The art of doing nothing

My opponent last weekend excelled in the noble art of doing nothing. He defended. That's all. Waiting in his hideout for me to make a mistake. Not committing anything, but with a sharp eye on the mistake that I would inevitably make. "Show me what you have" seems to be their concept.

It's hard to play that kind of playters, especially in a gambit line, since you did sacrifice the pawn. You gave this kind of opponent the opportunity to act like this, you did give them the pawn. They can just wait for the storm to calm and fight back at that point.

What to do against those opponents ? Play the correct moves, and hope that you can unleash a violent storm - something I failed to do.

1.d4 Nf6 2.f3 d5 3.e4 dxe4 4.Nc3 exf3 5.Nxf3 Bg4 6.h3 Bh5 7.g4 Bg6 8.Ne5 Nfd7 (diagram)
Challenging my outpost in a very unconventional way.

I continued in the normal Teichmann way, not realizing my opponent had embarked on a "Do Nothing" approach.

9.Qf3 c6 10.Nxg6 hxg6 11.Bc4 e6 12.0-0 Qf6 13.Be3 (diagram)
Black has just played the only active move he will ever play, and I failed to take advantage.

13...Qxf3 14.Rxf3 Be7 15.Raf1 Rf8 16.Ne4 Nb6 17.Bb3 Nd5 (diagram)

Black reached a relatively safe outpost for his knight, ( but has not forgotten his concept of play ).
18.Bg5 f6 19.Bd2 a5 20.c4 Nc7 21.Bf4 N8a6 22.Nd6+ Bxd6 23.Bxd6  Rh8 (diagram)

Returning to his home spot ! But actually it is a great move as the rook will go lateron to h5, commanding the 5th line.

And here I suddenly realised I had less than nothing. I have the bishop pair, but black still has a solid position and has the extra pawn. And most of all, I spent 1,5 hours out of my allotted 2 hours for 40 moves to reach an equal position, whilst my opponent had spent only 30 minutes doing nothing. Black clearly has a won game here - talking from a psycological point of view.

In any case, I lost the game. But how to play against the odd 8...Nfd7 ?? My silicon assistant suggests 9.Nxg6 ( a move that needs to be played anyway ) hxg6 and now 10.Bg5 or 10.Bg2, but let's analyse that in the next column.