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fart simpson posted:yeah that makes sense. i was thinking of that as studying the midgame and pawn structures and such but you know more than i do The endgames you learn from the opening-out approach are generally going to be far narrower and far less principle-based than the endgame-back approach. So, for example, if you're learning the Ruy Lopez exchange, you'll specifically learn the pawn endgame but you'll learn it as "here is how you convert this particular position" rather than "here are typical features where one side has a pawn majority on one side of the board, and the other has a doubled pawn hindering their pawn majority on the other side."
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Mar 18, 2021 16:20
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i like learning about those generalized structures but i don’t know of a great resource for them other than that one big book called “pawn structures” that everyone mentions. i haven’t read the book
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Mar 18, 2021 16:35
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Just a quick effortpost on some books I've gone through since starting out earlier this year - thanks again for the recommendations here! Just some background: my kids got really interested in chess after finding my old mechanical clock in my office and I wanted to read some books to learn some things to transfer to them. My background before this was just informally playing against some friends in college way back in the day. I had bought a nice board and clock thinking I'd get seriously into it, but it didn't take. 1. Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess What a great and unique book. It's just series of thematic puzzles with Bobby's guidance and explanations. It's designed by a pair of psychologists (?) or education experts who collaborated with Bobby to present the material in a systematic way that optimizes learning, and in my experience, it works. The book read front to back looking only at the right-hand pages, and then at the end, you flip it and go back-to-front. Big focuses were checkmate patterns to start, a lot of back rank work, and then it gets into more complex combinations. From what I can tell, the system helps commit patterns to memory by surprising you with unexpected switches just when you get into a groove - if that makes sense. My kids by far like this one the most. My 7 y/o daughter is about done with it and her play has really shot up to the point where she beats her mom and grandparents and makes me work. My 4 y/o boy is about 1/2 through it, but being 4, he only grabs it in spurts between lego building and harassing his sister. 2. A First Book of Morphy This is the next best one. It presents one Morphy game per chapter, and each chapter is based on a basic principle of chess, which Morphy apparently developed and/or put into popular practice. The games are explosive and dynamic: perfect for re-enacting on a live board. Morphy plays guys like The Great and Right Honourable Royal Duke of Brunwick, Esq. or something and just shellacking the guy all over the board with ridiculous queen-sac mate combos and clearly illustrating how the basic principles yield opportunities vs. opponents not following them. It's fun. 3. Yasser Seirawan - Winning Chess Tactics This one was way over my kids' heads and it lost me in the first section, but looking through it now, I'm probably going to dive into it next. I think it's a good book to follow something like the Fischer book, which demonstrates a lot of the concepts through immediate example with positive/negative feedback, while this book seems to explore them more deeply. Still in progress. 4. Yasser Seirawan - Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions Someone on here posted about it being a good book from a chess history perspective and it delivers. It's full of interesting personal stories and accounts from him playing the best of the best. The games are pretty interesting, but I didn't go through all of them. I'll likely go back and look at these some more. I really latched on to his stories about Tal and that led me to: Tal-Botvinnik 1960: Match for the World Chess Championship written by Tal. That's on the way right now and I can't wait to read it. I really latched on to Tal's personality and games from Chess Duels and Yasser's recommendation of Tal's writing and specifically that book has me anxiously awaiting it. Just wanted to share in case it helps out any newcomers.
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Mar 18, 2021 16:35
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Can anyone explain to me why the Scandi gets so much flack? I know it isn't very popular at GM levels, but as a 1200 Elo scrublord I am absolutely smitten with it. It's simple to learn, offers a great balance of sharp/positional play, transposes easily into a Caro-Kann (or even something like a King's Indian), and provides lots of punishment opportunities against an opponent who doesn't know how to handle it. It's also just fun to play because it's so goddamn goofy looking. I've been using it since I was like 600 Elo and I keep waiting for it to outlive its usefulness (especially in longer time controls), but it's still going strong.
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Mar 18, 2021 18:26
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One thing I've been struggling with as of late is understanding when to "trade down" with a bishop or knight. Sometimes I'll end up in a spot in the midgame that I can't see any obvious developing plays besides flinging my bishop or knight into the opponent's pawn phalanx, so I'll avoid that and develop one of my pawns instead and then analysis wanted me to capture after all (usually a >1 point error) I vaguely get that bishops are less valuable if you've already lost other diagonal pieces as a sole bishop isn't too threatening, and that there is value in disrupting your opponent's pawn structure or opening a file, but I still don't fully understand it.
