To Trade Or Not To Trade The Queen

    Here is a Vote Chess game we just lost, an Attack Versus Counterattack game.
On move 25 white chose to trade queens.
     I was not thrilled with this move for three main reasons.

1-With the queens on the board black always had to worry about Qg7#.
2-Black was up a pawn.
3-White had 2 isolated pawns to protect while black had 3 sets of connected pawns.

Would you have traded queens?  If so, how would you have played on from this point?

Tough call, I don't like the retreat 1.Qh3 due to 1...Rc8 and the resulting pressure on c2. The only other option is a very risky 1.Qg5 but after 1...Ne4 2.Qg2 there is the unpleasant possibility of 2...Nc3 with all sorts of threats involving  ...a3.

That's a good point, since our options were so limited would not trading the
queen have been even worse?

I was on counterattack, because attacking when it's not called for is risky.

I think I would go against the general rule that one should avoid exchanges when down on material and in fact exchange the queens. There is too much danger on the c file for my taste, and the black queen is better placed. The white queen is out of play, whether you move it to h3 or g5. Let her go.

Crazyc,

We did trade queens but after that we lost the game 18 moves later.  The pawn
structure was too much to overcome.

like last time, i think you're asking a little bit too late. i think white is pretty much losing in the position you are asking about. i would also go for the queen trade, because i think with h6 g6 played on the kingside, you actually don't really have any attacking chances; whereas black has the c-file and the possibilities of b3 or c3 which might open something else.

even if you still had your d5-pawn i would prefer black, so i guess their advantage is at least +1.3.

probably when you played h6 that was a serious mistake. beyond that, i'd have to see the game to know what went wrong.

Thanks IM Pruess.  To view the game click "Play" then click "Vote Chess" then
click on page "2" then click "Attack vs Counterattack"(start 01 December 2009).