Personally, it looks like black has the edge on the queenside. Instead of ...b3, why not try to take control of the center and build pieces up over there? Be7, Rf8, Nh7 all to prepare for an f5 advance? And afterwards, lock up the queenside and get the a5 knight to d4. b3 seems like it overadvances black's queenside and will eventually allow white some counterplay there.

Going to do an epic bump and put up a couple from my tournament this weekend.

Position No. 1


Black to make his 24th move.

Evaluate the position

Hint:



Position No. 2


White to make his 18th move, black just played 17. ... d5

Hint:

This is from the Spassky-Petrosian World Championship match of 1969, game No. 11. This is a rather famous game that Petrosian won quite beautifully later on, but this position in particular bothered me.

White to move, I'd like to hear people's thoughts on what they would do in the position as white.

Then, discuss white's actual move:

at that time it was not yet known that exchange sacs are amazing and whoever sacs an exchange always wins or draws.

Wait.. I might have just given away my biggest secret publicly

That is a true fact. FIDE should save some time and rule that exchange sacs join flag fall, checkmate and opponent's resignation as a winning condition.

I'm going through some KID lines right now and have a question if anyone wouldn't mind helping. The line I'm looking at is in the Bayonet Attack. The position can be seen in the diagram and is reached after the following moves.



1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Nf3 O-O 6. Be2 e5 7. O-O Nc6 8. d5 Ne7 9. b4 Nh5 10. Re1 Nf4 11. Bf1 a5 12. bxa5 Rxa5 13. a4 c5

In this position white's most popular move is 14.Ra3. Can someone help me with the idea behind that move? I've been looking at the position for a while and don't understand it's purpose. The only thing I can figure is that white might want to play 15.Bxf4, followed by 16.Nb5, but if white plays 14.Bxf4 right away, black can play 14...exf4 15.Ra3 Bxc3 16.Rxc3 Bd7 and black will win the a-pawn. That's probably not right though, I can't imagine black wants to part with his bishop like that.

Any help?

Above my pay grade, but John Watson just finished off an amazing 14-part video series on the king's indian defense on ICC.

It looks to be like it is a move that is preparing for black's eventual f5 push. With the rook on a3 instead of a1

1) It is no longer on that all-important KID diagonal and being indirectly attacked by the bishop
2) It protects the c3 knight from discovered attacks on that diagonal
3) It provides more cover to some of the really important internal holes in white's position, especially e3
4) It could theoretically provide some defense along that third rank far down the road during a kingside pawn storm attack from black.

Basically, the idea is that white has a major long-term static advantage due to his pawn structure, so black is going to have to prove some dynamic activity to justify his position. Ra3 is aimed taking a ton of the sting out of two of black's most important dynamic advantages: the long dark diagonal and the internal weak squares in white's position.

Inb4 someone tells me how wrong i am

What would be interesting would be for someone to look through a database for games that reached the position prior to Ra3, and then see what players used to play and what happened. Then, you can look at the games where white started using Ra3 and see how/if it solved any problems, and you will also get a sense for the ideas black used to counter that.

a GM once showed me a bayonet line that went something like the following:

9. b4 a5 10. bxa5 Rxa5 11. a4 c5 12. Ra3 with the idea of Nb5, Nd2 to clear the 3rd rank and meet any f5 by black with exf5 gxf5 2.f4, after which the rook comes in very handy on the 3rd rank. Not sure if this has anything to do with the position in question.

Appreciate the feedback from everyone, thank y'all for the help. Kyle, I need to watch that video series if it's as good as you say it is.

ganstaman, I tried doing that a bit last night before posting but I couldn't figure it out. Ra3 is the most popular move, but there are a couple of other moves played by 2500+ players frequently as well. I also tried running Ra3 and the alternatives through Houdini and seeing if it could poke holes in the other moves, but all evaluations were pretty close to each other. I wish I wasn't such a patzer haha.

Noir_Desir, that does make a lot of sense. The positions aren't identical, but they're pretty dang close and I bet that's the same idea. Some of the popular alternatives to Ra3 in my line were Nb5 and Nd2, so I bet it's part of the same plan. Thanks for the help.

That series in the top 3 or 4 chess instructions I've ever used, which includes books, videos and coaching. It may have been because he hit on some specific gaps in my chess knowledge that I was ready for, but it really blew my mind. The best job I've ever seen of explaining the interconnection between pawn structure, piece placement and piece activity.

Watson has an incredible way of breaking down chess, he's definitely on the same level as Silman in that regard. His Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy, in spite of its kitschy title, is an amazingly good read.

I have this book and have tried reading it but it's sooooo analysis heavy. Is it of any good instructional value?

Agree. Great book!

From an online 60 5 game today. White's best move and why?

I'm betting it's not a king move