Playing for an endgame

I deliberately played for an endgame in which White would have an isolated passed pawn. This factor in itself is not decisive. But can an average player defend well in such instance ? I was counting on making White's bishop bad, as well, but I never had the chance to try.



After White looses a pawn, does you believe that he has a chance to save the game ?

Ideal endgame situation. The IQP side has no attack and you grind your way through a better endgame. What you have to remember here is that you need both rooks on the board to exploit the waekness of the IQP (generally you want 2 major pieces).

Most internet players (and NOT only internet players!) will defend poorly and most of the times will even lose equal endgames.

@A-Cielbleu #1
Interesting and useful topic/theme, and good game!

If I remember correctly the matches Karpov-Kasparov had quite a few QGD Tarrasch games where Kasparov would have the isolated pawn, IQP. Usually the advantage in a pawns only endgames would not be enough to win. In your game it was a knight endgame though, and your opponent didn't manage to find the best moves.
In the book "Pump up your rating" the recommendation was mentioned that if you play against the IQP, then trade the light pieces, but keep the heavy pieces and target the IQP.
Also, mentioned elsewhere, the more light pieces are traded, the worse for the IQP party.

A difficult endgame for white, which he got to by misplaying the opening really badly, but he definitely didn't defend it all that well, passive king and knight moves were the name of his game for the most part... The ideal (in my opinion) setup to aim for would've been something like pawn on b4, knight on c3, king on some active square (d3,e3..) and then playing for the d5 push when cxd5 doesn't work because of Nxb5 with a very likely draw. In this case, black would have to play something like a6 to threated cxd5 but then white trades on c6, and now suddenly it's a 2v1 on the queenside - still not an easy hold, but it was likely the best defensive idea to aim for.