Is positional play overrated?

I was reading Silman's article on the front page and I came across the following position:

And here Silman said that it's an easy win for white.

But wait a second. How is white winning this?

Positionally, you couldn't find a more blatant example of a knight superior to a bishop. Then black has an isolated pawn, double pawn, backward pawn, mongoloid pawn, etc.

But what does white actually do with his theoretical superiority, except ensuring that he's playing for two results?

D6 should always have sufficient protection (N+R+R vs B+K+Rc6). The bishop is actually controlling c5 and g5. Pushing on the queenside would just activate black's rook, pushing on the kingside would allow black to get rid of his weak pawn and activate the bishop.

Am I missing something here? How does white win?

can you help me.  i am novice  please instruct me play by play  thank you  cattiger

Just a very rough outline of how this kind of technique works:

1) Improve pieces, gain space, but also be careful to not block avenues for your pieces with the pawns (an example near the bottom by trying to play c4 without b3).

2) Provoke square or pawn weaknesses by attacking pawns (forces them to move up the board or ties defenders to those points).

3) With some of the defender's pieces anchored to the weaknesses (squares or pawns) maneuver to the other side of the board starting with the pieces that aren't tying defenders to squares or pawns.

Because the defender isn't as flexible, during this process tactics usually appear. You may have to do several iterations.

As for the first impressions, you should also note that h7 and f7 are very weak. It may seem unimportant right now, but as the game goes on pawns like that can quickly disappear. Your knight would love to attack them more than d6 right now (as you note, d6 is solid).

I've only looked at this position a few seconds, so take this for what it's worth, but for example you can do things like Nf5, pawn-g4, then rook to h3 to try to provoke h6 or distract a black defender away from the q-side.

Then you might retreat out of there, and work on the queenside (or start with the queenside). For example Ne3 and you can play c4 without the move b3... so now a rook can slide along the 3rd rank and try to provoke black to move pawns on the queenside.

Anyway, this position isn't the time to be feeling helpless. Practically every piece of white's can be improved. The specific moves will depend on what black does.

And as for g5 and c5, the last thing you want to do is change black's pawn structure right away. Have it in your mind that you wont use those pawn breaks for 10, 15, 20... 40 moves later... after you make black maximally suffer the defense (or after it's clear it helps you in some way).

Trying this in a quick game against an engine (handicapped by my very slow laptop) I actually doubled rooks on h3 and h4 to win the pawn haha.

It tried to break with b4 so that its rooks made sense so I had to play a3.

Mongoloid pawn!!! I almost spit all of my cornflakes on that one!!!!

In all of this talk of someone who would "revolutionize Nimzowitsch" - here, finally, someone just up and does it - and without all the noise. 

I had a bit of time and I tried to defend this position as black against an engine.

I used the online engine of that other chess website, Stockfish. I understand it probably didn't have enough time to think because it was playing very fast, but:

I was very, very hard to crack black's position. Eventually it came down to pushing on the queenside AND having some tactical shot thanks to some super weird zuzswang I was in. Tactical shots that would be 2100+ on TT on this website.

So my point stands. Even if black's position looks bad in theory, in terms of practical chances for white there isn't much.

It seems like I was losing due to some peculiarities of the position (and, you know, playing against an engine) but I never felt that I was being pushed around. Passive, but resisting.

Silman is well know to "oversell" his cases, but here he really exaggerated. Black is not lost at all.

Here's the FEN if somebody wants to try:

2r5/pp1kbp1p/3p1p2/4p3/2r1P2N/2P2PP1/PP5P/2KR3R w - -

Is positional play overrated?

Up to and including my own level, most games are (sadly?) decided by blunders. 

Good positional play, generally "encourages" the other player to blunder - but there are exceptions. It creates the conditions for the other player to lose heart, to lose faith in his position - and at some point, to fall on their own sword, one way or another. 

I sometimes win or lose games on positional play without blunders - and I'm sure that at higher levels positional play wins many more games directly, without the need for actual blunders. Silman is full of examples for this. 

About this position - the argument is whether it is defendable or not. There's no doubt that white is much better, is likely to have all of the tactics, that black must be very careful, and that one slight mistake from him is all it would take to decisively tip the scale. 

So even if white's position isn't winning by itself - black is in for a lot of torture, and white can try many things... 

At some point, something's got to give - or maybe black can make a draw...

Who wants to be in this situation in a classical time control game, when your opponent has a lot of time to figure out various winning strategies, either in this specific position or in all kinds of endgames that could result from it? And the best you can hope for is to draw?

I agree with this, but I have an issue with Silman saying that "it's an easy win for white" and leaving it at that.

