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You can also turn rating displays off across the board on lichess, if you want that but still with matchmaking.
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Nov 29, 2021 00:26
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 05:00 |
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Maybe a dumb question: what is the purpose of the touch-move rule in OTB chess? If I had to guess I'd say it's to punish players for not thinking through their move before touching; but if you touch a piece with no legal moves, there's no penalty, which seems to avoid punishment for the arguably worse offense. Is that just because such situations are rare enough in high-level play that no one cares either way?
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Nov 29, 2021 05:33
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Is there any data on the most common openings by rating? I'm around 1650 Blitz on lichess and I feel like there's some strange opponent behavior going on. When I have the black pieces, most games start 1. e4 and the opponent often blitzes out a bunch of moves which I presume are theory and takes an advantage out of the opening. But when I'm white, a lot of games go like 1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. e4 and then the opponent starts spending time thinking (sometimes straight up blundering right after). Does 1. d4 not get played very often at this level?
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Dec 4, 2021 03:44
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That makes sense, I should probably do more opening analysis to see these things. It's kind of surprising though, as I figure that moves like 3. e4 would be more popular below serious play. I know I play it mainly because "something something move your pawns up control the center". That reminds me that when I was in grade school and we played chess as kids who weren't particularly engaged, for whatever reason every single game started as a Ruy Lopez. So I always thought of it as the Default Layman Opening. But it turns out that the Italian seems significantly more popular online, so shows what I know about chess 
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Dec 4, 2021 04:27
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It depends on the exact rating but at least up to my rating I don't think you really need any particular opening to avoid theory, because your opponent doesn't know it either. Assuming you're playing standard openings rather than dubious trap line, avoiding blunders is more about recognizing particular patterns of common "wrong" moves, which opening theory will often not help with. A couple of examples: I play 1. d4 as White and don't get the Slav very often, but I believe it is seen as a positional opening. However when I do see it, Black plays 4. Nc3 Bf5? at least half the time. The only reason that I see anything wrong with this is I remember seeing a Ben Finegold video on this, but because of that it's free rating points. As I mentioned earlier people don't play the Ruy Lopez very often, but when it happens I play the Berlin (no real reason, I just like the move Nf6). For GMs the "Berlin Endgame" has a very drawish reputation. For me that line has literally never happened, and it has always become a "tactical" game of who blunders first in the struggle over the e file. So I think descriptions of the character of an opening require a lot of caveats due to how games realistically play out. If neither you nor the opponent have the knowledge plus ability it takes to drive the game according to that character, it doesn't matter how technical the Ruy Lopez is, or how quiet "X" opening is. Redmark fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Dec 4, 2021 |
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Dec 4, 2021 23:07
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I think I've reached my first rating barrier where it's dominated by players who move very quickly, often choosing to present a lot of tactical complications. I find that I usually get into a favorable position, but either lose by flagging or blunder under time pressure. Of course it's a subjective question, but in such situations how do people usually improve their play for a certain time control? I could imagine serious arguments for playing faster time controls (improve time management?), slower ones (practice sound calculation?), simply playing more games, or doing more puzzles.
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Dec 13, 2021 06:54
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I feel it should be possible to build this kind of "difficulty" analysis into an engine. Of course it wouldn't be perfect but it could definitely distinguish between "every move draws" and "need to see 10-move line" and hand wave that into a numerical score. Possibly someone has already done this.
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Dec 13, 2021 20:52
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I think it's basically heuristic, with the main one being that draw rates tend to increase with more skilled play (as I understand it this extends to the top-level machine play).
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Dec 14, 2021 21:26
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IMO if you blunder and you don't quickly see the problem when the engine points it out it wasn't a real blunder for your current rating. On the other hand one thing that actually does feel uniquely frustrating about chess compared to other games is how crushing small errors can be. If you're dominating a game of soccer or tennis or Starcraft there's no equivalent to miscalculating one square and hanging a queen.
