I have always enjoyed playing chess and just recently started playing competitively again. Last week I played a game with Black:

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While playing the game I was extremely excited as this person was rated 400 points higher than me, however after I started going over the game I realized that white just played horribly and I left him some good options after I cornered my bishop in the left center of the board with 14...dxe4. This is just one example of studying my games where in retrospect the moves didn't seem all that great but where I had good reason to play them in the game 14...dxe4 forces the knight to move and keeps white from castling. Have you ever had similar experiences and how would you suggest I deal with it?

Mike Radford

I applaud your efforts to look for improvements from this game, but I find your conclusions mysterious. The moves you regret are certainly not your biggest mistakes. Instead of 5...Bd6, 5...Bb4+! would have forced a White piece to retreat and given you the edge. On the next move, you could have braved the double check with 6... Bxf4! 7.Nxc7+ Kf8 8.Nxa8 Nc6 and Black will come out ahead.