A Knight is Better than a Bishop in an Endgame

I always thought the knight is better than the bishop in end games because it can attack both coloured squares.

The knight is inferior to the bishop, if there is pawns on both flanks in the endgame. 

Also, studying endgame theoretical positions (with the exception of like a few, like basic K+Ps, maybe philidor+lucena rook endgames, to be generous) is rather useless when compared to studying endgame strategy (basic). 

I played ...Qe7 because it looked more active, but of course I have to do Bxe7, moving back anyways. 

I felt I could win after b4 somehow, but just wasn't sure if it was one of those strange fortresses. What should the plan be if white plays f4 later? Should I take gxf3 after b4?

I usually prefer the Knight, but you need an active working King too - that's why in this unusual finish I kept mine on the same square for the last 16 moves.

I kind of disagree, while knights can attack both coloured pawns, a lot of times the position is opened up and the bishop can sort of 'arrest' the knight and control a lot of squares it wants to go to. Even when white has the good knight vs bad bishop, there are cases where the bad bishop can just defend the weaknesses and draw the game

Yeah, d4 was pretty bad. And after the knight trade on move 26 I think white is close to lost. With a knight on d5 you'll have a picturesque good knight vs bad bishop endgame.

Moves like d4 and 28.Bd2 are pretty common at lower ratings where they don't understand passives pieces in an endgame is as good as resigning. In the middlegame you can get away with one or two badly placed pieces, but not in an endgame when 1 or 2 pieces are 100% of your forces.

This is why when I studied endgames I feel like it helped my tactics and positional play too... because over and over and over you're faced with the overwhelming importance of activity.

Basically ask, "what weak pawns can my minor piece attack? What passed pawns (or potential passed pawn) can it support?"

If the answer to both of those is none, and your opponent's minor piece can do one or both, then you're in a lot of trouble. Same sort of question for the kings. If the opponent wins there too, then it's almost time to resign.

Just a minor comment, I'd wish you would be less disparaging of your opponent.... he is a member here too and he can read this.....

If I lost a game, I would be thrilled to see comments like this from a stronger opponent who won. I don't want to be told "this move was interesting" or some crap like that. If it's terrible and it's the reason I lost I want to know!

In response, I made the game more detailed, and added where I thought the opponent played OK. But obviously you need to comment on the horrible strategic blunders - it's just what they are, and if I made such a blunder, I'd want to know exactly how bad it is.

Notice that the move d4 by my opponent might turn out to be more than just inaccurate - it could be a pretty severe strategic blunder, since in the relatively forced lines afterwards, white's bishop is really hurt by the d4 pawn, which stops it from acting on the long diagonal.

In the asymmetric passed pawn race that I added as a variation, the bishop is supposed to be stronger, but in fact the knights are better since the d4 pawn is there.

And although endgame study is not the first thing msot players should be learning, I do agree that studying endgame *strategy* is probably very helpful to many levels of players.

It depends: there were pawns on both flanks here but the B was ineffective because his opponent was able to put his pawns on squares opposite the color the B travels on.  I did the same thing in this game -notice how frustrated my opponent was after move 35, trying to find a way to get his B into the game:

bishops are generally better, because any pawn aiming for promotion must pass both white and black squares, and the swift movement can be decisive.  knight takes too long to get anywhere and you end up losing in a pawn race.

Here the GOAT shows why Bishop is superior to Knight.

usually bishops are better, in that case he put all his pawn in the same color of his bishop and even worse his bishop was passive and inside the chain of pawns, your knight was really good on the center