Twice the same position at move 14, and an improvement that failed

Merry Halloween!, or whatever. It's fitting that today's the Halloween because this is a scary post--soon I'll add a category "Eerie" for posts like this one and the one about the invisible queen.

Yesterday I played two bullet games against the same guy within a few minutes, and astonishingly or not, we reached exactly the same position in both games at move 14. The move order was slightly different (starting at move 8; I tried to improve my move order the second time around). My opponent chose a different continuation at move 15 because he lost a piece in our first game, and it should have been a better continuation had he found the best move, but to no avail, he ended up losing an exchange in the worst way possible in the second game.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the games:

Game #1:
1. e4 c6 2. Bc4 d5 3. exd5 cxd5 4. Bb3 Nf6 5. d4 Bg4 6. f3 Bf5 7. Ne2 Nc6 8. O-O e6 9. c3 Bd6 10. Ng3 Bg6 11. Bd2 Qc7 12. Be1 O-O 13. Nd2 Bf4 14. Bf2 Na5

Game #2:
1. e4 c6 2. Bc4 d5 3. exd5 cxd5 4. Bb3 Nf6 5. d4 Bg4 6. f3 Bh5 7. Ne2 e6 8. O-O Bd6 9. Bd2 O-O 10. Be1 Qc7 11. Ng3 Bg6 12. Bf2 Nc6 13. Nd2 Bf4 14. c3 Na5

Game #1: 15. Bc2

Game #2: 15. Re1

Game #1: 15. … Nc4 16. Bxg6? Nxd2!

Game #2: 15. … b5 16. Bc2 Nc4 17. Bxg6? Bxd2!

Game #1: 17. Bxf7+ Qxf7 18. Re1

Game #2: 18. Re2 hxg6

Game #1: Here I played 18. ... Nc4 and I'm up a piece.

Game #2: 

Here my opponent needed to play 19. Rxd2 Nxd2 20. Qxd2, 

still conceding the exchange (why not play 18. Bxh7+ otherwise?). 

Instead, he tried to deflect my knight from the defense of the bishop.

19. b3? Bxc3 20. bxc4 Bxa1 21. Qxa1 dxc4

And here I'm up an exchange with a protected passed pawn.

Here are the two games in full (1-minute games on lichess.org):

Game #1:

Game #2: