[mrkajz44]

Great write-up for a great game. I'm likely in the minority here, but there's nothing wrong with a well played draw and given how things were going at times, I felt pretty happy walking away with a draw. A few of my thoughts:

I played the Indian defense, which I'm not overly familiar with, but thought that maybe I'd catch my opponent off guard since I hadn't seen it played against me since I started playing again. This resulted in trapping my light squared bishop, forcing me to fianchetto it, which I pretty much never do. That's what lead to my aggressive b and c pawn play, but I didn't mind where things were going by around move 15.

After bouncing the queen on 15. Qd2 I had the chance to trade my knight for the bishop and leave some pawns handing out alone on the fourth rank. I seriously toyed with the idea for a while but ended up bring my other knight into the action instead. After 16. Bg3 I really kicked myself for not taking the trade. I think I spent hours here trying to decide what to do. I didn't mind my position but any sort of attack was too weak and left me vulnerable. I probably should have activated a rook at this point, but decided on moving the knight again with eventual plans to move them over to the open king side.

Things did get interesting at move 25. I offered a queen trade with 25...Qb6, but it was declined and all the focus was on those pawns sitting on the fourth rank. I think both my opponent and I had the exact same issue - we could start a set of captures that would net us winning material, with the small downside of giving up a bankrank checkmate. I will admit that I did eye that b2 pawn but was afraid of getting caught upboard with the d4 pawn in the way of a retreat. Stockfish says "go for it!" (taking b2 when Supperfraggle wanted me to in order to trap my queen) since I could put similar pressure on their queen with Rxd4. Needless to say, I didn't see that, but played the safe game only capturing b2 after my retreat diagonal was no longer blocked by the pawn.

After 30. g3 I considered opening up an escape route for my king as well, but thought this might be my opportunity to go on the offensive (finally). I saw I could force a queen trade and took it with the hopes of being able to capitalize down the road as I was the aggressor. Plans did not work out as hoped. Quickly I had to give my king an out with 33...h6 and we started the dance in the endgame.

I believe I offered the draw after move 38, but can't quite remember. The engine gave white a 0.23 pawn advantage as this point, so I'm glad to see it was a reasonable offer. What I found most interesting was how the engine hated 45. Rxf7 where my opponent picked up the free pawn. They had worked up a nearly 2 pawn advantage to that point by outmaneuvering me using their pawn very effectively, but taking the free pawn removed all that advantage. Perhaps it was at that point the critical mass of pieces left was passed and it was going to be too hard for either of us gain the edge we needed. I'll admit that while the engine thought things were fine for me, I was pretty sure I was slowly playing a losing game as the white pawn march commenced. I suppose that even though I was down a pawn, the power of my rook and the fact that I had my king to block at least one of the remaining pawns was enough to prevent white from getting a promotion. I felt very fortunate when the draw was re-extended to me and I was glad to take it.

No hard feelings at all with the declined draw - after that point I felt like I was playing from behind the whole way. It's also a bit fun to play the endgame out a bit since the trend for most seems to be resigning before we get to that point.

Anyone want to let us know how to post a gif of the game? I was able to download it, but can't seem to figure out how to get it into this message.