Rook Endgame

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Rook Endgame, an endgame with rooks and pawns only. They are a common type of endgame in practice, occurring in about 10 percent of all games, including ones that do not reach an endgame at all. Many rook endgames have the reputation of being drawish, even with one or sometimes two pawns ahead as noted by the remark ‘All rook endgames are drawn’, which might be considered in evaluation by scaling the material balance by a factor of less than one.

=KRPKR= While most programs rely on endgame tablebases, in rook and pawn versus rook endgame, two type of positions are of particular interest whose basic features may be considered with some pattern matching to adjust the score accordantly. The Lucena position, finally "building the bridge" is a win for the pawn side, and the Philidor position is a draw. Most rook and pawn versus rook endgames reach either the Lucena or the Philidor position if played accurately.
 * Lucena Position
 * Philidor Position

=KRPPKRP= In 2013, John Nunn applied the 7-piece Lomonosov Tablebases to R+2P vs. R+P positions from the famous book Rook Endings, 2nd edition, by Levenfish and Smyslov , which was assumed to contain the truth and, owing to Nunn, this is no longer so.

=See also=
 * Endgame Tablebases
 * Pawn Endgame
 * Queen Endgame
 * Scotch versus Vodka
 * Tarrasch Rule

=Selected Publications=
 * Grigory Levenfish, Vasily Smyslov (1971, 1989). Rook Endings. Batsford
 * Coen Zuidema (1974). Chess: How to Program the Exceptions? Technical Report IW21/74, Department of Informatics, Mathematical Center Amdsterdam. pdf
 * Vladimir Arlazarov, Aaron L. Futer (1979). Computer Analysis of a Rook End-Game. Machine Intelligence 9 (eds. Jean Hayes Michie, Donald Michie and L.I. Mikulich), Ellis Horwood, Chichester. Reprinted in Computer Chess Compendium
 * Ken Thompson (1990). KQPKQ and KRPKR Endings. ICCA Journal, Vol. 13, No. 4
 * John Nunn (1992). Secrets of Rook Endings. Batsford, 2nd edition (1999). Gambit
 * John Nunn (2010). Nunn's Chess Endings, volume 2. Gambit
 * John Nunn (2013). Discoveries in R+2P vs. R+P Endings. ICGA Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3 » Lomonosov Tablebases
 * Guy Haworth (2017). Understanding Rook Endgames. ICGA Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2

=Postings=

2010 ...

 * Rook endgame: Wojtaszek-Navara by Albert Silver, CCC, January 16, 2011
 * Re: Wrong evaluation of Rook endings with an extra pawn on one side by Tord Romstad, Stockfish Support, June 21, 2014
 * Obligatory scaling by Lyudmil Tsvetkov, CCC, June 27, 2014

2015 ...

 * What's Essential Rook & Pawn Endgame Knowledge? by Steve Maughan, CCC, April 10, 2015
 * 7 men Rook endgames H4 vs SF in recent TCEC stage 1b by Nay Lin Tun, CCC, September 07, 2015 » Lomonosov Tablebases, TCEC Season 8
 * Gull's endgame knowledge by Stephane Nicolet, FishCooking, October 16, 2015 » Gull, Stockfish
 * advanced krkp function by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, May 06, 2017

=External Links=
 * Rook and pawn endings from Wikipedia
 * CBM Blog: 'Rook endings are always drawn?' by Karsten Müller, ChessBase News, July 14, 2011
 * Rook and pawn versus rook endgame from Wikipedia
 * Lucena position from Wikipedia
 * Philidor position from Wikipedia

=References= Up one Level