Rook endgames were lurking in the background

Often in life or in chess we can understand things better through the illumination of the unvisible facts in the background.

So please look at the folllowing endgame position:

When I showed this position in my chess class and asked:" Whose position is better in your opinion?" came the expected answer: " Black is better cause of the d-passed pawn!"

Well, sometimes we are dazzled through a good argument. But looking at that argument in the whole context it is meaningless. So it is here in this position.

The d-pawn looks at first sight very impressive, but it is under control and other facts are more important. For example the piece activity!

All three black pieces are more or less occupied with defending tasks: king is protecting g7, the rook defends the pawn a5 and the bishop has to defend the "impressive" passed pawn

Now look at the white pieces: King is attacking the d-pawn and could attack rook and bishop , rook attacks a5 and g7 and only the knight has a defending task (pawn a2)

So the game went on:

We saw, that Kortschnoi avoided three  times transposing into a rook endgame. Was he right with his decision?

1. possible rook endgame

2. possible rook endgame (similiar to the third one)

So we have seen, that in that phase of the game white had the difficult decision transposing into a rook endgame or not.

The fact, that such a brilliant player as Kortschnoi presumely missed a winning rook endgame shows, how difficult this kind of endgames are to evaluate. Especially when you have the stress playing for the worldchampionship. So you are warned :-)