Chess Forum
uskidscompute.com << online chess - < chess - chess > - chess online >>
| From | Message |
| Posted by cascadejames uskidscompute.com 4/01/2006 09:06:34 Play online chess |  Subject: Novice Nook #11Message: started this week. -> www.chesscafe.com James |
| Posted by cascadejames uskidscompute.com 4/01/2006 09:31:03 Play online chess | Comments Message: I usually like having 2 bishops against a bishop and knight or 2 knights, even in a closed position, because those closed positions often turn into open positions rather quickly. But I had not tried to quantify that advantage as being worth some fraction of a pawn. I always thought of the advantage of two bishops as something like having your rooks linked or rooks linked on an open file, an advantage, but not something that can necessarily be translated into being worth a pawn or some fraction of a pawn. Sometimes it is worth the whole game, sometimes not much. So now I will have to start paying attention, to see whether this way of measuring the advantage works out for me. I suspect that it depends on how well I use the pieces, to take advantage of the advantage. <g> Some people of course don't see 2 bishops as an advantage, probably because their playing style tends to take advantage of the knights' strengths better than they are able to take advantage of the bishops' strengths. The tempo count idea is also interesting, because it gives you a way to measure an advantage. The general idea seems to correspond to the question of which side is ahead in development, and it quantifies that concept. But I think it has to be tempered by what you can see by looking at the board as whole. For example it won't do you any good to be ahead in the tempo count if your pieces are on the wrong squares. |
| Posted by alberlie uskidscompute.com 4/02/2006 03:38:06 Play online chess | Message: In cases of being up a piece or so (or on higher levels: being up one or two pawns), that is relatively easy. However, it's a completely different matter, _knowing_ how to play with the bishop pair against an isolated pawn if you have sac'ed the exchange for your opponents bishop+pawn and isolated one pawn in the process and really _playing_ it out. So, your opponent is up the exchange for a pawn and has an isolani. Ceteris paribus, according to Kaufman's research, that should be as follows: exchange = +1,75 - pawn = +0,75 - bishop pair = +2,5 - isolated pawn = +0.00, in other words: equal chances for both. But it takes a certain level to be able to conduct such an imbalanced game in a manner to _make_ it an equal affair. I would presume that I'm not able to do that yet. In fact, there is as of yet only one game I can remember where I sac'ed a piece for two connected pawns, one of which was a passer, and which I won in a way that was not dependent on horrible blunders by my opponent but rather by my play emphasizing the positional advantage of the pawns. Therefore, I usually just stick with those 9-5-3-1 figures and don't pay too much attention to the bishop pair. Wasting two tempi just to preserve an advantage I have not yet the skill to fully utilize doesn't really make sense, I guess... ——— Modern Chess Players Prove Bobby Fischer Was Wrong — Bobby Fischer once famously remarked that "chess is dead". What he meant was that so much had been discovered about the game of chess that creativity and innovation were waning. Chess players are certainly better prepared than ever because databases and computers are widely used to analyze and dissect openings. Players can sometimes reel off 20 or more moves before they leave their preparation. That seems to have sucked the life out of some chess openings. Most top players know a couple of lines in the Petroff Defense through more than 20 moves, and it is not uncommon for them to play that out and agree to a draw, if that is the result they want. But there are ... |