From zefrank

Voting CLOSED Until 7pm

Today's Suggested Moves have been posted, and the voting polls will open Monday, 7 August @7PM EDT and close at Tuesday, 8 August @12AM EDT (Monday Night), in order to give time for enough deliberation before the votes are cast. Don't have a username/Id yet? Get one here! and take some credit for your contributions!

Remember to check back even if you've already cast your vote! .. there's still some disagreement between potential moves .. and analysis will most likely continue up until Sunday night when the polls close. It's also not too late to submit a vote for another move that has not been evaluated yet .. (although it looks like we have most of the best move options available, people can always miss things).

• (very) Rough draft of the Fabuloso Chess Edit Guide is now up and located here

Use the following tags to help suggest moves, and remember if you want to throw up an example speculative board in the discussion, please refer to the Edit Guide on how to properly format it.

 <!-- ==Speculative Move== -->

 <!-- REMOVE THIS LINE TO INSERT BOARD

  REMOVE THIS LINE TO INSERT BOARD -->

 <!-- MAKE CERTAIN YOU ADD A COMMENT TO JUSTIFY THIS POSITION-->

{{clear}}

Just follow the instructions, and completely delete those lines .. and don't forget to replace 'Speculative Move' with the actual move name. Also bear in mind that anything after the clear tag won't be visible, so don't enter any text underneath it (unless you're adding another section)

Voting Instructions

Cut and paste the following to vote

# '''VOTE''' by ~~~~: add a comment! 

• You may vote for many moves as you like, but only one vote per move.
• When voting closes, the move with the most votes wins.
• If there is a tie, whoever tallies the votes breaks the tie.

Strategy Discussion

Contents 1 Voting CLOSED Until 7pm 1.1 Voting Instructions 2 Strategy Discussion 3 Suggested Move Summary 3.1 Rxa2 3.2 Nxe4

Please take the time to familiarize yourself with some common middlegame tactics as well.

Also, please don't be too hesitant to suggest your own move in this section. Just use * to begin a line and add your idea, even if you aren't familiar with notation, or don't feel comfortable updating the boards/suggestions yourself, there are plenty of us that will be more than willing to set them up for you (and keep everything organized) ßrigade^rant

Suggested Move Summary

Suggested Position Suggested Move: Rxa2

Suggested Position Suggested Move: Nxe4

Suggested Position Suggested Move: UPDATE THIS

Rxa2

• Say goodnight, good knight. MalteseFalcon 13:12, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
  • What is Ze's response to this? Qb1 forks our rook and our pawn, no? PTWhipplebang^SR! 13:52, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
  • Yeah, I was about to say, something like 29. Qb1 Rf2 30. Qxb6 and then our bishop is threatened and we can't mount an attack along the diagonal? JudiciousH
    • That doesn't sound optimal for us. PTWhipplebang^SR! 13:56, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
  • What about 29. Qb1 Rxa4 30. Qxb6 Rb4 31. Qxb4 axb4 ? Nevermind. I forgot about his pawn there. PTWhipplebang^SR! 13:59, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
    • Wouldn't Ze play cxb4 instead of Qxb4? MalteseFalcon 14:01, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
      • What if we just went Ra3 instead of Rxa4? then 30. Qxb6 Rb3 31. Qxb3 cxb3 ? PTWhipplebang^SR! 14:14, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
        • All we're going to manage to do is make Ze move his queen, and his queen has some fun places to move. arc
          • Good point. PTWhipplebang^SR! 14:19, 7 August 2006 (PDT)

Nxe4

Continue with our original plan. If he moves BxN, I think we can move in with Qh6, right? PTWhipplebang^SR! 13:28, 7 August 2006 (PDT)

