In a couple of games,  I've got an opportunity to swap my queen for 3 pieces in one - and to swap it for two rooks in another. What should I do? And will two rooks beat a queen with only equal pawns on the board?

In my personal experience, it does depend on board position, however if position is even I'd rather have 2 rooks than a queen. And well, 3 minor peices for the queen can be quite even, this relies even more heavily on board position I would imagine. If I had a passer or a good chance of a passer I'd keep the minor peices.

2 rooks are definitely better than a queen in the endgame though not in the middle game

Rook is worth 5 so two rooks = 10 a Queen is worth 9 so two rooks. But Two Bishops and a knight is very handy !

my man i like queens though u r quite sterdy with 2 rooks all in all

bring me back a keyring with a ukrain flag on please ,preferbely metal, but any wud b nice

hope ur gettin that adrenalin pumpin at least once a day :)

Two rooks vs. one queen, the two rooks usually wins if you are both relatively experienced.

3 pieces vs. one queen, depends TOTALLY on the current position.

In my words 2 rooks are better than a queen than 3 pieces vs queen.

Like everything in chess it depends on the position.  One easy way to keep in mind why 2R=Q+P is that the rooks can often force a trade for a Q+P and if all else was equal, be left a pawn up.

It is much easyer to look after a queen than 2 rooks (and even harder for 3 pieces) so even though usually 1Q<2R<3N/B it is better for less experienced players to have the queen becuse it reduces your options, and thus reduces the chance of blundering.

Two Rooks are better than a Queen, so they would be a good trade.

Three pieces vs. a Queen is a highly complicated battle. My guess is that the three pieces are usually better, but it would really depend on the situation.

"QUEEN FOR TWO ROOKS

How about queen for two rooks? Although many authors talk about queen and pawn equaling two rooks, this is only close to true with no minor pieces on the board; with two or more minors each, the queen needs no pawns to equal the rooks. I recall a famous Portisch-Fischer game in which Portisch "won" two rooks for Fischer's queen right out of the opening, but Fischer soon won a weak pawn and went on to win rather easily, despite the nominal point equality. In fact Fischer's annotations severely criticized Portisch for making the trade; Fischer understood very well that with lots of material on the board, the queen is every bit as good as the rooks, so once he won a pawn he was effectively a full pawn ahead.

QUEEN FOR THREE MINOR PIECES

As for the fairly rare situation of three minor pieces for a queen, the statistics put the equilibrium as three minors equal queen plus half a pawn, although the sample size is below my stated minimum. Conventional master opinion actually favors the minors by a full pawn or even a bit more, though I think this is because they are usually talking about opening variations rather than endings (the minor pieces are worth relatively more with rooks on the board, in my opinion, due to the "redundancy of major pieces"). Note that when talking about three minors vs. a queen, the side with the minors usually also enjoys the advantage of the bishop pair.

This is probably the main reason that three minor pieces are generally superior to a queen; without the bishop pair they should be evenly matched in my opinion, but such cases are too rare to test this hypothesis. In the even rarer case of two rooks vs. three minor pieces, the limited statistics give the minor pieces a slight edge provided they include the bishop pair, which they usually do.

Here also master opinion is a bit more favorable to the minor pieces. As for queen and pawns vs. rook and two minor pieces, the statistics put the fair value at 1¾ pawns, whereas conventional master thinking puts it a bit above two pawns. In general, master opinion tends to value the queen a bit lower than the statistics imply. This may be because masters are usually writing about positions where the kings are not exposed, but in actual games the imbalance often occurs with the kings wide open to checks, which of course favors the queen."

Here is a link to the full article. The author is Larry Kaufman. 

http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Articles/evaluation_of_material_imbalance.htm

Ok.Ithink if you have the advantage before or after the exchange than it's worth it!As simple is that!You have to exit out of the exchange with offensive play no matter what pieces you have.

ok thanks for that

I love unbalanced games like this. Sometimes the queen is better, sometimes the pieces. But the games are rarely boring.

yes, but you need to have strong nerves!!

A rather interesting point is that if you're going to end up material down, it's best to do so with material imbalance.

So generally speaking, it's much better to have 2 pieces vs the queen than simply be a piece down.

Material imbalance increases your defensive chances, practically speaking.

Funny, you don't look 108 years old.