[Lalu]

"I don't think people realize just how strong players of his caliber are. I'm sure that against a 1700'ish player he could clog up the board, win a couple of pawns or the exchange while some minor material is being traded, and then apply enough pressure to at least get a draw 50% of the time, and probably a win 30%+ of the time."


I don't think that's true at all, it might not be that hard to put pressure on a weaker player when you are starting on equal footing, but when you are a rook in arrears to begin with, it's not that simple. Applying pressure to win a couple of pawns is certainly not going to overcome the rook you are behind even if it were. Granted I'm not a 1700 player anymore, but I'm quite sure when I was, I would have beaten curtains at his present strength 95%+ of the time with rook odds.


"Use of that extra rook often doesn't come into play until the end of the middle game, after some files have been cleared/pieces have been traded."


That's completely wrong, and I frankly can't comprehend how you could even begin to think that's true even if you're a fair beginner at chess. The concepts of opening, middlegame, and endgame can hardly even be used in such a game, rook odds skew the game far too much to properly define what those really mean in an odds game.