Nice game! What do you think of Ne5 instead of Qa5. The idea is to trade of blacks bad knight for whites good knight. Blacks knight has no influence in the game while whites is a good piece on the queenside where he has all his play. If black gets to trade all minor pieces it should be no problem to draw (like the game position with only major pieces). I would go for this since I like whites position. Blacks got to do something so I think Qa5 is logical although I'm not sure how good it is. Ne4 is maybe a little hard to assess in blitz, but analyzing...

Ne4, Nxe4, fxe4 and if white playes Ne5 then Bb5 looks good and black will be able to defend the pawn with Bd3 if he likes, also threatening whites d-pawn. Then you can chase away the knight with f6 which is a good feature of the move aswell and the pawn e4,Bd3 constilation looks really good to me since it can't be challenged by any minor pieces at the moment.

If white defends Nc3 then you just trade and be happy in the fact that you have got rid of your bad piece.

Qa5 is more aggressive though trying to challenge whites play on the Queenside but I think black in reality can't force anything from this position. Qa5 could maybe have been exploited better by your opponent.

Not trying to be cocky with this I just thought I would contribute in the forums a bit since I really like this site!

SJplayer

Ne4 looks interesting. I think I might like it too. Another point about it is that if he trades with Nxe4 and I play dxe4, his d4 pawn will be backward and I'll be able to have pressure against white's center.

Also if he defends the Knight on c3, I might just leave my knight where it is on e4 and play something like Rb8 since I don't mind a trade. Qa5 was not such a good move in light of Bd2, so I think something like Ne4 would've been much better. I really didn't like my position and should've tried something more active (like Ne4).

I looked up some information about the 6. c5 line of the panov botvinnik and apparently Nc6 is not such good move. This is because of what happened in the game: when I play b6 and he played b4, I couldn't play a5 because I had to content with b5, hitting my Nc6. Therefore, most players (Karpov included) opt for 6...Be7 with the idea of castling and playing b6 to undermine white's center.

Anyways, I agree that Ne4 would've been a much more active (and better) option.

c6... why? He can't promote it. It's going to be lost, and he throws away his a-pawn too.