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Hi everyone. Ignore everything I just said because I reread the rules and we can only use wikipedia. Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Sep 11, 2017 |
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Sep 11, 2017 20:47
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 23:52 |
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I will now not comment on the first move as I have forbidden knowledge.
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Sep 11, 2017 21:01
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Covski posted:Ugh, having thought about it a bit more I'll be amending the rules to allow chess.com as a source for information as well. Me changing the rules as I figure out what works is basically a trademark of mine by now anyway. Goddamn. Okay I should be asleep but: There are four major plays on Chess.com with above 300k games. They are, e4, d4, Nf3 and c4. Let's look at each one and what Chess.com says:  e4 is a good move and the most popular opening in the game. We would do well to use it. However, I think specifically for this game there are a few reasons to believe it's not going to be as good as it otherwise might. Notably the cons to the opening are that it comes out weaker if black defends well and it requires good opening knowledge. Specifically last game, black ran an unconventional response to this move. Whether or not that lost black the game, I think it will have an impression on players. Specifically I think Black will play this game hard by the book if we do so. Now, the reality is if that happens what we're all going to be doing for the next 10-15 turns is opening up chess books and cross analysing anything Black does against that and they'll do the same. Whilst playing Book chess is a fine thing, I think specifically for us, it prevents us from really challenging and considering moves to try and understand the game better. Additionally I don't think the game will be that interesting to watch either. So honestly I lean against e4.  This is d4, which has about 2.5m games or so. The benefits here noted are that it's a more strategic play than e4, but with less direct attack potential. I feel like if the game we want to play is one where we try to understand chess a little better and develop ourselves as players, then running for a game that's more about long term build up is probably going to be better for us overall. And also it'll potentially be better for the audience to see a different opening to game one.  Nf3 has about 350k games or so. It's an odd opening to me because it blocks off a pawn but gives the advantage of a fast castle. The reason I don't like this for us is that I feel like being able to properly time and take advantage of a castle is something that we might struggle with as newer players, so opening to provide that option might lead us down a path where we take it at an inopportune time.  Finally we have c4, again with around 350k games. This is probably the most out there opening that's still widely played and I think would come as a surprise to black, but I think would be reliant on us correctly fighting the centre with a piece in an odd place, which isn't something I'm convinced we'll do amazingly. Also I noted last game that surprise didn't really provide an advantage because of the format. There is something however to be said for seeming like an unconventional player to start, only to immediately fall into convention to confuse the opposing team. In any case, I'm going to throw my hat in for d4. I want to win, but I want to learn and have the team be more collaborative in their efforts than a very book chess style opening and response would allow.
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Sep 11, 2017 23:28
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Phone posting, so bear with me. So I believe the reasoning is this as to why the game ends up more strategic. If we play d4 we can opt on turn 2 to offer black a gambit. (where we lose a piece to gain positioning) If we play c4. That's us forcing a fairly big tactical decision early on from them, which whilst not surprising might at least have them fighting in their thread. We can do the same thing with e4 and f4, but Wikipedia informs me that this is a weaker play for reasons that I haven't yet discerned.
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Sep 12, 2017 08:17
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So if I read that back, then Logically if the most common plays from an e4 opening result in us trying to fight over the centre and the most common plays from d4 results in a flank battle on the c file, d4 leads to a more strategic game in that early build back to the centre for an assault takes longer. At least I think that's right? Also regarding the check opportunity. We know that's a possibility from our opening so logically we can play around it or into it.
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Sep 12, 2017 08:22
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I hope all of this is helping. If people are confused by this and want me to shut up, I'm happy to.
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Sep 12, 2017 08:23
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I'll reply to that in a second, but I'm aware I kinda monopolised discussion yesterday. If everyone in the team were to mention their overall chess experience we might be a little better in terms of knowing what we're dealing with
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Sep 13, 2017 09:05
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So I played chess when I was about 10 or so and was never very good. I get notation and how the pieces move but I'm not really able to see more than two moves in advance. Like reading the last thread and watching people observe that white were at an advantage was mystifying to me.
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Sep 13, 2017 09:09
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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.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:20
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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.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:27
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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.
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Sep 15, 2017 09:49
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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.
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Sep 15, 2017 22:08
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I take that vote back. I've seen something cool on the Bf1-Bb5+ line that I want to suggest.
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Sep 15, 2017 23:00
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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+
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Sep 15, 2017 23:42
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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.
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Sep 16, 2017 10:19
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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!
