Learn How to Use and Understand - Rooks

Rooks, the second most valuable piece not counting the king, can move straight in any direction without being able to jump over other pieces unlike the knight.

What is the Rook Useful For?: Rooks can do ladder checkmates easily (depending on the situation)  and allow castling. Rooks can also cover whole files which would give you a big advantage in that position. They can also assist a queen or other piece(s) in checkmates. Rooks also protect the pawns above them so you don't need to give them extra protection unless the opponent attacks it. Personally I use rooks for ladders and supporting other pieces! 

Rook Checkmates: Rooks are one of the easiest pieces to checkmate with, they're also really good at assisting checkmates as mentioned earlier in the blog. The most popular checkmates (that I know of) with rooks are back rank ladders, smothered mates occurred by the opponent's rook, not your own. Or a rook assisting a queen and getting it close to the king so it has no space to run and can't capture the attacking piece. One thing I've noticed about rook checkmates is how easy they are and yet how many people miss them or mess up in ladders and such, if you do then i'm sorry, but i hope this helped at least! Try some rook checkmates or your own, they're a useful skill to have in any chess game! Not even just the checkmates.

Rook Tactics: Rooks aren't as confusing and hard to use as the knights but they have their difficulties that even grand masters sometimes struggle with in certain situations, so i'll try my best to cover this as best as I can! Castling is a really good move but at certain times it can be counted as a blunder, I've gotten one recently, and when i looked into it, there was a better move i could've done and one which didn't result in me losing pieces. A rook is worth 5 points so if you lets say, capture a knight with it then your opponent captures it with another piece, you would be losing that trade but if their knight was forking the king and queen then it would be a good trade, even if you lose points in the end. You would've lost even more otherwise. You can also have a rook in the middle file that lets just say has no other pieces in it and the opponent has their rook in a file that has lots of their own pieces in the way, you would have the better rook position in that scenario.

Rook vs Queen Endgames: If you're both down to only a king and you have a rook, they have a queen, in some cases you're actually not losing, depending. They might not know how to checkmate with just a queen, or mess up in the process. Pins are also a possibility if either of you aren't careful. The queen has a clear advantage, but if you can't reach its full potential then game changing blunders are a worry.

I haven't been posting as often because of school, any suggestions for future blogs? The next blog should be out in around a week or two!