What Went Wrong???

It looks like you had lots of advice about endgame just there. I'm using my phone in a foreign airport in the early hours of morning to read this, but it definitely seems like something I should come back to to read 

This is a game between N00bm4ster and myself in a 1000-1400 tourney.  My question is from move 65 forward; could I have won?  The computer analysis indicated that I had a 1 point advantage.  I accepted the draw N00b offered because I couldn't see a path to victory. 

I have never been able to figure out how to include a diagram but here is a link to the game.  Thanks for looking and any comments.

https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/daily/279596122?tab=analysis

Computer evaluations had you up 2.7 before move 66. I’ve come to the realization that my end game technique needs serious refinement so I won’t be anywhere near as technical as hopefully MasterDean and others can provide but you have a queen and his king is on c6 as of this move and your king is on f6. I would have tried to maneuver his king into a corner and not worried about his pawn chain as they are too slow. 

just my thoughts on how I would have approached it. I’m sure others have information that will be more helpful and insightful. 

I can give you a guaranteed answer on this one as I checked it against the endgame tablebase (all endgame positions with 6 or fewer pieces have now been solved absolutely by supercomputers and we can check the results online) at move 66: regardless of what the computer's instant read says, it's a draw. Q vs R with no pawns is a win for the queen, but it's a challenging endgame that masters have failed to win over the board; with the rook having some extra pawns as here, no way to force anything as you can't let the pawns run long enough to slowly outmaneuver the rook, so you were right to take the draw, and your instinct that you couldn't see a way to force a win was right because no one could. I can take a look earlier in the game at some point if you'd like analysis for when and how it got to be drawn, let me know and I can try to figure that out, but for right now I can at least answer the first question for you - you were right to take the draw.

I didn’t even know they had a endgame tablebase. I’ve got to step up my game. 

I offered the draw because I couldn't see any clear way forward in the position and felt if I tried too hard it would come to a bad end. Also, by winning the game Da-Nee got 1st place for a 1 day per move club tourney that started a few months back. 

Dean, thanks for the offer to look through the game but it was just the ending that I thought to be especially interesting.  It seemed to me like a rook and 3 connected pawns should be able to overcome the queen but now we know the reality.  I, also, didn't know there was an end game database.  N00b is a tough competitor as is evidenced by his 2000+ puzzle rating.

When would you become suspicious of players using an engine in daily games? Have a look at this from a player who was rated 400 below me at the start https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/daily/313073578?tab=report

They made 1 mistake and 1 inaccuracy both in the opening and then played near perfect from then on, probably not always choosing the best move so it's not too obvious! 

They may have just played really well, looking back, I made some mistakes but I didn't play hideously bad. I'm not bitter about it at all, if they genuinely played well.

It's in a knockout tournament which gives some motive... 

What do you think? 

Looking at the game it looked like he took advantage of some mistakes. That being said, his finish was near surgical. He defended your attack perfectly and his checkmate execution (vision) was impressive. What's his tactics look like? (rating wise I mean?)

So, taking a look at it... to me, unfortunately, it doesn't look like there's any cheating going on. I could always be wrong, but I wouldn't be suspicious of this game - the point at which things started to swing the other way on you all of their moves look very logical, and they're also pretty forcing one-move-attack type ideas, which is typical of lower-rated players. I didn't see any really 'deep'-looking moves, a lot of little attacks on your queen and the like, which are not super hidden computer-looking moves. Their peak daily rating is also in the 1400s, which might also indicate they are closer in strength to you than it would initially appear.

That said, I think you won the other game with them, so at least you should both advance in the tournament if it's a knockout tournament.

As for 'what went wrong'... if I had to put my finger on it, the move that immediately speaks of a common mistake is move 9 for you. This is something I see all the time - you have an attack or some pressure going and you trade. Whenever you've got initiative and pressure, unless it secures a winning position or absolutely has to be done, you should do everything in your power to avoid trading off your active pieces. Trading down is a key defensive resource, so you don't want to allow your opponent to use it when they are defending. In fact, often, if they are able to trade down, you find they end up a little better because the attack dies and your pieces are slightly misplaced as a result of going all-in for that attack. On move 9, instead of taking their knight, getting rid of your good attacking piece and helping them to activate their own bishop, better I think would be either Bg4 (pinning their knight and developing another piece, keeping your pressure) or Be3 (moving the bishop out of attack and further down their throat.

I think after that point you fell behind in development because you lost your most developed piece and then did an awkward queen-sortie that ended up with the queen on an ugly square on the edge of the board and them with a nice lead in development. Problem got worse when after that instead of developing your queenside, you kept moving the queen and trying to attack, seemingly trying to have your queen solo the whole enemy army. It was still salvageable at that point, but with the more non-developing moves you made there, by the time you were fully developed, they had a big material edge.

So that's my analysis - I hope it's helpful for you to see those mistakes; in review, the main issues were 1. Trading down your developed piece while attacking when you didn't have to, and then 2. Trying to launch another attack while they were actually better-developed. Those are my thoughts, anyways. I think you'll advance on a tie, though, and I think that's what happened so... good luck in the next round!

oh wow I wasn't expecting such a detailed analysis

I remember I did consider 9...Bg4 at some point but decided against it, I forget why. Your points are  definitely logical and usually those are the kinds of things I would think about, not sure why I missed this here. I suppose that I may have been focusing a little less on this game as maybe I felt like it should be easy given his rating (that's a huge mistake itself I know!)

This is definitely helpful, thank you for taking the time to look at it

Yes we both advance.

@mohotma67 he is 1384 but he hasn't done very many puzzles (<200).

Yeah, I think 93% accuracy isn't quite enough to be accused of cheating, even though he had very few suboptimal moves. And as masterdean said, I think the moves were mostly non-suspicious. I think I could have played as white or black in that game, the moves all seemed around 1500 rated I would say(speaking as a 1500 rated player). As masterdean said, taking the knight on the ninth move and probably move twelve were the two main mistakes in the game. But other than that I think the game was pretty well played for both sides. 

That's great. I'd much rather lose to a lower rated player fairly of course! Means I still have much to learn!

That player definitely seemed underrated however. I recently played a 400 rated player who I managed to hold to a draw and was one of the few in the tournament able to do so.