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If you're looking for fireworks, and don't mind getting crushed a lot when you're first getting the hang of them, I'd say KID and/or Grunfeld. Both are theory dense at master level and above, but can be played perfectly well at beginner/casual level just knowing basic/thematic ideas, and both are good for building "chess iq." The KID usually leads to closed middle game positions and will land you in a lot of situations where the best move is a weird one, so if you dutifully analyze your mistakes you can really sharpen your instincts for positional play. The Grunfeld, on the other hand, tends to open the board quickly and can get super tactical once it does.
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Apr 29, 2024 19:32
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khazar sansculotte posted:If you're looking for fireworks, and don't mind getting crushed a lot when you're first getting the hang of them, I'd say KID and/or Grunfeld. Both are theory dense at master level and above, but can be played perfectly well at beginner/casual level just knowing basic/thematic ideas, and both are good for building "chess iq." The KID usually leads to closed middle game positions and will land you in a lot of situations where the best move is a weird one, so if you dutifully analyze your mistakes you can really sharpen your instincts for positional play. The Grunfeld, on the other hand, tends to open the board quickly and can get super tactical once it does. I was under the impression that beginners/amateurs in general were highly advised to stay away from the Grunfeld because giving White a big centre is usually a disaster when they don't really know what they're doing. Does it not violate a load of basic opening principles that are far more important to internalise at that level?
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Apr 29, 2024 20:17
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people say not to play the ruy lopez as a beginner because the theory is deep. what can I do as black to capitalize on that? I don’t feel like it’s a bad idea for someone to play the ruy into me at the moment.
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Apr 29, 2024 20:42
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multistability posted:I was under the impression that beginners/amateurs in general were highly advised to stay away from the Grunfeld because giving White a big centre is usually a disaster when they don't really know what they're doing. Does it not violate a load of basic opening principles that are far more important to internalise at that level? OP is bored by the Slav, so it's not like playing the QGD is going to get their blood pumping. As infrequently as 1.d4 is played at OP's level compared to 1.e4, and with OP already playing more classically as white and against 1.e4, I think what OP will gain in exposure to new positions and structures, not to mention fun, makes it worthwhile. But yes, if someone is going for maximum long term improvement, doesn't care about making number go up quickly, and has the discipline to analyze all of their games deeply, they should be playing main line Ruy Lopez/Open Sicilian and QG with 3.Nc3 as white, and Nimzo/QGD paired with the Closed Ruy Lopez/Giuoco Piano and the Najdorf as black. Ghislaine of YOSPOS posted:people say not to play the ruy lopez as a beginner because the theory is deep. what can I do as black to capitalize on that? I don’t feel like it’s a bad idea for someone to play the ruy into me at the moment. If you're looking to notch easy wins, the Schleimann (3...f5!?) is very good for that. It's venemous, no one bothers to learn it from the white side, and many natural moves are inaccurate. khazar sansculotte fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Apr 29, 2024 20:56
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Theory is deep for a beginner in every opening. IMO the only theoretical thing that matters is "will you die if you don't play the best move 3 moves in a row" and that only really happens when you accept gambits Generally I think people should play whichever opening for which they can understand at least one idea (preferably more) going into the middlegame. Like King's Indian kingside attack, Carlsbad structure minority attack, etc. It helps a lot to have a picture of what you're actually aiming for, even if it might not be the exact optimal thing to do.
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Apr 29, 2024 21:01
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The main reason not to study "theory deep Sicilians," at least, is every book and course starts in a position you aren't likely to get until much higher rating. I've played about 250 ranked Sicilians over the past few months. You know how much of this you get?   Around 40%. Another 15% is this:  You know how many Open Sicilians I've gotten? 9/250 You don't even get many anti-Sicilians down here. The Rossolimo (8/250) and Alapin (15/250) barely turn up. And this isn't like, the 400s. This is 1100-1200 chesscom Rapid or so. Not good but decidedly intermediate range. That's the reason I gravitated to the Taimanov, actually. I knew playing e6 against Bc4 is right, and I was getting it so often I may as well just learn one solid e6 Sicilian that will work against everything vs trying to remember which variation is right against which random white move order. Redmark posted:Theory is deep for a beginner in every opening. IMO the only theoretical thing that matters is "will you die if you don't play the best move 3 moves in a row" and that only really happens when you accept gambits And there are only really two of these I've ever seen, the Englund and the Stafford.
