please feel free to offer improvements.

As usual I have this pesky habit of getting my excuses in before making myself look a fool...

This game's build up involved the team captain scaring the living daylights out of me with encouraging stuff which went something like this
Captain: Francis the team needs the points badly for our league.
Me: As am playing white, should I just go for the jugular
Captain: No cos that way You risk a loss
Me (very confused now ) : Surely the laws of probability are such that 33% games won, 33% lost and 33%drawn. Give me 50% chance to win and am taking it.
Captain: ordinarily thats a smart presumption but this guy was the region champion like 7 years back and he is a very solid player.
Me: &%*!! (hands on head and seeing hells gates open to swallow me whole!!!

After ages in the gents room I entered the playing hall shook my opponents hands and wished him good luck through clenched teeth before playing 1.e4
after a few moments hesitation ( like 2 microseconds) he played c5 and my head even sank further.
Not cos of the fear but rather of the confusion.
ordinarily me meeting the sicilian defencce involves going for the smith morra gambit.
However I decided not to cos

• captain says he is a very solid and prepared player. obviously someone like him with obscene ratings as he did have would be ready to crush the dangerous but unsound Smith morra gambit.
• I have been looking at Ideas of playing against the sicilian revolving around Qxd4 !! seeing I did not look likely to outsmart this wise man I decided to put into practice my 2 hour study of the ideas.
  

OK Now for the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the game progressed,

 

 

I hit my opponent with the sacrifice 13 Nd5 !! upon which he went into deep thought mode and I went into panic mode since I was sure he would find a 16 move forcing variation which I have no hope of ever seeing until its too late.

As my confidence was sky high , I delivered the earth shattering 20. Bxf7 check and predicted my going into the endgame two pawns up despite having both queens on board.

 

line following

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typical sods law. I offered my opponent a draw since I figured that going into an end game am totally unfarmiliar with and the words of my captain ringing in my ears, i took half a point and was scared of the endgame.

 

moral of the game:

study endgames my fellow players.

it helps a million.

what about move 25. Re7?

never mind :)  lol

25. Re7 loses but it certainly could fool people especially if there were time trouble.

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 25.Re7 certainly doesnt lose..

please see the second diagram.

white goes into a queen and pawns endgame whilst being 2 stable pawns to the good. more so the c pawn is passed and black will have hell stopping it since the white queen is centralised .

I take it the reason you didn't play 25. Re7 was because you were scared you might mess up against this 'stronger' player? Wasn't sure whether this was the reason or you thought it would be a very difficult endgame or something.

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 i know it doesnt make sense but this dudes like 150 elo points above me.

i was scared off my skin.
almost trembling even. Thinking of it, its annoying to think i threw away a win but in my defence, i had done absolutely no study on the endgames and i was losing most of the club games in the endings. Facing the proverbial tough endgame against someone whose immersed in theory like damn i chose the easy way out.

so with that "basis" ringing in my ears, i wasnt  (at that time) displeased with the result.

PS: If i face the same option today, we are going to an endgame. simple as that!!

right. sorry. I thought Rd1+ Kxd1 Bf3+ followed by QxQ unfortunately for my glance at it I didn't see the Q can take the Bishop.

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 its ok.

Yes, i ran it and it is indeed a draw by perpectual check in the first game. Some of the moves were impossible in the second game!!! Maybe i'm the only one seeing it or its my browser playing tricks on me for e.g.  after 23. Rxe5 23... g6 24. Re8 24... Rf5# 25. Qf6+ 25... Kg8 26. Re7 26... Rd1+ etc,if you pay attection to the moves and read the annotation something is wrongggggggg.

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 ok i think you have made a slight error.

By looking at the movelist , the bone of contention is,                            "23...Re8 loses by force 24. Re8 24... Rf5#  25. Qf6"

thats a variation I inserted into the analysis.
when you click onto the moves, the pieces on board shall rearrange and the analysis is complete ..

thanks for the input.
let me know if it helps.
thx!!