Why is this position winning, and by so much?

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Avatar of crocodilestyle1

This is a OTB game played by a famous IM streamer that has been mentioned in another thread - but names etc are besides the point, apparently this is a totally winning position, and there is no way white should lose from here. The material is even so can someone give some pointers as to why this is such a win?

 

My Lc0 has this at +4.54 - basically it is saying that white could pick up a minor piece and eat it as his next move and he would still win. My Stockfish gives it a +3.35 - both engines favour Nd2 - and Stockfish seems to think that black needs to lose his rook for that knight 2 moves later (Lc0 gives a different line.)

 

Avatar of llama47

The 3 vs 1 pawn majority on the kingside helps. Meanwhile black's center pawns are immobile due to loss of light square control.

100% of black's pieces being awkwardly placed is another reason tongue.png

Maybe a useful rule of thumb... for each non-pawn, pretend it gets to move 2, 3, or 4 times, and see if you can find a realistic maneuver so that it comes into contact with a weak enemy pawn or the enemy king.

For example:

White queen can come into contact with the h pawn in 1 move
White knight with d6 in 2 moves
White bishop with b7 in 2 moves
White bishop with king in 2 moves
a1 rook with d6 in 2 moves
f1 rook with h6 in 3 moves

Now do the same for black and you'll see it's pretty pathetic... I should note that it's worth more for minor pieces (bishops and knights) to do this, since when a queen attacks something literally anything can defend it. It's also useful when the weaknesses are grouped together. For example h6, the black king, the kingside light squares, and d6 are loosely connencted. Black can come into contact with b2 and h2... with the queen... and they're not connected.

Avatar of Arnaut10

Is gotham white?

Avatar of goldenbeer
White has a clear plan of pawn push, blacks pieces stuck in the back rank, if white manages to push the pawns forward properly and guided by heavy pieces, black has to give up piece after piece (if it doesn’t get mated in between).

Nd2 is simply get out of the way move (also take care of center), rook should also watch out the f pawn, maybe later bring back the knight from different angle and so on.


Even though there is such a clean plan, any human player is capable of messing up the plan and fall for traps. I’m pretty sure a top engine with black pieces wins against any human player who didn’t analyze the position in advance, this is because still there are a lot of dynamics in the game.