Yes, you almost mated yourself.
It would have been interesting to see if you had a way to break through if he hadn't surrendered the a pawn so easily.
Strange end game
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I cannot. The pawns should be on the white squares when you have a black squared bishop.
The rooks go behind the pawns that you wish to attack. You should bend over backwards to make sure your opponent does not get a passed pawn, let alone a protected one.
Congratulations on winning all the same.
As Rat has noted, the sequence from 24-28 turns your bishop into a big pawn and is appalling to a human player. Stockfish is not appalled (was curious) and it still plans to win very easily, but you are a human and can get in trouble doing stuff like this.
While f4 was not problematic itself, better was 24 bd2 and if 24...d4, 25. bg5 or bh6 keeps your bishop active and should make it easier to mobilize your own pawn majority by restricting black's options. Alternatively, 24. f4 d4 25. bb2 and white's bishop is still doing something useful pressuring black's pawn.
Thanks for your thoughts guys. I'm a novice so not really sure how the game ended up as it did and can't explain my thinking regarding moves 24-28. My opponent was playing the time game and trying to win that way hence those daft king moves, when I saw what he was up to I figured I could do something useful. I reviewed the game again and if move 19 wasn't bad enough, move 20 was pathetic even by my standards. Had I played either move differently I don't think I'd have ended up with this end game!
Feb 12, 2017
0
#6
I don't see how this endgame is "interesting"... it seems to me that white is winning easily throughout the whole thing.
Moves 24-28 weren't what I would've done, but it's hardly a bad move - white has more than enough play on the kingside, an extra piece that's easy to support with the pawns on the same color, and in fact the kingside is where white has an extra pawn, so closing off the queenside is no big deal. The protected passed pawn is easily stopped.
The king march to c5 does nothing though - you can not break through on the queenside in any way as long as he doesn't let you (he did, but you were winning anyways).
Feb 12, 2017
0
#7
Notice that, before you played moves 24-28, your bishop wasn't very active, as it was restricted by the black pawns. After those moves, the bishop became much more effective. Although 24-28 had drawbacks too, they definitely weren't bad in my eyes.
It was interesting to me because I'd never been involved in a game where a king takes out so much material. And yes, I know I was fortunate to be allowed to do this but I thought it might be worth sharing in any case.
A game I actually won but I'm posting this because it was a very interesting end game where my king did the damage...