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Aggro posted:The best mating pattern is Philidor’s mate with a Queen on the long diagonal and a Knight on g5/c4. Knight check, then double check, then a Queen sacrifice, and then a smothered mate. I thought I never would but then got two of them within about a week. If you are attuned to it you will see the necessary elements of the pattern in the game.
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Dec 25, 2021 07:15
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Aggro posted:The best mating pattern is Philidor’s mate with a Queen on the long diagonal and a Knight on g5/c4. Knight check, then double check, then a Queen sacrifice, and then a smothered mate. Also, I've had it once where the opponent let me checkmate him a couple moves early (moving the king to h6 instead of h8 after the double check) instead of retreating into the corner to allow the queen sac and smothered mate. Not sure if he just gave up or was denying me the satisfaction on purpose.
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Dec 25, 2021 19:21
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Hand Knit posted:I'm pretty sure the word "gambit" comes from chess and made its way out into the wider world. Myself, I find myself saying "intermezzo" instead of "intermediate" pretty often. Intermezzo is probably more associated with music than chess for most people. But yeah zugzwang is a very cool word. Gambit, stalemate and checkmate all have a fair amount of use out in the world. Endgame, also.
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Jan 7, 2022 04:25
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 Even though it's an easy win I like that Black's move contains a little trap that a short on time player could fall into.
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Jan 30, 2022 20:01
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Helianthus Annuus posted:thats right! a miserable gently caress up, when Re8# is right there Ah but even more stylish (IMO) to go with f7#.
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Jan 30, 2022 20:11
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Maugrim posted:Possibly it helps to see the pawn as effectively pinned by the fork threat. What do you do with a pinned piece - attack it. And they have no way to defend it so you're winning the pawn at absolute minimum as well as cracking open their defensive structure. I think it's hard to "see" for inexperienced or low players like me because the pawn is literally surrounded by pieces, but they are pieces that can't protect it except the queen. So your mind kind of rules it out as a target.
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Jan 31, 2022 19:28
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In which I, White, get my queen trapped, but actually it turns out it was a brilliant sacrifice because taking the queen leads to forced mate (which I, uh, totally saw and calculated).
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Feb 13, 2022 00:35
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Also, doesn’t your Elo rating moving up result in your eventually being rated a little above your true skill level, then you play a bunch of better players, take a losing streak, and your Elo adjusts back downwards? Won’t it tend to have a sinusoidal movement around your true skill level?
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Mar 24, 2022 03:35
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Weird and slightly unsatisfying feeling in a rapid game to think I was exchanging rooks but actually checkmated the opponent because my rook couldn't be captured because it was supported on a long diagonal by my bishop that I'd forgotten about. Hooray for having well positioned pieces that cover a lot of squares, I guess!
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Mar 30, 2022 01:00
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Amniotic posted:The flip side is having your threatening, balanced, and perfectly defended position revealed to be a house of cards by one seemingly innocuous move by the opponent. Yes, that actually happens much more often!
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Mar 30, 2022 04:35
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Artelier posted:Is that one Queen takes Queen, White Bishop recaptures, and then Black's Bishop recaptures? I don't see any other alternative that leaves you up. Maybe I'm missing something, or if I got it maybe this is one of those ones that I see really easily Yeah that's what I figured the solution to be also. There's a certain type of puzzle that's giving me trouble lately. It's where the moves in the combination change the circumstances and tactics on the board. Like sometimes the enemy Queen pins one of your pieces against your King. But if that Queen is also doing double duty protecting some other piece, if you exchange off that piece, the Queen recapturing releases the pin and that's the key to the puzzle. Likewise I did a really good one recently (didn't get it) where you win a rook that was protected by the enemy Queen along a diagonal. The key move is a knight move that discovers a check against the enemy king along a diagonal, after the move the knight is now interposed along the diagonal between the Queen and rook, blocking the Queen's defense of the rook (and the knight is further supported by a pawn!), upon which your Queen scoops up the rook which is now en prise, after the enemy King gets out of check. The fact of the Queen defending the rook seemed to be an immutable feature of the position, and the fact that this circumstance would change with one of the available moves because of an interposition was a blind spot I couldn't see, of course I looked at the knight moves that led to discovered check but somehow couldn't see this feature of the position because I had "rook protected by Queen" locked in as a permanent feature somehow. Zwabu fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Apr 5, 2022 |
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Apr 5, 2022 03:13
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Hand Knit posted:Ladies and gentlemen I present to you: You could hear their howl of frustration through the internet!  I love making the enemy king take a long trip across the board to visit my own king in his castle.
