Another endgame position

Ok here's another engame position I had lot of difficulties solving before. White to move and win. I am on check so I have move king. I am trying to calculate what if Kxf2. King takes h2. I have to get to the square and stop g3. If he goes g3 after I take f pawn I just take with h-pawn. So he has to take with the king here I can step in the square and g3 and I am fast enough with my knight.

King and queen versus king and knight.

Mating with queen against knight was biggest problem for me a while back. It seemed impossible to get opponents king to the edge of the board. But today against Fritz 12 while I was waiting my opponent to move and using Jeremy Silman's complete engame course as guide I suddenly nailed it!
 
1. Make a box with a queen for a opponents king. Make it as small as possible.

2. Don't walk into fork. It's okay if knight threatens either king or queen but not both. 

3. Take notice that being one square diagonally away from knight or two squares diagonally or horizontally is where it takes longest time for knight to threaten you.

Here are my annotations.

I wonder what happened since last time I tried?

Maybe I am not as nervous. The keyword here is patience. The way to resolve this is to concentrate on key ideas and not worry about making sidesteps.

Everything is not in its right place.

Position after 22.Bxf2

 I got to this position against Darrenshome in 5 minute blitz.in FICS. Do you see my wrong checkmating idea and how white blundered himself into it?

Missing principled idea

I had two slow time control games against my good man drfrankenstein on FICS. Here I am steering the rather sterile technical endgame to finish and missing two principled ideas.

If I move a piece, how will my opponent responds? In chess is this idea of response that somehow drops from my limited understanding.

If I want to be more specific: I always give squares and get squares while moving a piece. Which squares will I give?

Black to move and loose

s

e

Ten points and a parrot sticker for the one who finds my move.

Pawn mate

Using Peshk for practising basic pawn mates in one has changed somehow my feeling for the position when opponents king is loose. The importance and functionality of pawns in creating mating net has occured to me.

White to move

So white to move and mate here.

White to move

This is from bullet game where I had played g4 and opponent erred with c3.

The move that brought me to my record high

 

Once again one  my opponents played the dubious Bf5?! after 1.d4  d5 2.c4 Nf6 3.Nc3. And once again 4.Qb3! refutes this as far as I understand.

Couple of moves later we reach this position on the picture and his bishop is threatening my queen. I was happy to find the winner. In fact I seem to remember this from some previous game where the same tactic endured. So this time around everything was at its right place.

White to move

What is the winner?

When your friend pushes you into right direction

I’ve been nagged by my lousy tactics by a friend in FICS so I spent some days at chess.ermrald.net trying to improve. Here’s a position from recent blitz game against 1458 player where he had major tactical oversight with ..Qb6. I am sure the hours spent on tactics helped here to see the oversight. Actually I saw the possibility even before black move and kept summoning (shouting aloud) the possibility to play it.

White to move.