of pressure.
Regarding the endgame, I think this has been a good lesson for me in just how complex King & Pawn endgames can be and how you should be very careful before trading down to them. Out of interest, Stockfish's refutation of 32..exf5 is rather brilliant. I can't resist posting it as a puzzle, but bear in mind this is not my analysis! There's no way in a squillion years I would ever have seen this during a game! :
I think that the best way to get better at OTB chess @T4T would just be to get more experience. You seem to have good positional and tactical understanding; you probably could reach 1700+ after a couple more tourneys. Also, remember to watch your clock in the 45 min games- if you see two lines, one of which might be completely winning but needs like 15 minutes to calculate, and one which definitely wins but goes into an endgame a piece up, go for the endgame. If your opponent plays a move you didn't calculate, you might run out of time.
Thanks - I think this is good advice 190493. Sometimes it's good to be wary of entering into very complicated lines OTB, especially if you're low on time. You can't always approach it in the same way you would a correspondence game :-)