Stockfish and Ethereal both found wins for white from the position.
Most of the games ended in a draw. Black won several.
These engines are stronger than Super GMs, and don't make blunders. I think we can draw 2 conclusions from this:
1) The popular opinion that were was no risk for Carlsen with black is patently false -- White can win from this position without black blundering.
2) The majority of the results are draws, and all the results from the Top 3 engines playing each other were draws.
This supports the thesis that the position is objectively drawn, even if it is better for black. Offering a draw is perfectly reasonable.
Given the first two points, and the fact that Carlsen is a stronger Rapid/Blitz player and much more favored in a tiebreak, it makes sense to leverage your time advantage to entice a draw from a player whose chances are much better in the final Classical game.
If Carlsen can't find a winning continuation, and believes Caruana can make 9 moves in 7 minutes + 30 second increments to reach time control, offering a draw before that leverage evaporates is sensible.
Caruana hitting time control would have much less incentive to accept a draw offer. The material is even and White can win in the position with more precise play, and does not require a blunder from Black to do so.
It's a shame this is being downvoted- it's an interesting problem! Here's my 41-move solution: https://www.chess.com/analysis-board-editor?diagram_id=4269760
And the pgn: 1.e4 b5 2.Qh5 a5 3.d4 Na6 4.Bh6 gxh6 5.g3 Nb8 6.f4 Na6 7.e5 Nb8 8.d5 Na6 9.d6 cxd6 10.b4 dxe5 11.a4 exf4 12.axb5 fxg3 13.bxa5 gxh2 14.c4 Nc7 15.c5 Ra6 16.Bc4 Rd6 17.Be6 dxe6 18.Nf3 Nd5 19.Nh4 Bd7 20.Rg1 Ndf6 21.Rg6 fxg6 22.a6 gxh5 23.a7 Ra6 24.a8=Q Ra7 25.Qf3 Ra8 26.Qf5 exf5 27.c6 Nd5 28.c7 Bc6 29.c8=Q Nb6 30.Qe6 Nd7 31.Qf6 exf6 32.b6 Bb7 33.Nd2 Ba6 34.Ndf3 Bc8 35.Ng5 fxg5 36.b7 gxh4 37.b8=Q Ba6 38.Qb4 Bc8 39.Qg4 fxg4 40.Ra3 Nb8 41.Rh3 gxh3
Not sure if it's possible to do it in less moves, but I'd love to see what other people can come up with.
I was programming (surprise!) for various Internet startups. The last one was https://prismic.io - also my favourite one. Great team and great product.
the lichess name:
Or maybe I meant "le chess" and made a typo
The name Benoni Defense doesn't refer to the country of Benin in any way. It comes from Hebrew meaning 'son-of-sorrow'. Source: https://www.chess.com/article/view/attack-and-defense-in-the-modern-benoni
Full article: Gukesh Becomes 2nd Youngest Chess Grandmaster In History
Also interesting - three of these are GMs, and some of the youngest GMs of all time. Raahil Mullick is rated 2275 but isn't yet an IM.
Interesting - this is the position from the Jasper Knight tutorial (from Fischer-Spassky 1972 Game 6), but with the white queen moved from h3 to d2 and the white rook moved from f5 to b1.
https://www.chess.com/news/view/saint-louis-arch-bishops-2020-pro-chess-champions
​
"After a thorough investigation, Chess.com's Fair Play team determined that GM Tigran L. Petrosian, who played for the Armenian Eagles, violated fair play regulations during games in both the semifinal and final matches that took place on September 25 and 27, respectively. "
Wow, interesting to hear how they determined this. So much for the PIPI rematch...
I loved his book on tactics! He really tries to explain in words what a combination is and thoroughly examines all different kinds of tactical themes. The examples are super difficult and aesthetic at times, I would highly recommend it https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Tactics-Advanced-Players-Averbakh/dp/4871875083.
He seems talented, but 10-second chess is absurd. I went to his profile and clicked on one of his recent wins:
https://www.chess.com/live/game/2005729513?username=penguingm1
A modern-day masterpiece, right?
Here is a link. Carlsen appears to favor a knockout tournament over the way it is now, with a qualifying tournament and then a prolonged 1v1 series of games.
For most of the chess world championship's history, the 1v1 format with challenger mano-a-mano against the champion has endured. In the 1990s the reigning FIDE champion Garry Kasparov broke away and formed his own world championship. During this time FIDE's title lost prestige and they experimented with the kind of knockout tournament format that Carlsen appears to favor. In 2006 the two world championship titles were unified once again, and the old format returned.
as has already been explained, it was only done as a temporary"verification" tag, since Chess.com doesn't yet have a verified label like Twitter does.
