I fall apart after the opening.

Agreed with this guy's post.  Tactics and basic endgames.  Do you know what to do from here? 

you are right. in denmark we have 3 leaflets with endgame tests called bronze, silver and gold each with around 20 puzzles.

you can be examined in those and get a bronze, silver or a gold pin to show you master the endgame

most people cannot pass the gold endgame tests.

I think the one in your example is in the bronze test.

I have seen a lot only draw this endgame in your example even higher rated.

"Well, I'm up in material. I want to draw the king to a corner with my king and rook, right?"

Nope.  Your extra material is a pawn, which can't chase his king.  Unless your opponent does something really stupid, trying to force him into a corner simply won't work (your king and rook vs his king and rook), you'll end up either in perpetual check (a draw) or losing your pawn.  Though the pawn is useless until you can convert it into a queen, it's your only advantage.    You have to find a way to do three things simultaneously:  protect the pawn, protect your king (beware of perpetual check), and move your king out of your pawn's way so the pawn can be promoted.  THEN when you've got a queen, you'll have the firepower to kill his rook and/or go for mate. This is probably about a 1200-level problem, I'm guessing - even if you understand the three goals, the best initial move is not at all obvious.  

But it doesn't matter whether you can solve this problem today.  If you reached this position in one of your games, it's very likely that one of you would totally blunder and lose a rook.  Keep concentrating on basic tactics:  is this piece under attack?  is it pinned?  can it be forked?  etc.  It's OK not to see how to squeeze a win out of small, tricky advantages like the one in OogieBoogie's problem, as long as you're improving your ability to recognize the bigger advantages.

That makes sense then. Basically, I have a strategy here of promoting my pawn, and tactics are moves that will allow me to achieve that.

nartreb wrote:

"Well, I'm up in material. I want to draw the king to a corner with my king and rook, right?"

Nope.  Your extra material is a pawn, which can't chase his king.  Unless your opponent does something really stupid, trying to force him into a corner simply won't work (your king and rook vs his king and rook), you'll end up either in perpetual check (a draw) or losing your pawn.  Though the pawn is useless until you can convert it into a queen, it's your only advantage.    You have to find a way to do three things simultaneously:  protect the pawn, protect your king (beware of perpetual check), and move your king out of your pawn's way so the pawn can be promoted.  THEN when you've got a queen, you'll have the firepower to kill his rook and/or go for mate. This is probably about a 1200-level problem, I'm guessing - even if you understand the three goals, the best initial move is not at all obvious.  

correction: perpetual check from a rook is quite unlikely. A draw by threefold repetition is a real concern, however, as your king has few options if it peeks out from behind the pawn and draws a check.

Yes, the issue is to queen the pawn. A defender's rook behind the pawn may lead to a draw in some positions, as the king cannot leave b8.

1. Ka7 Ra8

2. Kb6 Rb6 and 3.Ka5, moving towards the rook, hangs the pawn. You must find the way to use your rook to shield the king

Back to the OP: you need to learn tactics. That alone decides most games less than 1800. (I can't see tactics with speed though. Probably why my bullet/blitz is so low.) Below 1400, I think, hanging pieces count. You simply have to develop the habit of checking whether any of your pieces/pawns are hanging, and whether you can take any of your opponent's.

The method is called building a bridge, using a rook shield to let the king leave b8. The answer is 1. Rc4, but is meaningless unless you know why the rook must come to the 4 th rank

Thanks again everyone.

I took what you said and worked up on my tactics a bit. I finally won a game. Feel free to check out my last game and let me know if I made any careless mistakes. I think it was a pretty good match. I took advantage of a few mistakes from my opponent.

Congrats on the win. You missed mate in 1 at moves 22, 23, 24, and 25. Keep working on tactics and you'll get better at seeing things like that.

Quasimorphy wrote:

Congrats on the win. You missed mate in 1 at moves 22, 23, 24, and 25. Keep working on tactics and you'll get better at seeing things like that.

I can't believe I missed those. I really need to learn how to see the entire board more.

This is one of the classic positions in rook endgames - The Lucena Position. As Akal1 mentioned, the method of winning from here is called Building a Bridge starting 1. Rc4, and it is the only way to win. However, if you move all the pieces one file to the right so that the position will be; White: Kc8, Re2, c7 and Black: Rb1, Kf6. There is actually another method to do so.

The Lucena and many other book wins are quite important to get down.  One of my favorite endgames studied was a Morphy one seen here:

One of my favorite Silman reviews can be found here.  Relevent because it mentions a Lucena and how a beginner said it was a draw. 

http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Rapid-Chess-Improvement-77p3511.htm

a 900 rated player shouldnt be spending time memorizing opening lines.  it's a complete waste of your time.

Take all the advice given here as well as try turn based chess on this site. I got better by playing correspondence chess. I would analize every move for - sometimes hours and really studied what would be the best move. Wrote down lots of calculations etc. I played better chess and started to get a lot quicker at seeing the best move in standard games.  

I got this personal advice from GM Igor Smirnov. Might be useful for you..

    ""The fact that you experience some difficulties in an opening stage actually is not a disaster. In reality although it may surprise you but opening is the easiest stage of the game. Lots of openings are already discussed and there are lots of opening tutorials about different openings and actually it’s not that hard to improve your knowledge about the openings.

    At the same time, one thing which is missing in any modern opening tutorials are the strategic ideas of these openings because modern tutorials normally just demonstrate you which move you need to play but they don’t explain to you why these moves are the best, which strategic concept are important in this position and how you can find proper opening moves even if you don’t know the opening theory.

You may try our free lesson: Professional Opening Preparation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADMIXuG3OLs)

Thanks again everyone. Your suggestions have helped me to look at the game in a different way. I won another game now too. I made a few mistakes along the way, but I realized I made mistakes after the moves. Fortunately, my opponent didn't pick up on them and made a few of his own, enough for me to eventually win by checkmate.

I can see that I need to focus on end game tactics as well. I checkmated in 38 moves, but I think I could have beaten him earlier than that. It's something I need to work on.