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Dec 20, 2021 00:35
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Is there such a thing as an annotated interactive endgame trainer? I'm sure there are great books but no matter how detailed, it's hard to beat being able to play a move and seeing "ohhh the tablebase does this, that's why it doesn't work". But for sites I've found like https://chess-endgame-trainer.firebaseapp.com, it presents you with a bunch of positions where you kind of have to guess and the only moves are mystifying if you don't understand them. If someone could say for a given position "you need to control this random square / push this random pawn /triangulate the king because XYZ" it would be the best of both worlds. Endgame feels like the hardest part of chess to learn through spontaneous online play since many games will end early due to tactical battles leading to mate or large material imbalance, and of the games that reach a reasonable end game often someone's in time pressure. Meanwhile most of the learning material (beyond basics like opposition) focuses on specific worked problems or technical topics (eg. Lucena position) which isn't that practical, at least at lower skill levels.
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Dec 26, 2021 05:46
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tanglewood1420 posted:You have to pay for it, but 100 Endgames You Must Know on Chessable is a fantastic interactive course that does exactly what you are after. Probably the single best course you could buy anywhere on the internet imo. Thanks! I'll probably wait to get a bit better before committing to buying stuff but it's not too expensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCBw2XTQEO4 This one from the rapid championship was brutal. I don't feel anything when blundering in online chess but if this happened OTB I'd be escaping the venue. loving diagonals, man.
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Dec 26, 2021 23:30
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This might be a strange question, but is there any chess terminology that has stuck out to people as idiosyncratic? I don't mean things like "pawn structure" which is fairly direct jargon, but more abstract terms. For example, I hadn't heard "X is better" used before for other games (presumably because chess is more drawish so "X is winning" is a distinct state). Or "tension" to describe situations where pieces may trade off with each other but haven't (yet). Or "accuracy", "(in)accurate" moves. Is there any resource of chess etymology?
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Jan 5, 2022 23:24
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Yeah that's a surprise for me too. Now that I think about it, "compensation" is another one that I've started applying outside of chess contexts
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Jan 6, 2022 00:17
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I'm not good enough to help with the actual calculation part but I think part of it is figuring out whether you're "supposed" to have a tactic given the state of the game. Looking at a position like that my evaluation would be "come on there has to be mate here", so that would be motivation to spend more time trying to find one. Similarly if your pieces are more developed or better-coordinated than the opponents, that's usually more promising for tactics than when you're on the back foot. I think of it like "if the chess gods are just, should I be winning here?"
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Jan 6, 2022 23:39
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Finegold is the best for fun factor (assuming you're a fan of condescension toward small children), and I think he's actually pretty good to learn from if you're still at a stage where you don't even know what to learn. I unironically started off at a pretty decent level before ever playing a game of legit chess just from watching him and trying to process what was going on, while I definitely would have bounced off of specifically educational stuff. By the time you start looking for more focused material you will also have experienced every single one of his jokes Guy definitely has a formula he sticks to.
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Feb 1, 2022 21:26
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I think everyone has games where one or both players play some moves fast, then someone blunders and it's like, oh oops, now they start thinking and actually start playing better as they try to recover. Is that something that better player grow out of, or is it just the reality of playing non-classical time controls?
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Feb 20, 2022 00:29
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Occasionally when I analyze my games, the engine will call some opening book moves inaccuracies. Here's an example from today: https://lichess.org/sdlNh2Ih, where it doesn't like 5. Be2. I'm aware that engine evaluations shouldn't be taken literally for human play, especially for openings like the King's Indian where it doesn't like Black in general. But my question is, do these evaluations represent the "actual" state of computer play, or is it an artifact of this particular run? I'm not sure exactly how Lichess does its analysis; IIRC they use donated CPU time for decently deep runs. Does that even matter for openings, or does Stockfish use opening books? In this example it wants to play 5. h3 which is a real line but the 4th most common in Lichess's masters database (with the best results for White apparently).
