| Once: Let's try to find it in our hearts to think well of white. Whether by design or accident, he did come up with an interesting plan. With 12. Qb3 he exchanges two minor pieces for a rook in order to be able to double his own rooks on the open d file. And if this had worked we would have been talking in awed tones about his excellent positional judgement. The problem was that the d file was not so easy to exploit. Black's annoying minor pieces made it impossible for white to find peace and prosperity with his doubled rooks. After 19...Bf5, we get to here:
click for larger viewBlack's two knight and two bishops control a heck of a lot of squares. They own six of the eight squares on the d file (and the black e pawn grabs a seventh). White is hounded to the point of death, his rooks are persecuted pieces. Okay, so white pressed the self destruct button at the end, but it was looking pretty hopeless anyway. I guess there's a natural progression in chess, a rhythmn to a game, a song. Normally we develop pawns and minor pieces, swap off some of the aftorementioned pawns and minor pieces, then look for somewhere to develop and ideally double our rooks. The danger is when we try to do this out of sequence - ie to try to develop and double our rooks while there are still a full complement of minor pieces on the board. It's a bit like a rock song. The ideal arrangement is a tinkly-plinkly intro, build into thumpety-pumpety drums and bass guitar, the lead singer swishes his long hair and sings falsetto, a manadatory guitar solo, fade to nothing. And it's stairway to heaven or bat out of hell, or any of a hundred other "rawk" anthems. But get it out of order, and it just doesn't work. You just can't start with thumping drums and then move into a tinkly-plinkly opening. It's all wrong. And for just the same reason, it's often incredibly dangerous to try getting too adventurous with your rooks before you exchange off some of the minor pieces. As my mother-in-law is wont to say, there is a time and a place, and this is neither. | 
Kibitzing
