End Game Help

Hello Everyone,

I was wondering if any of you would be willing to critique my endgame. Here is a game I recently won however it took me a while to end it. There are, of course, flaws throughout the game however I would like you to focus primarily on the endgame.

I was up a bishop.
I don't think I had a positional advantage until 60. g4.
My knight sacrifice was unintentional.

Game 4097682

Thank you for your time.

Regards,
Drew

Playing through the endgame quickly I noticed that you moved your king quite alot. It ended up going back and forth and not really going anywhere while your queen sat on the side of the board doing nothing. The best plan for you at the beginning of that endgame would be to protect your king from checks and try to trade off queens. Once both queens are off the board that endgame would be a piece of cake compared to what you had to do to win.

After the "sac" with the Knight, you still have the material advantage. You should be thinking about moving your King to safety (whites Q is alive and well) and getting your Queen more involved and possibly exchanged. For example move 32...Ke6 is probably a mistake because it allowed white to continue putting you in check (perpetual check was an option for white a couple times). f8 was a better square. Likewise with move 58.

Nice job finding the mating combo after he blundered moving his King.

Edit: Most of that was already said....oops. 😉

To the above two posts, I\'ll add this: When up material, try not to allow pawn trades. What you want is to trade major pieces, then go harvesting his pawns when he has nothing to defend them with.

White should have tried 60.fxg5 followed by 61.Qxd6, leaving you with no pawns left to promote. I don\'t remember what the tablebases say about Q+B vs. Q, but if there is a forced win, it\'s going to be a very difficult one.

Well, it would have been good to trade queens early in that endgame, but if you had traded later, when only a few pawns were on the board, you would have had an even harder time to win; a draw would have been likely (bishop vs. pawns). So nice job in that regard.

Originally posted by wittywonka
Well, it would have been good to trade queens early in that endgame, but if you had traded later, when only a few pawns were on the board, you would have had an even harder time to win; a draw would have been likely (bishop vs. pawns). So nice job in that regard.