A ~2100 player played it and I'm wondering why. Komodo backs this move up and even seems to slightly prefer it to Rfg8 which makes absolutely no sense to me.
Moves that make me go "Huh?"
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would h6 prep knight or bishop to g5?
aside from the pawn loss, is there any attack you can see by sac'ing the pawn just moving a piece? bishop g5 plays attacker and defender? no?
Huh...
The only thing moving that pawn seems to do is control the g5 square, creating an outpost for the knight or bishop. But otherwise, you're right it seems like a waste of tempo.
Sep 4, 2015
0
#9
Perhaps there is still hope that I can get some feedback on this position. There are quite a few positions in master games that a move takes me by surprise but usually there is a degree of reasoning that I can find that leads me to at least consider it after seeing it. In this position, I still can't come up with anything for h6...I know there has to be something though...
Sep 4, 2015
0
#10
Black can't really do anything, and he wants to trade both pair of rooks so maybe he can draw the endgame.
Sep 4, 2015
0
#11
I just threw a5 out there to show how much I didn't understand h6. I would of definitely played 1..Rfg8 thinking that it is practically the only move. The engine does like this move.
Thank you all for your interesting feedback.
I thought that perhaps it was to try to hasten the taking of the pawn or wanting the take to happen on a better square for black but really don't see how it is even close to as useful as Rfe8... I do see that perhaps he wanted to keep the option of moving the knight because 1..Rfg8 2.Rxh7 Rxh7 3.Rxh7 increases the pressure on the f pawn it seems and the knight is kind of pinned at that point... Maybe that line is a good example of why 1..h6 was played after all...
Another thing I just thought of about Rfg8 is that white can now force the exchange of rooks which I don't think is bad for white at all. It is becoming clearer why h6 was played to me. It seems to give black a lot more options.
If h6 would of been one of my candidate moves I think I would of been ok. After running variations occurring from the 2 candidate moves Rfg8 and h6 I like h6 better. I think I got too caught up in the fact that I would of never considered h6 in the first place which is the main deficiency that I'm trying to help correct with this post. It is obvious that the pawn is threatened, practically lost, so maybe it could be a rule of thumb for learning purposes to always at least consider advancing the threatened pawn.
The move that was played in this game was 1..h6 which I don't understand and was hoping someone could clue me in on how this move is better than most of the other moves.
1..Rg8 is the move I would of probably played in this position and it is a good move but the thing about 1..h6 is that I never would of even considered it and I am working on finding all the candidate moves or better moves in general. Case in point is that I thought that 1..a5 would be better than 1..h6 but it isn't. I don't understand what 1..h6 accomplishes...