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Today on dumb chess memes:Magnus's chat bot posted:Nightbot
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Jan 4, 2023 22:57
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Jan 5, 2023 05:17
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I stand up and clap
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Jan 5, 2023 05:43
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Hand Knit posted:Today's lesson in Know Your Endgames: https://lichess.org/7bRtIbY9Z8Nl I've been starting trying to learn some more about them lately. According to the lichess puzzle dashboard my endgame puzzles are hundreds of points behind my others. I think the problem is more conceptual. Like, I get forks, pins etc for middlegame tactics. What I don't have is an equivelent set of endgame patterns. Are there any books or resources you recommend for building up conceptual followed by concrete knowledge of endgame situations? For reference I'm like 1600 repid on lichess. I have an amazing app for chess endgame training, but it's just playing vs the tablebase or stockfish and doesn't explain anything
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Jan 5, 2023 13:28
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jiggerypokery posted:I've been starting trying to learn some more about them lately. There is the Silman text on endgames that explains important concepts like opposition, and the following chessable free course is pretty good at showing how to use it https://www.chessable.com/basic-endgames/course/6371/
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Jan 5, 2023 16:24
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if you can justify the expense i think endgames are the area where paying a human to teach you the fundamentals is most worth it
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Jan 5, 2023 17:28
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if only there was a chess course i could buy that will teach me to play either slow or bad, instead of both
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Jan 6, 2023 16:48
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I started to feel more confident in 10 minute games, I thought, "Maybe I should try some 3+2s" and threw away 5 queens in about 15 minutes. Lost every game with 1 minute plus on the clock, so like, I see a fundamental problem, at least.
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Jan 6, 2023 17:01
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5+3 is where it's at even better if it's low elo 5+3 where every game ends with both players having 3-4 minutes on the clock
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Jan 6, 2023 17:25
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I've tried a few 5s and at least felt like I was in a position to play the game mindfully, which I especially need as a beginner. Something I read was, "you can either win or you can improve" and it doesn't really help me (at my current level of learning) to lose games where the only lesson is, "I was going really fast and lost track of their bishop."
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Jan 6, 2023 17:32
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man, those games where you win and think you had a decent attack, and then on review the computer points out that you had absolutely nothing and got lucky they didn't call your bluff kind of deflating https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/66878522409?tab=review
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Jan 8, 2023 02:46
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I wouldn't say you had nothing. The way you attacked ended up being unsound and it meant your opponent had solutions, but that doesn't mean the idea was nothing. Clean up the start of the attack (i.e. find something better than Qf3-Qf4) and dodge blundering the rook later and the fundamental idea is still working.
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Jan 8, 2023 03:32
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Struggling to push past 1000 on chess.com in daily, and 800 in rapid. Accuracy is usually 75+ but definitely hit the point where I'm not sure what to do in the mid game. Trying to play the Italian/Ruy on white and Caro on Black.
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Jan 8, 2023 22:56
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empathe posted:Struggling to push past 1000 on chess.com in daily, and 800 in rapid. Accuracy is usually 75+ but definitely hit the point where I'm not sure what to do in the mid game. Show us some games. The Italian usually lends itself to a fair bit of manoeuvering, and the Spanish can too.
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Jan 8, 2023 22:58
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Hand Knit posted:Show us some games. The Italian usually lends itself to a fair bit of manoeuvering, and the Spanish can too. Will collect a bunch tomorrow thanks!
