New answers tagged positional-play
2
If you look at the static evaluation of the position in Stockfish, White gets an advantage of 4.17. The top factors in this position are are:
+1.23: King danger. This measures various things, like whether the king has a pawn shelter, how many checks are available, and how many pieces are threatening the area around the king.
+0.77: Piece value bonus. This is ...
5
It seems that, for tactical reasons, White is going to have to give up material to stop Black's attack with best play from both sides. That seems to be why the evaluation is so in favor of Black.
After move 16, White owns the e-file and maybe even the 7-rank.
Not really. After 16...Qd5, White must defend the mate threat somehow, and Black can then play a ...
8
White's actually quite close to busted in that position after 16...Qd5. Of the two points you bring up, note that White doesn't actually control the e-file because Black is ready to play a rook to e8 and drive White's major pieces away. The knight on g5 looks good, but it's also vulnerable to being kicked by ...h6 and it's not threatening anything yet. ...
3
Could someone please confirm that he became a stronger player by using that method of studying?
I can confirm, I was 2000-FIDE, struggling to beat players of the same rating. After a month of serious endgame study, I increased my rating to 2200 fairly quickly. Since then, I am continuously studying endgames.
A lot of players at that level have a gap in their ...
3
A really strong and great positional open source engine I have used is Rodent. The last version was Rodent IV and is available at http://www.pkoziol.cal24.pl/rodent/rodent.htm
Of course Chess Programming wiki continues to be a good place to research and discover engines and the following link shows only open source engines.
https://www.chessprogramming.org/...
1
Stockfish 12 is objectively the best in the free engines that is publicly accessible.
Estimated Elo ~ 3230. There is another engine mildly more powerful however I don't believe its available and the difference is negligible. Stockfish has good positional awareness, aggression etc can be tampered with for interesting outcomes.
I look at Komodo Dragon as a ...
5
The knight is badly misplaced on c3 here. If you protect your d5-pawn with ...e6, what is the knight supposed to do? It doesn't put any pressure on the d5-pawn since there are no White pawns helping to attack it. If White's c-pawn were on c4 then the knight would be completely fine on c3. But now, even if all of White's pieces were attacking the d5-pawn, it ...
3
My answer is to just play chess- playing on the queenside as normal is a good idea in this structure even without the pawn on c3, since here you get to knock away the knight. Pressure versus d4 is also easier without a c3 pawn, which is nice. Black is better than normal, but it's not really anything you can get a instant win from- this just doesn't even come ...
4
Just what is so bad about the White knight and its position? 4. Nf6 for Black is the best option, with a slight theoretical edge in scoring probability in the endgames, although getting there would take accurate play. Additionally, there are many moves that look plausible that would fail to do well. Overall, the position is very drawish.
11
I'm wondering if anyone has any general tips for how to make white
feel this "bad knight"
The fact that you manage to put "bad" and "bad knight" in scare quotes shows that there is some hope for you. White does not have a bad position. I suspect that this line isn't played much at master level because it isn't the best way to ...
Top 50 recent answers are included
