The best chess game of my entire life

I played an OTB FIDE tournament recently. Time control was 90 minutes + 30 seconds per move. Here was one one of the games I won in a pretty spectacular fashion:

I hope you like it!

well played game Matthew, thanks for sharing.

Wow! Did you do the same in your other games in the tournament?

Thanks Boogalicious

Nah cjxchess17 I had some bad games too... this was the only player rated above 1600 FIDE that I managed to beat.

That was a well played game from you, but it pains me to see someone tie the noose around their neck voluntarily. You put some nice pressure, and it was becoming a tough hold, but what on earth was that 16... h6? The last thing you'd want to do against a pawn storm coming towards your king is to give a hook for the pawns to chip at.

Regardless, really well played by you. :-) Great grip over the key break on d5 really put your opponent in a pickle, while you just steamrolled over him. If you can continue playing like that, you should see a noticeable increase in your rating in the future. :-)

By the way, 12. f5 doesn't really deserve an exclamation mark, or at least should put a question mark before it. 12... exf5 and black is just fine.

I think that 12. f5! Does deserve an exclamation mark. There was a lot of temptation to play d5 instead, which would've been way worse. And even after 12... exf5, white gets to activate his light-squared bishop, which is currently trapped behind his own pawn chain.

Yeah 16... h6? Was a bad move by black, but I don't blame him for playing it. It's the most natural move to play here because it's the only way to prevent a g5 pawn push, and it also prevents future back rank problems. The best move in his position is a pretty unnatural move to play (16... d5!), since it sacrifices a pawn and also does nothing to stop a g5 pawn push, so it's hard for a human to play that.

Thanks for the response though, I appreciate it

Hm. There actually a lot more than just playing d5. Not only d5 is an difficult move to find black also needs to see that after ed5 cd5 Bd5 he need to play e4! so that after Qxe4 Bxc3 Bxb7 Bxb2+! Kxb2 Rdb8 wins back the piece with a complicated position (although after Rd3! or Rh3! white will swing his rook to b3 to stop any attacks on white's king, with a pawn up). That being said, I would definitely give d5 a go instead of getting slaughtered after h6. You would have probably taken on d5 and after e4! it might be your opponent that had posted this forum post right now...

That being said, I think h6 should deserve 2 question marks but Bh6? none (since anything is lost at that point) and Rg6 should deserve 1 exclamation mark since anything win at that point (such as Qxh6).