Here are some questions about the king and rook versus king game.  The example I've seen of the King and Rook vs. King, it looks like the lone king plays along with it, making it easier.

It says neither side wants to opposition.  So I thought, isn't the opposition good when the lone king actually goes after the rook?  Then if they do break off pursuing the rook, the rook can move to lose tempo and lose the opposition.  What I mean is that it doesn't look like it really matters for the side with the rook because they can drop it.  Am I correct in this?

Another possibility I thought of was where the king is already in the way of the rook.

If anyone can think of another scenario, please let me know.

Oh, I thought this was going to be about Kramnik vs Kasparov or something like that.

And in the first diagram White should play 1 Kd5.  It will be much faster (1... Ke7 2 Rf2 or 1... Kc7 2 Rb2).

And this should have been in the second one as another example of why I don't see how the opposition is bad for the side with the rook.  I understand that it might result in a couple of turns extra, but does that really matter in this situation?

I'm sorry, I read your notation wrong.  You're right!  I wonder if the author saw that or if they just wanted to show the basic concept of blocking a rank from the king.

Oops, my 14 move with Kd5 was actually mate in 4.

I really wish this site would delete the comments completely instead of saying "[COMMENT DELETED]"

[COMMENT DEPLETED]

The king and rook are always suppose to work in tandem to cut down the possiblity of squares to save time in blitz. I used to lose all the time trying to mate this basic mate and was using the whole board as shown.

Don't swing the rook across the whole board. Cut the king off early and save squares grandually narrowing the defenders squares.

According to the Nalimov tablebase, 1 Kd5 mates in 9.  1 Ra6 mates in 10.  Look it up here:

http://www.k4it.de/index.php?topic=egtb&lang=en

your correct opposition on first move