Over Pressing in Rook and Pawn Endings

The following rook and pawn ending where Black has a passed Rook pawn and three King Side pawns versus White's Rook and four King Side Pawns makes frequent appearances at ICC. My experience has been that it is quite easy for the side with passed pawn to overplay the position believing the passed a pawn gives good winning chances.

However, blitz chess addicts prefer White's position because Black often runs out of time trying to win because his Monarch gets checked to death trying to cross over and help support the passed a pawn! So this is an example of the practical chances belonging to the side without the passed pawn. Postal Master Mark Dejmek of Houston,Texas understood the subtleties and finesses of these type of endings perfectly and frequently squeezed full points out of overconfident opponents who tried too hard to win a drawn position.

Dejmek, who drove a sports car with a personalized chess tag, was very effective utilizing his correspondence knowledge in over the board games and knew every last wrinkle of opening theory in his pet Dragon Sicilian where many games are drawn not by mutual consent but by perpetual check.