In our chess careers, sometimes we have extended "runs" (good ones with wins, or bad ones with losses) with the results for one color; with this tournament game, I managed to extend my Black run to five losses over multiple tournaments. It is relatively easy under those circumstances to start seriously questioning your repertoire choices, having an sinking feeling whenever you see a Black on the pairing chart, etc. Here the value of analyzing your own games and better understanding what is actually going on helps combat over-reactions.
Last seen in Annotated Game #262: An unhappy introduction to the Fantasy Variation, this opening is also sub-par for me, but not an unmitigated disaster. The key lesson from the early phase is the idea - also seen in my preferred answer to the Caro-Kann Advance variation - of using the ...c5 pawn lever against White's center. Unfortunately it's an idea that I completely missed - but will remember in the future.
Instead I make the strategic mistake on move 10 for going for a closed position, which resulted in an initiative for White and awkward cramping for myself, until I finally get some counterplay going with a b-pawn advance. I then get a bit lucky when my opponent misses a pin-related tactic on move 20, but mishandle the calculations. It's also notable that my thinking is too materialistic, a repeated observation I've had recently.
While my opponent was legitimately lower-rated, he was certainly much stronger than his actual rating - I would estimate high Class C / low Class B - and I give him props for fighting spirit after suffering a tactical blow, then taking full advantage of my blunders, with the game effectively over after the sequence starting on move 27.
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