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Apr 11, 2022 01:46
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So Ding Liren has played a bunch of events in China to get the number of games he needed to get the last spot in Candidates, while retaining the required rating. Is there ever any accusation of Chinese players throwing to get their best player into the Candidates, or are his results easily consistent with his strength relative to his opponents? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9OHO9yRaeE
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Apr 24, 2022 02:07
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Does this cycle feel like one of the most exciting and interesting Candidates in a while, or about the same as usual?
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Apr 24, 2022 02:49
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qsvui posted:
The bolded part is wrong. On the home page you can toggle between Quick Pairing (what you seek), Lobby (where you see what matches are available according to search parameters you set and pick one), and Correspondence. The home page stays on whatever you last used, so if you use the lobby you won't see the Quick Pairing menu unless you choose that toggle. 
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Apr 26, 2022 05:00
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So I’ve been thinking about movies and shows that are centered around chess. The best known are probably Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Queen’s Gambit. Here are some others, if anyone has seen any of them would you care to comment or vouch for the quality or lack thereof? Or have others to add to the list? Pawn Sacrifice https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596345/ The Luzhin Defence https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211492/ Queen to Play https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1082009/
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May 2, 2022 02:16
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TrixRabbi posted:Is there a significant difference between how Chess.com and Lichess assess ratings? I've been struggling to get out of the 800s for Rapid games on Chess.com for awhile now, but on Lichess after playing for a bit I've landed around the mid-1300s for rating and I'm not really feeling that much of a difference in the difficulty of the games -- if anything I've been doing a bit better there. Just curious if there's anything to that or if it's just a string of luck. The short answer is yes. The same skill rating on chess.com equates to a couple few hundred points higher on lichess it seems. Whether this is due to a different rating algorithm or just due to a different population of players with a similar algorithm I don’t know.
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May 4, 2022 18:54
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Ugh, important safety tip re lichess: There is a setting under "Game Behavior" to "Scroll on the board to replay moves" and I've lost at least a few won games because I had this enabled, and short on time, accidentally scrolled my mouse scroll wheel to roll back a few moves and flagged while trying to figure out how to unfuck it (You can forward arrow your way back to the current position lol).
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May 8, 2022 01:23
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Hikaru doesn't seem to really do instructional stuff on his stream like Naroditsky or Levy. He just seems to play or watch a lot of games and talk real fast about random stuff.
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May 23, 2022 14:12
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Ghislaine of YOSPOS posted:I just stepped on the biggest rake of all time. I'd played God's own chess game up to the very last move: Haha, a back ranker is just about the only way you can lose when you're up that much material. We've all been there though.
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May 24, 2022 02:53
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Okay I’ve been watching some of these Chessable Masters games and am embarrassed that I doubted Ding Liren, the man definitely has the goods. This Pragg guy is quite the decent chess playing fellow though! Has he been on everyone’s radar prior to this?
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May 27, 2022 03:09
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Okay I just watched Pragg's match against Ding. This guy is SIXTEEN YEARS OLD? And taking games off the best players in the world, and making them sweat in every single game? Jesus, this guy is amazing.
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May 27, 2022 06:51
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I got caught by an opening trap in the French Defence today (I was White) and lost. I looked over the game and identified the move where my game fell apart and why. Then I matched the same player a short time later and played out the opening in exactly the same way but I didn't make the mistake that fell into the trap this time, and got a solid win. The opponent taking a million years on each move once I didn't fall into their trap was soooo satisfying.
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Jun 6, 2022 03:09
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Helianthus Annuus posted:nice! can i see the moves leading up to the opening trap?  Here is the position where I got trapped, or blundered. I'm white to move on move #6. I somehow thought my d4 pawn was only doubly defended so I tried to defend it again with Be3 which of course abandons the defense of my b pawn. After ...Qxb2 I realized my game was going to fall apart with the loss of my c pawn as well and tried to defend everything with Qb3, losing my rook, so I resigned. When we played again I played everything up to the depicted position but did not overprotect the d pawn and left my b pawn defended, developing to:  If he takes the "free" d pawn (NxP, NxP, QxN) he loses the queen to discovered check. He did see that threat and avoided it, but he spent a LOOOOONG time on that move and most of the subsequent moves.
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Jun 6, 2022 15:19
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Rooney McNibnug posted:There's a Discord server? Sent you a PM with a discord invite.
