make your own thread and post your games there, no one will complain about the clutter and if it looks like you are making an effort to improve/understand then I expect you will get some good feedback.

My favorite site is chess.emrald.net for tactics. I honestly don't know about books, I didn't ever read any books at that level.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess. Some other primers might be as good but it's hard to imagine any better. Modern, user friendly, brings you out of the dark on all facets of the game, includes many exercises, recommends courses of further study.

RT good idea, I'll make my own thread. Thanks for all the help fellas!

Is CT-ART worth buying or should I just stick with chesstempo.com (which I like much better than chess.emrald.net)? Any opinions on tactics training software like that or other examples?

So lately I've:

1) Been really lazy about playing in games that I decide are "boring" for any of a number of various reasons.
2) Spent too much time looking for openings, especially openings that let me blow things up with fun tactical lines.
3) Made a lot of "Well, that looks fine, though I should be calculating" moves.

There was a time not long ago when I assured myself that my avoision (/kb) of those habits would be the reason I'd excel faster than most chess players.

Let my admission of a problem be my first step to recovery

Nice one! What I love about the EG is that when it works, you feel like you've got the initiative from start to finish. It's what makes the game fun.

Had an opponent as white eagerly trade down into this endgame, where he was a pawn up but essentially dead lost. Thought it was an instructive position for us beginners on the importance of an active rook and a centralized king in the endgame.

Nice example.

In fact, one of the big benefits of studying complex endings is to get a feel how important maximum piece activity is and to what extends you can go to achieve this. Most players tend to get more materialistic in the endgame. Maybe absolute material count is less important in many endings than in positions with more pieces, because 1) the K enters the equation, 2) many endgame positions are drawn with 0 against 1-2 pawns whereas it's often hard to draw with 6 against 7 pawns and 3) the relative value of pawns can differ by huge margins (imagine your position with your h-pawn back on h7, suddenly black is in trouble. On h3 it's much more worth than white's pawns on a2 and b2 combined).

Here's another fun one that happened in a real game. Black to move:

nice, it's definitely worth knowing about positions like that and playing for them

been on both sides of that last one, both times in blitz games.. first on a losing side of course, then remembered the pain several years later and used it to win hehe

My opponent is sandbagging me so hard. He reached a busted position with 40 minutes left on his clock, spent 30 minutes of it on a forced move (though he did take the opportunity to offer me a draw), and now appears to be ready to run out the remainder.

Anyway, this is giving me a chance to hang out in the Sports channel on ICC, and Nakamura is there. I kinda see what people mean about him. He's just kind of ... off-putting?

I'm like 99.9% sure this is a drawy drawy draw, right?

You can find a 6-man tablebase to use free online. Hmmm, here it is: http://www.k4it.de/index.php?topic=egtb&lang=en

Though discussing it would be better, having a definitive answer is nice too.

Seems like a trivial win for White.

1. Kxh7
2. Kg7
3. h7
4. h8=Q

It doesn't matter what Black does. I'm only posting because if I'm wrong about this, I definitely need to stop what I'm currently working on and go to sleep.

Oops! I'm sorry. I switched the kings around. Black king is the one trying to bunker on the light squares in the corners.

The database confirms drawn. Thanks for that link, I had no idea that was online!

Heh, oh well, back to work for me then :-)

Kyle, even without the tablebase you should be able to figure that one out.
What does white need to do to win the game?
Promote the pawn
What needs to happen to promote the pawn?
Need to win the h7 pawn
How can you win the a7 pawn?
Driving the black king out of the corner
How can you drive the black king out of the corner?
And here you have a problem ... there's no way to control all the key squares simultaneously without allowing a stalemate ... so its drawn ... unless of course black decides to centralise their king for the sake of it ... :P

I said I was 99.9% sure

This is as low-content as it can get with regards to chess, but I graduated college today! Can I get a woot!?!

I'll give you two. Woot! Woot!

(from the guy who left school one class short because of a job offer)

And graduation actually did provide some relevant chess content after all! As a graduation present my dad gave me a copy of Beauties Of Chess by Aaron Alexandre. This book is a collection of over 2000 tactics problems that was published in 1846. Alexandre is the same author who published the 1837 Encyclopedia of Chess which first introduced algebraic notation and the symbols "0-0" and "0-0-0" for castling. The book, which once belonged to my grandfather, is (as far as I can tell) not a replica or reprinting. It's actually over 150 years old. While it's not remotely close to being in mint condition or anything, it's still an absolutely amazing tome.

Very nice! Congrats on both fronts.

Woot!

What now?