Here, Black exchanges off the light-square bishop immediately and then focuses on development as White goes pawn-hunting on the queenside. White's sense of danger was not operating and after his queen is nearly trapped, he is forced to give back material in order to save it. Although the material balance was then roughly equal (3 pawns for a piece), Black definitely had the superior position.
In the remainder of the game, Black passes up several active options for improving his position and pressuring White, which unfortunately has been a common characteristic of my games. If I get nothing else out of these annotation efforts, they have certainly driven home the importance of playing actively with both pieces and pawns. In this game, White also missed some active possibilities, including the remarkable 20. f4!? and the counterintuitive 26. b4, which loses the b-pawn but gains a strong positional advantage for White's passed pawns. In both cases, the strategic idea would have been to effectively mobilize White's pawn majority, where he had a favorable imbalance (to use Silman's term).
White eventually goes for a draw by repetition after striking a tactical blow against Black's kingside and winning a pawn there. My opponent evidently did not trust his own position due to Black's possible threats. At the time I was perfectly happy to acquiesce, not seeing how I could make real progress against White, who was also higher-rated. The final result seems justified in this case, given the board situation. Had Black been looking to win, it would have been better tried earlier, for example with 18...Ne4!?
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