TL Chess Match 4 - Page 118

Possible continuation are:

22...Rxe3,

whether we play 23. fxe or 23. Bxe3, then 23...c6, 23...c5 or 23...Ra8 are all playable for black. I prefer 23.fxe though since the bishop if much more of a threat on the f4 square and gives room for our king to move. I think we'll be hard to keep the a3 pawn in any case, so follow with:

24. g4 if we can open up the king side, then our position will be more advantageous given our knight and bishop are already there.

If Black plays 22... Rb7, then we can play 23. g4 immediately, gaining momentum.

if black plays 22...Rb5, then 23. Bd2 follow by 24. Re1, we would gain massive advantage with the open e-file

Of the 3 possible move you suggested, it is indeed possible that he can do those move if he did

22...Rxd3 I dont really see what he can gain from this trade. Considering he already down pieces I dont think he would want to trade pieces at all unless he gain a game changing advantage or a significant advantage. This was mainly why I didnt really considered him doing this move but then again it not a terrible move so it still plausible.

22...Rcb8 I dont see why he would do this move when we can just do Bxc7 right after then follow up by RxBe7+ and retreat back to defend bot row.

22...Rd3 I dont really see anything he can gain from this position. He can keep pressure on the middle pawn now and the a3 pawn but with our knight there he doesnt seem to be able to do much. We also have the option to just trade which isnt a bad choice cause we are up pawns anyways.

Which is why I think he would probably retreat and do Rb5 to attack the weakest pawn pieces we have atm. He cant really do anything else that I can see. Also, this pawn will most likely fall because it some what troublesome to defend it as well and if he does go for this, I think it best to sacrifice it and just trade it for something position or another pawn.

I have to assume that you're saying this based on general principles, and in fact you yourself say that you didn't really consider him doing this move. I admit that in the abstract, it seems reasonable to assume that exchanges in general are good for us. However, this exchange is not!

You want to know what significant advantage Black gains from it? In a nutshell, he trades off one of his several active pieces for our only active piece (our a1 Rook is stuck in the corner defending a3 and our Knight and Bishop are currently pretty restricted in mobility: there aren't many squares for them to go to). That's a definite short term advantage for Black: it allows him to concentrate his forces on areas where we can't bring as many of ours to bear.

Let's not just debate theoretically, though: look at some lines. After 22...Rxe3, we have to either play 23. Bxe3 or 23. fxe3. Which do you prefer? For a time I thought that 23. fxe3 was better; I now think that the game is almost unwinnable if we play that, due to the response 23...c5. See the analysis here for more details.

If we play 23. Bxe3, the Black response I was most worried about earlier was 23...Bd3, threatening a number of things on both the Kingside and the Queenside. I now think that we may be able to come out of that line OK--but more analysis is still necessary. See the analysis here for more details. Even if 23...Bd3 works out all right for us, there are still other Black responses that we need to consider after 23. Bxe3.

In a nutshell, what you'll see if you look at these lines is that a) Black threatens to capture all of our Queenside pawns, and b) we don't have a good way to generate a counter-attack. That's really the big deal about losing our Rook at e3: it was one of the few pieces we had that could help us go after Black's own pawns. In its absence, we're reduced to hanging on to ours until we can slowly generate some counterplay--but hanging on to our pawns is not going to be easy. Please, check out what happens after 22...Rxe3 before dismissing it just because it's a trade.

The main page on the tree for 22...Rxe3 is here.

Keep material. Pure and simple.
Re3 is okay as well but...
22. Re3 Rcb8. In this variation, he's threatening a backrow mate if we ever move our e3 rook away while still attacking our a3 pawn.

Keep what material? 22. a4 Bb4, and Black will pick up the a5 pawn. We'll still have our pawn on a4, to be sure but I don't see a good way to make progress here. Do you?

As for 22. Re3 Rcb8 we have a couple of at least decent-looking responses to that: 23. Bxc7 and 23. Nd2. The move I'm more worried about after 22. Re3 is 22...Rxe3, but at least there I see some play for us, unlike after 22. a4.

