Checkmate with a single rook
Submitted by
on Sat, 10/24/2009 at 6:11am.
I created the following article for Helium teaching how to mate with a single rook and it was a challenge to be able to explain everythin whitout the possibility to ad a single image, read it and give me your view about it thanks 
LINK to the helium article I would appreciate a click
" Now let’s move on to the mate itself.
We reached a final position where the only piece left in the board is our Rook and the two lonely kings, since there is a 50 move rule to perform the checkmate before the game is considered a draw (if no other pieces are captured meanwhile) we should perform the mate as soon as possible.
To mate the opposing King with the Rook one must cage the king on the edge of the board, as we try to do that with just a single rook we will notice the king will always be able to escape back into the center of the board where he can find safety. Then how will we solve this problem?
The Rook isn’t our only piece left in the game, in virtually all the endgames the most important piece will be the King. The right technique to cage the opposing king as to be a team work between the Rook and the King. With our Rook we will “cut-off” the opposing king chances to escape to the middle of the board, and we can do that by always moving our Rook into the file right above the King we want caged, that way the king will never be able to move “up” the board this will work pretty much as a fishing net the more they struggle the worst it will be for them. The best defensive chances for the weaker side here is to move towards the Rook attacking it, to avoid losing “tempos” with our rook we will place our King on the rank next to the opposing King (if the king stands on the g8 square the ideal square for our own king is the g6 square, 1 rank apart from each other is mandatory by the rules). Once we are able to get the opposing King on the last rank like in the square g8 and our king in front of it on the square g6 all we need to do now is to get our rook into the 8 rank to finally perform this mate. "