I've lost a ton of games lately, but this one was my best win ever, as far as rating goes.  I was also lucky enough to actually queen a pawn, which was, for me, a good feeling. 

Any thoughts about improvements are welcome.  Most of my games don't go this well, but I'm trying to be stubborn and keep improving.

alot of mine lately havent gone well either. several i get the lead and end up still losing some how and make mistakes i dont normally maketo lose the lead(not counting pawn leads) and then go on to lose. I have done it a couple times before, i know its not easy, mostly depends on where everything is at the time of you doing it and sometimes its good to plan ahead and try to set things up to get you the advantage to help with it, even though thats not easy as well. try some practices runs for only at thatpoint in different situations and different pieces and try to find openings in each if you can, that way you find ways to set things up easier as well for end game to give you more the advantage if you are able to see certain set ups.

also nice job with all that, even though they could have taken the pawn sooner i saw but never did. he let you get too much advantage with that pawn and he should have took it out alot sooner

Well done, you won in style against somebody rated 500 points higher than yourself!

16. e6 looks like a great move but 17. Re1 looks a bit strange. You've got 17. Qxd5 and black is in big trouble. There was no need to lose that knight.

Congratz on the queen maneuvre to d4. There was no good way to prevent a deadly check on d7 or d8 after that. The way you finished off the game and achieved the promotion of the passed pawn was definitely the strongest phase of the game.

How about the simple 5. Nh4 in response to your opponents dodgy opening? You could maybe take advantage of his loose play faster that way. Are you sure about 13. e5 as well? It looks like black can just take it with either pawn, but I guess your rooks might become very active on the central files that way so it might be a fair idea for a blitz game.

Anyway, keep on slaying giants.

nice, you have forced mate too!

Thanks for the comments, everyone. The win was more a result of bad opening principles on his part than any real skill on mine, at least early.  I am quite pleased with the endgame.

padman - I'm always, for some reason, nervous about moving knights to the outside rank.  Is that a justified fear, or I have gotten bad information stuck in my head?

Yes, that is slightly bad information! Usually knights have limited range on the edge compared to a central position, but if you opponent creates a weakness in his camp and you have to move your knight to the rim to exploit it, then you should. Your knight wouldn't be staying there long either, he'd be jumping from h4 to g6 as soon as possible probably. Every principle in chess has exceptions.

on move 8 instead of playing Ba3, which doesn't do much. You should have played a move like h3 followed by g4 to break the pin. You can't let your opponents knight exploit a hole like that. On move 9 you waist tempo, you should put your bishop where you want it, and not change your mind a minute later. Then directly after that your opponent makes a mistake. Your bishop pair wasn't amounting to much, he should have left his strong knight where it was and find a way to develop his problem bishop, then castle either way. Anyhow I could go over every move but I'm too tiered. Overall just make sure you think about how well each piece is placed and focus on improving their effectiveness. Try to avoid painful pins and you should be fine. :)

In this case, and it's not really that rare, moving your Knight to an edge file makes sense.  The a- and h-files are not usually good long-term positions for a Knight, as you know, because they are farther from the center and influence fewer total squares (only 4 instead of their maximum possible 8 squares).  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't ever use the edge squares as a planned route to get your Knight to somewhere else (like Nh4 en route to Ng6 , as Padman pointed out).  You just don't want to get your Knight caught and trapped on the edge of the board unless that's the only way to save it.

Also, in this case, for quite a few moves your Knight could actually have caused you some potential damage by staying on f3 .  For many of the moves, if Black had chosen to take your Knight with his g4 Bishop, the only way you could have recaptured the Bishop would have been via gxf3 , breaking up your King's protection and doubling pawns on your f-file.  Black might have considered that worth giving up his Bishop pair.  Getting the Knight off of f3 would have removed that potential problem for you.

--Cystem

Thanks for the input, all of you.

I saw this last night, come back to comment onit now. Amazing display of chess my only advice would be try not to lose peices early on. Great play my friend!

My first queening...