Killing the rooks with bishops

While playing some of the less experienced chess players, I have noticed that some move the most left, and most right pawn forward first, along with the rooks forward two spaces. I killed them with my bishop, but I am wondering whether I should, because they would have an advantage in the middle game - I have no bishops.

So should I still kill their rooks or will they be forced to retreat or die in the beginning/middle game anyway?

I would kill them.

and could you explain why you would kill them?

First of all, evaluating a position is an assessment of material factors as well as positional.  

In terms of material: Rook for a bishop is worth an exchange => about 1.5-1.75 pawns. (Google for IM Larry Kauffman's articles on material values for more information)

So while you are right in claiming that bishops tend to get more activity / stuff to do in the opening-middlegame transition, this is "temporary"  (the rooks eventually find open files and can do a lot more with their mobility than bishops) wheras the MATERIAL advantage by winning the exchange usually trumps everything else and is permanent.

Sure, there are always exceptions when a bishop does more than rook, but given where you are at, I'd advise you to pay attention to material considerations FIRST when weighed against positional factors.    

Crawl before you walk, as many a stronger player has always told me. :)

thanks 

Kill 'em, then castle asap ,put your rooks in the game and any trade will be fine for you.

All other things being equal, a rook is more valuable than a bishop.

You seem to have a good grasp of the necessity for the phrase, "all other things being equal," since you seem to have picked up somewhere that bishops tend to be more valuable in the earlier phases of the game.

There is a very simple reason for this, however.

The reason bishops tend to have more value than rooks early on is because they are very simple to bring into the game, whereas getting your rooks involved is typically a slow process that requires castling and/or getting all your other pieces out of the way.

Once they're in the fray, rooks become far more valuable.

In the scenario you describe, your opponent is going ridiculously far out of his way to try to bring the rooks into the game far earlier.  If you let him succeed, then despite the idiocy of his strategy, he will indeed have fully developed and very powerful rooks.  Nick them quick, and you've not only traded up, but rendered the flank "developing" moves he did make completely worthless.

So you not only come out ahead in grabbing them...you come out ahead on multiple fronts.

an addition to those; while the opponent does such moves like h5 and a5 to make a way out for his rooks , you could just simply gain the control of the center and his rooks may not find good positions since there are no open lines

Ah thats what i was thinking

I'd kill the rooks because a rook is worth more than a bishop, and you make his or her's a4 and h4 moves complete nonsense.  What I'm saying is basically what Shivsky said.

why dont they take with the b/g pawns?

Agreed....forgot that Knights could take....taking with b/g results in isolated doubled pawns which add more misery apart from being down the exchange.

Take one of them :)

Visualization time:

Playing as black in this position, I'm confident I could beat even a considerably higher-rated opponent most of the time.

You don't "kill" the rooks, you capture them.

"Kill" is its slang equivalent.

In Finnish, we "eat" the opponent's pieces...

 In Greek we "eat" them too

@Cogwheel In an endgame like that it's like you're in heaven! I should point out though that in thePlguy's situation this is not the case because simplification would leave his opponent with two minor pieces versus his rooks. Which is a totally different endgame. But rooks are more powerful than bishops property-wise, no doubt about that.

yes i agree but what i am saying is that i have a huge disadvantage in the beginning/ early middle game and im wondering if i will be beaten then?