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the london is a good opening but most youtube guides stop around here: and don’t give much info of what your plan should be from here. lots of beginner london games turn into super long closed boring games as a result
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Oct 2, 2023 13:40
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jesus WEP posted:the london is a good opening but most youtube guides stop around here: would it make sense to castle queen's side and pawn storm the king?
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Oct 2, 2023 13:56
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VictualSquid posted:I don't know those books. But, the London was a considered a mediocre opening for boring people who are also to lazy to learn openings until very recently. With most theory focussing on how to play for a win as black. Well that's unfortunate. I wanted to read an openings book and get some more insight into the motivations behind them, but I guess many of the lines I see are apparently too hip for school.
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Oct 2, 2023 18:14
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If you have whatever tier of chess.com lets you see the lessons, I found this to be a really good set covering London middlegame plans: https://www.chess.com/lessons/london-system-for-the-busy-chess-player
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Oct 2, 2023 18:21
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If you are at the level where it is worth studying opening theory then you will gain more by looking at a different opening than the London System. The whole point of the London is that you don't need theory and you can low effort yourself into fairly dull, equalish middlegames and wait for your opponent to make a mistake. If you want to study lines and start playing for an edge in the middlegame, but are new to opening theory and don't want to fall into the abyss that is Ruy Lopez/Sicillian theory, then I would suggest looking at the Scotch if you like open and attacking games.
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Oct 2, 2023 20:23
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I just like the queen's gambit
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Oct 2, 2023 20:27
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Nothing wrong with the Queens Gambit, but black has a ton of different ways to respond which all lead to very different styles of games. Even something like the Marshall Defence, which at master level play is objectively bad for black, is still tricky to play against as white if you don't know the theory. d4 openings in general have more lines and variations to learn than e4 openings. At low to mid levels of chess it doesn't matter much of course, because your opponent doesn't know the lines either. But if you do want to take one opening and learn it as best as you can I personally wouldn't recommend it to a new player. tanglewood1420 fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 20:40
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Which getting back to the original point, puts an emphasis on game review and fundamentals instead of memorizing lines.
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Oct 2, 2023 20:43
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Serious question. If you're doing a computer aided game review and you can't figure out why a move you made was a blunder, nor what the suggested move accomplishes, is there a trick to figure out what the computer is thinking?
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Oct 2, 2023 20:59
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I recommend starting with a gambit line like the Danish. Even if you only know the first half dozen moves and just a few small ideas it gives you the flavor of knowing an opening. Basically what you'll see over and over is that people won't know what to do and they'll make some weird move. You might not know why their move is bad, but you *know* its bad. That gives you a fun posititon, and then later you can look at what the best follow up was and slowly chip away at all the different lines.
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Oct 2, 2023 21:06
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I've said this before, but I adore the Scotch at the Lichess 1400 level. You won't get many dead-won positions out of the opening like you may with the Vienna or a gambit, but there are a ton of ways for Black to go subtly wrong in the first 5 moves. You can consistently come out of the opening with an advantage against a lot of standard-feeling responses. I know mainline theory up to like, move 6 or so, but I've never seen anyone play the mainline past there. Even played properly, you end up with a ton of very simple "Rooks to the center and start pushing pawns" type of attacks. Here's a Scotch study I did of the moves you're likely to see, and I don't think any line goes past move 6 or 7. https://lichess.org/study/3yjQOc7K/cbl9pLQq Huxley fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 21:31
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scotch is good if you forget how the horsies move since it removes half of them from the game immediately
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Oct 2, 2023 21:54
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ikanreed posted:Serious question. If you're doing a computer aided game review and you can't figure out why a move you made was a blunder, nor what the suggested move accomplishes, is there a trick to figure out what the computer is thinking? If you press enough buttons you can see the computer continuation. Sometimes it's still not obvious, but sometimes you see it's actually a mate threat or something. tanglewood1420 posted:If you are at the level where it is worth studying opening theory then you will gain more by looking at a different opening than the London System. I'm not shopping for an opening, I was looking at defenses. In any case I was more looking for some reading material that satisfied my theoretical curiosity. It's not just the London, it seems like half the openings I look for are absent. Or I'll flip to the chapter on Sicilian which has multiple pages, but I look for the Alapin line and it just says something like "dickless losers play c3 here" and moves on. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense that books about opening lines won't focus on the simple openings I'm curious about.