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Apr 29, 2024 21:52
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I decided to play chess because a DJ I like plays it and her videos got me interested. Turns out the DJ thing is her side hustle. Anyway, is there anyone new or beginning on chess.com that would be interested in learning together? Apparently I have a "400" rating by virtue of making an account.
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Apr 29, 2024 22:52
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3 DONG HORSE posted:I decided to play chess because a DJ I like plays it and her videos got me interested. Turns out the DJ thing is her side hustle. Anyway, is there anyone new or beginning on chess.com that would be interested in learning together? Apparently I have a "400" rating by virtue of making an account. You should probably play some matchmaking games, to figure out where you actually stand first
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Apr 29, 2024 22:58
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AnoHito posted:You should probably play some matchmaking games, to figure out where you actually stand first Yeah I guess I got ahead of myself..I'll report back later, heh.
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Apr 29, 2024 23:08
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heya 3 dong! long time no see haha chess is cool I downloaded a random lovely chess app on my tablet and played for six months after I watched "the queen's gambit" on netflix and then I found this thread and found there's all kinds of beginner resources here that are cool and good so like, don't go away but one very cool thing about chess is it can be whatever level of game you want it to be because of the superb matchmaking if you want to just play and not put much effort in, you will wind up playing at people at a similar level. If you put in tons of effort to get gud, you'll get gud and then still play people at a similar level. So you should expect to be winning about half your games pretty soon, regardless. That does mean you need to be mentally OK with losing about half your games, pretty soon. My wife gets really mad when she loses games so she has to play games that are, basically, easy for her, and chess can't really be that game. The other thing I'll say is, learn the scholar's mate and how to stop it, because at beginner levels, shitloads of people are gonna just jam that at you and learning to stop it will instantly push you up to at least like 800 elo in short order and the games are frankly just not particularly fun if you just get beat by scholar's over and over again e. also you can just play the easy bots on chess.com if you want a zero-pressure, put down and pick up whenever experience. Bots don't really play like humans do but you can still learn the basics that way.
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Apr 29, 2024 23:32
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It also helps that Qf3/Qh5 isn't really a very good opening move, so if you don't fall for scholar's mate you're laughing
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Apr 30, 2024 01:51
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https://www.chess.com/game/live/108177058309 telling myself that i need to play longer time controls if i'm going to improve at chess because half of my bullet rating comes from just playing really fast. and then going into a G10 game and immediately dirty flagging them. chess!
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Apr 30, 2024 02:21
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Thank you Leper! I think I"m going to start at Rapid 30 for a few games until I get my bearings then drop the time over a few games. I feel like getting used to thinking and reacting fast is part of the learning curve. e: I'm gonna dive into this like I used to with Starcraft back in the day. Time to memorize Build Orders or whatever 
3 DONG HORSE fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Apr 30, 2024 03:12
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mfcrocker posted:It also helps that Qf3/Qh5 isn't really a very good opening move, so if you don't fall for scholar's mate you're laughing it's true - the main counterplay to wayward queen is just going "ok, good for you" and developing your knight like you probably should anyway, and then he's just got a queen hanging out putting pressure on gently caress all until he eventually has to move it somewhere else. Also - not only is it not that good, the kind of player who plays it has no idea of what to do now that his plan is ruined, so you can smell the blunders coming.
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Apr 30, 2024 12:36
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This is either the worst puzzle ever or I need to take a break. https://lichess.org/training/RkwvA
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Apr 30, 2024 12:50
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Bruce Hussein Daddy posted:This is either the worst puzzle ever or I need to take a break. I mean I got it first try, but that's a weird one, because the response moves don't seem at all forced.
