Piece Activity vs. Material

Hi there,

Here's an interesting position from one of my online games with a huge material advantage of the defender against the more active pieces of White. According to my analysis after the game White rules because of his more active pieces; I want to ask you if I overlooked something or if Black really doesn't stand a chance.

The position in move 27., Black to play. He just captured White's rook on  a1 forcing 27.Bd1.

During the game I thought after 1...Qxd4 2.Rf5+ Qfxf5 2.Qxf5 I had to play for a draw because I underestimated the good positions of my minors, but  after going through the variations in this analysis I'm quite sure that White's win is foorced. Am I right?

Cheers, 

Spielkalb

I think that your win was inevitable by move 27.  Blacks two minor pieces, and your all major pieces by that time were the reason your mate combo concluded so quick.  if you could, could you paste the PGN for the whole game plea?

Thanks for your comment! 

Here's the full game:

It's not just the piece activity which is decisive, it's also the exposed position of the black king. If the king was safe, the extra material would probably outweigh the activity.

Piece Activity, piece activity and piece activity!

If you can not use it, it is worthless.

Ok!  Just heard somebody crying .........  

I think and feel that at 8.. g5, black began giving up a good stronghold on the defense of the king with the f, g, and h pawns.  If I was black I would be looking at this loss, and saying, maybe I should or could have developed my minor pieces more after move 8., and then white would not have brought in a strong counter so fast. Why go chasing after the white dark-square bishop, when these pawns are needed to provide adequate defense of the king??  Chasing your dark-square bishop led to nothing but an even exchange knight for bishop, and weakened black's defense so much that it was impossible to hold back your king and rook offense.

But, alas, I am just a lowly 1100 rated player... haha..

Hmmm!

Exactly my thoughts when I retreated the bishop instead of trading it. Aside from keeping the bishops pair on the board, of course.

It seems to be inconsistence to castle king side in this postion. I was not happy to castle queenside with my king in the open, but in the game I was forced to wander off back to there anyway. 

In general a queen and a minor piece are too much for two rooks, especially in this case with Black's dire king situation and Black's complete lack of any semblance of development and coordination. After you won Black's queen, there was no need to analyze further; it's an easy win for White.

good one, spiel and baB3S.  I am playing a game where I traded a knight so that the king would have to castle by manual, but I am not sure I can make it pay off, because now my opponent is up two or three minor pieces.

Actually, I was in need for a further anylisis in this situation because I wasn't sure if I I could activate my minors fast enough before Black's beeing able to coordinate his rooks and possibly attack my pawns on c4 and g2 to create dangerous passers or restrain my minors first. Therefore, I was in need of a analysis of this concrete situation and put it on the forums for you guys to review in case I missed something.

Yeah, but black had no intention of activating his rooks, look, at your starting point, the Q is on A1 and the closest rook is on h8. How could they possibly work together.  Black was more interested in chsing down pawns, which gave you time to active a mate combo that he could not fight.  Usually, if i am down a rook I am finding myself in big trouble, but blacks crazy queen moves that led to no mate combo, and the strange advance of the f g h pawns leading the king quite wide open, seem to me as the reasons it did not matter you were a rook down.  Your active pieces, queen and rook and bishop and knight, were all kingside focused at the starting point of your mating combo. All his minor pieces were lodged back on the first rank, except for his Queen, and that didn't have any potential by herself, to be of much danger, when you forced by an advance.  I hope you let the player for black know about this forum topic, because though we're being hard, maybe he or she can learn something about what went wrong........

I think, recalling some GM games from awhile ago, that a proper defense for black was to activate the rooks to counter on 1st and 2nd of black ranks when the queen was there knocking on the door, and keep the pawns back on the 2 and 3rd rank.

It makes me wonder about the time part! This will take some maneuvering in the game. How many moves once in this situation? As the game goes past 70 moves or so the existence for a mistake is possible.

What? I thought the comments and my analysis demonstrated Black had no chance to delay his demise even close to 70 moves.

Talking about leading up to this point. It is way easier to anyalyze a game your not playing at the moment.

..... assuming the mental state is the same as was in beginning of the game trying to evaluate a situation. Everybody may miss a key move to end the game early. Just saying with fatique entered in the situation and miss the correct evaluation how far would you say the game would have gone. What alternate lines could be played? 

When i miss an evaluation i find hard to regroup takes about 2-3 moves mentally.

Ah, that kind of psychological stuff. It was an online game, so no time presure but surely there are other mental conditions for giving away a won game. In my case, I often tend to tunnel vision of my own course and underestimate the opponent's resources for defence or a counter attack like in another game I've posted here (http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-showcase/a-plan-worked-out-against-the-reti). So I wanted to double-check if I made the same mistake in this game as well.

In a won game where my opponent is putting up a strong fight then suddenly makes a mistake i somehow make a mistake and give it back sometimes. Using the opposite hand for mouse to look at the game seems like the only solution. Either that i sit on that hand that controls the mouse. Would standing up and walking away help?

It hurts when you get these advantages with all your hard work and give them away sometimes.

wow how poetic Royal....