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Oct 2, 2023 21:56
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Eric Rosen plays the London as his main d4 opening and he has a bunch of videos talking about the London. Little bit of click bait, but if you can stomach the thumbnails he's fun to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dd8dmyDkU8
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Oct 2, 2023 22:15
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PerniciousKnid posted:If you press enough buttons you can see the computer continuation. Sometimes it's still not obvious, but sometimes you see it's actually a mate threat or something. Oh right, gotcha. Yeah, specialist opening books generally focus on opening and lines that are solid at master level play. I think it's generally assumed by authors and publishers, rightly or wrongly, that if you're investing in a book you are at a level where playing gimmicky gambits and unusual sidelines hoping to confuse your opponent isn't going to work for you. With the online chess explosion over the last three years there is a lot more video content you can find which has opening advice catered to non-master level openings like the London and various gambits, much more than in published book form. The huge increase in GMs and super GMs playing online blitz in the last couple of years has definitely lead to a wider repertoire of openings at top level play (at least in shorter time controls), but that has probably yet to filter down into any book older than the last couple of years. tanglewood1420 fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 22:32
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Yeah it's interesting looking from the outside, Hikaru streams a lot of blitz while commenting the whole time and he'll say things like "I used to play this (opening) when I was 14, I won a lot with it but it's not so common now" or "oh, he wants to play this one (as in, some specific opening that maybe isn't played much today)" Shows both the rapid evolution in blitz / bullet openings and the insane memory, prep, and pattern awareness of GMs.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:43
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I bought a book with Kindle credit once on the modern Scandi, and every line I faced came straight out of the "sidelines and oddities" chapter in the back. Maybe 1/10 of the book was relevant to my rating.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:49
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tanglewood1420 posted:Oh right, gotcha.  Ah well.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:49
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These aren't too bad, and pretty cheap digitally. Has a pretty lengthy sample. https://www.amazon.com/First-Steps-...ps%2C242&sr=8-8
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Oct 3, 2023 00:36
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It looks like there are a lot of free London courses on Chessable. Here's a short and sweet one and there's also an anti-london one.
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Oct 3, 2023 03:36
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I've been trying to go with The Italian for my last ten to twelve games and I'm running into a problem. My opponents are generally getting anywhere from a pawn to a whole piece advantage (whole piece rarely) because I focus on the development rather than their threats. And it's not that I'm hanging any pieces. It's usually a knight advancing twice, or a trade in the middle, something that I haven't fully calculated out. So, now, it's less that I'm ignoring the obvious one move, it's two or more moves down the line I'm not accounting for. And it's usually very aggressive strategies that are catching me out. This is a pattern of my game that bears out in a lot of places. I'm not exactly hanging pieces, and I've stopped (touch wood) the obvious forks from advancing knights catching me out, but when it comes time to initiate an attack, or to stop someone else's attack/forward movement, I'm choosing the incorrect way of doing so. Occasionally I can rescue things, but usually both their tempo and/or their pawn advantage leads to me being on the back foot and hustling to recover, this is despite what I would see as better development even though I'm down material. It's like I have the board, but they have the pieces, and they can recover from that while I can't use my development (often enough) by choosing the correct way of working with it. I guess this is a case of working on tactics to see how I can utilise my development, but some heuristics or maxims to go on would be nice.