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Jan 8, 2023 23:06
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I'm at about your same skill/rank, I think, and if you're like me you have 3 main sources of losses. 1. "Well, I made it safely out of the end game with a good position and now I guess I need to get something going." [Move a Bishop hanging a Knight or vice versa.] 2. "Well, I made it safely out of the end game with a good ... wait when did I go down a piece?" 3. "Well, I made it the endgame and I'm +4, now how do I close this thing out?" [Miscount an exchange then lose all my pawns dodging checks.] I don't have a solution to it, lol, I'm just commiserating. e: upon reflection, I guess #2 is pay more attention; #3 is my key to stop studying openings and start studying end games; and #1 is just a general description of "the journey of the game." (And/or pattern recognition.) Huxley fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Jan 9, 2023 |
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Jan 9, 2023 16:49
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So I'll start with a couple general comments about the Italian. Generally what you want to do is stay solid, have your pawns control space, and gradually expand. A fairly typical setup to begin with looks like this: Notice how your pawn is on c3 and your knight is on d2. There are a bunch of different directions you can go from here. If black lets you, playing for b4 then a4 and Qb3, expanding and attacking along the kingside, is pretty good. Another common way of playing is to bring your bishop back to b3 (so it can come back to c2, preserving the bishop pair in case black plays Na5) and open up the c4 square for your knight, and then maybe push d4. Or you can play h3 (stopping Ng4 from black), and follow it up with Re1, Nf1 and Ng3 so that you can have your pieces attack the kingside. In each case, the main thing you're trying to do is stay solid and slowly improve your pieces. Now, it sounds like this doesn't offer a clear plan of attack but remember at the level you're playing (hell, at the level I play) it's also really hard for black to play these sorts of positions. Chances are pretty good they'll try too much and gently caress up. Maybe they make it so they can't defend their pawn on b7 after you play Qb3. Or maybe their pawn on f7 will be weak to Qb3-Bc4-Ng5. Or maybe, like one of the games you posted, they just wildly attack and explode. Now for some basic, schematic comments about the individual Italian games. (1)  Your opponent really goes for it right away, and way too early. A good rule of thumb is that you want to counter an attack on the wing by breaking in the centre. Your king is castled, theirs is in the centre. You have more pieces developed than they do. Just jam d4 in response to this and they're in huge trouble. I should note that while it's obviously directly working in this case, it's often still good in cases where it isn't obviously directly working. Your king is castled and safe while theirs is out in the middle so chaos benefits you. (2)  There's a good tactical motif to know here, because it's usually impossible for black to take the e pawn like this without being punished. The d5 square lets your queen simultaneously attack both the f7 and e5 squares. Sometimes you can just play Qd5 directly and win a piece through that double attack. Here that doesn't work because black can meet Qd5 with Nd6 but the idea still works. Play 7.Bxf7+ immediately. If black recaptures with the king, then you have Qd5+ winning back the knight. Material is now equal and black's king is in huge trouble. (3a) This game went really well for you until it didn't. The main idea is playing with your extra piece.  You're up a piece. And, importantly, black doesn't obviously have any play. What you want to do now is organize your pieces and have them working towards the same area. Using the b-file to attack the weak b7 square is the most obvious idea. (Note that black can't play b6 because your queen is targeting a6. And, even if black could, you could probably just sacrifice and win.) Your king is ideally placed on h7, blocking black's pawn and stopping black from getting in along the h-file. Looking at it now, another even quicker idea might be to just immediately play Bc4 with the threat of sacrificing it with Bxa6. (3b) From later in the same game.  Check out how well your pawns control all the light squares. And check out how black's pawns are stuck on the same colour square as your bishop. Playing Qd5 here is great because you set your queen up to infiltrate and make use of all those great squares your pawns control. If black somehow trades queens, your bishop's pressure on b6 is great and you should be able to mop up quickly. (4)  First of all, d4 is a great move by you. It's the sort of thing I mentioned under game (1): black plays slow on the wing with Be7 and h6, so you take the centre by jamming d4. h6 looks real out of place after that. This kind of tension usually benefits you, because you get to choose how it resolves (closing or opening the position). When this happens, it's usually in your interest to maintain the tension as long as you can. Continue to develop your pieces and keep control over the centre. c3 is a great move here, since you'd love to recapture on d4 with your pawn maintaining your great pawn centre. When you push d5 not only are you committing to a closed position, but you're also specifically closing off the diagonal that makes your Bc4 so good.
