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I believe "putting the question to the bishop" says more than just "the pawn threatens the bishop." I believe the deeper meaning is: "Now the opponent has to decide what to do with the bishop," again implying that every solution for the bishop has a downside. When White has a bishop at g5, and Black plays ...h6, White often has three possibilities:
- Exchanging it for Black's knight on f6, which often isn't desirable.
- Retreating it somewhere along c1-f4, when Black has got rid of the pressure/pin on the f6 knight.
- Retreating it to h4, where it could be vulnerable to a later ...g5. Besides, the bishop might later be needed somewhere along the c1-f4 diagonal.
When Black forces White to make that choice, White's choice may affect how Black should continue; thus, it's useful for Black to "put the question to White's bishop." In my opinion, that's much more than just "threatening White's bishop," which in itself isn't much of an achievement.
The kind of comment that perhaps bothers me the most, is when people write something like "White has compensation for the pawn" (even more annoying if it's more pawns, or a piece). Okay, I can usually see whether there is some compensation, but what are you actually saying? Is there "some, but not enough," is there "enough," or is there "more than enough" compensation? Not always that easy to say, of course, but still, I'd like to know the commentator's opinion.
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Most frequent useless chess quote/comment? (Read 20560 times)
