Ever! It's always Harder to play with them against the knight. In Open positions that is. So what's the deal?
Bishops are better because of their range, so they're strongest in the corners of the board where their range is maximized: b2, c2, g2, those kinds of spots. Knights are strongest in the center of the board. Your bishops are just out of position here; you're pulling them back to d2 and e2 where they have trouble targeting anything. Plus it's not a huge advantage: the trades are helping black develop their position without developing yours, and that might be enough to tilt things back the other way.
And black's exchange on move 23 was pretty cool, that's some Tricky Knights stuff.
And black's exchange on move 23 was pretty cool, that's some Tricky Knights stuff.
Here are my amateur thoughts without looking at the computer:
I think the position after 15...Bd7 is quite critical, and deserves some investment of time to work out. Black's pieces are a bit awkward (one knight undefended, the other undeveloped. Nd4-nb5 seems to be the wrong plan to me, because it allows black to give up the other bishop to gain a developing square for his knight.
How do you make use of the unopposed dark square bishop? I think you've got to get the knight to a square where it can attack the queen, and look to either advance the pawn or play Bc5 with a strong dark square control. I'd be looking at ng5 nf4 qf3 here. The knight has to go back to g6 I think, after which you have some options (qh5 to provoke a weakness in h6 or simply ne5 straightaway, and after the queen moves you probably have Bc5. With the rook no longer on f8 you are threatening d6 in some lines. I can't calculate very deep but my candidate sequence would be:
16 ng5 nf4 17 Qf3 ng6 18 ne4 Qe5 then I'm trying to work out whether I can play Bc5 or whether my b2 pawn is going to hang or whether nh4 is going to be disastrous for me. I feel like some rook to e1 might be good here, but like I say, I'm guessing at this point...
More generally, I think you have to be careful not to consider the bishop pair as a significant advantage independently of other factors. The maneouvre Be2-Bf3-Be2 shows that you're overvaluing the bishop pair I think. If you try to be more objective, then maybe you would have noticed after 17...Bxb5 you can avoid losing a pawn with Bxf4 Qxf4 Bxb5. You've lost the bishop pair, but for now you're dominating the knight with the other bishop.
Hope that helps, and isn't completely wrong!
I think the position after 15...Bd7 is quite critical, and deserves some investment of time to work out. Black's pieces are a bit awkward (one knight undefended, the other undeveloped. Nd4-nb5 seems to be the wrong plan to me, because it allows black to give up the other bishop to gain a developing square for his knight.
How do you make use of the unopposed dark square bishop? I think you've got to get the knight to a square where it can attack the queen, and look to either advance the pawn or play Bc5 with a strong dark square control. I'd be looking at ng5 nf4 qf3 here. The knight has to go back to g6 I think, after which you have some options (qh5 to provoke a weakness in h6 or simply ne5 straightaway, and after the queen moves you probably have Bc5. With the rook no longer on f8 you are threatening d6 in some lines. I can't calculate very deep but my candidate sequence would be:
16 ng5 nf4 17 Qf3 ng6 18 ne4 Qe5 then I'm trying to work out whether I can play Bc5 or whether my b2 pawn is going to hang or whether nh4 is going to be disastrous for me. I feel like some rook to e1 might be good here, but like I say, I'm guessing at this point...
More generally, I think you have to be careful not to consider the bishop pair as a significant advantage independently of other factors. The maneouvre Be2-Bf3-Be2 shows that you're overvaluing the bishop pair I think. If you try to be more objective, then maybe you would have noticed after 17...Bxb5 you can avoid losing a pawn with Bxf4 Qxf4 Bxb5. You've lost the bishop pair, but for now you're dominating the knight with the other bishop.
Hope that helps, and isn't completely wrong!
So after checking with the computer, move 16 is indeed quite crucial, but I missed that after ng5 black can go back to nf6, which gives up some of your advantge. I notice now that if you simply develop logically with rc1 and re1 black will have to play nf6 anyway, and you can either look to play Bd4 or Bc5 at an appropriate moment. This is because the bishop is unopposed - those unopposed squares are what you need to play for when you have the bishop pair. I think most of the advantage here comes from the fact that black's development is hard - one knight being offside and the other one not having an easy development route.
@ move 20 Be2, move 21 was a waste, then by move 22 you ended up with the same position and black ended up with 1 extra tempo.
The general idea of the bishops is that they, to start, can dominate a knight easily. Take for instance the position @ 22. Check the knight at d5 and the bishop at d2. If you try to move the knight forward, the bishop dominates those squares.
Now, imagine an empty board, except a knight and a bishop. If you place a knight, leave 2 empty squares in a file, then a bishop, the knight is dominated. The knight is in a color opposite to the bishop, but any forward movement will land in a square dominated by the bishop. That pattern repeats in all the board regardless of the color of the bishop, You just need to have the pieces in the same file with 2 squares in between.
To break this, the knight has to do a backward jump (say the knight is at d5 and the bishop at d2) if the knight wants to break that pattern, it can go to f6 then to e4. But then you just move your bishop to e1, and its dominated again. In an endgame, you can always do this, and you get 1 extra tempo to move the king into position as he had to move the knight twice to get free forward squares, and the bishop only needed 1 to get the pattern again.
