Unlock Your Genius August 2009 (Problems)

by dlwyatt, Ohio, Wednesday, August 12, 2009, 12:19 (5727 days ago)

Just belatedly noticed that there's a new Unlock Your Genius problem to talk about! :)

There aren't a lot of imbalances to talk about in the position, but what few there are make me prefer Black's position:

Minor pieces: White has a B+N versus N+N, but the bishop is very bad for the moment. The pawns on d4 and f4 won't be moving to improve its scope anytime soon, and he doesn't even have the option of trying to redeploy via Bc1-a3 since his queenside pawns are also in the way.

Pawn structure: White has an isolated d4 pawn. While it's easily defended for now, it does make the activation of White's bad bishop a pain. The doubled f-pawns are not really a targetable weakness, but they also restrict the bad bishop since f5 can never be achieved without losing a pawn. White may need to play g3 at some point to free up his queen from the defense of the f4 pawn, placing his final pawn on a dark square.

Space: White has more space with his d4 and f4 pawns, but it's full of holes for Black's knights (d5 in particular, and also f5 / c4).

As sort of a fantasy position for Black, I'd put his pawn on c6, queen on d7, rooks on d8 / c8, and the e7 knight on f5 (where it would pressure d4, and also have ideas of jumping to d6-c4).

For White, I don't really see a viable plan. If it were his move, he 'might' try just playing d5 immediately, throwing away the weak pawn that's killing his bishop. That looks pretty horrible, though, winding up down a pawn, losing his space advantage and handing Black a healthy queenside pawn majority. The problem is, I don't see another plan to improve his position in any meaningful way. He could double his rooks on the c-file just for something to do, but once that's done, then what?

With Black's move here, I'd probably move pawn to c6 first (so if White tried the d5 idea, I'd meet it with cxd5 instead of Nexd5, claiming the center and a protected passed pawn).