A lot of information about the Rook and pawn versus rook endgame can be found in Wikipedia. This article gives a nice overview of the most important positions and methods to win or to hold the position.

It describes the following winning methods:

• Pawn on the sixth or seventh rank
• The king without the pawn cut off along a rank is an easy win
• The king without the pawn is cut off from the pawn’s file is a far more complicated endgame (like we have described in the two previous lessons) and it gives the rule of five.

The rule of five is for positions in which the pawn is protected and the opposing king is cut off by files: Add the number of rank of the pawn to the number of files the defender’s king is cut off. If the sum is more than five, it is usually a win. Otherwise it is normally a draw.

The article also refers to the Lucena position and describes an alternate method to win for bishop pawns and central pawns.




The next lesson will show another famous game: Fischer – Taimanov 1971.