What a painful missed win

This was so painful to experience. I was doing so well.

At move 28 I correctly realized that Black had no time to give a check because then the queen would have been misplaced to defend. But the opponent understood it as well.
Later I realized that I didn't need my rook and h5 was the right way to go.
At the very end I was short on time and I did not see that the king hunt would end with the wild Kf6 !! IMO that's hard to see when in time pressure. After Qf4+ Bf5 Black would not have time to take the defending bishop and it's game over.

Kudos to my opponent for spotting all these defending resources.

Damn, this is really tough to digest. What an epic miss...

With 15 seconds on clock you have to play 35. Qxe8, there is no other sensible choice.

@Nerwal said in #2:
> With 15 seconds on clock you have to play 35. Qxe8, there is no other sensible choice.

fair point but in my mind with Bxf8 I thought I was removing the defender in order to later checkmate on h7. It did not occur to me that he had that queen check, since I was too focused on the attacking tactics.

If you completely missed Qxd4+ then you can't complain about how the game ended.

In some lines if you miss Qxd4+ you just lose : eg if 34. Qxg6 instead of 34. Bxg6, then 34... Nf8 35. Bxf8?? Qxd4+ 36. Kh1 Qxe4+! 0-1

@Nerwal said in #4:
> If you completely missed Qxd4+ then you can't complain about how the game ended.
>
> In some lines if you miss Qxd4+ you just lose : eg if 34. Qxg6 instead of 34. Bxg6, then 34... Nf8 35. Bxf8?? Qxd4+ 36. Kh1 Qxe4+! 0-1

OK but Qxg6 is already a blunder. so you are talking about an hypothetical scenario in which I make a blunder that I did not make in the actual game. Bxg6 felt better during the game because of the double attack on the rook.
I had to play very quickly, and so yes, I didn't notice Qxd4+ in those few seconds, but in fact I would have won anyway if I only spotted Kf6 (which I briefly considered but it felt too dangerous and I chose not to play it).

@esmiro said in #5:
> OK but Qxg6 is already a blunder. so you are talking about an hypothetical scenario in which I make a blunder that I did not make in the actual game. Bxg6 felt better during the game because of the double attack on the rook.
> I had to play very quickly, and so yes, I didn't notice Qxd4+ in those few seconds, but in fact I would have won anyway if I only spotted Kf6 (which I briefly considered but it felt too dangerous and I chose not to play it).

Qxg6 is only a blunder because of Qxd4+. Without seeing Qxd4+ and calculating anything precisely it is impossible to tell which move Qxg6 or Bxg6 is better.

One way to look at the game is to say "oh I was completely winning the entire time, I just missed a move at the end because I didn't dare it in time trouble."

Another is to look at how many direct wins White had :
1º) 31. Bxg6 hxg6 32. Qxg6 wins because of Rf7.
2º) 31. Bxd5 cxd5 32. Rc1 wins because of Rc7.
3º) 33. Bxg6 wins as Black can't even take the bishop.
4º) 33. h6 Rg8 34. Be7 wins.
5º) 35. Qxe8 wins.

By comparison, White chose a long and complicated way to win the game (in the middle of which there was a slip : after 37. Kg2 Qxg4+ there is no mate and the game will continue for a while). If we add that White fell into serious time trouble even before starting the part of the attack that needed to be calculated precisely, then the final result is not that surprising.

"It felt better", "it felt too dangerous"... It is good to have some chess intuition as guidance, but that's not enough (as you can see the first guess was right, the second one was not). It is not possible to conclude successfully an attack by just playing moves on the account they look good. At some point, you have to calculate concretely a direct and precise way to kill the game (or at least reach a simplified technical position where the win is not difficult anymore), without missing anything.

@Nerwal this is a very good advice, and your 5 possible ways to win are clear.... NOW, that I can check them out with all the time I want. The point is that in time pressure I couldn't think clearly and coldly about all these variants and I had to rely on intuition. Inevitably in time pressure I am going to miss a lot (this is true for most players, but particularly for me, since as you can see I am very weak in blitz and bullet). When I had more time I did make more in depth calculations, for example when I played Qf3, which is non trivial, or when I played h5.