Queen Exchange for Doubled Pawns?
This article will address the question of queen exchanges. Particularly, we will look into positions where one side forced the queen exchange to get some advantage in return. The opponent’s doubled pawns can be considered an advantage for us, for example. One has to take into account more elements than that. In the next examples even though with queen exchanges one creates weaknesses in the opponent’s camp, it turns out to be not enough. The dynamics of the position change completely with the queen exchange. Let us look at a couple examples that explore the details of such dynamic positions.
The following position happened from a Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense. Black sacrificed a pawn hoping to create an attack on the open files near the white king. This might prove a hard task, since there are not many pieces left on the board for an attack. A complicated middle game started if Black chose to play Bd5. However, in the game Black decided to go for an endgame, hoping to use white’s doubled c-pawns. Let us look at the resulting position and if black’s decision to go into the endgame was a correct one.
White has a symbolic advantage – black’s isolated pawn. There is no way now to expose this weakness. Black built a solid position – put the pieces in the center without creating many weaknesses. It is a common knowledge that to fight the isolated pawn one needs to exchange queens. With the last move Qf4, white offers an exchange. Black can of course retreat with the queen but this would give some positional concessions, since white improves the queen position, while black does not. Accepting the queen exchange would be a bad positional decision but in this case Black creates doubled pawns in white’s camp. There is definitely an advantage to this exchange but the question is: is it enough to maintain the balance?
The following position features the compressed king side of black under the pressure of h5 and e5 pawns. The bishop on c8 is still not developed and needs at least two moves to get into the game. White has advantage on the king side, so his play should be there. Can white use this time to attack the black king? Yes, if black would allow it, but it is black to move. White’s pawns can become weaknesses.
Overall, the most important exchange that happens in the game probably is the queens exchange. When we trade knights or bishops our strategy and plan of play remains almost the same, maybe modified a bit. On the other hand, when we trade queens the methods to lead the game drastically change. What was weakness before, might turn into strength (such as king in the centre). As the first two examples show, without queens doubled pawns turned out to be a strength. In the first example the king in the endgame successfully hid behind the pawns. In the second example the doubled pawns controlled the centre.
