Just an Online Game

     My play was never worth two dead flies when it came to tactics. That's probably because I grew up on the games of Botvinnik and my favorite thing to study was books on strategy and K and P or R and P endings. In fact I remember one incident in the State Championship where my Expert opponent broke etiquette when I offered to trade down into a R and P ending. After thinking a couple of minutes, he looked up and muttered, “I'm not going to play a R and P ending against you.” He muddied the waters in a sea of tactics and won. 
     My usual strategy has always been to play carefully to avoid tactics and try to bore opponents to death in positions where nothing much is going on and try to outplay them in the ending.  Often, if they are lower rated, they will present me with a tactical opportunity and I can pounce.  The disadvantage of this strategy is that against stronger opponents the tables are turned...I'm the one that makes a tactical error and am the one getting pounced upon!
     Today when I play Blitz games on line I always try to play tactically. Afterward I look over the games with an engine and usually things are pretty ugly! In the following online G15 I played a risky P-sac in a sort of Wing Gambit Delayed against the Sicilian and things got messy very quickly. Both of us missed a some tactics, but after black made a few less than exact moves, I got the upper hand to the extent that even less than perfect play scored the point. 
     Since this guy was rated over 1800 I wanted to play another game against him, but he turned out to be what I like to call a dirtbag because he disconnected and I was forced to wait a couple of minutes before I could claim the win. I don't understand this behavior because he lost (totally meaningless) rating points anyway. It was really annoying though because my previous opponent, facing a mate in one and having only one legal move, refused to move with over 12 minutes left. I just resigned and moved on to the next game. Hope he enjoyed his 10 point rating gain.