I've found a really nice free endgame course

 "Basic Endgames" on Chessable is a free collection of exercises in endgames you should know. I've just started it but I know it's something I've been looking for. Chess endgames are full of motifs and drills/exercises that you just need to know, like how to get a single pawn to the other end of the board, or if you're on the other side, how to STOP a single pawn getting to the end of the board.

The sections include: 

1. Pawn Endgames
2. Queen + King vs King
3. Queen vs Pawn
4. Mating with King and Rook
5. Rook endings
6. Bishop vs pawn

It goes on, but you get the idea.  You can also practice some of these endings on Lichess in a way that doesn't demand perfect moves. 

I can also recommend the six specialized endgames section from lichess: pick the piece type you want to focus on (ie pawns, bishops & pawns, rooks & pawns etc) and try to do ten puzzles from that area. If they are too hard, dial down the difficult with the Difficulty setting in the bottom left. 

There is benefit in doing puzzles that take a while to figure out, but there's more benefit (I think!) in doing a bunch of puzzles that you can solve quite quickly - under 30 seconds maybe? That's the kind of speed you need for most games you'll play and practicing those fast ones until you see the answer without even thinking about it...that's a good feeling!

Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

 

Galaxy Quest (you really should see this,if you haven't)

What a game! I played some blitz (5+3) this afternoon and this game was an air-punching victory for me!

It started with a pretty dense cluster of pieces in the center, during which I made bad moves, swinging the game to my opponent. We are both rated around 1300 on lichess.  I shuffled my pieces around trying to fix my situation (the eval bar showed a steady -6 through this time) and threatened his queen; I thought for a second I had the queen trapped and I guess they thought that too, because they just moved their king, allowing the queen to be captured.

The green arrow shows that they could have moved their queen to safety, but didn't.  A couple of moves later I followed that with this nice little tactic, forking the rook and king while my knight is safely on e6 (it can't be captured because the queen pins that pawn), and my opponent resigned.

I know it's hard to press on with a game where you're badly down in material, but at the level most people play chess at (myself definitely included!) pieces can still be given away for free which could turn the game around.