Chess960 SP692

This was my second game on February 28th at lichess.org and I was more awake from the start of this game than I was in the first one. The first game of that same day I shared yesterday which involved a silly mistake from me in the opening. The game below was my 6th consecutive win at lichess and it brought me quite close to my peak rating of 1854, which I was able to get on January 12th, 2016. My current rating in chess960 is 1851 there, so in the next game I can break my previous rating record on the site. I think the first move from both players is a reasonable way to begin the game, galaxie-500 opened up the diagonal for one of his or her bishops while I bring my knight to the game. Already on move 2, however, my opponent went a bit astray with the move h3. The move h3 does not make much sense to me, it would be much more natural to play 2.d4, for example. Because of the passive move h3, I am able to reply with 2...c5 and open up a diagonal for the queen and for the bishop. On move 3 galaxie-500 plays d4, but now it is not as good of a move as it was on the previous move. This is mainly because I could take the d-pawn and follow-up with Ne6 gaining an important time for development. Because I value fast development quite highly, it would be quite clear to me that after the move 5.Qd1, I have to be better to some degree due to the fact that I have two pieces developed while my opponent has none. That being said, the fact that galaxie-500 has more space, balances the position to some extent.

I think the game continues with both players making reasonable developing moves and the next position where I need to be careful is when galaxie-500 plays 11.b3. My opponent intends to follow that up with Bb2 and maybe take on f6. Had I not seen this idea, the game could have been over quite quickly. Because I saw that idea, I decided that the best way to handle it is to locate my e6-knight to f8 and not worry about any mate threats on h7. For some reason galaxie-500 does end up taking on f6 with the bishop even though there is no clear follow-up anymore. Had I been playing with the white pieces, I would not have taken on f6 because there really is no benefit in doing so. Sure, the pawns get doubled, but it is not that dangerous. It actually just opens the e-file for my rook, so it can now take more active part to the game. Trading the bishop for the knight also gives me the bishop pair and the bishops are better in this position than the knights in my opinion. Especially when I open up my light-squared bishop with the move 14...dxc4. My opponent took back with the pawn probably because galaxie-500 wanted to avoid the pin that would happen if he or she took with the knight. I can't actually take advantage of that pin fast enough so that it would win material and maintaining the pawn structure was the better choice compared to pawn takes, which weakens the pawns a bit. I continue by pinning the knight on d4 and I maybe threaten to take on d4 twice and win a pawn. Galaxie-500 makes the game losing mistake as a reply to my threat and played N2f3. The better alternative was N2b3 which at least avoids the game continuation. I have added one analysed game to the following posts: C18 French Defense: Winawer Variation, Advance Variation #2, A00 Polish Opening: General, A20 English Opening: King's English Variation. General and A10 English Opening: Anglo-Dutch Defense. I have also added five mate in four puzzles today.