Soñar no cuesta nada!

< 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.g3 c6 5.Bg2 Nbd7 6.Nge2 e5 7.O-O Bg7 8.h3 O-O 9.Be3 exd4 10.Bxd4>

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This position can be found in our opening explorer reached by transposition: Opening Explorer

10...Re8 looks natural here but you played 10...b5. I have never seen this move & I find it very interesting. Have you played this before or is it in some opening book somewhere? Your opponent responded 11.Be3 which I think was a slight concession in the position. I think 11.a3 is a little better. After < 10...b5 11.Be3 b4 12.Nb1 > which was played in your game we have this:

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Here you played 12...Qc7 which is definitely ok but did you consider 12...Nxe4!? here? Play gets very interesting.

Maybe 12...Nxe4 13.Bxe4 d5 14.Bg2 Bxb2

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...then perhaps 15.Nd2 Bxa1 16.Qxa1

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Black has two pawns & a rook for bishop & knight. Not sure if it is really that good as I hate to give the opponent the Bishop pair. Would need some testing.

I had played David Justice twice before, both times with the black pieces, and both games were Scotch games. I did not want to play a Scotch game again, as I've been having trouble playing the black side of the Scotch. (I lost my first game at the US Open in Orlando last summer playing the black side of the Scotch against a much lower rated player... I think that got me a little traumatized!) So, I played the Pirc, which was an old tool in my repertoire. All this to say that I have not studied the Pirc lately, so I was unaware whether what I was playing was correct.

You are right that 11.a3 was at least a natural move. Honestly, I don't know if I considered Nxe4, but it is not the kind of move that goes with my temperament. I'd be very reluctant to part with my black squared bishop, worried about the subsequent dark-squared weakness, especially as White keeps his own dark-squared bishop.

But what I do remember is that when I ran the game by Stockfish, the computer suggested ...d5. Frankly, I don't remember if it suggested it right away as move 12, but it was for sure before my own 15...d5, which came a bit too late, when the pawn is going to be subject to too much pressure. The strategic point is that the pawn in d5 makes it more difficult for the knight that just retreated to b1 to come back into play actively, since its jumps from d2 will be controlled by the d5 pawn. Black can probably send the knight to b6 and think twice about where the queen should be. (BTW, I'm pretty sure that 12...d5 13.exd5 cxd5 14.Bxd5 Nxd5 15.Qxd5 is bad for white. Either 15...Nb6 or 15...Ba6 seem to be good, but I am not looking at the board or running it by the computer. Notice that white has to control b2 and maybe loses the h3.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boca_J...

That Santiago Sana named there was my grandfather. The founders were all teenagers at the time. Baglietto was the only adult. Later, my grandpa was president of Boca twice, before the era of professionalization that started roughly around 1930.