Rook Endings

Rook endgames are the most basic endgames in chess. They come up all the time. I cannot begin to tell you how many times they have come up in my own tournament games.

The most important endgame to learn is rook and pawn against rook where your king is in front of the opponent's pawn. You will need to know when to defend from the side and so that when the opponent's pawn reaches the sixth rank you immediately go to his back file and defend from behind and build a bridge if need be. You will need to practice this until you have it right or otherwise you will lose many games you could have drawn.

Grigory Levenfish and Vasily Smyslov were two of the world's leading chess grandmasters and are the most suitable persons to teach these basic endgames..

Grigory Yakovlevich Levenfish (Russian Григо́рий Я́ковлевич Левенфи́ш; 19 March 1889 - 9 February 1961) was a Soviet chess player who scored his peak competitive results in the 1920s and 1930s. He was twice Soviet champion, in 1934 (jointly with Ilya Rabinovich) and 1937. In 1937 he The most important endgame to learn is rook and pawn against rook where your king is in front of the opponent's pawn. You will need to know when to defend from the side and so that when the opponent's pawn reaches the sixth rank you immediately go to his back file and defend from behind and build a bridge if need be. You will need to practice this until you have it right or otherwise you will lose many games you could have drawn.

Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov (Russian Василий Васильевич Смыслов; 24 March 1921 - 27 March 2010) was a Soviet Russian chess grandmaster, who was World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958. He was a Can0didate for the World Chess Championshipon eight occasions (1948, 1950, 1953, 1956, 1959, 1965, 1983, and 1985). Smyslov twice tied for first place at the Soviet Championships (1949, 1955).

The most important endgame to learn is rook and pawn against rook where your king is in front of the opponent's pawn. You will need to know when to defend from the side and so that when the opponent's pawn reaches the sixth rank you immediately go to his back file and defend from behind and build a bridge if need be. You will need to practice this until you have it right or otherwise you will lose many games you could have drawn.