Imbalances and Python Strategy!

Hello everyone! In today's post, I will be talking about some study that I have done of the game rather than go over games that I have played. I have read two books: "Pump Up Your Rating" as well as "Python Strategy" over the week. 

However, before we delve into the material that I have to show you guys, I have an update on my stats: my puzzles rating has crossed 2000! That was quite a happy feeling, as now I have crossed 2000 on 2 accounts. 

As can be seen, my blitz rating has not had a similar phenomenal growth, but I am confident that it will soon follow suite.

Now, coming to the study material. From "Python Strategy", I have analyzed one of Petrosian's games. I did it both with myself and with an engine. I have to admit though, I did not find much in my analysis! Here it is:

I also studied imbalances from 'Pump Up Your Rating'. In specific, I went through the queen vs 2 rooks imbalance. I present a variation presented in the book as a puzzle.

I now have learnt about the imbalance of queen vs 2 rooks. Not completely, but now I know the basics that will definitely help me a lot. The key points of this imbalance that I have picked up:

• If the queen has weaknesses to attack, it is preferable.
• The rooks are useless without open files.
• The queen is not very good against passed pawns.
• If the rooks get open files, then they are better than the queen provided everything else is equal.

That's all for now! I hope that you have enjoyed this blog post. Please comment on it! I will try to post two before the end of next week.