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Hi chess people. A few months ago I started watching Coffee & Chess videos at random, it got me back into playing a little, and now I've gotten slightly better (still awful). I've been watching Anna Cramling videos, she's entertaining. I'm posting because I found this hilarious Slovakian guy and his wild openings and analysis are fun as hell. Maybe someone else already posted them, I didn't go back very far to see. https://www.youtube.com/@adamiskosach He doesn't have that many views or subscribers so I'm guessing he's pretty obscure. I really like his gandalf trap video but that's an hour long, if you want to just try something shorter and fun maybe start with drunken bishops gambit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfnF3QTdDZQ Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jan 3, 2023 |
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Jan 3, 2023 00:40
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 00:20 |
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I am poking around trying to start educating myself in openings. I randomly came across Queen's Pawn: Krause Variation, which a little googling suggests is sparsely discussed. It seems weird to me that such an early position hasn't been analyzed thoroughly, so, probably I'm just not looking in the right places. I did find this list of grandmaster games using this opening, and I started looking at a few of them, starting with Kasparov/Seirawan, but there's a ton of games and I'm not sure if just reviewing grandmaster games is all that informative because I'm never going to play at that level and these games probably aren't showing me the most likely fuckups I'd make if I tried this opening. Should I just break down and buy a paper book on openings, or is doing tutorials on lichess good enough? Thanks for answering my noob questions
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Jan 9, 2023 22:05
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Hand Knit posted:Here's a position from my game last night. When I was playing I thought that I'd hosed up and was maybe lost, but on review it looks like I actually played it pretty accurately and was ahead the whole time. Even the move I thought was terrible was apparently the only way to play for an advantage. So that's cool. Oh this is fun, I want to try! I'm attempting proper chess notation for the first time, too. If it were black to move, black has a checkmate on the F file that white can't prevent, from ...Rxf2, Rxf2, Qxf2+, Kh1, Qf1#. So white must make a move that either forces white checkmate, or at least stalls black checkmate. White has a diagonal attack already set up with the bishop protected by the queen. White also has two rooks positioned to attack the 7 and 8 ranks. A rook sacrifice to 5, 7, or 8 would disrupt black's checkmate attack, so that's one idea. White could move rf3. That rook would be protected by the queen, but a response ...rxf3, qxf3, qxf3, leaves white in a bad position and down a piece. White could advance the pawn to f4. That slows black's attack, because after ...rxf4, pxf4, qxf4, white can move qg7, and that's checkmate. But it looks to me like black can spot this line and avoid it by just refusing to take the pawn. h4 or h5 gives the king a white escape square, or maybe go re8? I feel like there's several lines here. So I'm not thinking f4 is forcing enough. How about that rook sac idea. re5, rxe5, qxe5, but then black has qf5, the black queen is protected by the bishop and the g6 pawn, and the king now has f7 as an escape square. Maybe re7, qxe7, bg7, kf7, bxf8, qxf8, nope. Maybe rd8? after rxd8, you can exchange queens with qg7, qxg7, bxg7, kxg7, but I don't see how this is winning for white, it's just no longer a black forced checkmate Should we get the bishop the hell out of there? Instead of trying for a checkmate right now, we can do bd4. That puts a third piece supporting the f2 pawn. Black's attack is now just a set of exchanges, rxft, bxf2, qxf2, rxf2, rxft, kxf2 or similar. Black can't give up his queen for insufficient compensation, white still has the diagonal attack on the king's position, and white has qb4 as an idea. I've decided white doesn't have a forced checkmate, at least not one I can see, but I'm gonna go with that last idea as the one I'd probably decide to play here.
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Jan 11, 2023 19:41
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Hmmm. I'm really bad at board eval. Stockfish often wildly disagrees with what I thought was a good or bad position. I also just noticed kh2 and I wonder if that does anything. Oh! And advancing the g3 pawn exposes the bishop to an attack by the rook, HMM
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Jan 11, 2023 20:18
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Hand Knit posted:Eval is a hard skill to develop but it's a pretty important one since it's what underlies how you decide to do anything, especially when you aren't immediately winning or losing. But then kxh3, presumably black responds with rxe2, and then rf3, but if qxf3, then qg7#. Right?
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Jan 11, 2023 20:26
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I watched Queen's Gambit a few months ago. I think I looked at a video analyzing one or two of the games shown in the series. Then I started seeing coffee chess vids show up in my youtube algo recommended vids and watched one or two. That led me to more chess vids, and eventually to installing a chess app on my kindle, and then chess.com and then when I read up on the recent controversy and found out about the monopoly/magnus' company etc., I moved to lichess. So I blame Queen's Gambit.
