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Thanks to Reuben Fine's book "Basic chess endings", I start to like endgames. In one of my recent  correspondence chess games, I traded my queen for two rooks. Before looking in the endgame literature, I thought that I may loose my most valuable piece, the queen, but in return I have two rooks that can support each other fighting against a lone enemy queen, giving me good winning chances. Of course, this turned out to be wrong. First lesson learned: if you take correspondence chess games really seriously, look into the literature before making a move. (Unless you happen to have some relevant knowledge, of course. But my progress with studying chess endgames stalled lately.)
 The position shown on the left is from above mentioned game at ChessWorld with me playing black and white to move. What I did not realize before encountering it in a game is that even though the black rooks support each other, the extreme mobility of the queen makes up for that advantage. A short search of the endgame literature told me that chess endgames with Q vs. 2Rs are far from simple (Slowly, I get the impression that "simple endgames" simply don't exist). To my best knowledge, the game is drawn because the white queen is able to harass the black king constantly. A few moves later, I offered a draw and my opponent accepted the offer. Please take a look at the complete chess game for another lesson I learned: if you want to win, don't exchange all your pieces! If anybody sees a winning chance for either side at the end, please let me know!
My knowledge on this type of chess endgame is still very restricted. Therefore, I will just show one seemingly simple case without pawns and refer to an introduction into the topic in Karsten Müller's column at Chesscafe.com for more (part 1 and part 2 [PDF]). The interactive chess board on the right shows a position from Reuben Fine's book "Basic chess endings" with black to move. 1. ... Rh8 threatens a deadly discovered check, which can be prevented by 2. Qa2, but ultimately white will loose the queen and with it the game: Kg6 3. Kg1 Kf5 4. Kf1 Rh1 5. Ke2 Rh2 skewers king and queen. A quick check with the chess endgame tablebases showed, however, that sacrificing the queen with 2. Qxg7 is slightly better, but only delays checkmate by one move.
Starting with the black king on h8 instead of h7 everything else staying the same, however, results in a draw: 1. ... Kh7 2. Qb1+ Rg6 3. Qb7+ R6g7 4. Qe4+ Rg6 5. Qe7+ R6g7 etc. This shows that even a seemingly simple position like this one can be tricky to evaluate, particularly for beginners.
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