You can see it's already gone from his account: https://www.chess.com/member/BobbyHall
Check out Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions by Yasser Seirawan. Yasser plays a really calm and clean style in a lot of those games. He also writes a whole chapter giving you the background story of the matchups, which are fascinating. He's a really good story teller.
Assuming this is you, I looked over a few of your games. A few recommendations:
Learn the value of the pieces. It is roughly Queen (9), Rook (5), Knight (3), Bishop (3) and pawn (1). There were times where I saw you do things like take a pawn with a bishop and then your bishop got captured. That's not a good exchange.
Learn about how many times a piece is attacked and defended. If your opponent is attacking a piece more than you are defending it, your piece isn't safe.
Capture your enemy's pieces when they are not defended.
You really don't need to study openings right now. Checkmating patterns may be useful. I strongly recommend going through Lichess's Learning content, especially the fundamentals section.
This is the game that matches the position shown on screen and also the rating. I think he actually gained 11 points (if I remember correctly chess.com's archive shows the rating after the game, and it's 11 points higher than his rating after the previous game), so it's a UI glitch.
Whelp, I guess the cat is out of the bag ;) Thanks for the early feedback, guys!
We have a Trello board going in case you'd like to report a bug or leave a suggestion: https://trello.com/b/XMhyqciA/chessable-open-beta
Much more to come in the future. Hope everyone enjoys the site!
http://lichess.org/@/NapoliGM was investigated by lichess moderators. They tried to justify their performance with their ICC account. So they contacted me through ICC with the account "multicast", proving that they own it. They thought that it would be proof enough of their innocence; but we trust our algorithms better than ICC's, and so we banned him.
https://www.chess.com/news/view/nigel-short-to-run-for-fide-president
This has some more information. What instantly made me a Nigel fan is this: "I want to see end of the Agon contract. It has brought little or no benefit to FIDE and I believe has cost FIDE a huge amount of money in lost opportunities. Foregone income."
As a rule, if there is an example of anything ridiculous, it probably occurred in a Korchnoi match.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/korchnoi-spassky-candidates-1977-spassky-begins-a-streak
> During game 14, Spassky had escalated his psychological gambit by wearing a silver visor. Later, in game 17, Spassky wore the visor, sunglasses, and diving goggles.
Hmm... it looks like he's used chess as an allegory in the past.
Chess dot com published this article about him, but didn't mention that he's using their services... something that I'm pretty sure they'd want to highlight if they knew for sure it was happening.
Referring to the story about Mikhail Tal thinking about his move sitting over the board. His thoughts came into thinking about how to pull a hippo from a marsh.
Neat find. These tips may have come to your mom by way of Henry, but they originated with Reuben Fine in his book <em>Chess the Easy Way</em>. You can find slightly edited versions of his Thirty Rules floating around the Internet.
Looks like chess.com has confronted him for you:
>This account has been closed for violating our Fair Play Policy.
These rules help keep chess fair for everyone.
Whilst on the subject of Lasker...
GM John Nunn has a book, John Nunn's Chess Course, where he teaches chess concepts by analyzing only Lasker's games.
Unless I'm mistaken?
edit: some other interesting chess records
edit 2: my favourite one: >Losses on time: In 1969, Fritz Saemisch lost all 13 games on time at Linkoping.
This one just kills me, I'm imagining this poor guy falling asleep at the board and everyone just quietly playing against him while trying not to wake him up or something. Oh man.
A tablebase is presolved brute force for a specific number of pieces
http://chessok.com/?page_id=361
That tablebase has everything for 3-4-5-6 pieces solved so if there are 6 pieces on the board or less it will know exactly what happens given best play.
chessok also has 7 piece tablebases, the lomonosov endgame tablebase but I think you have to be a vip member to use it. Althought the android version of it may be free https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.convekta.android.lomonosovtb
> it's like they think i'm only on their site to earn rubies
They're nudging you for continuous interaction. The idea is to get you to make it a routine.
Relevant book recommendation:
https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788
Alternatively, you could get a more wide-ranging, but excellent, book like Fundamental Chess Openings, and then pick some openings that appeal to you? I'd worry that the opening 1...d6 can too easily turn into something a bit meh, or a bit stodgy.
Kotov vs Spassky - USSR Championship | Riga URS | Round 18
Kotov didn't realise he was forked and in check, and tried to castle long, but in that case, Spassky immediately saw the illegal move.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/dont-do-this-in-your-chess-games
I found this:
>When Vladimir Kramnik first played at Linares - early '90s - he was invited as a substitute for a player who got sick just before the tournament at the urging of Kasparov. Kramnik was rated around 2600 and had no title at all - he had qualified for the IM title but they were not awarded until the FIDE Congress met back then. I think he also had two legs toward the GM title.
here.
And it's very much appreciated. It's rare to see this approach these days.
