Thread by @rasmansa

This was a fun one, and the comments were really good too. So let's do a thread on the position and positional #chess in general.

High level guide to assessing a chess position.

- Material
- King safety
- Piece Activity
- Pawn structure

Stronger players have much deeper understandings of these concepts and sub-factors within, but we all can use these at our own levels.

So in this position:

- White is down in material (1 less pawn).
- Black's king is safer (less access points to it)
- White has a better pawn structure (that pawn on d6 can't be defended by pawns)
- Black has more active and scary pieces (Queen and Bishop near white king)

For a visual, I'm going to highlight some of the factors at play here. Weak squares are something lower rated players rarely see (class those in "piece activity" as they allow a player to put a piece in a position to be more active).

So now we get to what a stronger player would see.

Black's advantages can be quickly removed, and his disadvantages are more long term (again, there are to levels these evaluations).

So this game turns on leaving black with less piece activity and a less safe king.

First, there are too many black pieces near white's king. Also, that Bishop on c4 is protecting the d5 square. Knights are most active on squares right in the center of the board (exceptions to every rule, but stay with me).

So white plays 1. Nc3, attacking the queen.

The queen is protecting the bishop, so she can't go far. Her 2 moves to protect it are 1...Qb3 or 1...Qa6.

Qb3 is played, and we get 2. Bxc4 Qxc4. That's 1 less attacking piece near white's king.

So the king is more safe and white's knight has more access to more activity.

I already made clear that d5 is a key square for white to create a super knight. What other piece is defending d5 for black? So that leads to the next move, 3. Bg5.

The knight can't move as it's pinned to the rook. White will then trade the bishop for the knight.

I'll jump ahead here to show how the position has changed. We have 3...Qe6 4. Bxf6 Qxf6. White now has a significant edge and won in the next 11 moves, though according to the computer, he misplayed the position (chess engines are jerks like that).

Let's evaluate again.

- White is still down a pawn
- White King is a bit less safe (black can't get to it)
- Black bishop is horrible (blocked by its pawns), White knight is a superstar when it gets to d5.
- Black pawns are ugly (pawn on d6)

The computer suggests playing 5. h4 and ripping black apart (computers tend to be more aggressive than people). White instead played 5. Nd5 and went on to win quickly.

I animated the game, and it can be found here (nice tactic at the end too): chessgames.com/perl/chessgame…

I hope this thread provided some value. More important than this game or position is understanding the basics of assessing a position. There is a ton of positional chess theory. We all start somewhere and build on it.

Good luck and good chessing.