are we not just a pawn down here?

I'm reading Rowson's book on the Grunfeld and it looks like he's a bit optimistic about this position:

It does not look especially dangerous to me, white also has a passed pawn and will probably be able to withhold the b pawns. Am I misevaluating the position? The computer also says .8 for white. I know that this position will never arise in my games but I'm more interested in the evaluation of this position - I want to get better at it. After all, there's so many "!" moves by black and none by white..

I think you have to look at activity in this position. Black's bishop is at the moment slightly more active than white's knight. Black's rook seems significantly more active than white's rook that passively defends a pawn.

Rowson gives the straighforward idea of b4-b3, black can also lift the rook to a4 threatening the e4 pawn.

So what will white play in this position? I'm sure the computer gives you some candidate moves.

Perhaps white should give up the defense of the a2 pawn and free his rook. Rb1 attacks the b5 pawn and the e5 pawn but allows Rxa2 followed by Rf2+-Rxg2. I haven't spent long on this, but it looks like the endgame is going to be drawn after black regains the pawn.

The activity of the pieces is important while blacks pieces have cosiderable freedom of movement whites pieces are tied to the defence of his weak pawns

This is the line Fritz like most(so far). He is still thinking, so far it gives white a 1,70 advantage.

Deleted: duplication.

the book is from 1998 (according to Amazon). Much has changed in computer analysis since then.

Of course, computers still don't understand some positions.

Btw, the price is ridiculous:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1901983099/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

yes, the computer fast development improved in a fast pace the analysis of chess positions.

here is the line (Fritz 12 - deep position analysis):

23.Rd1 Bd6 24.Rc1 Bc5 25.Rc2 Ra4 26.Re2 Rc4 27.Nxe5+- 1.62/20

Let's see.

I agree that White is indeed tied to defending its pawns, and perhaps can only progress extremely slowly.

It's probably very difficult for a human to play such a positions, and who knows if an advantage(as evaluated by computer) can be converted.

Still waiting for a analysis, so far it really shows that white can not progress easily (or can he progress at all), is this one of those situations where (some) engines fails?

Here is the excellent puzzle, and my Fritz failed at it (until I turned off the "null move"):

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/just-cute-puzzle?page=1

houdini has

Rd1 Bd6
Rc1 Bc5
Rc2 Ra4
Re2 Bd6
g3 Kf7
Kg2 Ke7
h3

at .83 

Indeed black has a lot of potential pressure, though not necessarily enough to overwhelm white, but at least to keep him from doing much. I'd highly doubt that black can actually claim he's better, though; that's probably the bias talking.

Yes actually this game was in Rowson's book. Qxb6 was only an annotation. Yes I see what you all mean, now that I look at it from White's pov it is quite unpleasant for him. I don't know if I like the positions after 10 .. Bg4 11 f3 Na5 in general, though. I think I will try to look at 10 .. Na5 instead..

@Estragon: yet I see tons of cases where on the contrary the computer doesn't fancy the chances of the side with extra material if it sees it's hard to do much, with similar situations to this. I think this "materialistic" effect is much rarer than most people would presume about computers.

However, there are some rare closed positions where the computer will say one side is much better, but when you play through its analysis both sides seem to be just moving their pieces back and forth.