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Mar 18, 2021 20:35
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Modal Auxiliary posted:Can anyone explain to me why the Scandi gets so much flack? I know it isn't very popular at GM levels, but as a 1200 Elo scrublord I am absolutely smitten with it. It's simple to learn, offers a great balance of sharp/positional play, transposes easily into a Caro-Kann (or even something like a King's Indian), and provides lots of punishment opportunities against an opponent who doesn't know how to handle it. It's also just fun to play because it's so goddamn goofy looking. Some people who are not particularly good get very moralistic about their openings. They care about playing the 'right' openings so that they may identify themselves as being the right sort of player, and even if you have beaten them they are still better than you. This sort of thinking is of course nonsense, and should be ignored. Except with respect to the French.
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Mar 18, 2021 22:57
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Modal Auxiliary posted:Can anyone explain to me why the Scandi gets so much flack? I know it isn't very popular at GM levels, but as a 1200 Elo scrublord I am absolutely smitten with it. It's simple to learn, offers a great balance of sharp/positional play, transposes easily into a Caro-Kann (or even something like a King's Indian), and provides lots of punishment opportunities against an opponent who doesn't know how to handle it. It's also just fun to play because it's so goddamn goofy looking. i like playing against it. i have a 57% win rate as white against it, 67% if they go Qa5 fart simpson fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 03:57
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Lame when somebody plays a trappy opening and quits when you don't play into it.
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Mar 19, 2021 18:40
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I like to play the Ruy Lopez because of his classic bit of advice: if you're playing at night, use your hand to cast a shadow over the board so your opponent cannot see where to play his pieces.
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Mar 19, 2021 18:56
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I don't even know what that means.
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Mar 20, 2021 03:22
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qsvui posted:I don't even know what that means. That's the problem with today's players, they don't appreciate the great works of the (checks notes) 16th century.
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Mar 20, 2021 07:11
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I bought CT-ART 6.0 from House of Staunton over the weekend, and now I have to wait until Monday for someone to send me a download code. Every other site I saw had an expired security cert. It was the same price as a year of Chesstempo premium. Maybe that would have been the more "tactical" choice.
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Mar 21, 2021 16:57
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I won my first game without making any blunders  and only one mistake too. I won on time, but I was +13 on material as well. on chess.com, what does "brilliant move" mean? I don't understand how it can be better than "best move", considering... it's the best move
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Mar 22, 2021 08:34
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Paperhouse posted:on chess.com, what does "brilliant move" mean? I don't understand how it can be better than "best move", considering... it's the best move It means it's a better move than what the engine had come up with. The computer only looks a certain number of moves ahead (the depth), after you make a move it looks one move further and may realize that your move was even better than what it would have recommended.
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Mar 22, 2021 08:51
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Today has not been a good day
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Mar 22, 2021 09:21
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By the way, if you're ordering anything from HoS, I found the coupon code "CSCOM" gives a ten percent discount. Worked both times I tried.
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Mar 22, 2021 10:53
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Chamale posted:It means it's a better move than what the engine had come up with. The computer only looks a certain number of moves ahead (the depth), after you make a move it looks one move further and may realize that your move was even better than what it would have recommended. I think it's a little more complicated than this, it seems to evaluate its singular preferred move much deeper than others. If you choose a different move, it then runs a deep analysis on that move. So the difference is probably several moves worth of analysis, not just one. That would explain why when you're reviewing your games with its guided analysis, any move other than its best move (or book openings) causes the app to number-crunch for a few seconds, regardless if it's a blunder or "excellent" or anything in between.
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Mar 22, 2021 18:47
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Artelier posted:Today has not been a good day I had two games in a row today where I flagged when I had mate in 1.  e: lol, opponent offered a draw after I refuted the Englund gambit 
Bubbacub fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Mar 22, 2021 |
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Mar 22, 2021 18:56
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Paperhouse posted:I won my first game without making any blunders I saw my first brilliant move... against me. Luckily, he blundered immediately and I won.
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Mar 25, 2021 13:06
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Bubbacub posted:I had two games in a row today where I flagged when I had mate in 1. sorry it was worth a shot
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Mar 25, 2021 16:41
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speaking of, i won nearly all my englund gambits today
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Mar 25, 2021 16:42
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some guy hung his queen against my borg defense “trap” and proposed a takeback, waited 30 seconds for me to accept, then resigned. nice try
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Mar 25, 2021 16:44
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For the brilliant move question on Chess.com, someone over at r/chess did a deep dive on how it works so that they could engineer a game with tons of brilliant moves. You can read about it here. Some decent discussion of exactly how it works.
