Learning the names and the ECO codes of openings can be a very time consuming process. I would not recommend learning all of them, it is probably mostly waste of time. The way I learn the names, the moves and the ECO codes is by doing this blog. Over time I have learned some of them and the more games I look up openings for, the easier it is to remember these things. The problem I sometimes face is that not all the sources agree to the name of the openings, which of course adds to the confusion. Not only that but not all of the sources even have the same named openings. These things may not be all that problematic to most people, but people like me who want to organise their games based on the openings used in the games, this can be very frustrating at times. There have been times when I have needed to change some of my posts because I have found a source that recognises an opening that goes further in the line seen in the game than the source where I have looked openings for that post originally. Then there is the problem with move order that also complicates things. Luckily these days the sources I look these things up from, also understand different move orders and can therefore recognise the openings much better than before.
The reason I played 2...g6 is that I wanted to move my bishop to g7 before I developed my knight to f6 and avoid the possibility that my opponent takes on f6 and creates doubled pawns for me. The first move that I do not really agree with my opponent is 4.c3. It is a playable move, but not the kind of move I would make these days. I would have preferred to play 4.c4 and be as agressive with my moves as possible. Probably the second decision that I do not agree with my friend is the move 7.g4. It just seems a bit risky to do that. However, had my opponent castled queenside earlier than he did, then the pawn storm against my castled king would seem more appropriate. The move 7.g4 is not a bad move though, as long as White can follow it up correctly. It was something that Kojjootti unfortunately was not able to do. His next move 8.Ne5 could have lead him into some trouble, but that would have meant that I would have needed to reply with either 8...Nxe5 or with 8...Qd6. The former option being the better one. My choice to play 8...Ne4 did not accomplish what I wanted it to. The game continuation resulted in a position where I have doubled pawns on the e and c files. It is a thing that I usually try to avoid at all costs. However, in the position after 10...dxe4, the doubled pawns are not enough to give White an advantage, at least according to Stockfish's evaluation of the position. I was slightly ahead in development, so that compensated for the weak pawns for the time being.
I wanted to get rid of the doubled pawns, so when Kojjootti played 13.Qb3+, I blocked the check by placing my queen to d5. At that moment I wanted my opponent to take on d5, so that I can take back with the c-pawn, so that one of my doubled pawns would cease to exist. The move that my friend played was something that was even more favorable to me, he retreated with the queen back to d1, basically giving me a free move. This time I poorly took advantage of the free move and did not play the rook to a square where it would have actually attacked something. The correct square for the rook would have been b8. With my next move I continued the plan of improving my pawn structure with 15...c5. It also threatened to win a pawn, unless Kojjootti played something to stop that. He did not find the best reply and that meant that for a little while, I had the more favorable position. A couple of moves later I made a bad decision with 18...Bf6 and that turned the tables. Then on move 20 Kojjootti exchanged the bishops on f6, making this game even once again. I had managed to get rid of my doubled pawns and the position seemed promising to me, I was happy of the way things had gone. In order for me to win, it would still require a mistake from my opponent, which did came in the form of 26.h5. It was far from easy to me to convert the advantage into a win. Still, I was able to increase my advantage so that I should have been winning this game, unfortunately time was also working against me and I ran out of time on my 42nd move.
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