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Oct 3, 2023 08:22
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Link a game
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Oct 3, 2023 08:51
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This'd be an example of where I go wrong. quote:[White "Villain"] It feels like I'm focusing on developing pieces and I'm not sure where the turning point is in the game until after it happens. Edit: And an example of a game I won through sheer obstinacy, and with a boatload of blunders from both, and missed checkmates from me. quote:[White "Villain"] Mrenda fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 10:06
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Firstly, if you want a computer assessment of your game you can paste it into Lichess and get an assessment of which moves were mistakes or blunders. Looking at this one specifically, the primary issues I see are: 1. Not counting whether a piece is properly defended. 5... d5??, for example, leaves both of your pawns vulnerable to capture - your opponent has 3 attacks on your d5 pawn for your two defenders, and two attacks on e5 for 1 defender. If they have more attackers than you have defenders on something then they will generally win material, and losing your central pawns like this means you will likely lose control of the game. 2. Making meaningless threats instead of doing something important like recapturing. 7... g4?? is a mistake because your opponent can block your bishop with their Knight, preventing you from recapturing it. You were lucky not to be punished for this one. 3. Not being aware of vulnerabilities to your King. King safety is an important concept and if he's forced out into the open it will often lead to you getting bullied in the middle game, especially if you aren't used to spotting your opponent's tactics. A move that combines all three of these mistakes is 11... Bc5?? Firstly, it doesn't prevent your opponent from playing exf7 since that's check. Secondly, your bishop is completely undefended and your opponent's queen can just capture it after playing exf7 (also forcing you to trade queens afterwards for good measure). You needed to just take the e pawn here. And thirdly your king can't even recapture the pawn, so in addition to not being able to castle your king is also pinned against the edge of the board in a very awkward position. 9... Be6? was also a mistake that lost your bishop since your opponent could simultanously pin it to the king and unpin their pawn. Obviously you lose a bunch of pieces to tactical plays beyond that (failing to see the Knight fork your bishop was preventing before making the capture on turn 20, the discovered check on turn 25, making another ignorable threat on turn 27 instead of defending your pinned rook) but I would say the biggest breach of chess principles was moving your king out into the board on move 25 rather than retreating behind your pawns - having your king out in the open when your opponent has that many pieces is likely to lead to all sorts of nasty forks and pins, costing you further material. e: a lot of them were avoidable, but I would note that almost all of the tactical plays that cost you in the later game came about directly as a result of your king being forced to move into an awkward position by exf7 - your opponent was able to exploit your vulnerable king to create threats. In an alternate game where you had taken the e pawn and castled your king to safety almost none of those problems would've arisen. Irony Be My Shield fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 12:43
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Firstly, if you want a computer assessment of your game you can paste it into Lichess and get an assessment of which moves were mistakes or blunders. I am running this through the computer, and I am getting this type of analysis. What I'm saying is I'm making these kinds of mistakes anyway, because I'm too focused on thinking about what I should do and not what's in front of me. I'm not slowing down and thinking through things. Like, I'd be fairly certain at that point in time where the d5 move happened I thought, "He's attacking the pawn by my king, I might be up a piece if he takes it but he's taken away my ability to castle. Make the middle a mess and see what happens because time is ticking away and I'm lost." I get the whole counting out threats and attacks and all that, I just don't have anything to fall back on, mentally, when I'm feeling the pressure. And with that bishop move I was definitely feeling pressure. Which is probably different from "tempo" but I really feel like that bishop move beforehand was setting the pace of the game and I had nothing to fall back on. Edit: And that goes back on an earlier post about me overthinking things in the wrong place. Like, I was probably also thinking about him getting his knight to g5 to support the bishop attack, and I vaguely remember putting a pawn on h6 as a precautionary move is a waste of a move/gives them the chance to build faster. I'm prioritising the wrong things at the wrong the time. Much like I'm not evaluating trades properly (I'm not good enough to yet and more likely to get it wrong than right, other than be willing to trade pieces when you're up.) Mrenda fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 13:16
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I mean I think recapturing the pawn is the more natural move there? Your default should just be to recapture the piece rather than trying to find some fancy threat elsewhere on the board. Like obviously sometimes there are really smart intermezzo plays you can make, but you generally need to do a bunch of calculation to ensure that the threat is unignorable, your opponent doesn't have a move that answers it and protects their threatened piece/threatens something else, you're actually achieving something relevant etc. Just launching an attack on your opponent's queen for no reason shouldn't be your immediate response there Irony Be My Shield fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 13:24
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Yep. I'm being far too fancy for my own good, overthinking things and thinking chess is some genius brain move game when at my level it's, "Don't be immensely stupid, just moderately stupid." And a lot of that is just dealing with what I see is the "pressure" and pulling bullshit out of my arse.
