Winning combination

When doing a puzzle, you know there's a winning combination there and you just have to find it. They're harder to find in real games because you don't know if there is one or not. So I was proud to find the win here and it led me to victory over a higher rated opponent. 

Is it QxQ, RxQ, Bxc7 attacking both rooks? 

Yes.....that's it!

Cool. Well spotted. 

Thanks! I usually see these (missed) opportunities in my game review, so I was really pleased to see this in real time and get a chance to play it.  

Great job! If you can consistently spot these types of tactics in games your rating will go up in no time!

I know! That's why I go over every game in review a couple times. It's been frustrating to see all those I miss, and even games I've won, the victory has been tainted when I see how easily my opponent could have won if he had seen....... Anyway, I'm working hard at seeing more of these for that very reason....it's the difference between being a beginner and a respectable player.  Thanks!

It's somewhat sad how the rook gets attacked after Bxc7. All the squares around c7 are well defended - but the c7 square itself is not defended after the exchange of queens.

This is some weird mix of 2 different notations. (One of them is defunct since 1981. Interesting to see if it ever dies out in the US... although it was officially declared dead more than 40 years ago. )

Nope. Specifying the pawn to be captured was technically unnecessary, but not particularly old-fashioned. Specifying the piece to be captured when it's a queen is also pretty ordinary. I can see you might object if I went all 'P-K4, PQB3' on you, but I didn't. 

No, it's the other way around. QxQ only exists in the outdated and 40-years-defunct "descriptive notation". The only internationally recognized notation (algebraic) writes it as Qxd8.

Interesting how when I moved that bishop to f4, the review called it an "inaccuracy" but it turned out to be a winning move. Perhaps if I was playing against the perfect opponent, that would have turned out to be a bad move.  When the engine evaluates your moves, it considers that you are playing Stockfish or whatever, so a lot of times my weak moves have been the best moves given the opponent I'm playing. 

When a bad move turns out to be a winning move, I don't know whether to feel good or bad about it.

Even worse, I had an opponent resign abruptly yesterday and I didn't know why. From the way he had played, I sensed that he saw something I didn't see, and sure enough, I eventually found it. I had a move that forced him to give up his queen to avoid checkmate. He saw it and resigned. I didn't see it until after he resigned, and I may not have seen it if we had continued. 

It's not hard to see at all, but I'm not exactly a GM and I failed to see that the f1 square was protected by a bishop. So I didn't realize I could move the rook there. I'm not proud of that...but it's the sad truth.  But hopefully, I've learned something.