A very strange Capablanca - Alekhine game.

Well OK, it's not so strange now that I've read up on the game and understand it.  But here's why it boggled me for a while:  Alekhine resigned in the position below, when:

• he had material equality;
• he controlled the same amount of space as white;
• there was no zugzwang; and
• there was no immediate tactical threat.

The following comment on another chess site made me understand why:

"asiduodiego: Nice game by Capablanca. The resignation of Alekhine in this case is not, by any means, premature: black is completely cramped, and white has very good perspectives for gaining advantage: for example, putting the knight on d5, and then dominating the a1-h8 diagonal, with special pressure in the g6 square. In these conditions, black doesn't have any good moves: one of his rooks will be stuck defending the b6 pawn, and, of course, the other will be unable of doing anything useful, and soon black will have to exchange one of his rooks, and then, it's a winning endgame for white."

But I still think it's amazing how the game is lost for black despite everything I listed above.  A very clever game by Capa - I think he probably saw this position well in advance and Alekhine did not.

Now be honest - would you have even felt you had a disadvantage if you were black in this position?  Me, probably not.

this was an interesting post asiduodiego has some good insight.

ty for the post whiteknight. 

ah it appears that black is not worse but once u start trying to form a plan for black to better his position every thing will become clear.he is bound to defend passively his weaknesses on b6 and d6 as he anyway can't open the position.

may be  alekhine wanted to avoid the torture of playing an clearly inferior ending against the capablanca,who used to produce win out of even endgames.

Yes, as black I would feel like I was much worse.  Mostly for all the reasons Estragon said.  You don't count points, you evaluate whose pieces are more effective.  Capa didn't need to see that specific position to know who was better.  A bit bizzar to me though are Alekhine's moves afte the queen trade, moves 30-32 or there abouts where he declined to open any new files.  To me this says he greatly misunderstood the position, but that's just a cursory evaluation by an amateur... take it for what it's worth.

edit -- oh I see, a8 was covered by a bishop and black had vurnerable pawns, no way to actually get active.  I guess what Alekhine somehow (?) missed was 28.Rxc3 which wins material... also trading queens still seems weird to me and much better for white.

I Googled 'Kaufman's Redundancy Principle' and found this article:

http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Articles/evaluation_of_material_imbalance.htm

Fascinating stuff.

Thanks for all your replies, especially OrangeHonda and Estragon.

I hope I have gained a more finely-grained attitude to evaluating a position - thanks.  :)

The dutch against Capablanca. VERrrr niiice

Black's rooks have no way to penetrate (the minor pieces naturally cover them all), meanwhile all of white's minor pieces have squares and things to influence. I would personally play on until I actually started to lose pawns and stuff but I can believe that a world champion could find his position resignable right away.

Still though, it's a good way to lose in style! Resinging in a position like that, spectators are bound to think you're good; or crazy.