Curtains vs PoG

[TimM]

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I still hate our 40.-Nb3 which handed the draw over to curtains, we could have made him sweat more by not letting his king to get on such a good square [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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It really didn't matter at that point. It was just drawn as we really needed to get our king up to at least d5 to have any winning chances at all, and curtains wasn't going to allow that.

I hated 34...Qxb3. Why everyone was in such a rush to trade one of our good pawns on a7 for one of his weak ones on b3, while at the same time trading Queens in a position where his Kingside is a bit airy is beyond me. Yes we get a passed pawn, but I'd rather have won this pawn outright and had two of them if possible.

RoundTower: 18...d4 was an idea of BlackSails, a very strong player who perhaps could have made IM if he had remained active. He and I did a lot of analysis of this on a pocket set in our favorite Tex Mex place. We didn't see any improvements for white and I actually think curtains did a good job killing our counterplay after this pawn sac by eventually returning the pawn.