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Jan 12, 2023 00:08
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Spokes posted:love it I feel like it's an issue, that you know it's a puzzle and therefore solvable and therefore you're going to study it till you find the solution you know exists. If like at least 50% of these puzzles were intentionally unsolvable and you had exactly one chance to either solve the puzzle or declare it unsolvable and then that's your answer, that'd probably be more "realistic" training?
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Jan 24, 2023 20:29
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It took me a depressingly long amount of time to notice the revealed check by moving the knight but once I had that I got it in about a minute. Nice puzzle!
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Jan 26, 2023 07:40
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I don't understand how the computer calculates that a move was brilliant. I can understand how it finds the best line by calculating 25 moves ahead or whatever, and I understand how it calculates that a move is blundering away a piece if your opponent notices something fairly obvious. But how can it tell the difference between simply making the best move, and making one that is "surprisingly good" in some way?
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Jan 27, 2023 06:41
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Apsyrtes posted:If you are referring to chess.com, they published this info about how they rate a move, the definition of Brilliant is toward the bottom of the article: quote:Brilliant (!!) moves and Great Moves are always the best or nearly best move in the position, but are also special in some way. We replaced the old Brilliant algorithm with a simpler definition: a Brilliant move is when you find a good piece sacrifice. There are some other conditions, like you should not be in a bad position after a Brilliant move and you should not be completely winning even if you had not found the move. Also, we are more generous in defining a piece sacrifice for newer players, compared with those who are higher rated. INnnnnteresting. So basically sacrifices, you'll never get a brilliant non-sac move on chess.com; and you're actually less brilliant at higher levels of play than at lower levels. Thanks!
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Jan 27, 2023 17:58
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promote the g2 pawn to a knight check, king forced move to h4, knight to f3 check, king forced move back to h3, rook to h2 mate. Is that right?
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Mar 4, 2023 01:08
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oh yeah lol!
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Mar 4, 2023 01:36
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Salt Fish posted:
I solved this puzzle according to lichess, but I don't understand what I accomplished? Black can still get his rook to the 8th rank before the pawn can promote, right?
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Mar 9, 2023 00:49
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I have been watching hundreds of chess simp videos, which are mostly about playing 100 rated chess but with some severe restriction to make it a challenge, and it's always funny when he gets matched with some 145 rated player who has also paid for platinum Also I was chatting with my brother on sunday about chess and he bought me something called five dimensional chess as a Steam present, apparently you play chess vs your opponent's setup now but also in the past and future... anyone tried it? I haven't installed it yet.
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Mar 21, 2023 06:48
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I am still very bad at chess. But some things I'm starting to "get" that I think make me slightly better than I was four months ago:
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Apr 21, 2023 22:50
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drat yeah noticing when a pawn (or a piece) is pinned is another one of those things I never used to do and now can do like, nearly half the time! oh yeah and
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Apr 21, 2023 23:45
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Iron Chess. Tonight's ingredients: codfish, and... the Dunst opening!
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May 5, 2023 00:30
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I kept trying to find a mate for white from the position before that shown queen move. Something like a queen sac on b7 to tempt the rook off the back 8 rank and then a rook checkmate, but the bishop is guarding the f8 square and can block. If this were a blitz game and I was white I'd have wasted a full minute looking for a mate that's not there. And then blundered my queen with some dumb loving move immediately afterward.
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May 5, 2023 21:30
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Hand Knit posted:Okay, I want to start posting up my games from the big tournament. I’m going to format them for readability of the forums. If you want something to copy/paste into a pgn reader lemme know. This was interesting but I had a hard time following some of your comments because you didn't say up front whether you were playing black or white. Also, "12...a6" I wasn't sure if black advanced the a7 pawn or moved the b7 bishop, but maybe I don't understand chess notation that well and if you don't specify, it's always a pawn?
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May 22, 2023 20:15
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quote:The judge in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri noted that "counts 3 and 4," both regarding a possible antitrust injury, were dismissed "with prejudice," meaning they cannot be brought again. The other counts were dismissed for lack of jurisdiction but "without prejudice," leaving the door open to for the case to be re-filed, for instance if new evidence appears. Dismissal for lack of jurisdiction should mean he can identify the correct jurisdiction and file there, right? But the issue might be that each defendant could be in a different jurisdiction, requiring multiple separate lawsuits.