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Apr 30, 2024 12:52
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silvergoose posted:I mean I got it first try, but that's a weird one, because the response moves don't seem at all forced. They aren’t but they’re the top engine move.
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Apr 30, 2024 13:46
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I decided to do my qualifiers without studying first and it turns out I'm very bad. Though sure enough Scholar's Mate popped up among the 5 and that was the only game I won 
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Apr 30, 2024 15:11
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A lot of the Scholar’s Mate trolls will quit as soon as you have made the best moves for four or five moves and it is clear they do not have a sucker.
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Apr 30, 2024 16:34
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Yep. Frequently it's literally just that it's the only thing they know. If they can't win with that, then they'd rather not play.
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Apr 30, 2024 18:24
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More broadly, it is bad to get the queen out so fast and you can harass an opponent's queen and at low ELO they'll often blunder her quickly and then resign as soon as you capture her I think that basically that strategy will get you to like 700 ELO, all by itself, even if you otherwise have no idea what you're doing but the basic fundamentals plus lots of practice has gotten me to 1000 ELO (rapid 10+ or 15+ mostly) without learning openings. Fundamentals like, try to control the center, develop your pieces, castle, pay attention to how supported each piece is and don't overload one pawn or piece by making it support 2 others simultaneously, watch out for forks, pay attention to what your opponent's plan is as well as your own plan, and abandon your plan when your opponent counters it instead of keeping on with it even though it no longer works. Where I'm at now I think I have to learn the lines of a good opening, get better at endgame, and just practice a lot more for improving middle game performance. But I've been playing on and off for a year to get to this point: maybe 40 or 50 games on an app, 71 games on lichess, plus a shitload of puzzles and watching lots of chess streamer influencers on youtube when I'm bored (anna cramling is an absolute gem, levy of gothamchess is good, coffee chess is extremely wholesome, hikaru is unwatchable, botez sisters are annoying) and I'm hovering around 1050 or so. Probably could crack 1100 consistently if I just played more, but to get to 1200 I'm gonna need to do some actual proper line memorization and I'm kind of resisting doing that because it feels like homework.
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Apr 30, 2024 18:54
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I love the Botez Sisters. One of them is a DJ and that's actually how I walked into this whole thing in the first place!quote:but the basic fundamentals plus lots of practice has gotten me to 1000 ELO (rapid 10+ or 15+ mostly) without learning openings. Fundamentals like, try to control the center, develop your pieces, castle, pay attention to how supported each piece is and don't overload one pawn or piece by making it support 2 others simultaneously, watch out for forks, pay attention to what your opponent's plan is as well as your own plan, and abandon your plan when your opponent counters it instead of keeping on with it even though it no longer works. This seems stupid to type but it feels good there's a lot of overlap between this game and RTS/TBS games. lol.
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Apr 30, 2024 19:22
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that's... actually yeah there's parallels there, aren't there the "practice a lot" part I think is how you start to develop the knack of noticing poo poo, that's hard to like describe how to do? But I blunder pieces still, and I do it because I make a move and don't notice how that has changed the board state to one where one of my pieces is hanging or vulnerable to a fork or something. I only seem to get better at that by playing a lot. Same with noticing my opponent's blunders. There's this whole additional bit called "tactics" that is part of figuring out how to attack and win and that's hard. There's also this concept called tempo, part of what is bad about the opponent moving their queen into the middle and then having to move it three more times as you harass it is that every time they have to move her they are doing that instead of developing another piece, while meanwhile you are (ideally) developing new pieces to harass her. Any time you can do something that improves your position but your opponent has to undo a move, you've gained a tempo, and gaining tempos is how you "get ahead". And I think both of those ideas also have parallels with starcraft etc. You have to identify, create, and exploit opportunities rather than playing completely passively; and you want to avoid wasting time on moves that leave you behind your opponent in terms of position and strength.
