Help to analyze game (vs. CM personality)

Hello everyone. I need help to analyze my rated game. I ended up with a draw against a Chessmaster personality (rated 1148). I am currently rated 780; I have only played 1 rated game before this and I also drew it. I was going to post it here too but I lost the PGN file.

Here is the game. We both had 30 minutes.

move 51 I think I should've captured the knight, then he would've captured my knight, and I think I would've survived (and maybe won) a King and Pawn vs. King endgame. what do you guys think?

For what worth, here are my quick thoughts on your question.  #1:  Don't trade off queens just to trade them off.  I do the same thing, especially against higher level players.  Really bad habit.  Often, you can take advantage of an active queen that is brought into the game too early.  And taking queens off the table just plays into the hands of strong players, who make better use of the minor pieces anyway.  #2:  I like the knight capture.  But nice idea to at least think about a counter-instructive capture with the b pawn to challenge the center.  #3.  You did promote the a pawn!  At that point, you needed to more actively stop the advance of blacks pawns.  Endgames are hard.  Keep playing and you will get better.

My last quick thought was to look again at your decision to push the f pawn.  Looks like a really big mistake for a whole bunch of reasons.  You missed the pawn fork.  But more importantly, you needed to get your bishop developed and king to safety.  The pawn push didn't to any of those things.   Maybe Bc5 instead?  You had to do something about the pawn fork, and that bishop moves keeps black's king in the middle for a while.  Then you would develop the other bishop, castle, bring the rooks out, and attack! 

Thanks for the helpful reply ratkins. I appreciate it.

Anyways,  I totally missed the pawn fork during the game. Yes, it does seem like Bc5 would be the best move in that scenario. I pushed the f pawn up in the hopes that he would capture it, then I can recapture with the bishop. I knew in the back of my head that he wouldn't fall for it, but I still did it. Had I seen the fork ahead of time I probably would have moved Bc5 too. Shoots.

And I guess my question would be whether that a-pawn was meant to be captured by the rook (after promotion), or could I have done something to get the rook of there?

anyone else have constructive feedback? I'm gonna run the game through my newly bought Fritz 12 and see what it spews out 

I bet Fritz spews & spews and makes you feel superdumb...I know computers do this to me. I don't use them at all for analyzing or playing. I used to play a Chessmaster 6000, but I wanted to quit entirely after losing tons of games.

Practice against players is the way to improve.

Unfortunately from where I'm at I don't have too many opportunities to play against real players. And I just got internet recently, but my online connectivity is limited so I won't be able to play chess.com users that often. So I'll make use of whatever resources I have.

dude..wen i look at thought #1 i am like wat the heck....dude...having a opponents queen running round the board is a begger type thing cause it tends 2 give ur oppent a LOT of tempo ill analize ur game for u....im very happy u R playin a 30min game i love 30 min games..cause of the ability 2 allow in very admazing terific tactics..i like 2 find  N very good thought of the game u R playin. U shouldnt be scared of an active queen witch u could gain a lot of tempo out of....here is an example 2 gain just 2 give u backout bout myself im 1900s in bullet 1600s in bliz N standard so trust my judgement of wat im going 2 help u out.

ok move 1 e4! *the king pawn opening*  this opening here keeps the valuable center controling almost all the center...almost making white do e5! right mak givin white a tremendous adzantage! cause of the extra tempo. cause white is white N starts out with the extra move. TEMPO

TEMPO: this is probaly wat im going 2 teach u most of bout today. probaly wat im ur going 2 learn bout today. Tempo is wen u gain a move in advantage! Tempo allows in position N tactics. being white at the start is a tremendous Advantage...cause white starts out with 1 extra tempo...he makes the first move! here is an example of tempo.. 

now here in this position u would c white gaining tempo by taking the bishop 2 check the king gaining tempo on developing a peice.

now the reason y i am reveiwing this tempo sort of thing is cause of ur comment ur said...