So far, he's only a pawn behind and our position is very, very weak on his queen side. The proposed trade may instead be a gambit to bring his rook into play through castling over the queen side, at the expense of a bishop. Mind you, to play a gambit well means you're about infinite levels better at chess than 98% of the chess playing population, so I honestly can't tell if a rook on the D-column is worth the trade, but I just wanted to throw it out here.
So far, j2 has played well and there's probably more to this move than meets the eye.
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I'm willing to trade since that would elimnate all his bishops and judging from the last game, no one except me on our team like to use rooks. If we trade pieces that leaves our queen on A6 and able to move over to F6 depending on his next move.
Imho, Rooks are definately useful (they're worth 5 points in theorycraft as opposed to 3 for bishops and 2.5 for knights for a reason) but mostly as an anchoring/ end-game piece. For much of the middle play, due to how pawns impose their structure on play, diagonal control/support is more powerful than vertical + horizontal threat. Only later in the game, especially after the elimination of bishops and/or queens, does the rook become really strong, imho. Last game, the board was still cluttered and we weren't yet in the end-game. Nor were we able to link rooks, either, which is their strongest combination.
When applying that point count above (mind you, position also plays a role), the intended rook for bishop + knight trade would thus also only give us .5 point advantage when looked at from very basic chess craft, which is less than a pawn (value 1).
This post has been edited by Tapper: 24 August 2011 - 10:42 PM
Everyone is entitled to his own wrong opinion. - Lizrad