|
I've been bitten by the chess bug for the first time since dad stopped playing against me in middle school, and I want to run down my ... curriculum I guess? And see if there's anything I should be doing better. I'm paying for a month of Dr Wolf and am beating high beginner on only a couple of take-backs and <5 blunders, usually. Should I be rigidly doing no take-backs or is it fine at this level? I've got a copy of a Capablanca book (Chess Fundamentals) coming this week. I saw it recommended somewhere, but I know basically zero else about it. I've watched some videos on fundamentals by a guy named John Bartholomew that seemed to make a lot of sense in the, "understand it now how do I actually do it?" sort of way. I've played zero real games on Lichess, though I have gotten thrashed by Stockfish 1 a few times. Should I be focusing more on real games than all this computer/academic stuff?
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2022 20:45
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:36 |
|
|
OK! Take a stockfish break, go lose to some real people. Which type should I play?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2022 21:40
|
|
|
Hey! I beat someone before I sunk below 1k. Not an awful start. https://lichess.org/YRr7ea7Y/white
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2022 15:18
|
|
|
That's all wonderful advice, thank you!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2022 03:49
|
|
|
It took me 2 weeks of Dr Wolf, 10+0 and a fair bit of YouTube but I finally beat Stockfish 1 tonight. Progress!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2022 03:39
|
|
|
What I've learned is, when you pick up chess in earnest and then go home for the holidays, if you mention you are playing more chess everyone has a wacky set in a closet they can't wait to give you.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2022 04:58
|
|
|
Activate posted:Already scored a free set this way. Dad gave me the set he taught me on, this crazy thing from the early 60s: https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147994913/Collectors-Series-Chess-Set---Edition-II-Napoleon-Bonaparte-1804-1814 (which I obviously am going to re-felt and set up somewhere). Progress report: playing 10+0 on chess.com after my provisional games it started me off in the 700s, but I haven't lost yet and am over 1000, which feels really good! I was proud of this game, in particular, which felt really tight (1 mistake, no blunders, and a "brilliant" rook sac). https://www.chess.com/game/live/66435204771 I'm having a lot of fun and have decided to really focus on d4 (with the gambit if they d5 and London if they don't; I need to put a lot more work into learning gambit), Caro-Kann against e4 and ... I don't have a plan against d4 yet other than d5 and try not to hang a piece.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2023 23:54
|
|
|
I started to feel more confident in 10 minute games, I thought, "Maybe I should try some 3+2s" and threw away 5 queens in about 15 minutes. Lost every game with 1 minute plus on the clock, so like, I see a fundamental problem, at least.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2023 17:01
|
|
|
I've tried a few 5s and at least felt like I was in a position to play the game mindfully, which I especially need as a beginner. Something I read was, "you can either win or you can improve" and it doesn't really help me (at my current level of learning) to lose games where the only lesson is, "I was going really fast and lost track of their bishop."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2023 17:32
|
|
|
I'm at about your same skill/rank, I think, and if you're like me you have 3 main sources of losses. 1. "Well, I made it safely out of the end game with a good position and now I guess I need to get something going." [Move a Bishop hanging a Knight or vice versa.] 2. "Well, I made it safely out of the end game with a good ... wait when did I go down a piece?" 3. "Well, I made it the endgame and I'm +4, now how do I close this thing out?" [Miscount an exchange then lose all my pawns dodging checks.] I don't have a solution to it, lol, I'm just commiserating. e: upon reflection, I guess #2 is pay more attention; #3 is my key to stop studying openings and start studying end games; and #1 is just a general description of "the journey of the game." (And/or pattern recognition.) Huxley fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Jan 9, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2023 16:49
|
|
|
35 games in, I started 10-0 and then went 5-20. I miss winning!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2023 22:48
|
|
|
