How good is your endgame playing chess?

Back when I played routinely, it was awesome. I did not often lose if I went into the endgame with a pawn advantage.

Today, I am pretty sure it would suck. It’s been ages since I played against anyone who had won a state championship. I had studied the last two endgames and knew how to force checkmate. I’ve now forgotten them. But the first three are no-brainers.

I sorta wing it. Some, like when you end with a rook and a queen among others, were easy enough. On one occasion (most likely a test – we of the chess club liked to experiment) we had a king each and a handful of pawns. Took forever.
I will be bookmarking your link, tho.

@Nullo A pawn and a king versus a king is an interesting end game with nearly countless permutations. Of course, it you have the pawn advantage but the enemy king can capture your pawn before your king can reach the pawn to protect it, then it’s a stalemate. If you can protect it, then it’s a challenge to dance your king properly so the enemy king can’t move to prevent your queening the pawn without closing off all possible moves for the opposing king—which again is a stalemate.

I didn’t have a difficult time with four of the five scenerios above, when I first attempted to learn them that is. The one that gave me a difficult time was the king, knight and bishop vs a lone king scenerio. I know how to force mate rather easily now in all of these endgame situations, thanks to practice. Maybe this is a matter of opinion, but I feel the mate with two bishops and a king vs a lone king was much easier to learn than the bishop, knight and king vs the lone king situation.

@Nullo That is a good site to practice endgame technique on. The simulator also will always give you a different situation with each of those endgame scenerios linked above, so in this way you can master those endgame techniques.