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Jan 9, 2023 17:45
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I am poking around trying to start educating myself in openings. I randomly came across Queen's Pawn: Krause Variation, which a little googling suggests is sparsely discussed. It seems weird to me that such an early position hasn't been analyzed thoroughly, so, probably I'm just not looking in the right places. I did find this list of grandmaster games using this opening, and I started looking at a few of them, starting with Kasparov/Seirawan, but there's a ton of games and I'm not sure if just reviewing grandmaster games is all that informative because I'm never going to play at that level and these games probably aren't showing me the most likely fuckups I'd make if I tried this opening. Should I just break down and buy a paper book on openings, or is doing tutorials on lichess good enough? Thanks for answering my noob questions
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Jan 9, 2023 22:05
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Leperflesh posted:I am poking around trying to start educating myself in openings. I randomly came across Queen's Pawn: Krause Variation, which a little googling suggests is sparsely discussed. It seems weird to me that such an early position hasn't been analyzed thoroughly, so, probably I'm just not looking in the right places. There's nothing wrong with just playing and reviewing but if you're looking for more you can go for either paper books or chessable. In either case, make sure you're looking for something aimed at your skill level. Like if you're looking for a book on the king's indian, there's a world of difference between what Quality Chess publishes (mainly aimed at master-strength players) and what you can find from Everyman Chess. Similarly, if you're looking at chessable, the Nimzo course from Surya Ganguly is probably not for you, but there's a free course from Christof Sielecki that is aimed towards newer players. e: Also I would recommend maybe treating it a bit like poker, where you go in with a set budget and once you hit that budget you cut yourself off completely. It is very easy to spend a lot of money quickly with chess books.
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Jan 9, 2023 22:17
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35 games in, I started 10-0 and then went 5-20. I miss winning!
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Jan 9, 2023 22:48
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Hand Knit posted:So I'll start with a couple general comments about the Italian. Generally what you want to do is stay solid, have your pawns control space, and gradually expand. A fairly typical setup to begin with looks like this: Thanks so much for this analysis!
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Jan 10, 2023 06:28
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Here's a position from my game last night. When I was playing I thought that I'd hosed up and was maybe lost, but on review it looks like I actually played it pretty accurately and was ahead the whole time. Even the move I thought was terrible was apparently the only way to play for an advantage. So that's cool. Anyway, here's a key position from late in the game. White to move. It's not a tactic like you'd regularly see used for a puzzle, but you do have to calculate. What does white play? 
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Jan 11, 2023 15:39
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Hand Knit posted:Here's a position from my game last night. When I was playing I thought that I'd hosed up and was maybe lost, but on review it looks like I actually played it pretty accurately and was ahead the whole time. Even the move I thought was terrible was apparently the only way to play for an advantage. So that's cool. Here are my ideas: black is crashing thru on the F file, but maybe not if white plays f4... black doesn't have a knight or a dark-square bishop to attack the weakened pawn on g3. white wants to get a rook to the 7th rank to help with the attack, maybe Qe1 with the idea to play Re7, and also to prevent black from taking on f2. EDIT: i asked stockfish for help and Qe1 is no good because it drops the bishop, but it likes f4 Helianthus Annuus fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jan 11, 2023 |
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Jan 11, 2023 18:37
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Helianthus Annuus posted:Here are my ideas: Remember that white has a bishop on h8 that needs protecting.
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Jan 11, 2023 19:15
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ANYWAY, chess drama is back and it's as good as ever. Niemann is claiming that Carlsen paid Tari to follow him around and shout in Norwegian quote:Chess’s cheating scandal took another bizarre twist on Wednesday after the US teenager Hans Niemann accused world champion Magnus Carlsen of paying a fellow grandmaster €300 to scream “Cheater Hans” from a public balcony during a tournament.