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Apr 25, 2022 00:06
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Salt Fish posted:I believe this is because be2 in this position is evaluated at +0.5 at the specific depth the engine runs the analysis. However, if you run this on the lichess stockfish out to depth 33 the computer realizes that the position is actually +0.7. Since before be2 the evaluation was +0.7 and you end up with a swing of -0.2, that qualifies as an inaccuracy. Lichess checks for inaccuracies by comparing two calculations called "winning chances" and determines the proportion of change between them, in this case 10% change is an inaccuracy, 20% change is a mistake and 30% change is a blunder, with special cases hard coded in such as if you miss a mate or blunder a mate: Thanks, that makes sense. Today I learned Lichess is written in Scala. I haven't thought about that language in ages. It's pretty cool that it seems mostly a one man show.
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Apr 25, 2022 06:09
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Rating systems can't be compared across different pools in general. Lichess I think starts you off with a higher rating which obviously affects the numbers. I think at ratings in the 1000-2000 range Lichess ratings will be 3 to 4 hundred points higher, but it levels off at higher ratings and eventually Lichess ratings will actually be lower. Rapid ratings also tend to be higher than blitz which are higher than bullet due to the different player pools (also your rating will probably change if you switch time controls within the same bucket, eg. 5+3 to 3+0). Which is to say, only compare within the same time control on the same website or you'll get conniptions.
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May 4, 2022 19:02
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Another question on opening moves the online engine doesn't like: https://lichess.org/z48Ltt2V/black#12 This time it's a bit more ambiguous on whether the move is good. The masters database has 6... e5 being very rarely played (with very good results for Black, but it looks like it might just be one guy's pet variation?). In these cases where top players don't play a move, is it usually because it's "bad", or just unpopular? More generally, are there any hard principles on when to play e5 vs. e6 in these Sicilian positions, or is it a matter of knowing the theory? I can see how here e5 weakens the light-squared diagonal of the White bishop. But then why is e6 the move against 6. Bg5?
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May 6, 2022 01:52
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Ah, so 6. Bc4 directly attacks the d5 square and 6. Bg5 indirectly does by pinning the knight, so e5 is too weakening. But White's other moves don't help control d5, so e5 becomes the main move. That makes sense.
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May 6, 2022 05:17
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I wonder how much psychology matters in classical chess because online it's gotta be a huge factor. I've found that if I beat a significantly higher rated player and they slam rematch immediately I should take it because it's likely to be easy wins for several games in a row (and free cheating accusations)  Since I don't want to be on the wrong end of that I pretty much never click the rematch button.
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May 8, 2022 03:15
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Got this video randomly recommended on Youtube which I think is a pretty cool puzzle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDkIo90kOwE The logic is obvious once it's explained but not so clear when you first see it. I never thought about it but there are probably a bunch of chess puzzles which utilize the rules for something other than finding best moves.
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May 16, 2022 05:51
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I was watching this video on Sicilian move orders and it struck me how learning an opening often requires learning other openings. The example given in the lecture is the "O'Kelly" Sicilian with 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 a6. In this position the normal move 3. d4 is pretty much a blunder according to the masters database (though it's the most common move in the overall Lichess database and doesn't do so bad). Instead the best move (which discourages this opening in top-level play) is 3. c3 where you're in the c3 Sicilian with Black having made an unnecessary move in a6. But to do this of course you need to know the c3 Sicilian! Even though this won't come up much for non-masters, you don't really expect to be making theoretical opening mistakes on move 3. It's nice to learn this kind of thing if only to understand why opening move orders are the way they are. edit: another example from the video is in the Najdorf which reminds me of a question I asked earlier in this thread:  After 6. Nb3, the instinct for the Najdorf player is e5, but that's a mistake. Instead black usually plays g6 (the Dragon), or e6 (followed by the Keres attack with g4 which usually happens in the Scheveningen), which are "other" openings. Redmark fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Jun 6, 2022 |
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Jun 6, 2022 02:11
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Finally got a lichess puzzle generated from one of my games  Chess goal #1 achieved. It's a 6 month old game so I guess their processing pipeline runs a long backlog.
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Jun 8, 2022 03:54
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Zwabu posted:Do they notify you when this happens? You can check yourself at Puzzles (top menu) -> Puzzle Dashboard -> From my games. smiling giraffe posted:lets see! https://lichess.org/training/s2BjT
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Jun 8, 2022 18:25
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Qa8 sure is a move 
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Jun 23, 2022 03:46
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Good for Ding  Radjabov's had a strong tournament, he must be pretty happy about his performance after being written off by most.