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Jun 27, 2023 18:41
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regulargonzalez posted:I'm looking to get a chess table for my office and nothing on Etsy or Wayfair quite fits. Looking for a round pedestal style table with a nice board inlay and ideally a sliding tray that I can put a timer on when playing but can be slid back in. Anyone seen / own something like that? What's your budget? You could ask in the woodoworking thread, see if someone would like to take it on as a commission. But you'd want to expect to pay at least a couple grand, maybe more, depending on your specs, particularly because the board itself requires inlay or tedious joinery. If that's not an issue there's some very talented people in there.
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Jul 11, 2023 17:52
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regulargonzalez posted:That's a good idea. I was looking to stay in the $1500-2000 range, that might limit my options. It's sort of iffy. Like making a basic round table with a pedestal foot can be complicated or simple depending on a lot of design decisions. Adding a drawer takes more work. A pull out shelf that sits below the tabletop is easier. I could make a chess board butcher block style easily if I have a planer but way more effort if I'm doing it with a hand plane, and inlay is more effort still unless you've already set up to do inlay, etc. etc. I'm not a pro either. I'd probably take $2k to do that project but I would not be confident that the result would be worth $2k. But it's conceivable, anyway! I know one or two of the folks in that thread are basically professional furniture makers who could maybe quote you something though so it's worth a stab. The pull out bit kind of interferes with the pedestal base requirement, the base typically attaches with a spread of wood support (think like a bit plus-sign under the tabletop) which could make it harder to have a thing that pulls out flush, the hardware gets in the way? That might be why you're having a hard time finding that. There's ways around it of course, that's almost always the case, but maybe if you just went with a small table with four legs instead of a pedestal you'd find more with pull-out tray options. e. sorry this is wandering into wood chat, we can continue this convo in the woodworking thread if you like 
Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 19:09
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of course, nonbinary people just can't play, right?
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Aug 17, 2023 00:46
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I am still very bad at chess but I experienced the thrill of (incompetently) setting a trap and having it work the other night and I want to share. From about here, turn 26, I am trying to mate with the queen and knight, but I'm under intense attack and down two points of material.  26. Ne3 is a blunder, I lost a forced checkmate on this move, but I was staring at 25 ...Qc2 and thinking I had to defend a checkmating attack and lol I missed it until two seconds after I went Ne3. But then I realized my opponent must have also missed it, so... get ready for 11 blunders in a row! after 26 ...Qc3 27. Kg1 d2?! 28. Kh2 a5 29. Nf5?! Rd3?? 30. f3?? a4?? 31. Rhf1?? a3?? 32. Rf2?? a2?? This was my clever trap  I could see that taking the pawn on d2 would start a trade sequence that I would "lose" - and my opponent was trying to promote the a pawn and I hoped they'd see the same losing trade sequence and go for it. I was just trying to get the black queen off of the a1h8 diagonal so I could go Qxg7 and checkmate. And it worked! 33. Rfxd2?? Rxd2?? 34. Rxd2?? Qxd2?? 35. Qxg7# 1-0 lmao I'm so terrible lol 950 rated rapid is where all the funniest chess happens I think e. note that I did not see at any point that after Nh6, my opponent is losing after Ke8, Nxf7, Rxf7 because then Qb8 just leads to a sequence of taking both black rooks as she marches left across the board and the king is back rank mated. So I never saw I had a forced mate other than Qxg7. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Aug 28, 2023 |
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Aug 28, 2023 19:20
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Mikojan posted:What a rollercoaster Yes, on 26, Qg7 is mate, but I didn't see it till right after I went Ne3, and the next nine moves are me trying to recover Qg7# while failing to see the back rank mate in 5 that I can get from Kh6+, Kf7+, Qc8+, take, take that is available from 30
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Aug 29, 2023 16:23
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lol chess.com and hans neiman have kissed and made up and are BFFs again
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Aug 31, 2023 00:46
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I like Bb4, to attack the queen and put the bishop into protection from the rook or Be7, because if ...Rxe7 then Rxe7 attacks the rook in A8 and infiltration of another piece but I feel like I'm probably missing an even better line somewhere. oh, maybe Qc6? If black ignores that to capture the a3 bishop, white can fork the rooks and Ra7 or Re7 both look very dangerous?
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Sep 1, 2023 05:06
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fisting by many posted:Qf4 threatening mate? Black doesn't really have a way out of that. I guess f6 is the best reply and then you just bulldoze down the f file. Fortunately your knight is preventing backrank mate. But what about Qf4 Rf8? What do you do then as white? Bxf8 just leads to Rxf8, right? I'm missing the next step. Maybe it's still good just for creating the threat though?