I played it out on Lichess's stockfish thing and it liked: 1. f4 h5 Then the whole thing goes a bit nuts and white finally finds mate 32 moves later. CubicalSucrose posted:New Year Resolutions to play more chess? I bought Clubhouse games to play air hockey with my kids over Thanksgiving break at my in-laws. I was able to beat "Impossible" difficulty on Mancala, Backgammon, Gomoku, Hex, etc. But I couldn't beat medium on chess, and this made me angry. Month or so later, here I am.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2023 22:45
|
|
|
How many games do I need to play before I stop playing to a huge advantage then hanging my queen while I tunnel vision mate in 2?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2023 20:20
|
|
|
That's exactly what it is. My brain is going, "OK Q is in place and safe. Rook here, rook here, mate. OK, did their move stop that first rook move? No?" But I do miss that it revealed an attack on the piece I'm not thinking about.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2023 20:28
|
|
|
Huxley posted:I bought Clubhouse games to play air hockey with my kids over Thanksgiving break at my in-laws. I was able to beat "Impossible" difficulty on Mancala, Backgammon, Gomoku, Hex, etc. But I couldn't beat medium on chess, and this made me angry. Month or so later, here I am. Great news, everybody! https://twitter.com/MattSolo734/status/1619555410851266562 (Having played a lot of bots since Thanksgiving, I'd rate the "Impossible" chess AI on Clubhouse as about a 1400 bot on Chess.com.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2023 16:00
|
|
|
Why on chess.com trying to play Daily games, sometimes it gives me a game immediately and sometimes it starts an Open Seek that never actually matches me with anyone? Is there somewhere on the site I'm supposed to be accepting other people's challenges? Should I just delete any seek that doesn't immediately start a game and try again? How do people have 100s of games going at once? I'm trying to play 10 and half my seeks never match and half my matches never make a move. I feel like I must be misunderstanding a system somewhere. e: Ah, apparently under custom there's a long list of challenges (including mine, I guess) that I can grab. Huxley fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Mar 3, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2023 15:54
|
|
|
OK! There's an U1k thing up currently, I'll just hit the button and see where it goes.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2023 17:00
|
|
|
former glory posted:I'm going to try this out. Sounds like good practice that I won't feel bad bailing on when the kids inevitably toss a crisis on me. I know I'm supposed to be playing 10- and 15-minute games to improve, but it seems like every time I fire one up some emergency flares up and I have to bail or can't give it my full attention. I've settled on daily and blitz and just getting as good as I happen to get.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2023 01:07
|
|
|
As a beginner, I really like the Request Takeback feature, because it alerts me that my opponent did something really stupid that I may not have spotted.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2023 22:00
|
|
|
It's weird to me that my blitz rating is lower than my rapid. Like, obviously I'm worse with less time, but isn't everyone else? If rating isn't some true test of skill but just your average skill vs a particular pool, aren't I playing the same people at 800 blitz as I am 1000 rapid? Why aren't we all around 1k in every format?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2023 22:27
|
|
|
I kind of have the same thing where, I want to get better obviously. And I know the best way to improve is playing like, 15+10s. But I find it really tough to hit that button. I want the bonus time, because I lose a ton of 10s getting flagged up 10 points (I need to start drilling endgames). But the longer I spend playing a single game, the worse it feels to lose it. So I keep playing 2+1s at a low level, because winning feels good and losing feels like nothing, where in rapid losing feels miserable. But on the other hand, ELO isn't a gauge of my worth or intelligence it's just a machine to give me fair matches. And I may not be improving as much playing 2+1 or 3+2, but it's better than spending all day finding reasons not to play 15+10. It's a game and I'm not obligated to get better at it. I am, however, obligated to make it a positive and fun part of my life.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2023 04:46
|
|
|