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Jan 11, 2023 19:18
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Hand Knit posted:Here's a position from my game last night. When I was playing I thought that I'd hosed up and was maybe lost, but on review it looks like I actually played it pretty accurately and was ahead the whole time. Even the move I thought was terrible was apparently the only way to play for an advantage. So that's cool. Oh this is fun, I want to try! I'm attempting proper chess notation for the first time, too. If it were black to move, black has a checkmate on the F file that white can't prevent, from ...Rxf2, Rxf2, Qxf2+, Kh1, Qf1#. So white must make a move that either forces white checkmate, or at least stalls black checkmate. White has a diagonal attack already set up with the bishop protected by the queen. White also has two rooks positioned to attack the 7 and 8 ranks. A rook sacrifice to 5, 7, or 8 would disrupt black's checkmate attack, so that's one idea. White could move rf3. That rook would be protected by the queen, but a response ...rxf3, qxf3, qxf3, leaves white in a bad position and down a piece. White could advance the pawn to f4. That slows black's attack, because after ...rxf4, pxf4, qxf4, white can move qg7, and that's checkmate. But it looks to me like black can spot this line and avoid it by just refusing to take the pawn. h4 or h5 gives the king a white escape square, or maybe go re8? I feel like there's several lines here. So I'm not thinking f4 is forcing enough. How about that rook sac idea. re5, rxe5, qxe5, but then black has qf5, the black queen is protected by the bishop and the g6 pawn, and the king now has f7 as an escape square. Maybe re7, qxe7, bg7, kf7, bxf8, qxf8, nope. Maybe rd8? after rxd8, you can exchange queens with qg7, qxg7, bxg7, kxg7, but I don't see how this is winning for white, it's just no longer a black forced checkmate Should we get the bishop the hell out of there? Instead of trying for a checkmate right now, we can do bd4. That puts a third piece supporting the f2 pawn. Black's attack is now just a set of exchanges, rxft, bxf2, qxf2, rxf2, rxft, kxf2 or similar. Black can't give up his queen for insufficient compensation, white still has the diagonal attack on the king's position, and white has qb4 as an idea. I've decided white doesn't have a forced checkmate, at least not one I can see, but I'm gonna go with that last idea as the one I'd probably decide to play here.
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Jan 11, 2023 19:41
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Hand Knit posted:ANYWAY, chess drama is back and it's as good as ever.
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Jan 11, 2023 19:46
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I don't doubt that the team was chanting and making fun of Niemann. After all Carlsen once did a online tournament stream where his team tried to do some rapping about some Norwegian football scandal. But, he doesn't pay people to do things they would do for free.
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Jan 11, 2023 19:55
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Leperflesh posted:Oh this is fun, I want to try! I'm attempting proper chess notation for the first time, too. A good thing to add to this exercise is, at the end, figure out what you think the evaluation is. This can be anything from "white is winning" to "equal but complicated." It's a good way to make sure you take stock at the end of a line and notice, for example, that you're just down material. particular points: (1) A key point for white is that black's queen is stuck defending g7, which you noticed. But part of this is that you really have to keep the bishop on h8, so that you have that threat of Qg7#. Once white loses that threat, black has all the initiative and room to manoeuvre. This means that: (2) The big cost with Bd4 is that it removes the threat of Qg7#. This in turn lets black manoeuvre a bit with the move Bg4, with the strong threat of playing Bf3 and Rh5. (3) The suggestion of Re5 also has the problem of removing the threat on g7, since your own rook blocks your queen. Black can simply take on f2 Remember that it's not enough to just disrupt black's attack if white doesn't end up doing anything, especially if you're giving up material to get there. You need to find some active plan because, given enough time, black will probably arrange the pieces in one good way or another.