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Sep 1, 2023 17:09
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I assume it's d4? Attacked by three black pieces but supported by three white pieces, white can win the exchange, which if black declines, his bishop is trapped on f2?
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Sep 16, 2023 00:36
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When I play very carefully and pay attention, I still lose, but I have a much better time looking into why. The engine will show me my blunders and inaccuracies and something like, half the time? I can see why the engine says that's an inaccuracy, and most blunders I can eventually figure out. Most of the time though I lose because I get impatient and make a move without much attention or care. It is very important to me to not play blitz or even rapid because the time pressure makes me extra prone to doing this thing I am already terribly prone to doing. I just jam a piece forward without looking to see all the ways that changes support, threats, lines of attack, and so forth. Just "Ooh, I can grab that knight! It's not protected!" and uhhhh, dumbass, you just hung your queen? In one move? Like, obviously? gently caress The rest of the time I lose because I try to do calculation and hit a mental block where I just can't hold the board state two moves ahead in my head well enough to think about what moves 3, 4, etc. could be. I suspect that this part comes from just, loving, tons of practice, and also maybe not already being 48, like I bet there's a huge advantage to starting this poo poo when you're 9. I'm thinking if I clean up the impatience stuff, and maybe also bother to learn a few openings, the last bit will either resolve with time, or not, but it's not what I need to be worrying about right now.
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Sep 17, 2023 03:58
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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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PerniciousKnid posted:OTOH I just had a rapid game today with a 1400 who tried some scholars mate thing with a Queen and no bishop. His plan failed, then he stepped on a dozen rakes in a row and lost. So I think 1500 is probably pretty achievable at some point. I didn't even play well! doesn't a brand new account start at 1500 though?
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Oct 4, 2023 04:32
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Hmm. Yeah I dunno I'm just theorizin' here. 
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Oct 4, 2023 04:34
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I vote down puzzles when they were too hard, or too easy, or made me think I was trying for a mate when actually it's just a "best move", or after doing the moves the puzzle expected me to do it looks like my position is worse (an engine probably says it's better but if I can't tell, then it wasn't a good puzzle for my elo) I vote up puzzles that took me two or three minutes to figure out and then I felt good when I did and felt like I had learned something
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Oct 5, 2023 23:02
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I have found, recently, that I like it when I win a game of chess, but I still do not like it when I lose a game of chess. I think it's different from a lot of other games that have some element of chance, because it means when I win a game of chess that is proof that I am smart. Conversely, when I lose a game of chess, 100% of the time it is demonstrating that I am, in fact, an idiot. It is always the case that my mistakes were visible and I was able to perceive and avoid them had I just, like, used my brain better and been smarter. That said, when I win, as previously mentioned, it is absolute incontrovertible proof of my mental superiority. ... In other news, I have a question, how come there are no chess smileys? I feel like there ought to be by now. This thread should probably also have a gang tag.
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Oct 23, 2023 06:21
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maybe something along these lines? has to be resized etc. e. this is gangtag sized  or something about the sicilian defense, never go in against a sicilian when death is on the line some kinda pun Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 22:27
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all my ??s are gambits
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Oct 23, 2023 22:40
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butros posted:I like this May I have it please (replacing cum infections if thsi actulaly happens) If the thread is interested and we come up with a gang tag, I can get a few free done for sure, but I got told off a bit when I gave away hundreds of free gang tags previously so if it's a lot of people who want it we might have to have a contest or something.
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Oct 24, 2023 21:26
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you know, admins or whatever giving a gang tag is an av change and every one has to be approved by an admin in the queue, so it's a hassle: and then also it's giving away free poo poo, but I don't think jeffrey cares much about that part mostly just flooding the queue with a hundred av changes is a pita for them to deal with I guess
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Oct 26, 2023 01:13
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 00:20 |
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I get annoyed at stockfish for calling like five of my moves in a row "inaccuracies" because it thinks I should trade off a piece. I get that sometimes it's advantageous to trade off a piece, but it's often difficult to tell why the fish thinks this tradeoff is advantageous. Blunders are usually easier to figure out, you hung a piece or your opponent hung a piece or maybe you permitted a forced checkmate in 12 (that your opponent never saw either) but it'll show you the line that leads there so at least you can see why stockfish says it's a blunder. But the inaccuracy and "mistake" labels are harder to figure out IMO and that means I tend not to learn from them.
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Oct 26, 2023 17:01
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