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Sep 16, 2017 14:52
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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.
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Sep 16, 2017 16:26
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MagusofStars posted:Since there's a check involved, this can be described pretty succinctly. Black's only possible responses are: Agree with this, but think that c2-c4 is a strong move because it both defends the bishop and pressures the e5 square.
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Sep 17, 2017 20:26
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Decoy Badger posted:Nb8-c6 seems to be a good move for them. It gives them the most offensive coverage while leaving their bishop free to threaten the entire diagonal. The downside for them is that they cannot move the knight for now without making an unproductive move, so that suggests that d2-d4 might be a good followup move on our end. We can force a pawn exchange that will let us make our right knight more threatening. Moving our knight will open up the right side of the board for our left bishop and queen to run wild as well. You can't castle out of check unfortunately. Which is why I'd suggest going straight to the castle move if they choose to play Nb8_Nc6
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Sep 18, 2017 15:33
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Well we prepped a plan for what we thought was their best response. Honestly, to me this is the first misplay from black. The Knight achieves very little, since it's not threatening anything without another turn from black. Whatever we do, if they want to free the knight they either have to play Bc8-Bd7, a7-a6 or qd8-qa5. In either case we make a trade because we've had a turn of free development. We have a lot of good options for that now. d2-d4 is bad because as decoy badger pointed out, that path loses us a bishop. d4, qa5+, anything, qxb5. We can take a kingside castle and remove the threat of their queen sweeping down and also get our rook into play. In theory we can still play c2-c4, that means we're very likely to hold d5. Lots of choice, I'll have a video tonight.
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Sep 18, 2017 18:32
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guOYTxgJ_OY My analysis that's uploading. I think that 0-0 is probably the safest line to play for us at the moment.
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Sep 19, 2017 00:07
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It's working now!
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Sep 19, 2017 08:19
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LambdaZero posted:Phone posting for now, I'll take a better look (and watch the video) when I get home tonight. Tldr for my video. d2-d4 is fine, but there's an odd line where they refuse to accept the trade, c5-xd4 trade. If that happens I really don't like our positioning. The important thing to note is d2-d4 is coming, but what we're worried about is the position of our pieces when it does. The line from O-O runs bd7, Re1 and leaves them to move where I suspect they either run a6, to scare our bishop off or Nf6. In case 1, we run Bxe7, kill the knight, lose our bishop and the play D2-d4 after we've forced them into an awful pawn structure. In case 2, we play d2-d4 immediately and win the exchange that we force due to our superiority on both d4 and e4.
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Sep 19, 2017 08:38
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I'm a little concerned. Black overwhelmingly takes the gambit but when they don't white has never recorded a win per chess.com. I'll put a video up when we see black move.
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Sep 20, 2017 00:27
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LambdaZero posted:Where do you go to analyze the board on chess.com? I've looked a little bit, but I don't want to accidentally cheat. There's a free trial for a week which is what I've used to look at openings.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:15
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The Mighty Moltres posted:Good point. Not quite the same position. After that we can play Ba4-Bb3. The pawn positioning we create for them is one where we've removed the possibility of c5 being supported by the b file pawn. Additionally, Bb3 threatens Bxf7. That doesn't look that threatening but a subsequent move to Ng5 later in the game means that we threaten a queen/rook fork. They break the pin, but the aim of a pin is to force them into sub-optimal positioning by preventing a piece from moving and that's achieved by that sequence. I'd have to look at possible black countermoves to properly see the sequence though.
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Sep 20, 2017 18:59
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LambdaZero posted:The database I found showed that black takes the pawn literally 99.99% of the time. It's actually pretty crazy because it doesn't seem like the best move to me. Which is amazing given that the situations that they don't have much higher black winrates. It's so odd. Anyway, this seems like a pretty trivial Qd1-Qxd4 move on face. I'll do an info video a little later if I can.
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Sep 20, 2017 20:40
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Decoy Badger posted:I like Qd1-Qxd4, doesn't seem to lead to anything too bad for us beyond a whole lot of threatened pieces and opportunities for trades. The Nf3xe5 response leaves us a knight down if I'm right.
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Sep 20, 2017 23:53
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHkIOWwZDag Video's processing, I think Qd1-Qxd4 is a no brainer here. Edit: forgive me for the mispost about the move. I posted this at like midnight and was sleepy. Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Sep 21, 2017 |
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Sep 21, 2017 00:06
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So one move off Qxd4 followed by e6 is to just move the queen back a square to d3. Not the first thing I considered, but it appears to be safe and protect both our central pieces. From there we have space to go for a castle or develop our queen side.
