Endgames
Queen and rook endings
Both heavy pieces still on the board with few pawns left. These are barely endgames at all: the king is exposed in the middle of the board and the game is usually decided by a mating net or a perpetual rather than by anything to do with pawns.
How to spot it
King safety first, exactly as in a middlegame. Find where your king can stand where it cannot be checked usefully, then look for the battery on a file or diagonal that their king cannot escape. Trading one pair of pieces often changes the result completely, so calculate the trade before you make it.
The positions
Easiest first. Every one is from a real game, and the rating under each board is what it costs the players who have tried it on lichess.
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1. Black to play Play it out →Answer
46...Qb4+ 47.Rf4 Qxe7
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2. White to play Play it out →Answer
38.fxg7+ Kg8 39.Rf8#
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3. White to play Play it out →Answer
63.Rg7+ Kxg7 64.e8=Q
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4. Black to play Play it out →Answer
38...Rxf2+ 39.Rxf2 Rxa8
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5. White to play Play it out →Answer
34.Rdh3 Qxf6 35.Rxf6
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6. White to play Play it out →Answer
63.Qe7+ Rf6 64.Qxf6#
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7. Black to play Play it out →Answer
46...Re1 47.Qd6 d1=Q+ 48.Qxd1 Rxd1
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8. White to play Play it out →Answer
31.Rh8+ Kg7 32.Reh1
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9. White to play Play it out →Answer
26.R8e4 Qb5 27.Rf4+
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10. White to play Play it out →Answer
34.g4+ Kf4 35.Rf6+ Kg3 36.Re3+ Kh4 37.Rxh6#
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11. White to play Play it out →Answer
42.Kh2 f3 43.h8=N+ Kf8 44.Rf6+
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12. Black to play Play it out →Answer
39...h5+ 40.Kh4 Qe4+ 41.Kxh5 Qf5+ 42.Kh4 Qg5+ 43.Kh3 Qh5#
Reading about a pattern is the easy half. Motify finds the positions where you missed one, by running your own lichess and Chess.com games through Stockfish, and puts each of them behind two or three puzzles on the same idea so you meet it having just found it three times. See how Motify works.
Positions from the lichess puzzle database, released under CC0.