Were these good moves by white in the endgame? Was there a quicker way for checkmate? I found it hard to start the "box" with the rook and king.

52.Rd4

57.Kd4

 

i dont know if all black moves are the best ones.. I think resigning would be black's best move though

Anyways its just a bit quicker, I think the main idea is making blacks area of moving increasingly as small as possible untill the mate 

Intead of the box, then go for the longer, boring and easy way....

 

Checkers4Me wrote:

Were these good moves by white in the endgame? Was there a quicker way for checkmate? I found it hard to start the "box" with the rook and king.

It should not take more than 10 moves to checkmate the Black K. 

The trick is to use the R and K to force the Black K into zugzwang to move towards the edge of the board and into a mating position.

Here are some examples after 51...Kc5 52.Re5+

. In the first example, White's K moves forward when the Black K retreats. Unlike the method where the R is used to make the area of movement smaller and smaller, the zugzwang method is an aggressive pursuit of the opponent's K with the K and R.

 

Supposing,instead of 1...Kd6 Black tries 1...Kc4. See second diagram

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Matalino... i was going to post something like that... thanks for posting ahead of time... that is the fastest way from that position...

 

but with rook/king to king endgame... you'll win, just make sure you get the win.  don't run out of time though 

Just some info for those of you who dont already know this: 

If you are K + Q v K + R playing against a computer program with KQKR endgame tablebase, you also have to learn the third-line defence and be *very* good at spotting tactics :) It must be in john nunn's "secrets of pawnless endgames" - but you can find it in an old post in the newsgroup rec.games.chess by roger poehlman. [for those too young to know what newsgroups are/were - check out google groups - also google "usenet"]

The tablebase-best play aka the third-line defence [which at appropriate times separates the K and R in a way that no combination can pick up the R] is *not* learnable by humans - no supergrandmaster can learn it. [It was in fact discovered by programs after the KQKR tablebase was implemented.] But the defence to it [i mean K and Q still winning against K and R] is definitely learnable by non-masters also. 

 

 

Wow. great information guys. So, there really are quite a few ways to get the checkmate with the rook and king.

My opponent had me scared for a little bit because he said that he would play for the stalemate. It appears that I will have to watch out for that type of play when it comes down to endgames.  

I practice from the theoretically longest checkmate, according to Muller and Lamprecht, Fundamental Chess Endings. I rarely succeed in executing in the 16 moves that are optimal, but I also impose the restraint "no check that is not mate."

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