Move 20 discussion: Everyone vs stockfish

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by jwaltos

d1 to e1.
The Knight maintains the attack. Then develop a stronger attack or advance the pawn that is under threat. Blacks responses are expected to be defensive unless I have missed something.

Re1 is bad. Not only is it inconsistent with our previous move, it drops our a-file pawn and gives black a good attack on our 2nd rank, i.e.:

20. Re1 Rxe1
21. Rxe1 Rxa2

Black now has a double attack on our b pawn and we have no defense on it so it must also fall.

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

I find it difficult to believe that a program like Stockfish, which is far stronger than any human alive, could have played into what is looking like a weak position for Black. I'm still waiting to see what we've all missed.

What else was there? I thought that Rd7 was the only other move for it and it was suggested by LaurV. Perhaps Rd8 but that removes an attack on our a pawn and so quickly frees up our a rook. If it immediately captures with Nxb2, we capture with Rxd5 and have a strong center. Both Rd7 and Rd8 would have been quiet and defensive giving us time to mobilize.

I just didn't see much else reasonable for it except Re5 and Rd7.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

What else was there?

I expected ...Rd8 as I wrote earlier but I guess we'll examine other might-have-been lines after the game with the help of SF's analysis.

[gd_barnes]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

I expected ...Rd8 as I wrote earlier but I guess we'll examine other might-have-been lines after the game with the help of SF's analysis.

I think you're missing the point of why SF likely thought that 19...Re5 was the best move. The defensive moves like Rd8 and Rd7 mean that he fails to gain the pawn that he probably will by playing Re5 and he is stuck with a bad pawn structure against our good structure, which means that he probably gave the defensive moves a negative score.

I already gave an extensive analysis for black's Rd7 on move 19. Against Rd8, we can in turn go defensive and black has much difficulty making progress, i.e.:

19....Rd8 20. Rab1 (!)

What now? I suppose he can try fiddling around with his pieces by making short-term attacks. Maybe moves like:

20...Re2 21. Nd4

20...Ne3 21. Rd2 or Re1

Perhaps he can play reasonable waiting moves hoping for us to eventually blunder like
20...b5 or h6 or Re5 or Re6 or Rd6 or Kg7 but we can just respond with 21. Nd4 with the idea of ultimately playing Nf5 looking for a "drawing attack" on the king side or eventually playing b3 pushing the knight away so that we can do something with our queen-side rook.

Black can make little to no progress, the material is even, and we have a much better pawn structure. If I was playing a human, I would be playing for a win as white against 19...Rd8.

[richs]

I agree with 20. f4. The line is proceeding as Mr. Barnes analyzed in the Move 19 thread.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by gd_barnes

20...Re2 21. Nd4

exactly, and for us the variant that help us keeping the queen's pawns is better than any other variant. Those pawns are very strong together.

To join the "dispute" about what SF's mistake was, I think SF did only one mistake, he chose this 1...e6 defense, where 3.Nd2 is kind of guaranteed draw. And we used the opening book from the web, till the point where the draw became "almost" clear for everybody. It was not really a "game". But it was fun. It still is, but it is mostly played. We can draw from here (including the last analysis done by Gary and others) without much thinking, assuming we don't do a terrible blunder.

Or to be really correct, SF didn't do any mistake, it is just that "we are sooooo goood!"