Prospect v. Conant (3): Evaluation

In an earlier post, I speculated that Conant's 1st Board, David Lasocki may have felt overly confident after Peter Dimopoulos gave up a bishop for two pawns. I suspect that I may have been projecting my own feelings onto David because my initial impression was that Peter was in some trouble. In a comment to that post, David informed me that, in fact, he was quite unhappy with his position. It turns out that he appreciated the position better than I did.


It is important to remember that the player at the board usually knows more about the position than the casual observer even when the casual observer has a higher rating. This does not mean that the observer might not see some points that the player overlooks. Sometimes these are simple tactics because that is the first thing the casual observer looks for while the player often gets so engrossed in thinking several moves ahead that he may forget to look at one move possibilities. Nevertheless, the player is the one putting the most effort into the position and he should never blindly accept anyone else's opinion.


David suggests "that a good lesson would be how to accurately assess a position as losing and winning." I absolutely agree. I am just not sure I am qualified to teach one. In fact the more I have looked at his game on 1st Board against Peter Dimopoulos, the more complicated it looks to me. My current thinking (which is subject to revision), is that the momemtum shifted both earlier than I thought when I first reviewed the game and earlier than I thought while watching.


This is the position after Black's 29...Ke6.


Black played the very natural looking 30.c4, which I now think may be the losing move. The problem is that it immobilizes White's queenside pawns and leaves him unable to create a passed pawn. It also leaves an entry point for the Black king to penetrate. On the other hand, after 30.Nf4+Ke5 31.Kg2 Bxg3 32.fxg3, things look much different.

One of many possible continuations might be 32...g5 33.Nh5 f4 34.gxf4+ gxf4 35.a5 a6.

Now, if the Black king goes to f5, White has the threat of b4-b5 creating a passed a-pawn. On the other hand, if Black plays ...e3 or ...f3, White blockades the pawns with Kf3 or Ke3 when Black has too many weak pawns to protect.

I fear this was a position for which no general rules of evaluation exist. Unless you have analyzed something like it before, it may be impossible to know where to start when encountering it for the first time over the board. Still, I guess that is what makes the game of chess so fascinating.