Key Concepts About 2 Minor Pieces vs A Rook and Pawn

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[DrZaius]

The first example is pretty extreme, mostly because you give away two well developed pieces (5 total moves with them) vs a rook and a pawn with only 1 total move between them (plus a king move to take the second piece). Tuck the king away again and it's 5 moves for white, 3 moves for black that were wasted (I don't count the O-O as a waste).

[SC-zqcu]

1:58
There is also another thing:
when the rook-pawn had a better rating than the knight-bishop it wasn't just that the rook had a clear path of infiltration, the knight and the bishop were also completely blocked from entering the other side.


In all subsequent positions when the rook-pawn was worse than the knight-bishop it was the opposite - not only was the rook blocked from infiltrating, the knight and the bishop also had nice open routes to the other side.

[shieldphaser]

Without having seen the explanation, my conclusion is mostly that the position is worse for white afterwards in the first position because you are foolishly trading two developed pieces for relatively undeveloped material. That's a big loss of tempo right there, which is important because pieces don't just have value in a vacuum. A pawn in the right position can be worth more than a rook that's out of position, and moves themselves also have value.

[kirillzakharov]

2 bishops is a nightmare against a rook.

[JonathanMandrake]

What I have heard is that the later in game, the more valuable the rook. At the start, it can't do much, only in the middle game they start to get important

[amaarquadri]

Great video! You can really tell it's educational when you can actually notice your predictions of the engine evaluations getting more and more accurate as the video progresses.

[words]

The reason Bishop is never equal to Rook is because pawns always covers the board diagonal almost always to protect each others that chess 101. But as the pieces numbers dwindle and pawns still remain rooks gets more flexibility to move whereas bishop still struggle due to pawns cover the board diagonally. The negative factor we saw in the end game scenario was because Rook has flexibility to move whereas initially it does not hence Knight and bishop are good to start the game

[markw.schumann]

This is very helpful for mid-level players. And I like the brevity.

[Quidoute]

2 peices will mostly always be better because you just have more things to work with,
unless the rook is in the backrank then you're screwed

[sapnakumar]

I was explaining about rook-pawn and knight-bishop trade to my friends yesterday and u made an entire video about it today. Thanks for enlighten me that this trade is not always bad😁

[moving_knight]

You sir are an extremely underrated
Just found your videos and they are better than any other creator

[ian_]

Love the content and presentation, Nelson! I want to add some info that could benefit players, but it's maybe a bit of 'overkill'.

Larry Kaufman explains that the traditional values of the pieces [1, 3, 3, 5, 9] are only true in an endgame, where there are only a few pieces left. In the opening/middlegame, a better set of values is [1, 3.5, 3.5, 5.25, 10], with an extra 0.5 for the bishop pair.

So the trade in the first position is rook and pawn (5.25 + 1 = 6.25) for bishop, knight and loss of bishop pair (3.5 + 3.5 + 0.5 = 7.5). Looking only at material value, the trade is better for black by (7.5 - 6.25 = 1.25).

However, in the opening, each extra tempo is also worth something. In my opinion it's around 1 per extra tempo. Black has two extra minor pieces developed after the trade, so that's a pretty clean (1 + 1 = 2). The black king probably needs to move again at some point, so I won't count the castling as an extra tempo. This adds another 2 for a total of (1.25 + 2 = 3.25), which is close to the StockFish evaluation.

Edit: It's been pointed out that tempo is worth considerably less than 1 per extra tempo. I may edit this after I've learned more 😀

[khepridixon]

4:24 okay so I was way off base, but I wanna explain my reasoning.

Technically, if you average every possible move, the rooks can't just charge in right now. But, because their defense is evenly spread and the offense is condensed, white has the brilliant move of Knight to D6, cutting off the bishop's line of attack and trading down lesser pieces while maintaining a rook advantage. If they play defensively, you can push the B pawn and move the bishop to the A file for a quick push where they can't defend. So, I overthought and said +3.3 for white

[manuelfuentes]

And learned something again! Will add to your spreadsheet! TY 😊

[Zamppa]

This is kinda easy. If there are open lane(s) in the position then the rook dominates and often turns into a pawn eater but if not then the 2 minors often are atleast equal.

This was a nice video! Maybe continue with this with different settings of 2 minors vs a rook and pawn? My personal opinion is that a bishop pair against a rook and pawn is pretty much always better for the bishops, atleast equal. A bishop pair can control the whole board while a bishop + a knight really can't. I have had several endgames with a bishop pair against a rook and pawn and I have drawn or won pretty much all of them.

[Bruh-bkyo]

Bro just said a≠a for every a from any set.

[MrSupernova]

Bro, this was a great summary of rook vs two minors. I'm an advanced player and this concept has never been thought to me. I read 100 endgames and this is the kind of information I wanted. Instead, I got a bunch of heartless calculation which I'll never see in a real game. The hard stuff is the stuff you can't calculate and must understand before going into the position. Also, I would argue that rook endgames and pawn endgames likely cover 80-90% of endgames we're likely to see in practice. The other stuff can wait. Thanks for this lesson! Cheers!

[woodenfences]

Great approach! I have learned that the side with the knight and bishop must use its advantage before the endgame when the opponent's rook can infiltrate (and their extra pawn turn into a queen!)

[yotamabady]

Great video but it doesn't fully cover the topic you should address cases of 2 bishops or 2 knights for a rook and a pawn, and sometimes there is an imbalance of rook and 2 pawns for 2 minors that are unclear

[lancemcque]

Thanks for the deep dive. I knew of this but not to this depth.