An Accidental Checkmate

I was playing a 5-minute game on ICC tonight. I had a winning endgame, but the problem was that I was down to 1 second on my clock (Yeah I know, I need to move faster), and my opponent had almost two minutes. No problem, I thought. I will just promote my pawn to a Queen and sacrifice it for the pawn on g6 and get a draw.

In the picture above, I have just played 57. a7, and I premoved 58. a8=Q. When my opponent played 57...Ne6???, my BlitzIn made a DING sound to indicate the game was over. Turns out that 58. a8=Q was checkmate.

Oops

Oops, it appears that my USCF membership has expired :(
Since I was rarely playing in any chess tournaments anyway (Valley Chess once every three months is not very frequent), I don't have a strong motivation to renew. So I am temporarily retired from tournament chess. I will still continue to play on ICC though. My handle there is Googly.

Congratulations to Joel Johnson

...for winning the United States Senior, which ended recently. I know Joel from Valley Chess (I play there once every three months).