If anyone's curious, this is what the Tracker Control app on my phone shows for the Lichess and chesscom Android apps:
Paragraph 6.5 of the FIDE Rating Regulations
> "Where a match is over a specific number of games, those played after one player has won shall not be rated."
https://www.chess.com/news/view/short-beats-hou-yifan-but-loses-final-unrated-game-7002
I'm a dev, went to school for comp eng. majority of of fellow students make more than 80k right now, 2 years after graduation. That's junior devs.
Median is probably higher than 100k. Chess.com employs 78 devs: https://www.chess.com/about#chesscom-backend
You're right, it might be closer to 10 million.
Yeah I have an account on chess.com named GLORIOUS_LEADER with Kim's picture and a North Korean flag.
https://www.chess.com/member/Glorious_leader
do you think I'm actually the North Korean dictator?
Not sure why you're downvoted. ChessBomb entered a partnership with Chess.com back in Nov '18 and operates under the Chess.com URL
Yes, and the best part is in the same article that quoted Karjakin on that, they asked Aronian the same question and he gave this response:
>Currently I am analyzing with a program that is five years old! So I don't care so much, it's more about adopting the programs to suit your playing style rather than have the best computer program. At the end of the day the position you get, you're going to play, not the computer, so it has to suit human's taste.
So I'm not sure what they're spending that money on, but hopefully they at least checked with Aronian first.
Actually, some guys I saw were compiling a database of players' USCF and FIDE ratings compared to their chess.com ratings, and the trend was that their online rating was actually lower than their official ELO. I think this was either a forum post on chess.com or it might have been something someone posted here... I'll see if I can dig it up
EDIT: This looks to be it. Granted there's no shortage of people in the comments who are saying they have a higher chess.com rating than a FIDE/USCF rating, so make of that what you will. It's quite possible the OP got a skewed sample size. I haven't dove deep enough into the comments to see if someone has conducted a follow-up to his research.
EDIT 2: It appears there's another, larger, and more recent survey that shows the opposite trend for players above a 1000 ELO. Credit to /u/LaBrainwashed for the link.
So we had a great Summer Marathon a few months ago, and we're back at it!
Autumn 2015 Marathon is about 3+0. If you can't handle the tension for 24h straight, just sit back and relax: there will be a great stream coverage of the event.
Just please, if you play the tournament, please take frequent breaks, have naps and water and food. Be careful, be healthy. lichess declines all responsibility in case of death by chess overdose.
It starts the 24th of October, right there: http://lichess.org/tournament/autumn15. Have fun!
Chessify is probably what you're looking for. It also lets you output FEN.
Key features
�� Scan chessboard from printed or digital sources
�� Local Analysis (Stockfish 8, Komodo)
�� Cloud Analysis at 25,000 kN/s (free)
�� Top games live streaming with powerful analysis
�� Play vs Computer from the initial scanned position
�� Search the given position in 6M positions DB
�� Chess clock
https://www.chess.com/tournament/live/-biggest-ever-titled-tuesday-952610
Nepomniachtchi played but only got #25, MVL played and got #8 because he lost in the last round of the tournament (after leading it for the prior 8 rounds). Paco Vallejo also played but only ended on #52 after having some unhappy early rounds due to not being used to streaming while playing, and then having random fun afterwards. Not sure about others.
Tournament was won by some random FM I've never heard of.
Yep, you got the details wrong though. Korchnoi's rook on h1 was under attack so he was unsure if he could castle and asked.
Yuri (another very good GM for those that don't know) called his opponent out thinking he did an illegal castle since b8 was under attack. He was of course wrong :p
You can read more on the link /u/sacundim posted:
https://www.chess.com/article/view/do-grandmasters-know-the-rules-of-chess
The lichess app (http://lichess.org/ or "lichess" on the play/app store) is super amazing for being free, by the way. It has:
(Some are more serious than others)
Play against other players or against the computer in any time controls, solve tactics, watch live games, use lots of free analysis or learning tools. It's also an open-source project (https://github.com/ornicar/lila) and I've seen its main creator be pretty active in this subreddit, even respond to feedback.
yes they have a deal now with Fide https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-com-fide-world-championship-broadcast
Fide maybe likes to have chess.com as their platform now. The Olympiad, Isle of Man Swiss, and Online Nations Cup were all Fide events streamed and hosted by chess.com so there is familiarity there.
Any time you have an endgame problem with 6 pieces or less (including kinds) you can use an endgame database like this In your game yes it is a theoretical draw if black and white play correctly.