My rule of thumb for our position is that we shouldn't let Black have even one of our a-pawns without extracting some concession in return, such as sidelining his Rook or making him give up his Bishop pair.

I've been trying to come up with a way to make moving one of our rooks to another square on the back row work, but it doesn't. I also thought perhaps Nh4 might work as we would sacrifice the pawn for a little bit of tempo with our knight, in order to get it to the f5 square to apply pressure. But the more I looked at it, the more I think that actually takes our knight out of position more than it helps us put any pressure on. Perhaps in a couple moves, but right now Re3 is the move we need to play. Let's force him to either trade, or make an awkward move with that rook.

I don't like 22. Re3 at all, but I'm not sure where to go otherwise :/

22. Re3 Rxe3

And then 23. fxe3 c5 24. dxc5 (else black with a protected passed pawned that looks unstoppable) Bxc5 doesn't look as strong for black as I thought it did, (with the weak isolated e pawn). I'm thinking the continuation is 25. Nd4 but I'm not sure white's general plan after this point. Activate the king is what I'm guessing, but I don't see the specific details right now.

23. Bxe3 sucks for white. He has zero active pieces. His only active one is now defending the pawn (Bishop).

I personally don't like Qrs's follow up for black with 23...Bd3 though, because of 24. Rc1 Bxa3 25. Rc3 Rb8 26. g3 Be4 27. Rxa3 Bxf3 28. Ra1 which looks drawish to me. That being said, I haven't worked out a good response for black that punishes white so it might be the best or their might be a line in there that plays out better for black.

Edit: wait nope scratch that my line sucks. Instead of 26...Be4 26...Rb1+ 27. Kg2 Bf1+ 28. Kh1 Bh3+ 29. Ng1 and white is dead.

1) After 22. Re3 Rxe3 23. fxe3 c5 24. dxc5, Black can play, rather than 24...Bxc5, 24...Rxc5, and he immediately threatens both of our Queenside pawns. I don't see a way to stop him, nor to generate significant counterplay, and if we can't do either before he kills our pawns, then he'll have evened up the material, and we won't have a single advantage in this game (whereas Black will still have the Bishop pair on the open board). That's the reason that so far I'm favoring 23. Bxe3 instead, in the hope that we can make it end up working out.

2) I admit that 23...Bd3 may not be Black's best response to 23. Bxe3, but it's the one that worried me most at first. Later I started to think that we might manage to make out all right in it. Black's various other options can still use analysis.

3) If Black does play 23...Bxd3 in response to 23. Bxe3, my main line isn't 24. Rc1. Instead, I'm hoping we can play 24. Bd2 or perhaps 24. Ne1 followed by Bd2, the idea being to hold on to our Queenside pawns (or forcing Black to give something up to get one of them), and in particular, intending to play Bb4.

As long as we can hold on to our material, we have something to play for. If we let Black get it all back for nothing, then I don't know what our plan is anymore.

Alright rook does look stronger than Bishop, so let's assume black would play that move over the other one which leads to more equality.

As for the 24. Bd2, I see black responding with Rb8 with the idea of Rb3.

If white blocks with 25. Bb4 Bxb4 26. axb4 Rxb4; white can't push the pawn because of the black rank mate. The position looks even, with a slight advantage for white with the passed pawn.

25. Ne1 seems to deal with the Bishop. Black can't play Rb3 here because of 26. Bb4 Bxb4 27. axb4 and black can't retake the pawn because of the hanging Bishop. 25...Bc4 to stop the pawn from pushing/keep it on the queenside as well as keeping white's king back. I don't see anything good for white except for more defensive play.

So, to sum up what I've looked at, it seems like black has a very solid response in Rb8 because of the holes on that file.

(briefly, after 25...Bc4 we still have 26. Bb4)

23. Bxe3

23. fxe3 (c5 24. dxc5 Rxc5)