When you are in a bad position or a pawn down, think about liquidating pieces to an endgame, because having the advantage your opponent will be concerned with a quick finish and he will make mistakes.
It's true that when you are material down you shouldn't trade pieces, but practically it's very difficult to win a won game, even grandmasters struggle with it. I just played a bad position, see what happened:
en.lichess.org/01712CpR4oV4Ridiculous that your opponent didn't win this, and it's not because of anything you did sorry.
He had either no clue about rook endgames or was in extreme time pressure.
Very bad advice. The rule of thumb in a bad position is to seek pawn exchanges, not piece exchanges.
In that game 58... Kf6 and 59... Kg5 is trivially crushing, allowing all of Black's pieces to advance together.
Chessmotion is right.
GENERAL RULE STATES:
Exchange pieces when up material but not pawns.
Exchange pawns when down material but not pieces.
There are moments when to break these rules that is why they are called general rules.
To be really fair you should always exchange your bad pieces for your opponents good ones and keep the material count to the side unless king safety is involved.
It was a blitz game and the badness of the position was not just the material, my king was also in danger and he was going to win pieces if I didn't trade.
If it was a 15 min game I would have lost the game of course, because he wasn't just a pawn up but 5 pawns up, but the idea is that it's difficult to win a won game and sometimes defending means not letting the opponent to knock out.
I will agree that a tenacious defence is very important!
Mir Sultan kahn had nerves of steel when defending a lost position... and of course Lasker...