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Oct 3, 2023 13:32
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Mrenda posted:Yep. I'm being far too fancy for my own good, overthinking things and thinking chess is some genius brain move game when at my level it's, "Don't be immensely stupid, just moderately stupid." And a lot of that is just dealing with what I see is the "pressure" and pulling bullshit out of my arse. With triple-digit Rating you shouldn't feel pressure. If you fall behind just keep focusing on counting correctly and half the time you'll come back when your opponent blunders a piece back. If they don't make any mistakes they were smurfing or playing out of their mind, either way you were doomed from the start.
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Oct 3, 2023 14:41
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Also, a dog who chased two hares catches neither. Focus on protecting pieces and counting properly, then when you've mastered that move on to tactics, then strategic stuff. Probably some other steps in there but you get the idea. It'll be easier to evaluate when not to take trades after you've mastered the basics.
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Oct 3, 2023 15:04
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A hint I found useful was, instead of starting every turn thinking "what are my checks, captures, and attacks?" ask yourself, "If they could take another move right now, what would they do?" And it doesn't have to be a crazy long evaluation. Sometimes the answer is, "I don't see anything obvious," and you develop another piece or present a threat of your own. But sometimes you'll go, "oh they played c3 because they want to play d4." Or even just, "if they could go again right now, they'd take my Bishop." After that it's working on your simple calculation. "He wants to take my Bishop so I'll counterattack his Bishop." OK fine, but does that actually stop him from taking your Bishop? It doesn't take long to count out the trades, but you have to actually do it. And you'll mess it up, sometimes, because it's also a skill you're developing. You're going to go, "takes takes takes takes and we're still equal ... oh poo poo I missed his Bishop on the other side of the board." Or, "Oh poo poo, when he takes back there with his Knight it's check and I drop a piece." Huxley fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 15:15
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PerniciousKnid posted:With triple-digit Rating you shouldn't feel pressure. If you fall behind just keep focusing on counting correctly and half the time you'll come back when your opponent blunders a piece back. I was like that the first two nights I started online (this go around with chess.) Just play my game, think about what I should be doing and most of all, "Have fun!" I think Lichess actually works this better due to their interface. I have vague memories of chess.com putting the ELO in a more obvious place, and generally feeling more aggressive about pushing you to improve. Lichess feels more, at a level I'm not quite sure why, "Yeah, friendo. Just play your chess. Enjoy yourself!" Probably because they're not trying to make money out of selling you plans with extra puzzle access and more advanced lessons, even if down the line when those things are wanted chess.com might be better at it. Late last night and more this morning though I got more concerned at not falling any lower in the rankings. It's probably because I want to feel like I've "bottomed out" at where I should be, despite really only playing online for a few Christmases and the past 15 or so games online. I think it's partly because I know what I need to do. I have all the tools and information for what I need to do, I just haven't made it part of my game yet. There's no more "learnings" or tricks I need to hear. Simply put, I just need to do what I know I should be doing. I will say this time around is a lot more fun, possibly due to Lichess's more "Just play chess, hun," interface. Also because I've told myself not to play when I'm exhausted because I'll just get angry when I do dumb things instead of learning from it. I'm having my first beers now, though, so who knows how I'll feel about using my noggin for chess tomorrow when the beers have made me feel icky. And I know I'm posting a lot, but I am, genuinely, having a lot of fun with this and don't have anyone really to say this stuff to who gives a gently caress about chess. Thank you, chess-posting pals.
