Rook-pawn endgames

What is you oppinion and experience in only rook-and-pawns-related endgames. Do they frustrate you or do you think it´s a good sport and educating?

If you're talking about endings with R and pawns on both sides, I think they account for 50% of all endings in OTB games, so they are quite important and studying them is a must in any chess player education.

nimzovich wrote:

When I started tournament chess, too many years ago, I typically loathed endings (unless I ahead by a ton of material.) As I progressed in chess strength (before I plateaued out ), I appreciated the necessity of endgame technique and experience, especially since such endings (rook & pawn) seemed to recur constantly.

At the start, studying endgames may seem dry, but the effort really paid off for me when I "stole" draws from lost positions and wins from drawn positions due to my relatively greater knowledge base than my opponents'.

I will make an unsolicited book suggestion for starting out rook endings:

Mednis' "Practical Rook Endings" (can be found at www.abe.com for $10-$15)

before graduating to

Emms' "The Survival Guide to Rook Endings."

 Thank You for suggestions!

nimzovich wrote:

Mednis' "Practical Rook Endings" (can be found at www.abe.com for $10-$15)

I have GM Mednis book I got it 20 years ago for $2 it's great! my copy is rather old though from 1982. He says the magic principle of rook endgames is to activate it and keep it active.

I am terrible at these. They're probably the weakest part of my game. This may sound ridiculous but I often draw and sometimes even lose these endings when I'm up two or three pawns! They're much more complicated than at first glance.

Rook and pawn endgames considered to be the most dificult endings,but i love them.Keres has write a book about endings and of course the man who played flawless the rook & pawn endings (and generally all endgames) was Capablava.

If you are interested for some studies about endgames you can find some interesting games about Capablanca at his group here