Another advantage of the bishops is that they have very long range, and since the opposite player dont have a bishop or 2 to challenge their respective diagonals, they become a nightmare if they are well placed.
For instance, at move 19, the bishop has to move, but placing it on e2 kinda defeats the purpose of having a bishop. They have to be in an attacking square. The better plan was to try to re-rout it to c2 or b3, or in any square that attacks either f7 or h7., get the queen out to your kingside to make the treat bigger and force him to block the diagonals with a knight. Then you can get your rooks out, and even undevelop the lightsquare bishop to b1 to keep it well defended if needed, but still attacking at the same time. Eventually you can do roughly the same with the other one.
If you proceeded that way, and got the queen out before it was blocked by your own bishop, you could have set up some nasty pins to the queen with your rooks, and when he tried to get out of the pins while still defending the knight, you could have followed with another bishop pin, forcing him to defend the knight with a rook, and then pile up with the queen after and won a piece. And even if he managed to hold the position, you could have gotten some extra tempos to push a pawn to avoid a back rank and proceeded from there.
But to summarize. The main idea is to keep the uncontested bishop attacking the king, use the queen as a support to tie down a knight to block diagonals or force weaknesses via pushing pawns (or even a mate with a battery if he gets careless). Once a knight is tied to the defense, you can rotate in 2 tempos with queen and bishop to the opposite flank. You could have scored even with a pawn down, easily if you had placed them and didnt gave free pawns there at the end.
For instance, you thought that you HAD to capture the knight at move 24. While certainly looks unpleasant to undevelop the bishop and trap your own rook, if he really doesnt have anything going on, you could even consider lose the exchange (forward knight for useless rook). The bishops are really strong when uncontested.
At the very least you would have been playing for a win, not for a draw. Even after you gave the light square bishop.
Edit. I have been playing horribly this past month, but here are some games where at least a bishop was very well placed and forced the opponent to bend.
Of course the games are far from perfect, but i take advantage of that.
Unfortunatelly i dont have games where i dominate knights. Those endings are very rare at my level. People knows how to not get in those positions.
The general idea of the bishops is that they, to start, can dominate a knight easily. Take for instance the position @ 22. Check the knight at d5 and the bishop at d2. If you try to move the knight forward, the bishop dominates those squares.
Now, imagine an empty board, except a knight and a bishop. If you place a knight, leave 2 empty squares in a file, then a bishop, the knight is dominated. The knight is in a color opposite to the bishop, but any forward movement will land in a square dominated by the bishop. That pattern repeats in all the board regardless of the color of the bishop, You just need to have the pieces in the same file with 2 squares in between.
To break this, the knight has to do a backward jump (say the knight is at d5 and the bishop at d2) if the knight wants to break that pattern, it can go to f6 then to e4. But then you just move your bishop to e1, and its dominated again. In an endgame, you can always do this, and you get 1 extra tempo to move the king into position as he had to move the knight twice to get free forward squares, and the bishop only needed 1 to get the pattern again.
Another advantage of the bishops is that they have very long range, and since the opposite player dont have a bishop or 2 to challenge their respective diagonals, they become a nightmare if they are well placed.
For instance, at move 19, the bishop has to move, but placing it on e2 kinda defeats the purpose of having a bishop. They have to be in an attacking square. The better plan was to try to re-rout it to c2 or b3, or in any square that attacks either f7 or h7., get the queen out to your kingside to make the treat bigger and force him to block the diagonals with a knight. Then you can get your rooks out, and even undevelop the lightsquare bishop to b1 to keep it well defended if needed, but still attacking at the same time. Eventually you can do roughly the same with the other one.
If you proceeded that way, and got the queen out before it was blocked by your own bishop, you could have set up some nasty pins to the queen with your rooks, and when he tried to get out of the pins while still defending the knight, you could have followed with another bishop pin, forcing him to defend the knight with a rook, and then pile up with the queen after and won a piece. And even if he managed to hold the position, you could have gotten some extra tempos to push a pawn to avoid a back rank and proceeded from there.
But to summarize. The main idea is to keep the uncontested bishop attacking the king, use the queen as a support to tie down a knight to block diagonals or force weaknesses via pushing pawns (or even a mate with a battery if he gets careless). Once a knight is tied to the defense, you can rotate in 2 tempos with queen and bishop to the opposite flank. You could have scored even with a pawn down, easily if you had placed them and didnt gave free pawns there at the end.
For instance, you thought that you HAD to capture the knight at move 24. While certainly looks unpleasant to undevelop the bishop and trap your own rook, if he really doesnt have anything going on, you could even consider lose the exchange (forward knight for useless rook). The bishops are really strong when uncontested.
At the very least you would have been playing for a win, not for a draw. Even after you gave the light square bishop.
Edit. I have been playing horribly this past month, but here are some games where at least a bishop was very well placed and forced the opponent to bend.
Of course the games are far from perfect, but i take advantage of that.
Unfortunatelly i dont have games where i dominate knights. Those endings are very rare at my level. People knows how to not get in those positions.
I liked the games, you got style.
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