Well, I have no choice but to move my pawn up; Pawn to g6.
There is no way I am taking his pawn with mine. Nor am I interested in taking his Bishop with mine, as it solves his fractured pawn structure and eventually opens the h file for his Rook. I like his pawns all separated like that, and certainly do not want his Rook staring down my h7 Pawn.
Still, his f Pawn down in the 6th rank is problematic.
There is no way I am taking his pawn with mine. Nor am I interested in taking his Bishop with mine, as it solves his fractured pawn structure and eventually opens the h file for his Rook. I like his pawns all separated like that, and certainly do not want his Rook staring down my h7 Pawn.
Still, his f Pawn down in the 6th rank is problematic.
Man, this is getting tricky now.
And I think this game's about to get ugly, for both of us, as well. After much consideration, I'm going with Queen e-2 to f-3...
I was thinking h4-h5 for you, Jim, but I haven't analyzed it entirely. It just seems to me that there's a lot of pressure from those pawns on the king side, so I would have continued to create a situation in which those pawns raise hell. If he takes the pawn, you wind up with your queen on the h column and he is threatened. If he doesn't take, you get to take his pawn on the g column and support your f pawn with it. That opens up the h4 column to your queen, too.
I love it when the game gets wild and wooly. Then again, I was always the guy who would take huge risks by offering sacrifices to open up positions.
h4 to h5 would give me his Bishop free and clear. That would give me a big advantage.
I didn't really give it much of a look. It was just a thought. When I used to play at the Bloomfield, NJ Chess Club on Friday evenings there was a fellow I used to beat constantly (I beat him the first twenty games we played) because I would give away pieces like it was water and he would take them until he realized I'd set him up for mate. I once gave away a rook, a bishop, a knight, and three pawns, so he had a huge material advantage and the board looked like a complete mess with pieces scattered all over the place and no pawn structure, but I'd opened his king side up. I chased his king across the board and cornered it on my side of the board and mated him with the queen, a knight, and my own king.