Black, Unrated vs. Michael Martin, 1276

My second game; alas, also a loss, though it felt quite evenly matched up until I started dropping pawns with 21...h5. This was the first move of mine which I recognized as a mistake right then during the game (though Lichess pointed out others beforehand). It's also the move which pushed Lichess' evaluation from +0.1—the last time it was basically even—to +1.4, and from there it favored White more and more. Interestingly, Lichess did not flag 28...♜e3 or 30...♜g3, moves which, at the time, looked good to me but which I almost immediately regretted.

Throughout much of the game, I had a growing time advantage, peaking at about ten extra minutes by move 40. At this point, I had lost any hope of a win by checkmate, but my opponent had less than fifteen minutes on his clock and had been using several minutes per move, so I held out hope that I could stall his pawn advances long enough to win on time. In the end, too many squares around his pawns were covered for my king to really do much, and when checkmate came for me he still had over seven minutes.