I'll end tonight by mentioning a couple of recent firsts for me in endgame play.
As some of you know, Connor especially, I am not a fan of technical endgames. I find them boring, and thus I haven't learned nearly as much as I should have. For example, the Lucena and Philidor positions are outside of my knowledge base. I defend this ignorance first by stating that I am just a Class B scrounger, and second by mentioning that R+P vs R endgames have almost NEVER come up in serious games for me. In fact, I can only find one R+P vs R endgame in my database of tournament games, and in that case it lasted for one whole move before a draw was declared. Not only that, but it was a rook pawn anyway, so there are less things in my heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Lucena and Philidor's philosphies.
(That said, after discussing the matter with Connor, the [radio edit] R+P vs R ending came up twice in three games with him. But I think those may be the only two times the ending has even come up even in skittles games for me.)
Nevertheless, in the last week I've had two nice moments wherein I demonstrated actual technique. First I had a game in which I had a R+g-pawn vs a R+f-, g-, & h-pawns. I managed to bamboozle my opponent into exchanging g-pawns, and then held the draw with R vs R+f-and-h-pawns. It was pure book, baby!
And then the other night I managed to win a Queen vs Rook ending, no pawns on the board. Sure, I did catch my opponent with badly placed pieces, but hey, I won the thing!
Maybe there's something to this technique jive after all.
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