It's not an easy win like being up a piece. Even in terms of practical defence, it's not hard to defend: you just need to shuffle pieces around and do nothing.

My point is that this is one of the most blatant cases where a minor piece is superior to another minor piece - and this is still not enough to win by itself.

I have some other examples in strategy books and again, the side with the superior piece wins because they have the superior piece AND an attack or some other cards to play.

So what I'm asking to this forum is: can somebody make me an example of a superior minor piece that leads to an easy strategical win?

No stuff like pawns that can't be stopped straight off the bat; I mean middlegame/early endgame strategy.

What is easy for IM Silman isn't necessarily easy for lesser players...

And maybe he did exaggerate. If he claims it's easy, please do enlighten us and show us how, O revered master...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

That said - just yesterday I had a tournament game, in which I sacrificed two pawns, just to end up with the good knight against the bad bishop. I had every chance to win the game - and finally did. 

It wasn't easy, and my opponent had opportunities to draw - but it wasn't easy for her either. 

Here it is: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-showcase/interclubs-in-belgium-2015-2016-the-league

I think that it could be an answer to your question - because indeed, I had just the superior piece and nothing else - and I was coming from a two-pawn deficit in the endgame (admitted, one could be captured pretty easily). 

The game is also annotated, and I would appreciate your feedback. 

Funny, as by coincidence, right after the game I posted (yesterday) a note thanking chess.com, the diamond membership program, chess mentor and SPECIFICALLY IM Silman for teaching me (through the website) how important this imbalance is - so that I was really encouraged to make this sacrifice in the game, which brought me this win. 

I had no other way to win this game, and had I failed to find the winning idea, I was actually inferior, in all probability. d6 was just too weak and it could have been my downfall. 

Looks pretty winning for white though.

I'll give you three examples from three of my fairly recent tournament games. First two I win, last one I lose.

Engines are stupid in these kinds of positions. It may win every time (it may not), but it will win in strange ways.

That said, the zugzwang you were in was likely inevitable one way or another. Passively moving back and forth is claiming you have a fortress. Probably the #1 thematic idea for breaking a fortress is zugzwang. It's effective and not some strange twist of fate if you keep ending up in one. Zugzwang is absolutely one of the main ideas a human will be playing for.

@011 - very nice examples. In the first one you also had 20.Bxg6!

Just to add - if anyone saw Silman's fairly recent chess.com post, he posts the solution to one of his student's problems where the end result per the computer is a +1.2 or something advantage in a late middlegame. 

Silman concludes "and black is dead" or something close to that line, but when I look at it, black is plenty alive and white has to play very well to continue to increase the advantage. 

I remember this being one of my biggest 'complaints' with Reassess your Chess and Silman in general - he's so strong as an IM that fairly advanced tactical or positional play seems 'obvious' to him, whereas the same issues for us class players are devilishly unclear or difficult. I strongly suspect he came to chess with enough innate talent that he didn't even need to study these tactical positions - they were 'obvious' to him, and thus he makes similar obvious conclusions in his commentary, when for most non-IMs, it's not at all clear. 

Well, it depends really. Who you are playing against for instance. A pair of bishops is so overrated when your light-squared bishop is on g2.

This position is really hard to win, although I'm sure that it is a win. The point is this:

-White's knight is superior to Black's bishop.

-All Black can do is attempt to create counterplay with ... b7-b5-b4.

-White can improve his position for hours on end:

-He can target h7 with Rg1-g3-h3.

-He can gain space with h2-h4-h5 and g3-g4.

-He can make the f3-f4 break later on.

-He can centralize his king, although the queenside pawns can come under pressure if Black plays ... b7-b5-b4.

-If Black tries ... b7-b5-b4, a7 becomes weak.

-f7 is also potentially weak, and although it's hard for White to bring any kind of pressure on it, it can be hit by Nh6.

This position may not be a win for White. But it is winning. White has all of these improvements he can make. He can repeat moves about 18 times in between.Would you want to defend Black's position for two hours? I certainly wouldn't.

Why can't you just play Nf5 tying the King to the d pawn, double rooks, maybe plop a rook on d5, and just activate your king and roll your queenside majority. Your pressure is massive and they just have to sit there as you win the d pawn and then the game. If that d pawn is gone your queenside pawns are just easily winning.

Am I missing something?

Edit: The computer seems to really like this plan with careful play, restricting Blacks counterplay. If Black doesn't immediately play b5 after Nf5 he is just dead in the water to this idea. Even if he does play an immediate b5, White is still way better and his kingside and center become full of targets/holes to defend.