|
I used to play a lot in school, but not well, maybe 16 or 17 years ago. Mostly because we were allowed to bring chess boards to school and I didn't always go back immediately after. Haven't played since. I never studied openings or anything like that, and I didn't play anyone good. Like looking up the opening moves yesterday, all of them were like "Huh, that's probably better than what I used to do." For reference, I always liked to build something similar to this:  It's probably horrendously inefficient BUT I LIKE HOW IT LOOKED DAMMIT Anyway I haven't really played since then, except to play a few rounds of fun time waster Really Bad Chess at the easiest difficulty. Nothing like playing a game with 6 Queens on the frontlines from the start.
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 11:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 23:36 |
|
|
quote:
As you correctly surmised, this is a pretty weak development, yeah  The knights aren't placed very centrally, only affecting a few squares on the your own side of the board that will most likely be largely irrelevant in this stage of the game, and are neither protecting nor attacking anything of interest. The bishops are only attacking squares to the sides of the board instead of the more important centre, and aren't protecting anything either. The centre pawns are only protected by a single pawn each, making it easy for a determined opponent to pile on the pressure by attacking them with multiple pieces while you'll have a hard time giving them extra protection besides moving up the knights to b3 and g3 (wasting tempo by moving them twice compared to initially developing them to c3 and f3 as conventional wisdom suggests). On top of this, moving the f-pawn forwards opens up the e1-h4 diagonal for scary checking shenanigans. Generally, you want to be very cautious about moving up the f3 (f7 for black) pawn before castling. Another weakness are the hanging (unprotected) pawns on b2 and g2 - a queen taking on g2 in this position would be pretty ruinous. Don't take this as a harsh critique of your high school chess playing self - it's a good case study on what makes developments strong or weak, and nicely ties into the subject of positional advantage (as opposed to material advantage i.e. "having more stuff left") The problem with this theoretical development is mostly that it is extremely passive, and wastes the advantage of playing white by doing nothing to challenge the opponents' development.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 16:42
|
|
|
 1.e2-e4 c7-c5 You have 24 hours to decide on a move. The Sicilian Defence is probably the most well researched opening in the game, so remember my earlier suggestion to regard the book moves as options to choose from and to consider carefully the pros and cons of each choice, as well as remembering that me and the mentors are around if you have any questions or need any pointers! Again, at least for the opening I'll consider any questions that can be answered without suggesting specific moves fair play! Also: Although chess if famous for being a game where you need to be able to calculate several moves ahead, I'm willing to argue that this is at least in part overstated. Being able to visualise just two or three moves ahead will get you far, at least on a novice level, as long as you are able to see everything that is happening on the board. This includes both your own tactical options, as well as any potential plays by your opponent. In the light of this, I'm introducing a new exercise for teams to do when it's not their turn: Try to find the best move your opponent has to your last move, and try to figure out what your best response is to that move!
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 19:45
|
|
|
It looks like the only back-row pieces they can move next are the knights and queen, and the queen is rather cramped. Wiki says Nf3 is the next typical move, which would commit us to moving stuff up on the king's side. Nc3 would seem to build up on our first move more, but I can see that we wouldn't be able to move out the bishop without getting more pawns out of the way first (and c5 is making doing that annoying), which isn't a problem with Nf3. So Nf3 is the move for me.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 20:50
|
|
|
Let's do Nf3 and see if they stick to the book.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 21:18
|
|
|
I called it! Well I didn't call Sicilian defense, but I did call that Black would play conventionally. Okay, so wikipedia and chess.com basically say that there's only one real response to this which is Nf3 from us. Stats on chess.com show it's played in 320k of the 400k Sicilian defense games loaded and wikipedia has games that run that was at around 75%. So after all of that I made this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJxicEQp8Q4 It's a video of me being an idiot and trying to figure out how I might play the game, following Covski's exercise. It turns out according to Wikipedia I entirely miss the most common response and go straight to an offensive that's about throwing Book theory chess out the window. A few questions arise. The first is, is having a video showing what moves look like helpful or annoying and should I keep making them? The second is, were I to keep making them should I change anything to help better show things? That aside, this was me basically assuming we're running Nf3 and then playing around with Cov's exercise to get my brain juices flowing. In the future I'll try to show all potential moves and other responses and probably be a little more methodical. If people want to argue against Nf3 they should.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 21:20
|
|
|
Apologies Cov if you think the video is out of thread communication. I don't think it is, but happy to delete them and stop it if it irks you.