• Hmmm, I don't see Qh6 as a winning response, we wouldn't be any closer to a mate and we'd be giving him material. I'm pretty blind though. What line were you thinking with Qh6? arc
  • I'm honestly not sure. I think I posted without thinking enough about it. I'm not sure that moving our rook to take his knight is the best idea either, although we may get a pawn or two out of it as well. PTWhipplebang^SR! 13:43, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
    • This line is nice because if he doesn't respond to the knight he can be mated pretty quickly. Rxa2 looks nice, patz had some arguments against it thought that lose us some tempo and put on defense for awhile, but we still pick up some nice material. For this one, I'm trying to figure out how things might progress after BxN in a positive direction. QxB is okay and then we can follow with Bxd, but I'm expecting there is a better response, since I am pretty sure we can't mate with the B, R, and Q in that position. We can Rx his pawn which should lead something nice for us though. - arc
• Yeah, I thought it'd be QxB at that point, with our next move hopefully being our bishop taking d5. JudiciousH
  • That makes a lot more sense. I still don't know what I was thinking. PTWhipplebang^SR! 13:49, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
• I was hopeful we could mate Ze in this corner, but I've given up that dream. The most likely line I see is 28. Bf3 Nxe4 29. Bxe4 Qxe4 30. Qe1 Qxe1 31. Rxe1 Rxa2 and then we're picking off pawns (Bxd5, Rxa4)bobby_mac^{rap at me}
  • Yeah, it's a bummer because it feels like it should be possible to mate. Trading down at this point, especially with the center pawns toast, is fine by me though. arc

• If we somehow get the bishop to d5 while keeping the queen and rook where they are then we *might* be able to mate by attacking g2 first with the rook and then with the queen...but it's not likely to go down that way.bobby_mac^{rap at me}

• Even then, if we attack g2 with the rook he can ignore it with his rook. At that point though we can play discover check on him and take his queen, but as you said, I doubt he's going to sit idly by and let us destroy him. arc

• How about picking up his pawns by: 29. Nc1 Nc3 30. Qe1 Rc3 Cubzas 14:20, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
  • If he doesn't take our knight with his bishop, then we move 29. ... Ng3+. PTWhipplebang^SR! 14:23, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
    • Yes, that's very, very dangerous for white. 30. hxg3 Qxg3 and I believe the piper begins playing. arc
      • Nevermind, it's not quite that simple, white can help himself out with 31. Rf1 I think. arc
• I forget who it was, probably Patz, pointed out that he'll have to do Bxe4 or else Ng3+ leads to mate in two or three moves (29. Nc1 Ng3+ 30. hxg3 Qh6+ 31. Qh5 Qxh5++)bobby_mac^{rap at me}
  • The bishop is still on f3 in this case, so it would probably be 31. Bh5 which does stop the mate for a bit. It's still not a very desirable situation for white. arc
  • So I think one of our biggest advantages here is that if we move Nxe4, Ze's next move is forced, which lets us plan a little further ahead. PTWhipplebang^SR! 14:28, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
    • Excuse me, arc, you're right. I missed that. It's not mate...but the bishop would be pinned and the Queen would be limited in her movements to those that kept the bishop protected. Nasty for white.bobby_mac^{rap at me}
• Since no one has suggested another move besides Bxe4 that is useful, should we assume that that will be the move? Maybe there's a problem with it, but if no one speaks their piece I'm sure they'll just yell at us for it a few days from now. In any event, if we assume that's the move, do we think Qxe4 puts us in a good spot? I'll put up a board. arc
  • This looks like an ok position. I'm trying to figure out what white's response would be; maybe trying to initiate the queen exchange? PTWhipplebang^SR! 14:49, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
    • That's my only guess. He can move Nc1 but that really doesn't help Bxd5 very much. He can't move his rook or he'll be mated, and his farr ight pawn would just be a silly move. arc
    • The only place I can see him exchanging on is 29. e1, then 29. e1 Qxe1 30. Rxe1 Rxa2 and we are looking pretty damn fine. arc
    • Yeah. It looks like that's the only way he can guarantee a queen exchange. Anything else and he winds up down quite a bit. PTWhipplebang^SR! 15:02, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
    • What about 30. Qe1 Re2 ? PTWhipplebang^SR! 15:03, 7 August 2006 (PDT)
      • I think at this point I don't have much interest in having our queens on the board. A Qxe1 exchange will leave us with a ton of protected and movable pawns, and a piece up. No need to chance it when the end game is insured that way. arc
        • I see what you mean. I think our move numbers from the last couple comments are one behind. I'm correcting mine. PTWhipplebang^SR!
• I've kind of been toying with Bc8, but don't know how to do the wiki thing, and frankly, am still smarting from the "those who suggest moves only to be corrected by those with computers" comment from yesterday. But I'd like to talk that move over if anyone is willing. Otis 15:11, 7 August 2006 (PDT)