kylemeister wrote on 02/15/14 at 04:01:02:

Ah, I see. If the defending king is on the 7th, then putting the rook on the 5th leaves it only one move away from the king. Putting it on the 4th is farther from the king, so that defense is less problematic. Thanks!

Makes you wonder why Tarrasch was so insistent that everyone else was wrong for going to the 4th instead of the 5th.

This one's been bugging me for a while. I'm reviewing the early chapters of Silman's Complete Endgame Course, on my way to reading some of the later stuff that I never got to before, and I just came back to ye olde Lucena Position in rook and pawn vs rook endgames.

As I'm sure most of you know, the winning technique has to do with "building a bridge" with the rook on the 4th rank, king on the 5th, and pawn on the 7th ready to queen.

What I can't understand is why the rook goes to the 4th rank instead of the 5th. The whole thing would be two moves shorter if it went to the 5th instead, because the king would have two less moves to get within a rank of it, so the rook could block the enemy rook's check and build the bridge sooner.

What's even funnier is that Tarrasch, in "The Game of Chess", recommends putting the rook on the 5th, and criticizes other authors for recommending going to the 4th instead. Yet decades later, books like Silman's Complete Endgame Course and Pandolfini's Endgame Course continue to recommend exactly what Tarrasch criticized.

So why is the 4th rank better than the 5th? Can someone provide an example of a position where there's a meaningful difference?