A game I drew, could I have won it?

To patzers in the crowd looks spot on (I think 34. h4 also works). IMHO to keep it general, LuckyDan74 because of your outside passer your king is in a much better spot, so the idea is to create inroads into his kingside pawns then give up the pawn and run over there and nom nom with your king.

That 34.f4 is better than f3 (and more importantly that 35...g5 is a draw) was not at all obvious to me.

If it was obvious to you, I'm impressed  It took me some analysis to figure out why the engine cared... like you say, it's all about not being left with the rook pawn, but I wonder if I would have been able to find 35...g5 as black in a real game.

Anyway I think 30.Bd4 is an important move to note (which I did earlier, and I haven't seen anyone else mention it) because the B vs N endgame should be very easy while king and pawn endgames often require accuracy. Sure the K+P endgame may be a win, but in a real game I wonder if I would even bother to check.

#23. I pondered 30, Bd4 I thought swapping the a-pawn for the g-pawn was ahead but not winning.

@Preggo_Basashi On move 29. Tal knew this was a win for white, another obvious one ;-)

34...g5! draws, nice. Not quite the same idea as OP's game on move 35, but similar stuff, excellent example game, very nice 

Eh, I assume it's an easy win. After the pawn swap Bd4 makes the pawn immortal. The bishop easily works both sides of the board. Black's kingside pawns are split... should be a win.

30. Bd4 Nxa5 31. Bxg7 Nc4 32. Ke2 Nd6 33. b6 Kc6, after which I cannot see without playing it out on a board.
#26: Is that 34. f3 ?! g5! (=) by the way.

#26 is talking about the Tal game you posted where Djurasevic missed a draw. I assumed that's why you posted it (as an example of how hard it can be to evaluate king and pawn endgames).

As for the OP's game, this is what I'm thinking. If you play Nc4 I just go to d4 then activate my king later.

@Preggo_Basashi  Right I see, sorry. David Hooper Practical Chess Endgames page 35 suggests 34. ... g5 over the played 34. ... e5 in the Tal game. This sort of thing: 34... g5 35. g3 gxf4 36. gxf4 e5 37. f5 h5
Clearly white needs the h4 move as corum showed in the potential game variant on the first page.

Yes I see that 32. Bd4 variant stops 32. ... Nd6. hmmmm

#22  IMHO to keep it general, LuckyDan74 because of your outside passer your king is in a much better spot, so the idea is to create inroads into his kingside pawns then give up the pawn and run over there and nom nom with your king.

Thanks SH, keeping it general is good for me, this thread is becoming quite a lot to take in, I feel I am getting swamped with information. What is obvious to me is I should have turned this in to a win and it seems there were 3 or 4 opportunities to do it. 

So it's move the king to help the pawns, but not too early as I did in the game, make sure I play f4 but not f3, or defeat the knight with two flank pawns leaving me a bishop up but a pawn down - not the easiest of wins, OR take out a black pawn with the bishop for the sake of my rook pawn which Preggo and Rat are currently debating....

I DO appreciate all the help with this guys and girls, but I think I need to focus on the simplest advice bearing in mind my rating level!

There are two really good presenters on here who analyse games, that is GM Jesse Kraai and IM Attilio, their programmes are really helpful

Yeah, topics tend to take on a life of their own. We are (or at least I am) just having fun with it, analyzing because it's interesting, not necessarily to help you.

But ok, a very important comment you made in your game, IMO, was on move 34. You said you had no plan, but this is a very basic and important endgame with a very simple plan. Namely you use your outside passed pawn as a decoy to give your king time to win the kingside pawns.

Now, analysis showed that in this particular position white wasn't able to win on auto pilot. For example after 35...g5 it's already a draw. I don't necessarily expect you to understand or care that 35...g5 is a draw (if you do, great), but more importantly the basic plan of using an outside passed pawn as a decoy you're definitely able to understand, and it's very useful.

For example seeing a position like the one below you should be thinking this is such an easy win that you could do it in your sleep

(white can win any number of ways, but the basic mechanism is using the passed pawn as a decoy, I show two ways black might play, one moving his pawns, and the other moving his king)

Agreed.  GM Jesse Kraai has been very helpful with getting insights into my game.  If you post your game in this thread, you can get it analyzed by him:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/free-member-game-analysis-from-gm-jesse-kraai-broadcast-live-on-twitch

Even if you can't make the live broadcast, you can watch show any time after through the chess.com twitch channel.

Thanks Preggo, a most useful post and great summing up. Yes using the outside pawn as a decoy is something I must take from posting up this game if I am ever going to win an endgame without fluke.

Your examples make things very clear to me. I've gone over them a few times so hopefully this idea will sink in. I vaguely remember Silman talking about the fox and chickens or something ridiculous like that but it's difficult to see in a book and so much easier to see here. Thanks for taking the time to post up these lines for me. 

Thanks for posting up this game Darren... very good example.

When the board reduced to pawns and kings only it was interesting to see both players activate their kings centrally and how white used his 3 v 2 pawn advantage to great effect.

I guess black calculated that Tal would capture the black pawn right after it queened and he had no way of stopping the white a pawn from queening with his own king.

The game was one of about 100 I memorised as a teenager. You know how it is, the best chance of winning a rook end game is with centre pawns; the best chance of winning a knight end game is with wing pawns. So if you have examples in your head, copy cat rules.

Thanks Pam & Jonathan. Sounds interesting - certainly wasn't aware of this!

I see chessable have just introduced a new endgame/tactics e-book which could be the very thing I'm looking for