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Jan 11, 2023 20:08
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Hmmm. I'm really bad at board eval. Stockfish often wildly disagrees with what I thought was a good or bad position. I also just noticed kh2 and I wonder if that does anything. Oh! And advancing the g3 pawn exposes the bishop to an attack by the rook, HMM
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Jan 11, 2023 20:18
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Leperflesh posted:Hmmm. Eval is a hard skill to develop but it's a pretty important one since it's what underlies how you decide to do anything, especially when you aren't immediately winning or losing. Kh2 does something very important: it means black now takes on f2 with check, making everything a whole lot harder.
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Jan 11, 2023 20:21
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Hand Knit posted:Eval is a hard skill to develop but it's a pretty important one since it's what underlies how you decide to do anything, especially when you aren't immediately winning or losing. But then kxh3, presumably black responds with rxe2, and then rf3, but if qxf3, then qg7#. Right?
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Jan 11, 2023 20:26
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Leperflesh posted:But then kxh3, presumably black responds with rxe2, and then rf3, but if qxf3, then qg7#. Right? Just don't take the rook on f3. So 25.Kh2 Rxf2+ 26.Kxh3 Rxe2 27.Rf3 Qd7+ (I suspect Qe7 works well enough as well).
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Jan 11, 2023 20:53
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Hand Knit posted:Here's a position from my game last night. When I was playing I thought that I'd hosed up and was maybe lost, but on review it looks like I actually played it pretty accurately and was ahead the whole time. Even the move I thought was terrible was apparently the only way to play for an advantage. So that's cool. I'm not succeeding at calculating it all the way, but I think that f4 seems good? I would play f4, then follow it up with Rde3 and Re7, like: 1. f4 h5 2. Rde3 Kh7 3. Re7 Rxh8 4. Rxf7 Rxf7 If Black plays 1... Rxf4 that sacrifices a rook, and since I still have the threat of checkmate I think there's no attack; the Queen can't go anywhere unless it's check.
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Jan 11, 2023 20:54
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Chess.com is having major issues because of record players and Hikaru peaked at 40k viewers today. Looks like another chess boom. But, why is there another chess boom right now?
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Jan 11, 2023 21:19
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Sub Rosa posted:Chess.com is having major issues because of record players and Hikaru peaked at 40k viewers today. Looks like another chess boom. Everybody's hype for Wijk nrook posted:I'm not succeeding at calculating it all the way, but I think that f4 seems good? I would play f4, then follow it up with Rde3 and Re7, like: You've got the idea that I was thinking of: I really want to double the rooks so I can play Re7, which wins. Of course, black gets a say in the matter too: 25.f4 can be met with Bg4, attacking the rook on e2 which stops you from playing Rde3. There's no sacrifice on f4 for black, but there are ideas of cracking open the f-file by playing g5 at some point.
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Jan 11, 2023 21:24
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Hand Knit posted:You've got the idea that I was thinking of: I really want to double the rooks so I can play Re7, which wins. Of course, black gets a say in the matter too: 25.f4 can be met with Bg4, attacking the rook on e2 which stops you from playing Rde3. There's no sacrifice on f4 for black, but there are ideas of cracking open the f-file by playing g5 at some point. I figured I could just move the attacked rook down to the first rank if Bg4 was played. I thought about the d file too, but I was worried about a discovered attack from the bishop if I put a rook on d7.
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Jan 11, 2023 21:32
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nrook posted:I figured I could just move the attacked rook down to the first rank if Bg4 was played. I thought about the d file too, but I was worried about a discovered attack from the bishop if I put a rook on d7. I played around with this a bit. It looks like black has the idea of h5 and Qh7, forcing white's bishop to retreat. White maintains a positional advantage but you still have to be careful on defence against both g5 and h4 ideas.
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Jan 11, 2023 22:28
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| # ? May 29, 2024 08:24 |
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Sub Rosa posted:Chess.com is having major issues because of record players and Hikaru peaked at 40k viewers today. Looks like another chess boom. New Year Resolutions to play more chess?
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Jan 11, 2023 22:38
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