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Apr 30, 2024 20:05
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If anybody reading this wants to practice against the scholars mate, go to chess.com and play the Nelson bot (1300) as black. Play .. e5 and he'll go for the scholars mate every .. single ... time
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Apr 30, 2024 22:27
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Exercu posted:it's true - the main counterplay to wayward queen is just going "ok, good for you" and developing your knight like you probably should anyway, and then he's just got a queen hanging out putting pressure on gently caress all until he eventually has to move it somewhere else. Yeah wayward queen is bad even if they don't blunder their queen because it's very easy to chase it around the board while developing, so you win a lot of free tempii while they're constantly wasting moves just getting the queen out of trouble. You do have to be careful about not blundering a fork since the queen is going to have a lot of freedom to move around the board in the early game and can attack any pieces you've left undefended, but so long as you don't get over-aggressive about trying to chase her down and just develop normally you should come out ahead.
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Apr 30, 2024 23:02
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Bruce Hussein Daddy posted:This is either the worst puzzle ever or I need to take a break. It's an "attack the pinned piece" puzzle with the twist that you pin the piece and attack it in the same move. The opponent has no way to add more defence to his rook after your move, so the best he can do is throw in a few pointless checks before you inevitably win it.
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Apr 30, 2024 23:35
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Yeah wayward queen is bad even if they don't blunder their queen because it's very easy to chase it around the board while developing, so you win a lot of free tempii while they're constantly wasting moves just getting the queen out of trouble. You do have to be careful about not blundering a fork since the queen is going to have a lot of freedom to move around the board in the early game and can attack any pieces you've left undefended, but so long as you don't get over-aggressive about trying to chase her down and just develop normally you should come out ahead. I see the wayward queen about once a year and always fall for it apparently. I played a kid at my daughter's tournament between rounds and stepped on a couple rakes in a row. Luckily I have better concentration than a nine year old, so I found checkmate anyway. 
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Apr 30, 2024 23:49
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Maugrim posted:It's I realized that after 14 attempts. l am very intelligent.
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May 1, 2024 00:36
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Leperflesh posted:to get to 1200 I'm gonna need to do some actual proper line memorization and I'm kind of resisting doing that because it feels like homework. You definitely don't need to do a bunch of memorization to break 1200. The advantage you gain by successfully reproducing 10 theory moves is miniscule compared to how most games at that level are won and lost. It's way more important to train yourself to consistently notice when your opponent blunders and avoid blundering yourself. Just do lots of tactics puzzles (chesstempo is best IMO but lichess and chess.com are fine) and, critically, take the time to understand the ones you get wrong. That'll make your rating rise way faster than memorizing lines.
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May 1, 2024 01:28
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I think there's value in memorizing what the correct response to 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f6 is as a beginner because it's crushing against black's typical reply, involves material sacrifice, that opening comes up a lot in lower levels, and frankly there's only two moves you need to remember.
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May 1, 2024 01:48
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Arrhythmia posted:I think there's value in memorizing what the correct response to 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f6 is as a beginner because it's crushing against black's typical reply, involves material sacrifice, that opening comes up a lot in lower levels, and frankly there's only two moves you need to remember. Yeah stuff like this. I almost always play 1.e4 and usually reply with ...e5 as black but then after that I tend to make mistakes and lose like one game in six just because I fell into yet another opening trap. Where if I just studied a few of the lines and learned them I could stop doing that and I expect that'd improve my ELO by 100 points.
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May 1, 2024 02:05
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Yes, I would agree that it's worth knowing how to refute garbage and not fall into simple traps. I just conceptualize that more as "see and understand" rather than "memorizing."
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May 1, 2024 02:10
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Basically if someone gives up a piece in the first 5 moves then either my cheeks or their cheeks are about to be clapped. No inbetween.