10 opening rules
OPEN with a CENTER PAWN. DEVELOP with threats. KNIGHTS before BISHOPS. DON'T move the same piece twice. Make as FEW PAWN MOVES as possible in the opening. DON'T bring out your QUEEN too early. CASTLE as soon as possible, preferably on the KING SIDE. ALWAYS PLAY TO GAIN CONTROL OF THE CENTER. Try to maintain at least ONE PAWN in the center. DON'T SACRIFICE without a clear and adequate reason.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/ten-chess-opening-rules
Rule 11: Don’t hang your pieces
Records: https://www.chess.com/leaderboard/rush?type=all_time [#1 is Hikaru at 55 as of 20190416T1836Z].
Ray Robson: https://www.chess.com/stats/puzzles/spicycaterpillar?type=puzzle-rush#recent [record: 58]
What?? There's a rule re: no anons for the top lists?
What's the deal with Hikaru "leaking" that it was Jeffery Xiong? Did he really believe it was Xiong, or was he intentionally trying to mislead?
That is indeed hard. But you can calculate Elo here. If Hikaru plays 9 games against 2500 Elo rated opponents then he can lose 1 and draw another one and still gain 6,8 Elo points.
Let's say he loses 3 and wins 6. Then he will drop 23,2 Elo points. Which is quite a lot, but still better than losing your rank. And this is basically a worst case scenario where he does pretty badly.
"Magnus hasn't lost a tiebreak since 2006"
Chess.com recently released CAPS ( Computer Aggregated Precision Score ) statistical analysis - predicting that Magnus has an 85% chance to win if the match is decided by tiebreaks. Currently Carlsen has a ~90 point lead in rapid, and a ~170 point lead in blitz.
So this means that Carlsen has a clear incentive to play for a draw right? What stops him from deliberately choosing theoretically drawish / super safe boring lines?? It almost sounds like despite being the underdog, Caruana NEEDS to win the in the classical section - a draw will likely lead to a loss in the tiebreaks.
> don't analyse games of other people
Wait, isn't that what GMs and most of the players do when they walk around playing hall during the game? Remember that https://www.chess.com/article/view/an-argentine-nightmare
The 10 Commandments of Chess You Need to Know (courtesy of /u/danielrensch)
Protect the King
Use All Your Pieces
Know the Value of Your Pieces
Control the Center
Make a Plan
Watch for Checks and Captures
If You Find a Good Move, Look for a Better One.
Don't Play Hope Chess
Learn From the Masters
Consider Your Opponent's Plan
Here is the tool. It requires Python and is best enjoyed from the kitty terminal emulator to display the board images. Though, you are also welcome to use this as a backend for a more sophisticated GUI.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions for how to improve the tool!
if you want to get better, it's not just about playing. you need to study chess, by reading books, watching videos, looking up your openings, practicing tactics/endgames.
and practice better redditing, put a better title next time.
Someone tell me how then this happened, which decided a spot for Canada in the recent World Cup:
https://www.chess.com/news/view/controversial-finish-to-canadian-chess-championship-5047
> With six seconds remaining, Noritsyn played ...d1, scrambled to find a Black queen, and with none in sight, grabbed a captured rook. He announced "queen" and turned it upside down on d1 before pressing his clock with four seconds remaining.
> That's when the onlooking Chief Arbiter IA Pierre Dénommée intervened by waving his hands and stopping the clock. He declared the move to be legal, but for the piece to be played as a rook ...
> But was there one there? The arbiters didn't have the benefit of the video, but go back and watch the climactic moments again. The Black queen was not in the captured pieces pile when Noritsyn played ...d1. She came from Sambuev's left hand after the move was completed. Sambuev does not appear to have taken her in the final moments; she had been cradled in his left hand for more than three minutes and well before any pawns were close to promotion.
By virtue of generally having weaker opposition, Capablanca’s games may be more instructive than Carlsen’s - it’s easier to see plans being carried out.
Also, some of his games are classics that should be known by every player who wants to cultivate a good sense of chess culture (e.g. rook endings against Janowski in 1914, Tartakower in New York 1924, and Kan in Moscow 1936)
I’d recommend Chernev’s book on the guy. Clear enough explanations to reach lower rated club players, but Capablanca’s play is so good that stronger players can probably get something from it too:
Capablanca's Best Chess Endings: 60 Complete Games https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486242498/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UDz3CbBNV2D3A
Great question. The time control is 15+2. Here's an earlier announcement that covers tons of details not in this teams announcement. https://www.chess.com/news/u-s-chess-league-becomes-pro-chess-league-5789
So I clicked source to retrieve the PGN so I could put this game into lichess, and I noticed that under the site header, there already was a URL: http://lichess.org/hysPXToC.
Interestingly enough, if you go to this URL, you'll find that, in that game at least, White did not play 36. e5, but actually blundered mate in one with 36. Rd3?? I don't know what to make of this. Did OP alter the game in an attempt to deceive the members of /r/chess? OP, pls respond.