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 21:27
|
|
|
Yeah I was considering the strengths and weaknesses of Nc3 too but I think it's worth developing King Side and continuing to take advantage of tempo. Uh, if I'm understanding tempo correctly. This threatens less spaces than Nf3, and leaves a bunch of un-threatened holes. Black can develop their own knights in response, or develop their pawns and gain control of center. In return... we can try to coax an earlier confrontation? Man iunno. So looking at it from the position of Right Now, I'm voting Nf3
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 23:07
|
|
|
Yorkshire Tea posted:Apologies Cov if you think the video is out of thread communication. I don't think it is, but happy to delete them and stop it if it irks you. Not at all! The rule is only in place so that observers and any of the players in the thread can easily follow the discussion without having to join external sites or reading through chat logs by the people who happened to be available at a certain time. I think the video format is a great way to discuss move options, especially since many people have an easier time learning that way rather than by reading lots of words 
|
|
#
?
Sep 13, 2017 23:59
|
|
|
Nf3 because it has the best number of spaces threatened. Basically what Yorkshire Tea said, though I don't think they'll pin the knight to the king, they'll probably move their bishop to threaten ours if we continue on with Bb5.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 00:18
|
|
|
Without "the book", I probably wouldn't consider Ng1-f3 at all, as a novice it seems kind of detached from the previous two moves. But then, it's far too early to be specifically countering what the opponent just did, and as a defensive move nothing else covers as many squares. I guess my initial thought, ignoring existing advice, would be something like Nb1-a3 to threaten the moved pawn's next square, but actually thinking ahead at all it makes sense why Nf3 is the move to take. I forget if I've mentioned it, but I intend to make a point of explaining how I think about a move before learning how it should actually be done, just to see what could be improved about my approach. Of course, there are a lot more options this early in the game, so that's a bit hard right now. E: Bolded the longform AlphaKretin fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Sep 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 01:41
|
|
|
I'd be trying to reinforce my pawn at this point. Ng1-f3 isn't something I'd normally play. I think I tend to get too wrapped up in protecting material pieces and forego tempo.
CascadeBeta fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Sep 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 12:49
|
|
|
A friendly reminder to use long notation for moves (for example Ng1-f3 rather than just Nf3), it makes it easier for people to follow along
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 12:53
|
|
|
This is the part of chess I'm really bad at; I'm much better at reacting to things than planning things so I'm really out of my depth here but I'm trying to understand -- would someone be able to explain our options to me as if I was five? My instinct would usually just be to move another pawn forward a bit but that's not good tactics at all and I'm here to learn after all!