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May 1, 2024 02:13
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I will say just personally, I didn't really get over my anxiety around playing until I started studying openings seriously. I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy playing knowing there were objectively correct answers to the first 5-6 moves and I just didn't know them. It felt like going into a calculus test without my multiplication tables memorized. I'm starting this whole game worse off than I could be, not because of my strategy or tactics, but because of my laziness staring down the only position I can guarantee I'll see every game. I know for a fact I would be a much better player if I spent 3/4 of the hours I've spent on openings just grinding tactics. Zero doubt. But I don't owe it to anyone to get better, I just owe it to myself to have fun.
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May 1, 2024 02:18
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Simplest approach is to just memorize the lines you lose to. If you exit a game feeling bad about how the opening went, resist the urge to go next and spend a few minutes drilling what you should've played instead. Especially if you play on lichess where you get free analysis for every game.
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May 1, 2024 03:04
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Here's my official Salt Fish's guide to if you need to study openings for the terrible chess player: * The goal of chess is to have fun, so don't study openings if its not fun * #1 thing that makes you gain rating is just playing a ton * #2 thing that makes you gain rating is spending a little time learning from your games * 99% of games at low MMR are who blunders first and are 10-20 moves long If you memorize what to do for the first 5 moves you're going to win a lot more games when games are a race to not blunder first. Learning openings is so powerful that some players advise against it until later because they're worried it'll slow down learning basic principles. Its almost like a form of cheating at low MMR because its that good. Once you learn theory it can be very very fun to use it to smash people. The rest is up to you.
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May 1, 2024 03:19
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah stuff like this. I almost always play 1.e4 and usually reply with ...e5 as black but then after that I tend to make mistakes and lose like one game in six just because I fell into yet another opening trap. Where if I just studied a few of the lines and learned them I could stop doing that and I expect that'd improve my ELO by 100 points. If you keep falling for the same opening trap then you should probably figure out how to avoid it just from reviewing your games. If you're hitting different traps every time then which traps would you even study?
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May 1, 2024 03:50
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PerniciousKnid posted:If you keep falling for the same opening trap then you should probably figure out how to avoid it just from reviewing your games. If you're hitting different traps every time then which traps would you even study? A lot of traps tend to have common patterns so you should look for those and see if you can start recognizing them. Learning tactics can help a lot, since usually the idea behind traps is that by falling into them you are exposing yourself to a tactic later down the line, so by being able to spot those tactics in advance you can figure out moves that will shut them down before they get played. There's a lot of opening traps that simply stop working because you pushed an extra pawn and are now defending a crucial square they needed to put a piece on at the end of the sequence.
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May 1, 2024 04:32
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You absolutely don't need to memorize opening lines or really study much opening theory at all until you get to around 2000 elo. Studying tactics, endgames and positional principles will be far more useful and improve your play faster. Just stick to basic opening principles you can go very far. It's also better for your chess in the long run. If you are 1200 elo and memorize the eight most common lines of the Grunfeld or something, sure you will consistently get middle games with an advantage against that competition. But all that will do is bump up your elo until you are playing people who don't have the theory that you do, but have a better tactical and positional understanding than you, and you will start to get mad that every game you are +2 eval after 15 moves but you still keep losing anyway.
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May 1, 2024 05:59
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PerniciousKnid posted:If you keep falling for the same opening trap then you should probably figure out how to avoid it just from reviewing your games. If you're hitting different traps every time then which traps would you even study? it's not about studying traps, it's about understanding maybe the top five lines of the opening I always start with, because those established book moves are mostly not just blundering a lovely position like, I'm not hitting the exact same problem every time because my opponents don't even play consistently at this level, it's more just like... oh, it's bad to move taht knight first, because there's a bunch of advantageous lines against it? ok good to know, remember to move the other knight first or "don't develop the bishop to that square until it's got a pawn support" poo poo like that this is what I imagine is learning openings, maybe I'm way off e. it's probably wrong to describe what's happening as me falling into traps, more just that I am giving up a bunch of advantage sometimes because I make a move that is just not a good move in some way that is not very obvious, very early on
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May 1, 2024 06:22
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