That would be like deciding who to be in a relationship with, based on an objective evaluation conducted by 5 of your friends on a number of prospective partners.
You're forgetting the most important factor in which openings you should play - you should LIKE them. If Stockfish suggests the Petroff against e4, and you think it's about as exciting as watching beige paint dry, are you really going to put in a couple of hundred hours studying it? Or are you going to lose interest?
If you can get your hands on it, this is a quite useful book to read before you start building your repertoire:
buy a tournament set and practice taking notation. Join your chess federation (USCF if you are US-based) and you are ready now.
You can start with a local club night if you like. I recommend it, but its not necessary.
In the US, most tournaments are Swiss-style and have sections divided by rating. You would play in the lowest/unrated section. Swiss means each round the field is re-seeded by win-loss, so the later rounds have the most balanced games. There is no elimination, you play all rounds.
I would politely but strongly disagree that we do nothing :) That said, online cheating is definitely a challenge in the modern chess world. Here's some information about our efforts: https://www.chess.com/article/view/online-chess-cheating
If you see a member that you are suspicious of, please do use the report button on the member's profile page.
If it's ambiguous you put the file piece starts at before the destination square https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-notation#avoiding-ambiguity
Aron Nimzovich. It is cool to downplay him nowadays, especially with his pompous nature and silly antics, but he had a huge impact in the way chess is played.
He was a man who praised his own moves a lot while calling his opponents idiots (even when he loses) and his analysis are full of mistakes but this was before computers.
And yet he was extraordinarily creative and saw a new way to play the game. He may not be the only hypermodern GM or the earliest one, but he was its strongest advocate and hyped it till it became mainstream. (At which point ppl dissed Nimzo cos come on all these ideas are "obvious", i.e Yasser Seirawan.)
One of the soundest and strongest defences to 1.d4 (the Nimzo Indian) is named after him. Many other lines also bear his name (Nimzo-larsen Attack, Nimzovich Defence, Nimzovich variation, etc).
Nimzovich was nuts; but you kinda have to be one to challenge the mainstream.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/aron-nimzowitsch---the-greatest-opening-innovator
https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-father-of-modern-chess
A well-known example is the puzzle presented on this page: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/fun-with-chess/where-is-the-king-retrograde-analysis
The white king can only exist on a single square on the board. Any other square and we have an impossible position.
There's an Italian FM on chess.com who uses a move-order trick to sidestep the Philidor (and the Petroff). He plays 1.e4 e5 2.d4 first. Then on 2...exd4 he plays 3.Nf3 (he could of course play in Gambit style with the Danish 3.c3). Then if Black plays 3...Nc6 he finally plays 4.c3 (4.Nxd4 would arrive at the Scotch Game) arriving at the Goring Gambit for which the normal move order is 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.c3.
You haven't told us your cool gambit but if it involves an early d4 I hope the above helps. Something to note for the Black defenders who use 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6. You can kill two birds with one stone by using the same system against both the Goring Gambit and Ponziani's Opening (3.c3) by declining the Goring Gambit with 4...Nf6, or against Ponziani's by responding with 3...Nf6 4.d4 exd4. On 5.e5 you have either 5...Nd5 which I think was played by Carlsen, or the sharp 5...Ne4
I know far too much about openings ;)
Great feature. Before we all start shitting on Chess.com (for whatever reason...), though, I'd like to add that Chess.com has had a very similar feature like this for a very long time.
Edit: Lol. I have no idea why I'm being downvoted. I guess it's a sin to say that everything Lichess does might not be the most innovative creative groundbreaking thing of all time
Hey man. I think you should look at this distribution graph. http://en.lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz
Basically, the average player on lichess is around 1600 rating in most game types, so obviously 1200 on lichess is a decent amount under average.
If you look at chess.com, the average player is much lower https://www.chess.com/livechess/players?type=Standard - around 1100 - 1200.
So, to be average in either of these distribution pools, you need 1600 in lichess and 1200 in chess.com. Achieving 1200 in lichess is much easier than in chess.com because you're still 400 below the average pool of players.
I think with some casual playing you won't struggle at all to get a 1200 rating in lichess, but also if youre playing casually ratings shouldn't matter much anyway - either way have fun, and if you wanna play lemme know (I'm still very much a beginner).
In case you haven't checked it out yet, and assuming your girlfriend is okay with playing on desktop or laptop, I suggest lichess.org
It has a correspondence mode that lets you and your girlfriend start a game without the use of a clock - you can log in whenever you want and make a move or look at the position, additionally you can personalize settings like at least one move every 24 hours, or not more than one move per day etc.
I think you don't even need to register, you can just access the running game via the link it gives you once started.
​
Is this what you're looking for?
