Barnet chess club's top players perspective - 15. b3
Regarding Position 3:
(After 10.Nde2 Qe6!? 11. Nd5 Qxe4 12. Nc7+ Kd7 13. Nxa1 Qxc4 14. Nb6+ axb6)
Position 3: "Knight caused double pawns" position
Barnet's top players feel that 15. Be3 is not as good as 15. b3 from the above position. The main reason is that after Be3, the reply Nd5! is strong.
By playing b3, the Black queen is kicked away from the protection of the d5 square. Also White can then play the move Bb2. This is illustrated below:-
Different games can arise depending on where the Black queen goes. It can go to:-
 |
Queen to A6 |
|
Queen to D5 |
|
Queen to E6 |
|
Queen to H4 |
Let us examine the plan implications for each of these locations:
Queen to A6
With the move Qa6, we provide more support for our potentially
vulnerable queenside doubled pawns. We also put pressure on white's a
pawn.
We can plan to exploit our passed d pawn, by getting the rook into the game, e.g.
to d8, and then moving the king out of the way. The d pawn is our trump card for
compensation.
Queen to D5
As the FIDE master suggested, play might run: 16.Bb2 Qxd1 Rfxd1 b5 with an interesting endgame position:-
Queen to E6
The queen is attackable with Nf4, but then can go to F5/G4
Queen to H4
The threat is clearly Ng4 now with a discovered attack on the rook on
a1.
However White can calmly play the move 16. h3 with the intention of playing Be3
targeting our vulnerable b6 pawn:-
An example variation is : 16. h3 Ne4 17.Rb1 Ra8 18.a4 reducing black's pressure on the a file. White can then follow up with Be3 and arguably stands slightly better.
Conclusions
The 4 different queen locations provide different types of games. The underlying trump card for the World is the passed d pawn. To leverage this pawn, our King would have to get out of the way.