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 14:16
|
|
|
 My vote is also for Ng1-f3. I read up a bit and I think I can summarise what I understood from pursuing this line: - Black responds with c7-c5 because they want to threaten the board at a later time, by putting direct pressure on d4 - Their logic is basically, "Ok, you can have that side, we won't fight for it, but we want to establish on our side and we're definitely fighting for the middle." - So we move our Knight to f3 to establish a presence on the right but more importantly, we are fighting for the middle too. - A lot of the lines that I skimmed through have the next move being Nb1-c3. Again, to fight for the centre. I'm probably missing a lot of nuances, but I hope this helped a little bit, Faerie Fortune. As for our other options that you asked about, here are other popular moves: - Nb1-c3. We fight for the centre with the other knight, and it protects our pawn. Because it's protecting our pawn, it threatens one less space than the right. A lot of times, apparently, the next move is Ng1-f3, so this move is oftentimes interchangeable than the one we're considering. - c2-c3. We are matching their leftside development with our own, and we are allowing our Queen to be released on the left. - f2-f4. Opening up more of the right side. The pawns do not inherently protect each other though. - d2-d4. We challenge the pawn they opened with. If they continue to develop on their side, we just take that pawn. Apparently if White doesn't take the pawn, this move is totally not worth it. Maybe in an expert's game they might do something to prevent this, but as self-proclaimed beginners, I think most of us, including the black team, want to take as many pieces as possible and we probably can't pull this off. Yorkshire Tea, nice vid. I appreciate the effort you took to explain your thought process! You do you. I also am tempted to attack and check everything. Covski, when you put a new move, do you think you could put in the FEN code so that we can copy paste the board state into Lichess editor? I realise it's a bit more work. Artelier fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Sep 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 15:08
|
|
|
I also appreciate the effort video, Yorkshire Tea. I just forgot to say so in my last post.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 16:10
|
|
|
From the other thread, regarding how to deal with checks:Covski posted:You always want to get out of check with as forcing a move as possible - if you for example can block an early check by moving up a piece or pawn to a square where you were intending it to go anyway, no loss of tempo is suffered. If you can block the check in such a way that you attack the checking piece or another undefended piece, for example via discovery (when you move a piece out of the way to allow another piece to attack something), it is quite possible that the original attacker is the one who loses a tempo when they have to retreat their checking piece or protect something elsewhere on the board. Artelier posted:Covski, when you put a new move, do you think you could put in the FEN code so that we can copy paste the board state into Lichess editor? I realise it's a bit more work. Uh, not easily unfortunately  I don't think the program I'm using has any good way to output an FEN code that I can see. It would probably be easier if you just use lLchess links from the last turn and update them to reflect the latest move?Faerie Fortune posted:This is the part of chess I'm really bad at; I'm much better at reacting to things than planning things so I'm really out of my depth here but I'm trying to understand -- would someone be able to explain our options to me as if I was five? My instinct would usually just be to move another pawn forward a bit but that's not good tactics at all and I'm here to learn after all! I think Artelier's reply to this was good. Just to reiterate once more - the opening is all about controlling important squares (mostly the centre) and getting your pieces out and active, while preventing your opponent from doing the same. In this case black is aiming to gain space on the queen side and hopefully eventually be able to trade their c-pawn for your d-pawn, thus gaining a pawn majority in the centre. Having more pawns in the centre is a Good Thing. You want to find a way to keep pursuing your overarching goal of control and development while dealing with black's latent threat. For the record, if black hadn't done anything to threaten the centre, moving up your queen-pawn to the centre would have been a very standard move.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 16:50
|
|
|
 lichess's import tool can read short algebraic notation!So to get the current board status, copy and import: 1.e4 c5
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 16:58
|
|
|
 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Black has 24 hours to decide on a move. What do you think is the opponent's best move, and what is your best counter to that move? In light of oldskool's revelation that notation can be imported into Lichess, I'll be reverting to using short algebraic notations for the updates. Please continue using long notation when discussing moves though!
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 20:08
|
|
|
Covski posted:
If Black does Ng8-f6, they'll be threatening our advancing pawn, and we know that having good control of the middle of the board is key. Then again, it's "just" a pawn, so I'm not sure how good a move that would be overall. If that does happen, though, we can do Bf1-d3 to threaten their knight if they take our pawn on the following turn. If that happens that bishop isn't threatened, either. Keep in mind that this is with no research, so it's probably all horribly wrong.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 21:04
|
|
|
Remember that everyone is new here. Don't be afraid to be wrong or speak out if you're lost.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 21:21
|
|
|
Hello friends, I am far too hungover this morning, so I have no strategic input at the moment. I'll cook up something in the evening when I don't want to kill my brain.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 09:49
|
|
|
I concur with Missingno, Ng8-f6 looks like a pretty solid move for basically the same reasons as our own most recent, threatening a lot of squares around the centre of the board.