I tell myself I make up for it by also playing 1-day daily tournaments, which this thread suggested and has been fun. e, I guess also the real answer is finding my way to a place where losing a 10 feels as light on my ego as a blitz game. Just a game, nothing matters. Except we kind of get taught as new players that our rapid ELO is our "actual skill" so you want to protect it, not goof off with it. Huxley fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Apr 8, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2023 04:53
|
|
|
I don't know that I would have even considered b5 either. My first instinct would be e5, and if they take dxe6, fxe6 frees the rook and if they take fxe5, then Nxe5 seems really good. But then just pushing f5 is probably annoying enough not to risk it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2023 17:15
|
|
|
OK, I have a fair-play question: I'm at around 1k and am trying to play/learn QGD. I also play a few daily tournaments at once. Anyway, last week someone in here said you could go a long way just knowing what exactly to do vs Englund, and I thought, "yeah, I should make a page of notes about that," but didn't get around to it yet. So today in a daily game, I get hit with the Englund. Obviously in any game you can't put your moves into a computer. But does it seem fine to watch a video on white vs Englund while the game is ongoing? What if it's a Danya video with a Lichess study linked? Is THAT basically plugging in computer moves? Is it a silly questions since it's a <1000 tournament and it's not reasonable to expect people to just not learn relevant information for the entire course of a month-long game?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2023 19:45
|
|
|
Baronash posted:I assume you’re talking about chess dot com daily games. You are expressly permitted to use books, lessons, and videos during daily games. Great, thanks! And I can't stress how much my play improved in daily games when I discovered the in-game self-analysis tool. Being able to play out 5-10 moves myself on the board (not having to just visualize it) I think helped me improve quite a bit.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2023 19:55
|
|
|
I'm proud of a minor milestone: I broke into a 4-digit rating on chessdotcom. Granted, it's in Daily, but I figure if I can play at 80%-85% accuracy when I spend 5-6 minutes per critical move, I can eventually do it faster in a Rapid game.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2023 21:00
|
|
|
The ones that seem to throw me are doing puzzle rush and you get into the 1200-1500 range and the puzzle seems to just hang a queen out in the middle of the board. So you spend time trying to sort out why taking is wrong, and then it turns out it isn't. They just threw a 200 puzzle in the middle to mess with you, which I guess is realistic.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2023 16:30
|
|
|
Sub Rosa posted:So the lichess accounts Rapport and Ding were using to prep leaked? https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/12ssizv/lichess_accounts_between_two_1500sone_of_which_is/ https://twitter.com/lichess/status/1649039552495902721
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2023 16:18
|
|
|
You know they say that all men are created equal, but you look at me and you look at Ian Nepomniachtchi and you can see that statement is not true. See, normally if you go one on one with another grand master, you got a 50/50 chance of winning. But I'm a genetic freak and I'm not normal! So you got a 25%, AT BEST, to beat me. Then you add Richard Rapport to the mix, your chances of winning drastic go down. See, you got a 33 1/3 chance of winning, but I, I got a 66 and 2/3 chance of winning! So Ian Nepomniachtchi, you take your 33 1/3 chance, minus my 25% chance and you got an 8 1/3 chance of winning the world championship. But then you take my 75% chance of winning, if we was to go one on one, and then add 66 2/3 per cents, I got 141 2/3 chance of winning. See Nepo, the numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for you.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2023 21:20
|
|
|
The thought process: "OK, so they've really overextended their Queen, and it looks like they want to get to the 2nd rank take my Rook with check. Well, I can bring up my queen, maintain the guard on the Bishop, then long castle and trap them! Yeah, I think I have a really good shot at trapping their queen here. Maybe chess is really starting to click!" The position, as I proudly analyze the game after winning: 
Huxley fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Apr 21, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2023 19:37
|
|
|
Yeah, that was my joke. I spent a minute of clock walking through all the possible ways I could bait them into letting me trap the queen ... which was already just fully hanging. Because I am not very good (yet).
