How to mate with rook

Hello and welcome to the blunt school of chess. Today I played a live 15|10 tournament and I played fairly well with a record of 3 wins and no losses. At one point my 2nd game scared me when I thought my king couldnt reach his pawn but it was a false alarm.

The reason I am writing this is to express my annoyance with the current tournament system that made me come in 2nd to someone who I probably would have slaughtered in a game, but I somehow didnt get a chance to play. Why am I so sure? Well, take a look at a game he played where we learn how NOT to mate with a rook in 103 moves. White resigned out of pity.

I hope that I do get a chance to play him at another point and tell you the result. I should really be studying for finance now, but hey, chess tournament beckons ;)

I plan on doing an analysis on my games and will post that later.For now, here is a great post I found on our own website that teaches you the basic mating patterns found here:http://www.chess.com/forum/view/endgames/basic-mates

The resource omits the extremely complicated knight and bishoep mate which I still havent gottent the hang of. This came up against me once in a standard time control game and eventually I offered a draw. Since my opponent kept refusing it, I eventually gave away my knight to force it. What I know of it so far is that there are two methods to do it. You can only do it in the conrner that the bishoep controls and it is very very hard to do. Hopefully I can post back soon that I have mastered this. You can find a rough guide here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_and_knight_checkmate