And yet, he has so few choices of where to safely spring, and will remain on d2 for 15 more moves.

So true, but it allows me to play e4

Care to explain? White could have initiated this pawn exchange with 15. axb5 Qxb5 16. Ra5 the same 16th move as you played in game, but now attacking black's queen and the pawn on d5, limiting black's options. Consequently, I don't see 14. ... bxa4 as being an error, and would love for you to share with me what you see wrong with the move.

Error may be to strong a word, I thought E5 or Bb7 were a little better (although I haven't really looked into it)

In fact, he has a passed pawn. But so does black, and black's pawn is easier to push forward toward promotion.

So true, but I am pretty sure that Blacks pawn is going to fall

At move 24 I rather like 24.f4 for White... All the same, the position in the diagram here looks very strong for White. Mind you, Black is not without counterchances.

Black is advancing his passed pawn a bit unwisely. His bishop prevents supporting the pawn with doubled rooks. Much wiser would have been to hold the passed pawn in the black camp for a while longer while maneuvering the bishop to c6 and bringing both rooks to bear on the pawn advance. Incidentally, this would also have blocked the pin on the d5 pawn and prevented white from playing 28. Nxc4.

Instead of 27...a3, 27...Ra7 would have broken the pin on the h1-a7 diagonal, and left the a-pawn freer to advance.

Again I'm missing something. This time it is black's justification for 30. ... Bb7? when his rook was en prise. Surely he didn't think sacrificing the exchange would spare the advanced a-pawn? This seems a needless loss of the exchange.

I'm glad I'm not the only one wondering about 30...Bb7. As a lowly 1500 level player, I thought I must be missing something.

Maybe he thought the advanced knight, in conjunction with his equally importunate colleague, was worth a rook to be rid of. But I think I wouold have preferred 30...Ra7 myself... It's clear that in the last 2 or 3 moves Black has gone backwards, rather.

I was surprised too, but you don't look a ift horse in the mouth

Black finally got around to playing Ng8 in an attempt to oust the white knight from his advanced post.

Black's moves show a desire to trade off the rest of the pieces as much as he can and then try to stymie white's pawns. Perhaps this may lead to a draw, since white's pawns are not strongly placed.

Good, possibly even better, for White was 37.Qxa8 Bxa8 38.Nxg8 Kxg8 39.c4, exploiting the pin on the long-diagonal to break up Black's centre pawns. After White played 37.Qc7!? Black might have tried 37...Bb5, but then, after 38.Qb6, would have found itself having to guard c4 and c6 both - an impossible task. Black is toast...

Excellent move! Give that 39. c4! the exclamation it deserves. I still wish GameKnot would let us put notation marks into our annotations.

There really was just no effective way of preventing this, even supposing Black saw it coming. That long-diagonal pin is so powerful. Mind you, his response to this (39...Kf8?) was no help at all...