Author: José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba
Date: 10:25:12 06/14/01
Go up one level in this thread
On June 14, 2001 at 11:38:17, martin fierz wrote:
>
>>I think the edge of Q+N by better players is due to the fact that in order to
>>win your game against a lower rated opponent you have to create inequalities
>>('life') in the position.
>of course it is always easier to play for a win with some kind of inequality.
>but this does not explain why the better players choose the side with Q+N - if
>all they wanted was an inequality, they would choose Q+N or Q+B at random.
>therefore, the conclusion is that better players actively choose the
>Q+N side because they believe this rule. as i said, watson is critical of
>the rule itself - he claims that the Q+N side is scoring well because
>the better players more often choose the Q+N side, so he thinks that this
>is some collective hallucination of the strong players who blindly follow
>this rule because this strong player 'xy' stated that Q+N is better. an
>interesting thought. if lots of strong players suddenly started playing a
>dubious opening then it might also score well in the chessbase statistics :-)
>
And as far as I know, this rule was first formulated by Capablanca. His
explanation was more or less the following: the in the ending QN vs QB, the
Queen is by far the stronger piece, so its degree of activity decides who has
winning chances. The bishop and the knight play only a supporting role for their
respective queen. But if all the other conditions are roughly equal, the knight
has more supporting potential for a queen, precisely because its moves are
completely different, while the bishop moves are a restriction of the queen
moves.
I think analysis of huge databases show slight better results for the side with
the knightk, but I am not sure at this moment.
José.
>>But if your
>>opponent has a weak kings position the Q+N is definitelly worth much, at least
>>in inner peace and gained thinking time.
>and of course you are right here - Q+N is very strong when attacking the enemy
>king.
>
>cheers
> martin
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