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2023 21:37
|
|
|
Two things I'm learning as I start taking the game more seriously: I am like, 200 points worse on my phone than I am on a computer. I have an old ipad floating around, I'm interested to see if that splits the difference. I paid for a year of dotcom, which makes my dotcom rating feel very serious and sweaty. So I started using Lichess for "practice" because it was a place I felt free not to care about my "actual rating." And now 99% of my playing is on Lichess because not really caring is what makes it fun. I'm 100% aware of how this is all just my brain playing a trick on itself, so maybe what I need to do now is go get a FIDE rating, so THAT feels like my real rating. Brains are funny things.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2023 17:14
|
|
|
I was for Ding this time but I would totally flip if Nepo is back again. An easy guy to pull for, particularly seeing his reaction today. I'd like to see him get one, now.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2023 16:32
|
|
|
Decide the next world champion via correspondence chess. First to 6 wins or until someone dies of old age.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2023 14:05
|
|
|
I like games where you get two pieces staring one another down and neither player feels like trading is good for them, so we just hold. You fight out what felt like a solid, smart game, then the endgame eval gives us both 20% accuracy because the right move for both of us 10 moves in a row was trading. Just 2/3 of the moves for both players are misses or blunders because the computer is yelling at us both to chop.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2023 18:22
|
|
|
I've reached the point where more of my games are starting to be decided by one of us missing a tactic vs one of us just outright hanging a piece for free, and it's starting to feel like a very different game. Like, the pieces are still hanging, but now they're hidden behind tactics. For instance, here's a Rapid game I punted twice in 4 moves. Their 1. Qe3 was wrong, and I knew it and I spent 90 seconds before settling on 1. ... Bf4, thinking it was going to win me the exchange. But I didn't follow either important move past their first response because ... Qxe3, fxe3 hangs their Knight and my move doesn't win the exchange, it lets them have Nf5 attacking back. So 1. ... Bf4 2. Nf5 Bxe3 3. Nxh6+  And do I see Bxh3 up a piece for a pawn? I do not. I'm so concerned with not doubling my pawns I snap off Rxh6 in 6 seconds and lose down a pawn 25 moves later. I know they say these are exactly the kinds of mistakes you WANT to make, the ones where you think for 90 seconds and still get it wrong. It's just wild (neat? proof of growth?) that I've gone from total slop to whatever level of play this is (like, 1400 on lichess) since January. Time to take 2 weeks off of Blitz for puzzles, I suppose. Huxley fucked around with this message at 21:07 on May 5, 2023 |
|
#
¿
May 5, 2023 20:34
|
|
|
ulmont posted:The bishop’s ability to move backwards is often overlooked to players’ detriment. When I'm on the computer and not under time pressure, I'll sometimes start every move by drawing lines from every bishop on the board to the edges, just because I've blundered so many times in this exact way. I've gotten better about it, for sure. I've mostly stopped losing Rooks in the corners to discovered attacks. Mostly. Hard game, long road.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2023 21:03
|
|
|
fart simpson posted:i don’t follow your logic as to why you didn’t just play Qxe3. they basically have to capture back with their pawn and then your bishop picks up their knight. what am i missing? Admittedly, this is wrong-headed, but it was the thought process of a 900-1000 ELO player. "OK, so bishop chops the knight gives up a good piece for a medium one and doesn't give me an attack follow-up. Plus it opens up their Rook. Meh. Queen takes queen, pawn takes back and that also opens the Rook but also gives them a partner for the isolated d pawn. Bishop f4 chases off the queen and I win the exchange if he plays Qe1, the rook if he runs the wrong way, and maybe both if they blunder Rxc1." So I missed that the pawn retaking the Queen also hung the Knight, and I missed they had an attack back on my Queen after Bf4, and I missed the bishop back to h6. In fact, the computer says Bf4 was only a quarter pawn worse than Qxe3 but only if I see Bxh6 in the second screenshot. Plenty of opportunities for me to learn.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2023 04:03
|
|
|
Hand Knit posted:Start with the most straightforward response and work out from there. What happens if white just takes the bishop on e2? 1. ... Bxe2 2. Qxe2 Qxe2 3. Rxe2 And we're down –2 in material and can Rbc8 and get an open file or ... something? Nc4 after Rbc8, trade on a3 and get on the back rank? None of that feels particularly good enough. I guess my thought is if the absolute most bloodthirsty zero-brained run of moves still ends with me worse, it's probably not worth considering. Opp doesn't even have to burn clock to get over on me. I put it in the computer after I thought about it a bit and never would have spotted it. I was right for the wrong reasons. My next idea after discarding Bxe2 was something like Bd5 trying to trade our two good bishops leaving me a Knight vs his miserable dark-square bishop and loosening up the King's defense. Seems fine. Also, my brain never even thought about baiting the Queen over for the pawn fork. No clue if that works ... maybe!
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2023 15:24
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:36 |
|
|
I think I'm learning that the most important skill to enjoying chess—not winning or improving necessarily, but enjoying—is being able to recognize early when a day is not a "Chess Day."
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2023 16:45
|
|