What am I missing?

I'm a new player at 700.  When I review my losing games I find myself in situations like this that are middle game, minor piece battles, that when I look at it, I see black being even on pieces, and if anything I'm controlling more center squares and "should be" slightly ahead.  I did move my king.  The analysis says I'm down a minor piece.   At this point in the game, I did not feel like I was losing, I felt even.    What am I missing?

This has been frustrating.  Obviously, I'm still hanging pieces and coming up to speed on tactics, but I feel a bit lost when I can't see this.

Thank you for your help.

This is not a position I play often (early queen swap), I can see now that if you are white and force the black king to move it is actually a valuable move because white doesn't need to move.  I usually am happy to swap queens because it simplifies the board.  

That said, is the majority of the white advantage due to the loss of castling rights, or is there more?  Can I keep in my head that, very generally, moving a king early is sort of like losing a minor piece?

I would say it is a combination of worse pawn structure, king safety and the fact that your opponent has a bishop pair. By the way, I think that this 3.5 advantage is a bit exaggerated. It is only depth 18 after all. When I am looking with outside software it shows around +2.

In any case, you should've played Bd6 and save your bishop. There wouldn't be a queen trade where your king remains in the center and pawn structure would remain intact. 

f4, Be3 and then castles with check looks good for white, and then maybe, e5, g3, and Bg2. A few attacking moves gaining time against black. The centre is fairly open which favours whites bishop pair and they might win control of the d file with their rooks and secure some good diagonals for the bishops. White has some good opportunities to secure stable good squares for their pieces while kicking black around.

So to calibrate my chess engine avoiding double pawns and losing the castle rights needs to be considered more than I do.  My game is still mostly material + not hanging pieces + slow-attack (or defense).  I haven't thought about the other details as much.  I will need to look at my losses and see if my "odd" loosing positions have these details.

You mention bishop pair.  By this I assume that you mean 2 bishops should be weighted more because they can control all the squares?  Again, I've just been counting values so that would never register in my head?

Thank you.

Exactly, there are positions where such a trade is not bad because the opponent can't exploit the positioning of the king. 

Two bishops shouldn't necessarily be weighed more. It depends on the position. Open positions favour bishops as they are more powerful on long open diagonals where they can control squares and create threats in your opponents half. Closed positions favour knights as the bishops may struggle to find a good diagonal. So it often depends on the situation around the centre, whether it is cluttered with pawns or wide open. Knights prefer stable squares where they cant be easily chased away, so weak squares that pawns cant control. Knights also increase in power as they move forward, so a knight on the 4th or 5th rank might be roughly equal to a bishop, a knight on the 6th, on a weak square and protected by a pawn, can be a monster, not only directly controlling squares but indirectly due to forking threats. If you find yourself with a bishop pair seek to open up the position, if you find yourself with knights, try to keep it closed and use pawns to block diagonals that might favour your opponents bishops. Shape the position to support your minor pieces and create problems for your opponent.

And double pawns aren't necessarily bad. They can strengthen central control and create a half open file for a rook. It depends. In this case you've lost your central pawns, your opponent has the bishops, the game is opening up, you've lost castling privileges, and they can quickly centralise a rook whereas you have to castle by hand, so there are a combination of factors all in their favour.

Yes I understand that "it depends" will be added to every suggestion or comment.  I'm OK with that.  I also am very aware of bishops gaining value as the board opens up.  That said, I loose mostly because I give away pieces.  This discussion was really more to understand how to value the current position of the board.  I do lots of puzzles here and on other sites, but puzzles are pure math problems, while this is more subtle and not conducive to the training aids.

It would be nice to have a "which position is better" puzzle.  It would not be as mathematical as the tactics puzzles but it might help improve pattern recognition and I would guess would generate a lot of arguing over the definition of best.

Try Amateur's Mind by Jeremy Silman. Its aimed at 1200-1400 players so assumes some basic positional knowledge. He teaches how to break down and evaluate a position, then come up with a plan. The 2nd edition has 25 test positions. Jeremy's fully annotated answers are nearly 100 pages. I found it very helpful.

You cannot castle, Opponent has double bishop and white has king-side majority which guarantees him significant advantage as pieces are exchanged.

At 700 I would say:
1. You are doing fine: even material, keep up the good work!

But:
2. You have an undefended knight so take care it is vulnerable;
3. Your king is not safe and that is bad news in the middle game at 700;
4. It wil be hard to activate your rooks.

Next time castle, that will solve point 3 and 4. Castling is important, do it before move 10 (or so).