AlphaKretin fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Sep 15, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 10:24
|
|
|
Seems like a few of us think they will go Ng8-f6. Here's what would look like.  We could move Nb1-c3, which I noted earlier as a move interchangeable with our previous turn. We set up both Knights on board, like so:  Epicmissingno suggested that we could follow up with Bf1-d3.   (Whoops I forgot to do black's hypothetical move at the end there) I think we could also go Bf1-d2. A similar position that protects our Knight, and when the Knight moves we get to be a bit more aggressive.   Or maybe we move c2-c3. It opens up our Queen and helps fight for the crucial d4, which Black has been threatening with their opening move.  But! What if they don't move their Knight and instead do something else? Apparently a common move is d7-d6 instead. Here's how that would theoretically play out.     It seems like we win on position, but it'd be Black's turn at the end of that, and I'm not sure what their ideal turn is. Moving our Knight on 2 allows us to take the centre like this, but our centre pawn is now stuck there, unprotected. My guess is black goes Nb8-c6, which threatens our Knight, forcing us to move it away or make a move to protect it. Or possibly they do e7-e5 for a similar attack with a pawn instead, and opening their black square bishop. Don't think I have much time during this weekend, so not sure if I can try analysing this in-depth then. But I hope this helps you imagine future scenarios! Or maybe this is all bad theory and they do something else entirely. Who knows? PS - If you guys want, share your weekend plans! I'm in Malaysia, it's Friday 8pm and in about 24 hours I'll be at a small show as a feature* stand up comedian. On Sunday I've got rehearsals for a small monologue I'm doing the first week of October. * Feature meaning they asked me if I wanted to do a longer spot and I said yes, not feature as in I'm a super popular and amazings comedian in the local scene.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 13:06
|
|
|
Its my sisters' 30th birthday tomorrow, so today I'm making her a cake and tomorrow evening she's having a house party in her new house that has a goddamn hot tub in the back garden so I'm super stoked. Also I get to hang out with her adorable english bulldog puppy just look at this little wrinkle  
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 13:21
|
|
|
If the black team decides to go with Ng8-f6, I like the idea of responding with Bf1-d3. This is mainly to protect our pawn. First blood must be drawn, but it shall not be in this way! Also, the Chess by Post app is cool, but always makes me think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weAcVf6QUX4 The Mighty Moltres fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Sep 15, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 15:59
|
|
|
That is indeed an incredibly good wrinkle.  We are perhaps getting somewhat ahead of ourselves, but another benefit of Bf1-d3, or Bf1-anything, is that it opens up the option for a castle should it become relevant.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 16:34
|
|
|
 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 You have 24 hours to decide on a move.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 21:41
|
|
|
Okay so good thing, this has run about as I predicted it would. In my original video where I tried to predict in advance I suggested Bf1-Bb5+ which is an aggressive choice. Chess.com shows about 15k games where this is taken. But crucially White's winrate drops to around 31% if this move is played. The response which has something like 100k games is d2-d4. This has a winrate for white of around 40%. I'm going to suggest that purely based on winrate stats and number of times played, but I'll put up a video looking at it analytically in a bit.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 22:08
|
|
|
I take that vote back. I've seen something cool on the Bf1-Bb5+ line that I want to suggest.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 23:00
|
|
|
Two videos! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psEvCR2MvE8 Firstly trying to talk about Faeriefortune's move pawns forward question. Secondly talking about the standard line on d2-d4 and something weird and cool I've seen on the Bf1-Bb5+ line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzOLlIXgWCY Mainly I think if we go for Bb5+ but then don't take the bishop exchange we can instead create a really strong line of pawns that wins us the centre pretty hard. It's off book and unexpected, but it appears to have a really respectable winrate. So yeah, I'm saying Bf1-Bb5+
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 23:42
|
|
|
