A Special Class of Rook and Pawn Endings Part 1

I want to examine several cases of Rook and Pawn endings where the Pawn is as far away as possible from queening.  If White is the strong side, then that means the Pawn starts on the second rank.  Quite often these positions can be won.  Whether or not it's a win depends on whether the defending King can get close enough to stop the Pawn's progress.

With this in mind, let's start with the one of the easier cases where White, the strong side, has a Pawn on b2 and Black's King is cut off on the h file.  So, Here is the position.  Take a look at it, and see if you can figure out a way to win it.  Set it up and try it against a computer if you want.

OK.  Here is a demonstration of how to win this one

The annotations are me playing vs a chess engine at full strength.  Neither side was tablebase accurate, and where a better move was possible, I noted it.  The main idea was to use the Rook to set up the advance of the Pawn.  This was possible because the King was far enough away.   Let's take that possibility away by placing Black's King further forward.

 Once again, neither side was perfectly accurate, however the plan I executed was clear.  It's not that difficult because the defending King is far away.  In a future post, we will continue on this theme with more difficult positions.