Considering that https certificates are practically free nowadays there is really no excuse to not have the entire website run over https (or at the very least the registration/login). This should be the number one priority fix in my opinion and it makes me question how secure the rest of the system really is...
Well, the ridiculous dogma here is that beginners don't need openings, which is why no one will help you.
A simple plan for black is to play the French Defense vs 1.e4 and the Tarrasch Defense vs everything else. These are not "systems" per se, but the pawn structure is the same, and you will develop pieces to similar spots.
Both defenses are known for counterattacking with active piece play.
I learned them from Jeremy Silman's article recommending this setup, "Creating an easy opening repertoire for Black." You can find it here:
Hope this helps!
edit to add: This is a easy way to get started, but these defenses do have the depth to carry you much further forward if you like. And if you decide to move on to something else, they will help to teach you good habits.
you're right man. has anyone here actually played OTB chess at a club or tournament? lol
OP sounds like he's looking exactly for something like this. That way, you can also get a clock either to include or add later on. I know it doesn't look like 'cool gift material' but it's probably what everyone else at the club is using. Maybe in the future though you can find a cool set to use at home!
u/DWrevilO is a great parent for not only looking to get their son a good gift, but getting some input from a relevant subreddit!
As much as I love Chess Tempo I feel like CT-ART 4.0 deserves to be mentioned as well. It's a little different than most tactics trainers in that it's a complete, structured training course that teaches you each theme in turn while increasing the difficulty progressively (up to 2400 Elo). I like it, it's very pedagogical.
Thanks for the reply again Sam. Could you help clarify this further?
In the opening book, he looked up that it's important to play f6 and then plays f6 later in the game https://www.chess.com/live/game/4897912539?username=iminthewings
He has clearly received a helpful concept from the opening book, as it says "play f6 as soon as possible", and had not yet done so.
I also disagree that move 14 is "long past any opening theory". For many openings, move 14 is still very much opening theory.
I'm not understanding why it's fine for him to do it here, even though it influenced his play, but not okay elsewhere. The rules are now becoming confusing. Is it really because he's a diamond member?
Practice and knowing a lot of different positions.
Some coach would tell you "When you have an outside passed pawn, you want to trade rooks and queens, because those are the pieces who has the easiest time controlling those pawns". I don't think like that. I just calculated some lines, and thought f3-g4 was annoying, because white get attacking chances. If I trade the queens, they disappear. And the rooks come quite naturally (especially since I traded the d-pawn for the e3-pawn, creating a great square for the knight on d5). Knowing that the endgame with knight vs bishop is just winning comes from experience.
Aagaard sees the same from his work with Gelfand. Gelfand quickly traded rooks in some game, not giving it any thought. Aagaard asked why, and the answer was: "Obviously, when you have more space, rooks need to be traded". Not at all obvious to me, but when you got 2700, that is just random knowledge you use.
Jeremy Silman recommends in his "How to Reassess your Chess" to think of imbalances. I kinda use that method (combined with looking for worst-placed piece and my opponent ideas) to play positional chess. Always try to improve the worst-placed piece, and if there is an imbalance (in my example knight vs bishop and pawn structure), try to make the knight better than the bishop. I did that by creating a beautiful square on d5 (and my opponent failed by not playing f3 and either g4 or e4, making the knight unhappy on f6).
This is why looking at games are very important. Inventing new ideas in a lot of positions seems to be fun at club level, but knowing the good ideas just gives more points. Sad but true. Luckily, g4 in random positions is now a classic https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-shabalov-shirov-gambit .
In the old days, Spassky and Korchnoi perpetrated this:
https://www.chess.com/article/view/korchnoi-spassky-candidates-1977-spassky-begins-a-streak
> The psychology of the match showed a public face in game 10 when Spassky stayed in his relaxation area or box, except to make his moves at the board. Spassky followed the game on a demonstration board in his private space.
And then Spassky took the match to the twilight zone:
> During game 14, Spassky had escalated his psychological gambit by wearing a silver visor. Later, in game 17, Spassky wore the visor, sunglasses, and diving goggles.
I also found the lichess AI to be really difficult. Playing real people at a low rating is the best way to go.
If you want to play an AI in a browser, try Chess.com's AI. If you're on iOS, I recommend the Shredder app, as it also has an Elo scaling AI.
Other than that, practice tactics. There's a free Chess Tactics app for iOS that I enjoy. There's also ChessTempo.com.
That's an underrated video, should be posted more often.
Aside for David Pruess' guide, this here is very useful: https://www.chess.com/blog/CharlyAZ/a-hardcore-guide-to-analyze-your-chess-games
Don't use engine unless as your last resort.
Chess.com doesn't use Elo: it uses Glicko (or Glicko-2).