Computers are and can be be very helpful, but keep in mind they are not an absolute universal truth that reflects what's going on the board. We are humans, we recognize patterns and we make mistakes. Computers can calculate anything and everything, and will say that having your king bare naked on e4 is good if there is no forced win because it can calculate everything and won't blunder. Now good luck playing with that (unless maybe you're ivanchucky), especially in blitz. Also... if the computer gives something like +or - 0.8 that's not really an advantage depending on the position. Some positions are just easy to play... the moves are obvious and the positions plays itself. For example, you're playing white and the computer eval says -1.3 , but you have 5 obvious moves and the worst of them will result in -1.8.. Now you could be playing black with that same -1.3, however you gotta find some grandmastery brilliant three exclamations marks to maintain that advantage, otherwise you go to +8 advantage as white.... the computer gives it as winning for white cuz it can and will find that move, but as a human is never as simple... in fact, grandmasters are known to memorize and go into lines that are not the very best because it could be some crazy position where they know all the intricacies, traps, maneuvers, secrets and the strategy of the position, and if their opponents can't find all perfect best moves they're in a losing position. 

Also I have seen computer give 1 point evaluations on theoretical draws because one side was up a pawn.

 

That is not the case here and I am not saying you should not uuse stockfish to study, but keep in mind it sees the position as a computer, you should look at it as a human =]

Yes, thank you for your response.  That actually is my concern about using the computer to judge myself.  I look at positions perhaps 3 levels deep, on the 1 or two moves of interest, maybe more on takes-takes-takes... moves, but the analysis isn't deep at all.  When I see the engine say it went 18 levels deep or I see an M8, that is just out of reach.

I was wondering do they make chess engines that are limited to "human" thinking.  A limited depth + heruistics.  I've if a higher ranked player would pick a different move, I'd like to see a move related to may ability to play.  I played against this online:

https://vole.wtf/kilobytes-gambit/

Which uses a ridiculously small amount of code to play, using what must be a very simple alogirthm.  It plays a good decent game against me.  It looks completely different than any opponent I've played.

I spent a little time following the lines the engine could see from this spot, and while there’s no easy tactic one can point to to say “oh, here you lose a piece,” there are MANY lines that all lead to you being in a worse spot than White, for a couple reasons: that their ability to castle means you face rooks in the center while your king is on an open file; that their two bishops give more flexibility in controlling the mostly open center; plus it’s their move and they have the initiative.

Also, remember that scores aren’t really about specific features of the position so much as outcomes. You’re 3 pts down because you’re likely to be down a minor piece eventually no matter what you do. Asking “what can I look for in this position to see that” really is saying “what heuristics would a human player use to sense that they’re in a worse spot.” But, that’s not how the engine evaluates the position.

Finally, a human player who follows the guideline to look for “checks, captures, threats” in that order might very well be able to see a mate in 8, because that evaluation means every move is a forcing move, which greatly limits how far one has to search to find them.

OK, we've sort of beat a dead horse.   I will carefully consider the cost of not castling and consider that on open games, particularly early, not to initiate a sequence of takes that removes a lot of material, particularly if it leaves the opponent with bishops.

@hucker233 Also, I'll throw at you that at 700 rating, blunder prevention and watching for opponents' blunders matter a lot more than getting into the weeds on the subtle pros and cons of a position like this.  It's pretty clear from this analysis that you didn't blunder into a mistake that's easily and immediately punished by an opponent at your level.

Based on my own stats, I find I win almost 40% of games where I was at some point down by 3 points on the engine analysis.  A lot of that is seeing and punishing blunders that make up the difference.  So, in a very real sense, the problems with this position likely don't matter much, at least until you've tightened up your play a lot.

I agree, ALL of my games are painful to review. Many games, when I watch the analysis bar, each move turns out to hurt  the mover's position rather than help!  If it weren't me playing it would be funny.  I had one game that I won in 10 moves (my best game on chess.com) and I remember getting the analysis back seeing it at 10ish percent AND it swung from 90% me to 90% him.  We both had mate in two for 2 turns each.  Demoralizing.

 

I mentioned this up above, but it might deserve special emphasis:  When looking at candidate moves, it's best to start with "Checks, Captures, and Threats" in that order.  If you focus only on checks, and you can visualize well enough to see a checkmate two moves ahead, you will usually find mate-in-two, because mate-in-two implies that you can absolutely force the checkmate (which usually requires using checks to do it.)

continuation will probably be like;

Bf4 (attacking knight on e5 and the pawn on c7) and opening d-file for the rook

So you retreat to Nd7 to save your knight and block that possible check on d-file next move but your bishop and rook will be stucked. you can still develop your bishop by b6+Bb7 but you will need rook lifts for your both rooks.

these actions will cost at least 3 extra moves and opponent will keep making new threats while you are trying to shape a decent position.

or you will simply retreat to Nc6 and move Ke7 and develop your rooks from the backrank connected. but you will have to sacrifice your c7 pawn.

position is still playable but your chances are very low.. they'll just keep coming