Endgames
Queen endgame tactics
Queens on an open board give endless checks, so these endings are about avoiding perpetual check as much as about winning. The decisive tactics are skewers and cross-checks: a check of yours that answers theirs and wins the queen.
How to spot it
Before you calculate a win, calculate their perpetual, because that is the outcome you are actually playing against. Look for a square where your king can hide behind their own pawns, and for the cross-check, which is what turns their checking sequence into a lost queen.
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
57...Qf5+ 58.Kh4 Qh5#
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2. Black to play Play it out →Answer
57...Qc3+ 58.Kf4 Qxg7
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3. White to play Play it out →Answer
49.Qc6+ Qxc6 50.dxc6 Kf5 51.c7
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4. White to play Play it out →Answer
39.Qg7+ Kh5 40.Qxg6#
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5. Black to play Play it out →Answer
59...Qf6+ 60.Qg7+ Qxg7#
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6. Black to play Play it out →Answer
46...Qa1+ 47.Kb3 Qxa4#
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7. White to play Play it out →Answer
50.Qc8+ Kg7 51.f6+ Kxf6 52.g5+ Kxg5 53.Qxh3
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8. White to play Play it out →Answer
46.Qd7 Qf8 47.e7
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9. Black to play Play it out →Answer
44...Qd3+ 45.Ke6 Qf5#
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10. White to play Play it out →Answer
32.Qf4+ Kxd5 33.Qe4#
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11. Black to play Play it out →Answer
45...Qg6+ 46.Ke7 Qe4+ 47.Qxe4 dxe4
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12. White to play Play it out →Answer
30.a7 Qb1+ 31.Kg2 Qb6 32.Qb8
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.