e4/f5/h5 in this position

Hi,

Was in this position as black earlier today and wanted to play f5 or h5, but indecisive. I played h5, bc of not liking opening up the diagonal for check, despite the lsb being gone and the sense it wouldn't be hard to defend anything up a full rook.



I checked and engine likes e4, which I hadn't thought of at all but after looking feel is kind of neat. I'm curious, is there a substantive difference between f5 and h5 and if so what would it be? Also, e4 would obviously be defended but how does one think about it being isolated?

Thanks in advance!

Looks like the engine is "worried" about white playing h4 and trading queens... which is incredibly stupid because a queen trade favors black. The engine can't think in practical terms so it doesn't understand that.

IMO the only overall sensible idea in the position is you want to trade pieces... the easiest are the rooks. Either put the black rooks on open files, or on white's 2nd rank. No one is dumb enough to trade material when they're behind, so the way you trade piece is by activating them... when you make your rooks menacing, white will be the one asking you to trade (or white will lose more material). I'd probably start with 22...Rac8.

Ok, those are what I think of as the reasonable ideas, so now on to h5, f5, e4... none of those moves would cross my mind so I don't know what to say. It looks like the idea is black is going to attack the white king directly, which is fine of course, but IMO it's an overly fancy way to win that involves more risk for no reason... umm, of the 3 I guess Id play... eh, they all look equal. Black is completely winning so you can do whatever you want.

Maybe it's worth talking about how black can lose the position

One way to win a game, is look for the only way you can lose, and then don't let that happen.

Black might lose if black leaves the rook on a8 for the next 20 moves, and spends the next 10+ trying to attack with only the knight and queen. That's how a very low rated player would handle the position... during the attack some tactics will happen and if black is careless black will lose material. Two piece attacks are basically never enough to mate, so the queen+knight was never a real attack to begin with.

That's how black would lose

Thanks so much, as always!!
Yeah, overthinking those three options was probably dumb...what you said makes a lot more sense.

Oops, maybe I sounded too judgmental, I don't think it's dumb to ask and think about these things

e4 to go Nf3 (possibly winning the queen) looks good. But anything really works when you're a rook up and opponent has little counterplay.

Excuse me, but in this particular position there's no need for subtleties: Black is a rook up.

Even if someone plants an extra white rook eg at a1, there's no significant difference between 1...e4, 1...f5 and 1...h5: All are winning because white's pieces are completely uncoordinated.

Thanks everyone!
@Ultimate-trashtalker why is e4 a "must play idea"?

Makes sense, thanks!