Converting the Advantage - Queen and Rook Positions
Continuing my exploration of interesting games from the 2018 Olympiad, I analysed the Caruana-Mamedyarov game from Round 8, because of the fascinating queen and rook type of position that resulted.
First, here is the full game without annotations:
1) Black's problems all started with the fact that he couldn't move his f5-pawn backwards - with the pawn on f7, White wouldn't have an opportunity to create threats to the Black king, and the position would be equal. Instead, we saw ideas like Qb7 and Rd7 to target the exposed g7-pawn.
2) Conversely, because Black had the more exposed king, he should have looked for ways to exchange queens, even at the cost of a pawn. Because quite a few pawns were already traded, a lot of these pawn-down endgames were technically holdable for Black.
3) A detailed analysis shows just how difficult these positions are to play in practice. Both players made mistakes in the queen+rook position, but they also calculated well overall and found a lot of good moves. It's hard to give general rules of thumb for the phase of harassing the opponent's king, but it's a skill that is honed by studying more analysed examples like these.
One point you might take with you is that the key lies in the harmony of our piece placement, and finding ways to create new threats to maintain our initiative. Do you remember how Caruana did this in the diagram position below?
Solution: 34.Qh4! asked some tough questions for Black. The point is that now Rd8 by White can't just be met with ...Re8, or else White will take on e8 and c4, winning material. But after 34...Re8 35.Rd4!, Black had to choose between giving up a pawn, or defending the pawn but going passive.
4) As a continuation of point 3, it is often necessary for both the attacker and the defender to find the very best move to maintain the evaluation of the position. Unlike many simple endgames, 'the second best move' often won't cut it when the king is on the line.
