I tried to approach this from two perspectives, to see if I could tell a difference between my OTB play and CC play.
When I gave myself 10 minutes to study it like I was at a tournament, the best I could safely see was Bxe7, for purely general reasons. White's dark square bishop is bad, and Black's dark square bishop is good (and the opposite case for both sides with regard to the light square bishops), so exchanging the bishops favors white in a positional sense. With queens still on the board, I would have castled one way or the other on the next move, although if the queens were off, I woud pass on castling and just "step my king up into the pocket" for the ending.
I have now spent small parts of two days (maybe two hours in real time) looking at it. I looked at castling both ways, sacrificing on f5, sacrificing on h7 (not long, but I had to check, no pun intended), and throwing the f and g pawns forward, and I couldn't find anything.
The positional elements tell me white has the advantage, but it takes lots of accurate moves to convert these OTB. I am not surprised to learn that this is a Capablanca position!
Paul
I fail to see what's so awful about white's position.
Although reaching this position directly from the opening would also feel odd to me,white stands well.
Anyway,it's from a Purdy book.An example of how a move (12.... f5) changes the position so much you must alter your plan.
"12..... f5 Now the average player,with White,would be likely to seek for some way of continuing his attack on the king,merely because that is the plan he has been following,and the chances are that by a patient search he would find a way,and duly lose the game.
If,however,he asked himself the question above (How has his move changed the position?),he would realise,more or less clearly according to his strength,that Black's last move has completely changed the position,that the attack on the king is over,but that a new weakness has arisen in the backward e-pawn,and that the attack must now be concentrated on that instead." - Purdy
I think that perhaps we had an advantage in that we had NO plan when we started to look at the position, and therefore had fewer preconceived notions about what to do, although white's position does have an aggressive air to it.
The first thing I noticed when I looked at it was that, in the absence of a tactical shot, white had to either exchange or move his Bg5, or lose it.
I just looked up the original game, and I wonder if black had planned to play ...f5 all along, or if he just played ...Ne8 to trade off the bishop and missed Capablanca's Qh3 zwischenzug, threatening mate. It's an early game, so Blanco may not have been all that strong (local master vs world class, relatively speaking).
Originally posted by michael liddleThere's a "what's black and white and red all over" joke in here somewhere!
personally, I would exchange bishops, as this would hedlp tp cement the knight in a strong position. (Mind you , that decision has been taken in 30 seconds, after another gulp of red wine!)