At the end of the Qxb5 line (after a4), White can respond with Rac1, to which Black doesn’t really have a good response. b6 gets in trouble with the d6 discovery, and Nd2 just loses a pawn after Rxc7 Nxb2 Rxb7 - Black may have a passed pawn on a4, but I doubt it’s enough not to lose.
That being said, that wasn’t actually what made me suspect Qc5 was right. It’s just that Qxb5 feels like a much more natural, more human move than Qc5. Before I even looked at any lines, I thought, “well, this looks like Richard checked with a computer, and it found a move better than the flawed one he thought of: Qc5.” Maybe this is even a position from a game Richard played, where the engine suggested Qc5 when he was analyzing it afterwards, or something like that.
I’m only about… 60% confident in that theory, but if I am right, it’ll… kind of invalidate the experiment for me, because the factor of “does it feel like a human move” isn’t something that’s supposed to be considered. Unfortunately, I’m not that good at making my brain ignore that factor and analyze the position without it.
Hoping I’m wrong; if it turns out “check if it feels human” isn’t actually helpful, I’ll hopefully be able to analyze other puzzles without paying attention to that.
There’s definitely something to learn from the setting of the position. I actually took it from Strategic Chess Exercises, just taking one of the variations of one of the problems. There’s picking a position that it makes sense to debate over, but also a meta thing that you have raised, which I didn’t consider.
…Qc5 is the stronger move, but …Qxb5 still leaves black better off than white. It would probably have been better to have a greater discrepancy in the evaluation of the moves.
The mistake in your reasoning is that after …a4, d6 is not threatening, black can respond …Rac8. As I said in another comment, however, I would expect white to hold the draw in this position, where as after …Qc5, black has a decent advantage.
(Puzzle 1)
I’m guessing that the right move is Qc5.
At the end of the Qxb5 line (after a4), White can respond with Rac1, to which Black doesn’t really have a good response. b6 gets in trouble with the d6 discovery, and Nd2 just loses a pawn after Rxc7 Nxb2 Rxb7 - Black may have a passed pawn on a4, but I doubt it’s enough not to lose.
That being said, that wasn’t actually what made me suspect Qc5 was right. It’s just that Qxb5 feels like a much more natural, more human move than Qc5. Before I even looked at any lines, I thought, “well, this looks like Richard checked with a computer, and it found a move better than the flawed one he thought of: Qc5.” Maybe this is even a position from a game Richard played, where the engine suggested Qc5 when he was analyzing it afterwards, or something like that.
I’m only about… 60% confident in that theory, but if I am right, it’ll… kind of invalidate the experiment for me, because the factor of “does it feel like a human move” isn’t something that’s supposed to be considered. Unfortunately, I’m not that good at making my brain ignore that factor and analyze the position without it.
Hoping I’m wrong; if it turns out “check if it feels human” isn’t actually helpful, I’ll hopefully be able to analyze other puzzles without paying attention to that.
There’s definitely something to learn from the setting of the position. I actually took it from Strategic Chess Exercises, just taking one of the variations of one of the problems. There’s picking a position that it makes sense to debate over, but also a meta thing that you have raised, which I didn’t consider.
…Qc5 is the stronger move, but …Qxb5 still leaves black better off than white. It would probably have been better to have a greater discrepancy in the evaluation of the moves.
The mistake in your reasoning is that after …a4, d6 is not threatening, black can respond …Rac8. As I said in another comment, however, I would expect white to hold the draw in this position, where as after …Qc5, black has a decent advantage.