White to move.

What Im seeing here is that white is a pawn down but black bishop is not in action yet. That means that we need dynamic play.
The other thing is that black has a rook controlling a file but his other rook is not going much.

So how do we procede from here? The two candidates I can come up with here are b4 and Rfd1.

What do you guys think?

Without looking too deeply, I'd add Bf4 and Rfe1 to the list of candidates. Those moves, which might initially look bizarre, have hopes of exploiting Black's awkward queen placement.

The immediate b4 looks good though.

The rook is located on the file, but I wouldn't say it's in control of it. I think its most useful contribution at present is the overprotection of b7.

I suppose that Rfe1 and Bf4 have the objective to put pressure on e5 right?

Yeah, they make it uninhabitable for the queen after b2-b4. Additionally, Rfe1 allows Bf1 in some lines and Bf4 hits c7/b8. This is the part where we'd have to roll up our sleeves and look at concrete variations.

This is a position from a correspondence game?

Yes but the game finished already.

Here is my thought process fwiw grunching:

1) Castled on opposite sides. The game likely is now in "caveman chess" mode where both sides can go after the opposing king with abandon.

2) While white's king is relatively safe, there are a lot of dark square holes. If black can activate his bishop effectively that could be a lot of trouble.

3) White has his pieces aimed at black's king but it will take several moves to galvanize his pawns to effectively make a break.

4) Black's white squared bishop is in the way of his pawns. His rooks are uncoordinated. His king is somewhat safe but the queen is over there to possibly let white push pawns with tempo.

5) Black is up a pawn as compensation for all of this stuff. If he can actively launch his own attack on the kingside hopefully white won't have enough time to build up a winning attack. Then black has a material advantage that could possibly be carried into the endgame.

I think I like white's position quite a bit better. However, white has all the pressure to capitalize, he can't just wait around and milk his position since if he can't force material gain (or significant structural or piece activity concessions going into the endgame) with significant attacking threats, I don't see him with any chances of winning the endgame.

Practically, I'm not sure I have ever castled queenside in my life so I would prefer playing white here just for that reason alone, lol. Although it doesn't look completely juicy or won to me, I don't think white can be too far behind and likely may have a slight advantage from a strong engine.

Oh, it looks from the comments you don't just want analysis but practical moves for white here. Well, the board seems to be screaming at me to play b4 since it's with tempo and advancing any pawn on your opponent's king in "caveman" chess seems like it almost has to be good.

As for an overall plan, without spending several minutes actually doing it, I would try to kind of envision how white would like to force a break with his pawns on the queenside and where his rooks and knight should be to support it. It seems to me the most immediate concerns are what to do with the knight since it's in the way of the c-pawn and where you would like to push your three queenside pawns and how the knight can support them. Then, after having some idea of that I'd figure out rook placement but also keep in mind I may have to use them to challenge for control of the d-file so moving them later once things develop more may be a good idea.

Ok, that's all the time I'm going to spend atm. Hopefully strong players weigh in with a lot of detail and we all learn a ton now .

At first the idea of Re1 or Bf4 seem good but, honestly, I think black can play Nd5 possibly followed by e5 which continue to improve his position and defense. An immediate b4 forces the black queen to an awkward square right away. a6 where it is even more in the way of black's defense. Or e5 where it can now be batted around by white's pieces with tempo. The more moves either side can play with tempo that advance the attack against the opposition's king the harder the other side will be able to create sufficient counterplay.

Just checked on a chess engine. Lol at me. b4 certainly is a candidate move but I way overestimate white's positional advantage here. I really thought it'd be close to even or something like +.1 for white. Looks like it's -.5 for white.

At my level it looks easier to play white's side, though, which may count for something. Ain't nobody under USCF 2000 is playing anything like a computer defense of this position, .

I gave the position to Stockfish:

Ftr, I think it's important, particularly in correspondence games, to regularly select ambitious candidate moves that are likely to turn out to be stupid upon further inspection. I wouldn't appreciate it if I suggest moves that really should be noticed in a bunch of these threads only to have them summarily dismissed every time because they "seem" bad. I don't think The Yugoslavian is doing this (he said "the idea of Re1 or Bf4 seem good", after all), but his post reminded me that it might happen, so I'll post this now so that I can refer to it when someone says "well your move sucks because of XYZ, what the hell are you looking at that move for?" in some other thread. I just know someone is going to do that eventually, and the idea of it tilts me. I realize all of this is pretty neurotic.

The position is concrete enough that this type of analysis is unreliable, imo (what I was broken-recording about in the recent Malkovich thread). The evaluation of individual moves will hinge on specific lines; variations need to be calculated; a line can live or die on one non-obvious tactical/concrete resource; etc.

I actually dont play correspondence chess game like correspondence chess games, I play without moving the pieces around and I dont take longer than 10 minutes on a move. I should have lied and said it was a long game instead

What I wanted from this thread is too see how others think through the position and both your post and yugoslavian ones have been helpful.

Why don't you move the pieces around (analyze)? IMO, that's the funnest part. And your opponent is doing it so it seems you should, too.

Rei — This position was much more concrete than I initially thought. Specifically, on first glance I thought since neither side had advanced his/her pawns much that it wouldn't be so concrete. But especially after thinking about Re1 vs. Bf4 vs. b4, it became clear quite quickly there are more calculations immediately in play than I assumed.

Is your general issue with what I said that you think it's the wrong type of way to think about a position or b/c I didn't go into much concrete analysis that it was lacking? I agree that calculation then needs to take place even after b4 since it looks to me that black should play Qe5 which leads to quite a few branching calculations.

Valenzuela - I'm surprised stockfish and fritz (I think I used) were somewhat significantly off in evaluating the position.

My issue was: every sentence has an equally valid counterfactual. "An immediate b4 forces the black queen to an awkward square right away" and "Holding off on b4 allows us to strengthen our position and force black's queen away when it could be even more favorable for us" (or whatever) are such a competing pair. But it's not like we can pit one verbal argument against another (your entire paragraph vs. its entire counterfactual form) and decide which is right without looking at the variations.

But I don't have that issue anymore, actually. It's reasonable to interpret your post as an elaboration on your intuition that b4 looks right, which it does, and nothing more (i.e., and not an argument that it is right).

Yeah, that's what I assumed I was doing, I'm just trying to elaborate on whatever initial intuition I have. I generally am not sure it's possible for a player of my level to determine the "right" move. Just varying degrees of right. Obviously there are finite options each move and one may very well be the best and it is great if I choose it, but, realistically it's more important to play moves that are good that I know how to follow-up with other good moves, .