A key feature of Glicko is RD (Rating Deviation). RD measures how accurate your rating is, with a high RD meaning "inaccurate" and a low RD meaning "accurate".
When you first join Chess.com, your RD is high, because a new player's strength is unknown. For this reason, your rating will vary a lot after each game. As you start to play regularly, your RD gets lower and your rating is considered more accurate. At this point, your rating changes less after each game.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-ratings---how-they-work
Sorry, Anton - have to post it :) It was too instructive to pass up!
[pgn][Event "Casual game"] [Site "http://lichess.org/OYvGmCLQ"] [Date "2015.06.03"] [White "Fins"] [Black "AntonSquaredMe"] [Result "1-0"] [WhiteElo "1773"] [BlackElo "1277"] [PlyCount "25"] [Variant "Standard"] [TimeControl "1800+30"] [ECO "D15"] [Opening "Slav Defence, Three Knights Variation"] [Annotator "lichess.org"]
I know, I know, there were 14 moves by the book. I still feel really good though XD.
It was a Ruy Lopez, Marshall attack.
This gonna get parodied at r/anarchychess isn't it.
I was curious so I looked up the game, unsure what your upset about. First of all your opponent was winning and is the one who blundered the draw. Second your you got checked and then played 10 moves after that, you played the best move 3 times in those 10 moves. Third, this is chess, stop whining and geaux agane.
This is from chess.com's description of the Carlsen-Kajarkin match
> Carlsen selected the box containing his name, allowing him to draw first. Inside his second box was a white king, and so even before tomorrow's opening move, he seems to be making all the right ones already.
So it looks like a "choice" was made (Carlsen chose between two boxes each containing an unknown color), it just didn't mean that the choice was between color preferences. If it was done the same way this time, the report was not exactly false, but the wording should have been more precise.
chess.com rating, which uses glicko see here.
As a side note it is Elo, since it is named after the creator Arpad Elo, and not a acronym or abbreviation.
That's because you haven't seen what the good blogs used to be like.
https://www.chess.com/blog/juniortay/instructive-games-from-the-3rd-balestier-blitz-event
https://www.chess.com/blog/CoachJKane/pawn-power-lessons-from-the-gm
Are recent examples, but 1-2 years ago these kind of blogs used to be everywhere and updated weekly.
Since everyone seems determined to avoid telling you a place where you can play easily without registering: lichess.org makes this as simple as giving your friend a url to click on. Then, you're playing!
I think to get the most out of the book, you probably need to be at least 1500 OTB. The book covers a specific strategical concept in the opening, middlegame and endgame. It's not meant to be a comprehensive book on chess, but rather a deep dive on an essential but oft-overlooked aspect of chess strategy - initiative.
In addition to illustrative example games, there's plenty of exercises where you have to figure out who has the initiative to move their pieces. Sometimes you have to rely on board position. Sometimes on external hints like little black/white dots or squares at the corner of the board. Sometimes you have to rely on intuition. The book goes over all of these methods.
I encourage you to read the foreword by Kasparov. The pre-order page is up already and has the table of contents too.
Don't buy that. That looks like the worst most annoying board ever.
If you want a board you can take to tournaments try this (amazon).
The wooden boards I saw on amazon were really not impressive. Most of the 12x12 and 15x15 ones are rather annoying to play on just from experience.
The Art of War is a perfectly fine book if you want to learn how to deploy your chariots against the Count of Chu and the Duke of Wei.
Its use in terms of self-improvement and obviously also for chess, is a scam, like most of that entire industry is. You should probably return that book.
Chess King (the makers of CT-ART) has an app for that. It presents you with positions where your opponent has a threat and you have to figure out the best way to counter.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chessking.android.learn.advanceddefense
> How is this stopped?
With difficulty.
One thing to realise is that the first internet chess server was started on a Monday, and the first internet computer cheater started on the Tuesday. They have been working on catching this for 25 years.
On the internet, they can't see you, however, the server can have computers running to monitor you. I will not share all the tricks - primarily because I don't know them all. They do involve monitoring how computer-like your moves are, your timing, your cursor movements. It's not perfect, but it is by now really really good at it. Can it be beaten? Of course it can. Can it be beaten by all those beginners who log in to a chess server for the first time and think they're really clever and have found a way to beat the system? Ha! Not a chance.
How about in real tournaments? Well, there it requires more effort to cheat, and also more effort to catch them. But it happens. The last one I heard of, was this one. There was even a GM who recently got caught using a phone in the toilet.
The classiest one was the one who used two helpers, who'd place themselves in the room in a code signifying how to move.
But we still catch those. Is their quality of play inconsistent? Can they explain their moves? Do they go to the bathroom on their own move rather than yours (BIG red flag)?
It's still a work in progress, and suggestions are welcomed.
I don't have any experiences with coaches, here's just my two cents:
I hope you will find a good coach for your needs!
