[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Yeah, agreed. 2 rooks vs queen is much easier to play for the queen in most cases, I've found.

The queen can be good as a single piece whereas the rooks have to coordinate, which is hard when there's a queen on the board ready to fork. Often the rooks end up having to defend eachother, and if this happens suboptimally they can become very immobilised on a useless file or rank whereas the queen can fly around the board attacking stuff at will.

Like you said, material imbalance is very difficult to evaluate and understand. I generally recommend not to incorporate them into one's play until ~1700 FIDE elo. Though sometimes you're forced into it of course.

It's also a matter of style. I personally love materially imbalanced positions, and I'm pretty good at them, so I incorporate a fair bit of exchange sacrifices into my play. Because then I often get positions I understand better than my opponent and that makes up for the material on its own, I find.

But other players just prefer a different style of play and maybe shouldn't go for it even if objectively it's the best move, because they'll end up misplaying the position.

[Enginerrrd]

As someone low in rating, there are few things in chess more satisfying to me than when the engine confirms I was correct in sacrificing an exchange or a full piece for some sort of positional advantage. The opportunity itself comes up very rarely for me, so recognizing it just makes me giddy.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Yeah, there's nothing that feels better in chess than that. I still remember my first win in the norwegian championships(in the noob category, not bragging, they let anyone play in it) almost 20 years ago(yikes); found, correctly calculated and played a rook sacrifice leading to mate(it was like a 3 move combination, all checks, nothing too fancy but I did consciously threaten it the move before). I also remember walking into mate in 1 in another game that tournament, the rest is a blur.

And in fact most of the wins I remember the most clearly involved some kind of well-found sacrifice. The others tend to blend together too much in my mind. And most of the losses I remember most clearly involved horrible blunders.

[superhuzza]

edit: my comment was silly, removed.

[jpmoral]

I don't think being up a full piece counts as material imbalance.

[superhuzza]

You are absolutely right, I deleted my comment as it was misleading.