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Jun 6, 2022 22:15
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Maugrim posted:Can I have an invite too please? Assuming it's not completely dead. Sent
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Jun 6, 2022 23:25
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https://discord.gg/67ushxsJ
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Jun 7, 2022 17:07
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Redmark posted:Finally got a lichess puzzle generated from one of my games Do they notify you when this happens?
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Jun 8, 2022 05:57
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Well at least I solved both of your puzzles on the first go.
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Jun 8, 2022 20:18
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Good reasons to look over even the games you win: Finding better moves than even the winning moves you made in the game. In this game White had sacrificed a knight to start a withering attack on my king, which I wasn't sure I'd survive, but I found the critical move or two I needed to hold onto my king and the material. Then afterwards I had anticipated the fork that is the winning move here (Black to move), but if my opponent hadn't immediately resigned after I put him in check, I never would have found the continuation sequence that turns this from winning the exchange to a smashing easy victory. Obviously after ...Ne2+ White has only one move that avoids mate, and I did consider following with ...Qf3+ to flush the king out to h3, but I didn't see an immediate way to mate or win White's queen by force, so if we'd played on I'd probably have settled for winning the exchange. So after puzzling over it I asked Stockfish to take a look and it taught me something.
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Jun 13, 2022 05:16
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fisting by many posted:Cool. I saw Qf3+ was annoying but had no clear move after, and thought back to Danya's advice, looking for a way to bring another piece in, but I couldn't find it. I didn't see that Kf7 to prepare Rh8 is unstoppable. Yeah. I did have the idea to try and bring a rook into it to attack the king or pin the queen by swinging the rook up and over the king, but it looked like White's bishop and pawns had everything covered. The king move is the kind of move that seems counterintuitive to me because it seems to expose the king to further attack, and that prevented me from considering it.
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Jun 13, 2022 12:08
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Salt Fish posted:
Great on Naroditsky to land the NYT column, but I'm trying to decide if I hate the NYT chess graphics worse or the piece set that gets posted here where the pieces look like cartoon chickens.
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Jun 15, 2022 05:46
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Some good rear end chess in these here candidate matches.
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Jun 18, 2022 17:13
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Hikaru is one of the best in the world at the game he streams. There are not that many opportunities to play for the world title and prove yourself the best at something. Hikaru would definitely take a hit to his image if he declined to even try for the world title, given an opening to do so, even if the short term financial considerations are somewhat understandable. The flipside is if Hikaru actually won the title it would be a substantial boost to his already considerable streaming income, popularity and brand.
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Jul 4, 2022 17:11
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 Hooray for sacrificing a piece into a winning attack, not being a hundred percent sure it was winning but it looked so promising that I was fairly confident I could at minimum win back the material or more, with a good chance of coming away with mate or way ahead in material.
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Jul 8, 2022 23:13
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I think the issue is that the majority of competitive chess these days is in fact played in shorter time controls. So candidates and world championship are the only tournaments people pay attention to that are longer time controls and closest to "best chess". So if you get rid of longer time controls, or deemphasize them, even in those tournaments, then you're kind of getting rid of it altogether? I also see the point Hand Knit is making.. especially if you are particularly strong in rapid or blitz games, like Hikaru or Carlsen, you might have even more incentive to draw than in the current situation and you might have such players drawing their way to blitz tiebreakers, exciting for spectators but far from "best players playing the best chess". Maybe keep longer time controls but decrease the number of games, make it less of a grueling slog? Or, as Magnus suggested, have the WC have to come through the Candidates gauntlet too.
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Jul 23, 2022 00:12
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Hand Knit posted:Just sent someone straight to hell with a sick rear end puzzle book quality tactic Rd7
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Jul 30, 2022 18:10
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Hand Knit posted:1.Rd7 Rcd8 You're right, shortly after I posted I saw that the threat of back rank mate from those rook moves in response would be an issue and realized I'd have to do more work to see if it was in fact winning. But I was at a work conference and trying not to be too obvious lol.
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Jul 31, 2022 00:52
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Okay I got it. Rd7. If ..Rcd8 then Qxf7+..Rxf7, followed by Rxd8+ leaves White up a rook. If ..Rfd8 then Qxf7+ with mate in 1? edited, Hang on more to come edited a second time because I can't read or read coordinates backwards Zwabu fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 01:12
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Hand Knit posted:1.Rd7 Rcd8 Okay if ..Rce8 then Rxg7+..Kxg7, then Rxf7+..Rxf7 followed by Qxe8. The key elements being White queen pinning the black queen along the diagonal, the threat of the two White rooks mating in the corner along the 7th rank if Black's queen leaves f7, and captures with check forcing the replies. Zwabu fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 01:22
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