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Oct 3, 2023 15:17
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Also on Lichess you have the option under Preferences/Display to totally hide player ratings from the platform. You can still play rated games, but when you fire up a game it will for all appearances be unrated and clicking your profile won't show your ratings and the line graph showing your movement over time.
Huxley fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 15:21
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Had draws in 2 successive games for the first time.  This is when I dropped the win for the second game:  https://lichess.org/oRfYMnbO/black#101
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Oct 3, 2023 17:19
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Mrenda posted:
Have fun! Your rating is going to drop. Even setting aside that Lichess starts you with a very high rating, it will drop because you have an eclectic mix of chess habits and solidifying your foundation will result in missing tactical and strategic opportunities. As you master counting, your rating will stabilize and increase to a new plateau, and then repeat the process every time you add something new. But, it will all work out in the long run!
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Oct 3, 2023 17:20
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PerniciousKnid posted:Have fun! Your rating is going to drop. Even setting aside that Lichess starts you with a very high rating, it will drop because you have an eclectic mix of chess habits and solidifying your foundation will result in missing tactical and strategic opportunities. As you master counting, your rating will stabilize and increase to a new plateau, and then repeat the process every time you add something new. But, it will all work out in the long run! 1500 is a very high rating? I've looked at the distribution and it's almost exactly the median.
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Oct 3, 2023 17:40
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ikanreed posted:1500 is a very high rating? I've looked at the distribution and it's almost exactly the median. It took me around half a year to reach 1500 on lichess. And more then a full year to stay above it consistently. 1500 also was the exact median rating until they changed the way bots are ranked. e: before that I was playing Go for several years and never reached median rank.
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Oct 3, 2023 17:49
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ikanreed posted:1500 is a very high rating? I've looked at the distribution and it's almost exactly the median. Median rating is very high for a beginner.
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Oct 3, 2023 17:56
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chess.com says that like 1200 blitz is 80th percentile or something but that's where it starts you and I definitely still suck after clawing my way back there
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Oct 3, 2023 18:18
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VictualSquid posted:Had draws in 2 successive games for the first time. I'm not very good but e3 is the move right. But if I had any kind of time pressure I'd probably go c4 and then 1... d2 and you're hosed. That's my 1400 analysis. E: or maybe not? Those two moves aren't committal so I could still recover E2: ok looked at the game, that's pretty funny regulargonzalez fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 20:26
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I've been playing on average about two or so game of Rapid a week on lichess for the last few months (I have 49 total games recorded) and I'm hovering around 950 to 1000, which I'm quite happy with given I've done no opening theory study whatsoever and I'm just trying to consistently play safe moves and occasionally spot attacks. I think if you set yourself a goal of hitting 1500 in some specific short amount of time that's bad, it's putting way too much emphasis on rating and also not really realistic. You should assume that the vast majority of bad chess players give up and stop playing, and the vast majority of players who are consistently and regularly playing online chess have been playing for years now. That 1500 average therefore represents not an average of all chess players, but rather, an average of dedicated multi-year online chess players. I doubt I will hit 1500, like, ever, because I'm just not playing that often or putting attention into proper study. I would say that if you are playing blitz... don't. I do 10+5 rapid and that hits a sweet spot for me in terms of not feeling too pressured to make bad moves, but also a game usually takes around ten to twenty minutes and that's a chunk of time I'm comfortable with casually committing to. e. on Lichess, click your username top right and click Profile and you can see your history. Then click the name of whoever you just played, and you can see how many games they've played. That might be a helpful thing if you're struggling to feel good about wins and losses. Of the last ten players I was matched with, one's account has been deleted, 8 have several hundred games, and only one has about as many games as me. I felt extremely stupid about losing this game:  but that player has 1500 games, so at our rating he is probably really bad and just knows a couple of clever tricks, I fell for one and he probably loses a lot to 1k ranked players when they pick up on his one trick. Otherwise it's hard to understand this rating for a player who has played this much. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 21:16
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