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Jul 4, 2022 19:09
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How do you decide whether an engine-unsound aggressive move was actually good? For example, in the Smith-Morra there's often a piece sacrifice with Nd5. Of course sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not good. In my last game I played it with success, and the engine classified it as an inaccuracy that moved the evaluation by 0.5. But that could mean "move bad against slightly better player" or "move bad against engine". I guess a heuristic would be, if the opponent has to find non-obvious only moves many moves in a row then it's likely good. But there's no easy way to quantify this without doing a deep manual analysis.
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Jul 9, 2022 02:28
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From lichess's opening explorer I was looking at this game https://www.365chess.com/game.php?gid=3752987 and don't understand how the game ended. It doesn't look like a decisive position at first glance, and the engine says the position is pretty much equal. Did White flag? It was a blitz tournament, but the game only went 15 moves.
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Aug 18, 2022 04:16
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My theory is that most people online (including me) are terrible at endgames not because they're inherently hard (though they might be), but because we're playing time controls that are too fast. To pull numbers out of my rear end, 75% of games are decided before the endgame, and 75% of the rest end under severe time pressure. So you end up being bad at endgames since you never actually get to play them properly, especially if there's no increment.
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Aug 22, 2022 03:00
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I hope it doesn't, but it feels like this has a chance of blowing up in everyone's faces. There seems to be a bunch of weird things about Niemann so far (like his interviews lol) but zero hard evidence. If nothing comes up, and I doubt that anti-cheating measures are water-tight, do all the players just pretend this never happened? The guy's going to play under an aura of suspicion forever.
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Sep 6, 2022 02:10
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That's where I'm at too. Even if you're convinced that he's cheating, if there's no hard evidence what's the plan exactly now that you went public? If Magnus had gone to the organizers with suspicions maybe they could have done something, but now you can only hope he cracks and admits to it.
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Sep 6, 2022 20:10
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Control Volume posted:Welcome to the chess thread! Whats your favorite opening to use? I also switched to KID solely because it's the only opening that's felt good against the London, which is all people seem to want to play.
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Sep 7, 2022 20:48
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I have another question out of the consequences of all of this: apparently multiple (maybe even "many") titled players have had accounts banned for cheating, and though it's kept hush hush evidently it's not a secret among GMs. Isn't that a ticking time bomb, then? Because if past online cheating is accepted as suitable evidence, and these players are allowed to continue playing OTB with no repercussions as long as they admit to it and apologize, what's stopping this from happening again when one of them over-performs?
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Sep 7, 2022 21:40
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Is there any good video or article on general ideas after playing e3 as White in openings like the Nimzo-Indian and Semi-Slav? I realize these are very different openings, but my question's more about what proactive things you're supposed to do with such pawn structures. To me it's not very obvious so I end up playing random legal moves.
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Sep 10, 2022 05:13
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cheetah7071 posted:The weird corner cases make a lot more sense if you consider an alternate version of chess where the goal is just to capture your opponent's king. Your king would die first so you would lose. Checkmate is just a formalization of the idea that your king being captured is inevitable While it logically makes sense stalemate doesn't fit into this model at all.
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Sep 15, 2022 20:27
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If Magnus had handled this more sensibly, at this point public opinion would probably be with him. Instead most people seem to be pro-Hans or at least pro-chaos now. After reading about how prevalent online cheating is, not only from Hans, I'm definitely on team chaos.
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Sep 19, 2022 19:01
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If we're talking about the Olympiad, literally the top three teams in the open tournament had players who've been banned online, right? And that's just the cases that are publicly known. I just don't see how the current drama can address that without taking a broader scope in mind.
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Sep 22, 2022 20:08
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 05:00 |
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I think Magnus hosed up by playing that game against Hans. If he'd withdrawn like he says he wanted, the reactions would be way different. Losing and talking about the bad vibes you got just isn't good enough... even if you're right!
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Sep 26, 2022 20:49
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