The rook and pawn versus rook endgames are very important to study because these are the simplest versions of the very frequent occurring rook endgames.
Let’s have a look at the diagrams below. All these positions are a win for White, but do you know why?
This lesson will explain a part of this KRP-KR endgame.
In the wikibook Elements of chess strategy you can find an explanation of the most important ideas of chess strategy:
Development
Mobility
The center
The positions of the kings
Weak and strong squares
Pawn structure
Queenside pawn majority
Open lines
Minor pieces
We have seen most of these positional ideas before on Chess Teaching, but the mentioned Wikibook describes them in a rather different [...]
In the previous lessons we have seen how we can take advantage of some positional characteristics of a chess position. Based on these lessons we try to locate undefended pieces, pieces that are placed on the same file, line or diagonal or an unsavely positioned king. This may enable us to find a nice combination.
But [...]
A passed pawn is a pawn that can not be stopped anymore by one of the opposing pawns. A passed pawn is rather valuable especially in the endgame. Passed pawns are dangerous and they have to be stopped. Assuming that the pawn can not be captured we can stop them by:
attacking the square in front [...]
In this chess lesson we are going to combine some of the knowledge of the key squares, the square rule and the square rule for two separated pawns.
First have look at the diagram on the left site.
It’s a draw. Can you see why?
And do you see that the game is won by White if the [...]