Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Positional Imbalance

This post is a collaboration with Mr Andrew Crosby who is an expert in chess gambits.
Andrew usually plays them in his games with great success. In addition, he is an active member of our virtual Chess.com club taking part in our online tournaments and matches..

Fighting is the fundament principle that rules chess. The setup at the beginning of the game is like two armies looking at each other menacingly. When pieces of both sides come into contact is like those armies engage in hand-to-hand combat.

Beginners tend to trade pieces of similar value at every opportunity: pawn-pawn; knight-bishop, rook-rook, and so on. Seasoned players handle the fight in a more sophisticated way using concepts like space advantage or activity of pieces. They know that the material value assigned to pieces is a relative number and their real value always depends on the position. Players strive to decide the fight by modifying the positional balance. Sometimes, it happens that one side obtains an important advantage and the imbalance favors him/her in a decisive way. But most of the time the result of the fight is the sum of small improvements. That is the case in today’s example when Black at some point after the opening finds a disruptive plan. The plan made use of all the small advantages accumulated so far.

It’s worth observing that although Black’s plan that starts with 17…e5 doesn’t result in a crushing victory, but it allows Black steadily accumulate several small positional advantages. The fact that White is forced to answer with queen moves, indicates that his own plan is incapacitated.

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