you may want to consider analyzing with a tablebase
Endgame Help
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Jan 18, 2010
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#3
A tablebase isn't necessary. This is a won ending for black. Your mistake was c5. You want to keep the c-pawn and use your a-pawn as a distraction for his king so you can win his c-pawn and secure the queening square. Something like this should have happened:
EDIT: To more specifically answer your original questions:
1) You went wrong when you played c5
2) You should have seen that sequence wouldn't work out b/c King + rook pawn vs King is a draw if the the weak side can secure the promotion square.
3) Since you can't win with the rook pawn, you want to promote the c-pawn. To make progress you need to distract his king, and you a-pawn is very useful for doing this.
What bondiggity said. A Rook pawn is usually the easiest to draw against, Your c pawn is the trump.
I'd like to make two general points, one about weaknesses and another about procedures.
First, to win most endings the opponent has to have two weaknesses. A weakness is a square that needs to be defended by pieces. This is my own definition and I think it is clearer than anything I've seen in endgame textbooks.
In your starting position what are White's two weaknesses? He has to defend the pawn on d4 and he has to defend at least one square on the a-file to prevent the a-pawn from queening. Since these weaknesses are 3 files apart, the White king can not guard them both at the same time. So your winning plan should be to tie the king to one weakness and then attack the other.
How does this work tactically? You post your king on d5, forcing his king to guard his d-pawn. Then you push the a-pawn. Eventually he will have to stop your a-pawn and lose his d-pawn.
How do you know this is the ending to steer for? Because it's a procedure. A procedure is a group of endgame moves, not involving specific move orders, that accomplish a goal. Linking procedures together is the way to improve your endgame skills.
For example, mating with king and queen against king is a procedure. You don't have to analyse specific move orders to know this is a forced checkmate, because you have learned the procedure. let's call this the QueenMates proceedure.
After you learn this procedure, you can learn another procedure, how to queen a pawn in a king and pawn versus king ending. let's call this the Queening procedure. Once you know which positions allow you to execute the Queening procedure, you can hook the two procedures together into a longer procedure, Queening+QueenMates
Once you have this combined procedure mastered, you can learn a third procedure - what to do when you have an extra pawn in a king and pawn ending. In this procedure you the extra pawn as a decoy to lure the enemy king away from defending his pawns. You let your extra pawn be captured, and while his king is decoyed, your king attacks and wins one, or more, of his pawns.
Now if you know this decoy procedure, you can check to see if the result of the decoy procedure reaches one of the positions from the Queening procedure. If it does, you execute the series of procedures in a combined sequence Decoy+Queening+QueenMates, And there's the answer to your original endgame.
The conclusion: If you want to improve your endings you have to learn these, and other, basic pocedures. Then you'll be able to know in a glance if a position is won or not and what to do.
Ok, I recently played a long game with a lot of back and forth. Towards the end I finally got a small advantage, only to throw it away somewhere in my endgame. I would appreciate it if someone could help me understand where I started going wrong in this sequence. And not only by telling me what I should have done, but why. And why I should have seen it. Thanks.
This is where we were after 44.5 moves. I play black.