What's wrong with my endgame??

I play the London System for white and I manage to get an advantage in a lot of my games during the middlegame, sometimes I'm even a piece up!! However, I can never finish the game and towards the end I start making terrible blunders and eventually lose or tie the game.... Why am I so bad at endgames when I am good at the rest?? Technically, there are less pieces on the board to think about, so it should be easier

GMQueensPawn123 wrote:

I play the London System for white and I manage to get an advantage in a lot of my games during the middlegame, sometimes I'm even a piece up!! However, I can never finish the game and towards the end I start making terrible blunders and eventually lose or tie the game.... Why am I so bad at endgames when I am good at the rest?? Technically, there are less pieces on the board to think about, so it should be easier

Post an example. You've won four of the five games you've played here and your only loss was as black.

 Also technically, errors with fewer pieces cost more than with more pieces.

A GM might give you knight odds from the starting position, but some endgames even 1 pawn up will be enough for you to beat the world champion.

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Anyway, don't relax when you're ahead, use all your pieces, including the king in the endgame, and remember the art of winning a won game is eliminating counter play. Find the last hope for your opponent, find how they can activate their pieces... then don't let them do that.

Also, don't beg for exchanges by chasing their pieces around offering exchanges all the time. When you make your pieces active, they'll have no choice but to offer exchanges themselves.

 The games that this happens to me in are with the chess.com computer and I do not know how to post those on here.... However, it's mainly me missing the opponent being able to check me and then take something .... It's like I just stop thinking at that point

If you are missing simple tactics, using the tactics trainer can help. A few every day before playing a game can help sharpen your vision.

If you're bad at endgames, you have to spend more time studying pure endgames. 

A lot of folks incorrectly assume they'll master endgames just by studying late-middlegame tactics, which have less pieces, and look 'endgame-like'. However, the further you get into the deep endgame, the more endgame-specific the game becomes, and if you haven't seen the ideas, you're going to screw them up.

Surprising endgame concepts that I'm sure you're screwing up because you haven't studied late endgames:

- In the late endgame, if you can liquidate to only pawns, and have a choice between keeping a central pawn or a rook pawn, often times you give up the central pawn so you can have an outside passed pawn to decoy his king. Sounds obvious here, but it's not so much when you have to trade off 1-2 pieces to end up in such an endgame. totally different from the middlegame where you much more highly value central pawns.

- Zugzwang tempos are critically important in the late endgame. You won't even think about these unless you've done some zugzwang problems.

- In pure pawn endgames, opposition and how to use it is huge. Note that everyone knows what opposition is and even how to get it in simple positions - very few players (including A-class) see how to use opposition when there are more than 3 pawns per side even when it's the only way to win.

- Don't trade off all the pieces into a pawn endgame unless you're either sure its won, or in a blitz game, you at least know you're not going to instantly lose the pawn endgame. It's a lot harder to hold an inferior position with only pawns left.

- If you want to pick up a lot of quick points, studying rook + pawn endgames. They get crazy complicated quick, but Gleen Flear's "Starting Out: Rook Endgames" is really good for newbs. Highly recommended.

These general guidelines don't mean squat though compared to actually doing a boatload of tactical problems and positions.  

Endgame doesn't mean the last few moves or last 1/3rd of the game. You can play a game without ever reaching the endgame.