Its going to be very challenging to win either way, unless you play e5 and black is dumb enough to trade. After the trade, the pawn on d6 is a permanent threat that black cant get rid of. Its very much not going to be easy for the black king to approach. With the black queen restricted by the need to prevent the pawn from advancing, white has a free hand to improve the queen's position, go after the queenside pawns while continuing to protect e5, and improve the king position. Once you realize that trading would be very bad for black, its easy to see what e5 is the best try -- keeps your pieces the most active, restricts black, etc. Its nothing much though -- still going to be very hard to win.
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Hi,
white to move in this position. I was looking at both moves Rxd8+ and e5 in the game but ultimately decided to go with Rxd8+ only to find out in my analysis after that the engine rates e5 much better. Can someone explain to me why, cause it's not obvious to me. I felt like having a central pawn more, I'm better off trading and just leaving his queen as only defender for any backrank issues.
I didn't see any clear advantages of e5 except maybe denying him the open file and access to my back rank (with check) and 2nd rank. I also felt like it might be easier for him to attack my pawn if I push him further away from backup like the f-pawn or felt like he might have some tactics where he can somehow distract my defenders and take the rook. And at the time I thought simple e6 kind of forces me to take on d8 anyway and didn't see the pawn fork on Qc4.
What should I have done better here?