When this game started I thought my opponent's handle seems familiar, so I had to check if I had played against him before. I had one game against him before this one and it was played almost exactly 10 years before this one! It is probably the longest time I have spend before the next game against the same opponent, no other example comes to mind. It seemed I was playing with the white pieces on both occasions, only the result and our ratings were different from our first encounter. Who knows, maybe our next game is nine years from now... Playing every ten years one game seems a bit silly though. I won the first game and drew this, so maybe next time I lose. If there is going to be a next time that is. For the first six moves the game continued evenly, but then I played 7.Bd3 and ended up in some trouble.
Bobla45 should have then attacked the weakest of the central pawns with the move 7...c5. My opponent did not find the right idea and instead continued the game with the move 7...a6. The reason why Bobla45 played that move I can't understand because I have no desire to go to b5 with my pieces and my opponent also never played b5 himself, which might be another reason to play a6. I should have then continued the game by playing 8.h4, but I chose the move 8.Qh5, which is a bit weaker alternative according to the chess engine called Stockfish 8 64 POPCNT. The game then continued with the moves 8...f5 9.exf6 Nxf6. At that point the position was roughly even. My 10th move was a horrible blunder and could have meant a loss for me.
In the game I played 10.Qh3, which placed the queen on an awkward square. Bobla45 went for the immediate 10...e5, which is not as accurate as playing 10...c5 first and later on move the e-pawn. While my opponent should be preferred in the game continuation, the position was not winning for Bobla45 anymore. The game continued to be played in more or less evenly manner until it came time for my opponent to play 19...Nf6. The square f6 was a good square to place a piece, just not the knight, but instead the bishop.
I then finally castled short, which is perhaps the most accurate move. My opponent blundered a second time in a row with the move 20...Bd6. I then had a chance to gain a winning advantage by playing either 21.f4 or 21.Na4, but I failed to see a good move and played the move 21.Bxd6 instead, which allowed my opponent to get back into the game again. A few moves later I went downhill so steep that I should have lost the game with my 24th move Qh3.
The huge problem with my 24th move was that it took the last safe square away from my knight and Bobla45 could have just played 24...h6 and I would have needed to sacrifice my knight to e4 in order to get at least a pawn for the piece. For some reason my opponent missed the move 24...h6 and moved the knight from b8 to d7 instead. I messed up again by moving my queen to h4 on my 25th move. A much better square for the queen was found from e3. The game continued clearly in my opponent's favor for a few moves, but then with his 27th move Qxg3, Bobla45 threw some of the advantage away and the game dwindled more towards a draw again. I was not out of trouble yet, I took another wrong path on move 37 with the move h4.
At first Bobla45 found the strongest reply 37...Rf8, but only after few moves later my opponent played a bit sloppy move 41...Rxg5 and the game headed likely towards a draw again. I replied with 42.Kg1 making my struggle for the draw more difficult again. With the 44th move Kf5 by my opponent the game started to head towards a draw again, this time for the last time and the game ended in a draw after my 47th move Nxf4.
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