What does it mean to study the endgame? I know there are things like K+P vs K, Lucena Position, and Philidor position that everyone should know. But what is there after that? Do you just pick random endgame positions and try to solve them, sort of like tactic problems? Or does study endgame mostly refer to just practicing the long calculations involved in figuring out the endgame?
Well, first of all you can break them into categories. Rook vs Rook, Bishop vs Bishop etc. Then each of those contain technical positions with 1 pawn, a few pawns, pawns on one side, and pawns on both sides. After that there are more complex endings where it's not a specific winning technique but proper application of calculation and principals. And those are just the endings with one piece each. You can move on to rook and bishop vs rook and knight etc.
There are also pawnless endgames and of course king and pawn endgames. Also imbalanced endgames such as rook vs knight or queen vs rook.
As with chess itself they range from simple to unsolvably complex. Even with the comparatively simple technical positions move the pieces one rank up, down, left, or right, and it can change from a draw, to a win and you would want to know the proper technique for each.
You could spend your whole life on only endgames.
What does it mean to study the endgame? I know there are things like K+P vs K, Lucena Position, and Philidor position that everyone should know. But what is there after that? Do you just pick random endgame positions and try to solve them, sort of like tactic problems? Or does study endgame mostly refer to just practicing the long calculations involved in figuring out the endgame?