Best move for white in this position?

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MikaKujala

Hi,

I just wanted to get some opinions on the best move for white in the following position.  It's white to move, and obviously you could go for hxg4.  But I was afraid of doing that, letting the black queen, h4 pawn and c8 bishop loose on my kingside.  I choose Nxd4 which might sound stupid, but I wanted to get some pressure on the middle, and free the b2 bishop.  Later, I lost the game because of too many blunders, but this was the kind of a turning point, an interesting position that I'm still not sure what would have been the best move ;-)   You can find the whole game here:  https://www.chess.com/live/game/3114491466

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MikaKujala

And to clarify, this is the position after: 15. gxf6 Qxf6

ArtNJ

Hxg4 was certainly best...you were afraid of what exactly?  However, Nxd5 wasn't that bad of a move, still easily winning, but after pxn you absolutely needed to play pxp not bxp.  

MikaKujala

Yes, I guess I was predicting to have to give up the rook eventually. The combination of the black queen, h4 pawn and c8 bishop seemed to be able to create some unknown havoc. But of course you are right, given the material advantage after hxg4, and just playing steady without any blunders - which is difficult ;-)  - I guess this would have turned out right. Thanks a lot for your reply!

MikaKujala

It's interesting, evaluating this position with the old Chessmaster 10the edition software, the longer I let the evaluation run, the better value it gives to Nxd4.  But hxg4 seems to be the best move here anyway.... 

Daniel1115

hxg4. bxg4 runs into fxe5, even without this you are more than fine