(266) Plaskettian basic endgame correction
V In early April 2012 I was trying to work on raising my results in chess. I decided that one part of this process would be to improve my endgame technique, and that to start with I should even try to better familiarise myself with some of the most basic endings of all; the very elementary ones, not forgetting that in 1993 I had drawn the ending of Queen versus a Rook against Mark Hebden and that in 1997 concerns over that ending materialising on to the board had led me to draw a trivially winning position against Jonathan Speelman. During that game I was recalling Speelman´s comments in 1979 when I overheard him say that Grandmaster Walter Browne, many times U.S. champion, had twice recently drawn that elementary ending against a database. My erstwhile coach, GM John Nunn, had observed that endings were interesting although "... they don´t happen all that often." Nevertheless this was a clear relative weakness in my game and I had begun the process of doing something abo...