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Sep 21, 2017 08:32
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Cov can we assume that people calling for Qxd5 mean Qxd4. It was my fault for accidentally typing in the wrong move.
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Sep 21, 2017 15:10
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Faerie Fortune posted:Can I just say that I haven't been able to comprehend a single post on this entire page? I feel like this thread is being taken over by two or three people who kinda know what they're talking about and leaving the rest of us who know very very little in the dirt. Its overwhelming as heck, remember that this is a newbie game, you guys. Some of us are still trying to get to grips with notation and remembering how the pieces move I mean, a lot of us are trying to be as legible as possible here. I've got videos showing what I mean and a bunch of the other guys are posting really good illustrations of the ideas that they have. But at some point if we're to have a discussion we end up having to abbreviate things. For example, typically I post something in detail once a day once I'm done with work stuff at home, go to sleep and I can respond to stuff that's posted subsequently about once a day, from my phone on the train in. I need to be able to comment on what other people have said meaningfully, but I can't realistically post a diagram from my phone so I have to abbreviate. There's a point where yes, abbreviation harms very basic understanding, but once you're slightly above that level it helps facilitate discussion between people I assume are busy goons with real lives, since we gain breadth to phone post or quickly send something when we have a half minute at the computer. I suppose the best thing to ask is what exactly are you finding difficult to follow? Saying everything's impossible to understand, whilst it may be true, doesn't really tell us anything about what you're struggling with. And I mean, on a team of 13 or so, last page we had 8? people or so making really helpful points about what moves are available.
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Sep 21, 2017 20:41
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiXYI7v9wU0 Video's up in a second. Bb5-Bxc6 Letting the knight go free lets them play queen runaround which takes control of the game from us. The trade is profitable since the bishop's or pawn's positioning at the end of it is worse than the positioning of our pieces.
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Sep 25, 2017 00:09
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LambdaZero posted:Just to illustrate what happens after Bc8-g4. Our knight can move to any of these four squares safely. Once it's out of the way, the bishop is just sitting there, and nothing productive gets done with it. Quick thing I noticed in my video is that Qd4-Qd3 is followed by Nc6-Nb4, which threatens our queen again and forces us to move her three times in a row.
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Sep 25, 2017 00:11
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They also have Nc6-Na5 to respond to that.
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Sep 27, 2017 16:03
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Guys, if they play e7-e5 what do we do?
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Oct 12, 2017 09:15
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AlphaKretin posted:I also agree with 0-0. Bc1-g5 looked like a ballsy option for a second to threaten the Knight, but it's backed up by pawns. I think Bc1-g5 is actually the best option we have open. Here's why: For those suggesting a Kingside Castle, it ends up with a rook sat at f1. That's not a bad place to be, but does nothing for our current structure. To get the Knight in the game we'd have to move our pawn up or move our rook across in a later move which kills our momentum. So we end up with a board like this:  At which point Black can do basically anything it wants to. Probably moving a pawn e7-e5 and forcing us into queen runaround. We're not in a bad spot there, but equally it's not very predictable imo. Black has any number of moves that aren't e7-e5. Contrast:  The obvious and only real response to this is:  And we can then choose to take the knight or move back. We've been planning on this, so we take the knight.  Their two options subsequent to this are to capture with e7, at which point they've just lost a central pawn or they capture from g7 which is slightly better:  At which point we Queenside castle:  We're left in a position here were Black can't do anything with its f8 bishop because it's walled in by its own pawns entirely. Our castle is in play and backing up our queen, which makes any attempted queen exchange fall in our favour. If they play e7 to e5 now it has no teeth any more since they can't pin our queen with weird Knight attack angles. If they do literally anything else we get Rook from h1 to e1 for free. So yeah. Bc1-g5
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Oct 19, 2017 13:27
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CascadeBeta posted:I agree that Bc1-g5 is the best move, however, would we care if they take our pawn with their knight instead of moving that pawn up one? Probably not but that's the only other thing I can see happening. We respond by taking their knight with ours, they then either lose a knight for a pawn, or take our knight with their bishop. We then take their bishop with our queen. The net of that is they lose a knight and a bishop for a pawn and a knight.
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Oct 19, 2017 15:17
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 23:52 |
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I think we've broadly anticipated the correct set of black moves here. It'll be interesting to see if they follow our plan.
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Oct 19, 2017 23:35
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