I vote for Bf1-Bb5+. It forces them to keep a knight or Bishop at our mercy, opens us up to a castle, and if we take the exchange then it's fewer pieces for us to worry about. I think following it up with moving up a pawn in the centre (or maybe the queen?) might help us get more board control as well.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 02:33
|
|
|
The thought of putting them in check so early with Bf1-Bb5+ is hilariously aggressive, let's do it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 03:15
|
|
|
Not sure I'm seeing the point of checking them. If we do, they either move the knight or the bishop up. If Knight moves Nb8-c6 and we take it, they use their pawn to b7c6. If Bishop moves Bc8-d7, we either back off or take it. If we back off, we basically wasted a turn, and their Bishop now threatens more tiles. If we take it, they will probably use it as an opportunity to bring their Queen out. Their Bishop and Queen will then both be open to attack our right side, the side they conceded to us with their first move. Yorkshire Tea's video addresses this concern, and he suggests moving the pawn up, c2-c4. By doing this, we effectively pin Black's bishop in place and they have to take the trade or just develop elsewhere as we pin their king. But...I don't see why black wouldn't just Nb8-C6 for instance, putting a Black Knight in between the two Bishops. This free us the black Bishop and if we take the trade, they use their pawn to take it back. Now Bishop is free. Alternatively, they use their pawn, a7-a6, threatening our Bishop. We can't run away elsewhere if they do this, so either we take the Bishop-Bishop trade that releases their Queen, or we step back to the left, Bb5-a4. Then they move their pawn up, b7-b5 and our Bishop is trapped again, threatening very few squares, and they would have a pawn formation set up. Is there some sort of plan for the attack/trade that I'm not seeing? Sorry am out already so no pics! PS - Faerie Fortune, doggo is super cute! I love it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 03:41
|
|
|
Incidentally, just grabbed Chess By Post under the name alphakretin
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 08:46
|
|
|
Artelier posted:Not sure I'm seeing the point of checking them. If we do, they either move the knight or the bishop up. a7 to a6 means that they've moved their pawn in response to our central pawn development. We trade and our board position is a lot stronger centrally. If they move the knight why did they move their bishop at all? We just pin the knight instead. Again all of this is at around 200 games played, but white appears to gain win rate on that play.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 10:19
|
|
|
Yeah, let's throw 'em a curve ball. Bf1-Bb5+ then follow it up with c2-c4 as Yorkshire Tea suggested. If they move their bishop to block, that is.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 13:47
|
|
|
The Mighty Moltres posted:Yeah, let's throw 'em a curve ball. Bf1-Bb5+ then follow it up with c2-c4 as Yorkshire Tea suggested. If they move their bishop to block, that is. If they don't it's really good for us!
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 14:52
|
|
|
Its fun to go off book and all that but I just feel like...well, we're all new at this and the people we're against are new at this too. Nobody's going to react to anything the way we think they are and I feel like doing something completely out there to throw them off is just rude and not helpful in the black team actually learning anything I don't know if this makes sense, these are just my dumb thoughts
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 15:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 7, 2024 23:36 |
|
|
Faerie Fortune posted:Its fun to go off book and all that but I just feel like...well, we're all new at this and the people we're against are new at this too. Nobody's going to react to anything the way we think they are and I feel like doing something completely out there to throw them off is just rude and not helpful in the black team actually learning anything So from what I've observed of black, they have currently reacted exactly the way we've expected. This means that at worst (in terms of their play) they're just reading from chess.com and playing the highest win percentage play. At best they're seeing that we've gone standard and have chosen the optimal plays on their own. In the worst case they're learning nothing and just blindly copying others. In the best case they're going to be able to react and make and adjustment. I feel like part of learning chess is learning to examine positions ourselves. But also we're playing the same play as Kasparov in Kasparov vs. The World.
|
|
#
?
Sep 16, 2017 16:26
|
|