Knights like outposts, bishops like clear diagonals: you
could guess that rooks like clear ranks and files. The best rank to
put your rook on is the seventh, particularly if the opponent's
king is trapped behind it. A rook on the seventh rank (or 'on the
seventh' as people sometimes say) can threaten unmoved pawns and
with assistance can create mate threats. To get to the seventh the
rook will have to move along a file. You can see Znosko-Borovsky
doing just that with the c-file in the Illustrative Games. The
other use of rooks on files is to attack: we have seen some