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Mar 26, 2021 18:09
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Good chess set
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Mar 26, 2021 21:23
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"Doctor, I slipped and landed on the pawn. That's, uh, how it got stuck."
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Mar 26, 2021 22:01
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finally broke 1000 in rapid! mostly been playing as practice and doing puzzles
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Mar 27, 2021 04:03
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Captain von Trapp posted:"Doctor, I slipped and landed on the pawn. That's, uh, how it got stuck." I like seeing bad dragon diversify
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Mar 27, 2021 17:40
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former glory posted:3. Yasser Seirawan - Winning Chess Tactics I bought Winning Chess Strategies at a Waldenbooks in 1992 and I think I read it more times than I played chess until they invented the internet. It's still my favorite Seirawan book so far.
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Mar 27, 2021 22:06
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I've only been playing about 4 months now, but I feel like I'll never get a better mate than this
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Mar 28, 2021 23:25
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kingcobweb posted:I've only been playing about 4 months now, but I feel like I'll never get a better mate than this I...I need you to link the whole game.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:16
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ulmont posted:I...I need you to link the whole game. https://lichess.org/study/8b8CwiCw
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Mar 29, 2021 00:28
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kingcobweb posted:I've only been playing about 4 months now, but I feel like I'll never get a better mate than this Same feeling
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Mar 29, 2021 00:42
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When you have the choice to mate with either the king moving or castling I think choosing to castle is aesthetically superior 
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Mar 29, 2021 00:49
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I’d somehow never seen this work of art
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Mar 29, 2021 09:36
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Castling requires moving two pieces!Lasker posted:Instead of checkmating with K-Q2 I could have done it by castling, which would perhaps have been more spectacular, as no player has ever been mated that way before, as far as I know. I actually considered castling, but the efficiency-minded engineer in me got the better of it and I played K-Q2 which required moving only one piece.
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Mar 29, 2021 10:57
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I guess that's one of the reasons Nh6 is not a recommended opening move.
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Mar 29, 2021 22:48
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former glory posted:Just a quick effortpost on some books I've gone through since starting out earlier this year - thanks again for the recommendations here! Just some background: my kids got really interested in chess after finding my old mechanical clock in my office and I wanted to read some books to learn some things to transfer to them. My background before this was just informally playing against some friends in college way back in the day. I had bought a nice board and clock thinking I'd get seriously into it, but it didn't take. Thanks for these recommendations. I have a kid who is 3.5. I really can't fathom him sitting there and playing. How did you get your 4-year-old to play?
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Mar 30, 2021 04:40
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PerniciousKnid posted:I bought Winning Chess Strategies at a Waldenbooks in 1992 and I think I read it more times than I played chess until they invented the internet. It's still my favorite Seirawan book so far. I might grab that one next. Either that or an endgames book, because I think Handknit made a lot of sense when he said the Soviet system starts from there since the game inevitably progresses to that point. Now that a player has to buy me dinner most of the time before they can fork my queen  , I see those more often. I got back into the Tactics book and I'm really enjoying it now. He has an engaging style and his tests are really well thought out. angel opportunity posted:Thanks for these recommendations. I have a kid who is 3.5. I really can't fathom him sitting there and playing. How did you get your 4-year-old to play? His older sister is super into it so that translates to enthusiasm on his side - I think that's the biggest factor. That and he really likes the battle/war angle of it. The other day he jumped into the kitchen behind me with both his fists cocked up ready to fight and yelled "I'm a Fianchettoed bishop!! ARHHHH" I think he got that from a chesskid lesson, lol.
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Mar 30, 2021 16:20
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lol, that is so funny. So he actually knows enough about the game to fianchetto his bishop and stuff? That is really impressive for a kid just barely older than mine
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Mar 30, 2021 17:57
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They make big leaps in the 4s, though, and I doubt he would've sat still enough in his 3s. But yeah, his typical opening is e4, Nc3, Nf3. If he's defending, he'll do something like e5, and then will sometimes bump out g6 and fianchetto there and I've mistakenly called that the King's Indian Defense before I knew better-- and it stuck-- but my wife makes them refer to it as The Awkward Pawn Move instead when they say that.  When I do my e6b6 opening, they bug me all the time that I should be doing centre pawns followed by knights and then bishops. I should probably just trashcan that idea because my win rate online with it is like 45%, so I think they're right. The other day he pinned my queen when I spotted him queen odds and wasn't paying full attention. That raised an eyebrow a bit.
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Mar 30, 2021 20:24
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