You can memorize all the openings you want, but if you don't understand the theory behind the moves, then you'll probably get slaughtered during the middle game, especially if they do something unexpected. There are so many combinations that it will very likely occur.
Memorizing end games may help, but I think there are just so many combinations that realistically only a handful will ever come up. So then begs the question, how do you know what to memorize? It'll be like winning the lottery. Learning the theory is much more time-effective and enjoyable, like how to play Rook Pawn end games, etc.
>Would this be possible?
According to this: http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database-info.html The endgame tables used here are greater than 1 Terrabyte of data, and that's just for 6 pieces. The openings have even more combinations, so good luck memorizing those.
>Are there any examples of this?
Many pros definitely study/memorize openings, maybe to the extent that you are thinking of, but they tend to remember a lot about their past games through theory and practice. As an example of great preparation check out Anand vs. Aronian @ Tata Steel 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCrU9410vSo Anand plays some crazy moves, but he knows that they are sound due to prior preparation.
chess.com stopped their computer chess tournament briefly and set all the engines to play the remaining Game 12: https://www.chess.com/cccc
So far 5 drawn games and 2 wins for Black, so even with all these engines "near perfect" play (compared to humans) it is not easy to win this as black.
We probably won't know his full team until after the match. Players usually like to keep at least some of their seconds secret because knowing who they are working with can give some indication of what they are preparing (based on what openings, etc their seconds are experts in).
Before the Candidates, Caruana did some training with Lenier Dominguez, Christian Chirila, and Alejandro Ramirez. That doesn't necessarily mean he'll work with them for the Carlsen match, but he seemed to enjoy working with them, so they could be possibilities.
I'm generally skeptical of typologies like these. For several reasons they often fail to capture the nuance of differences in players. And worse, it's often debatable whether a player falls on one extreme or the other. Ultimately, I think there are better ways to discuss style.
For a very interesting discussion on chess players' playing styles, here's an article by Kramnik where he discusses all the world champions before him and how the played: https://www.chess.com/blog/spektrowski/vladimir-kramnik-from-steinitz-to-kasparov
Found this thread at chess.com which might be helpful:
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/chess-store-opinions
btw, I found it by typing this into google:
site:chess.com chess store germany
In my experience, the faster the time control, the more streaky you tend to be in general. You don't have the time to carefully consider the position, so you default to playing on instinct. If you're on a losing streak and your confidence is suffering, your instincts fall apart, so it's easy for that to snowball into a bad losing streak in blitz/bullet.
Conversely, if you lose enough and your rating dips low enough, eventually you start playing people rated far enough below you that you pick up some easy wins, gain some confidence, then climb your rating back up.
I don't think true consistency is possible at faster time controls. It's just too easy to make a mistake somewhere or use too much time and lose in a time scramble. Heck, look at Nakamura's rating graph. Arguably one of the best blitz players in the world and he has ~150-200 point swings.
Ultimately, the healthiest thing to do is just to accept that the streaks will occur and mentally trick yourself into not getting so hung up on individual losses that it affects your performance in subsequent games. Easier said than done, I know.
lichess blitz and standard ratings are significantly higher for most players than fide/uscf.
https://www.chess.com/blog/smarterchess/chess-rating-comparison-2016
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GcVG_slcTUJfi0sQMeaxes_jwYFBrfWaR1ejSSOH-SM/edit#gid=0
Thanks to /u/smarterchess for compiling this information, as it's stuff that tons of people wonder about. Hopefully for the 2017 analysis more sample points can be taken somehow.
Their policy states:
>The following behavior is prohibited and can result in your being kicked or banned: (...) spamming or advertising competitive websites (...)
It's interesting that they also disallow "intentionally pointless/distracting posts". Isn't that basically 95% of their forum content? 😁
I can understand being annoyed by this, but, as someone else already mentioned, this is a business, and these decisions are financial decisions.
It's not "essential" to know any opening. You need to understand plans for typical pawn structures, you need to know the pawn breaks. A lot of openings transpose and then people become confused because they memorised the opening lines, rather than studying the plans and the structures.
Once you understand these, you will know which ones you like playing and can look to avoid certain structures and transpose into familiar ones.
If you are a premium member of chess.com, this video might help. It explains a lot of the typical structures in a nutshell, although you might be able to find some free resources too:
https://www.chess.com/video/player/pawn-structure-101-every-opening-explained
Well, the answer to the question is you can be sure that you will be beaten within a certain number of moves because of a position where a player has forcing moves leading to mate. In other words, no matter how your opponent responds, even if they play with perfect accuracy, they will be checkmated if you also play with perfect accuracy.
The Star Trek game is a chess variant that I know nothing about. However, forcing moves are just that, forced.