What is White's compensation in the Smith-Morra Gambit, Paulsen Formation (a6, e6, Nc6) after an early ...Na5? The variation is almost forced if White aims for the standard Smith-Morra setup. At the end White is a pawn down and no longer has two bishops, but is well developed. However Black's setup does not seem to have any weaknesses that can be pressured by White's superior pieces.

White's most immediate plan is to strike on the flank with a4, provoking ...b4.

In most of games at 2000+ level, White ends up defending a worse endgame.

 [fen ""]
 1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 e6
 5. Nf3 Nc6 6. Bc4 a6 7. O-O b5 8. Bb3 Na5
 9. Re1 Nxb3 10. Qxb3

If Black reveals his intention to play ...a6 early, White has alternative plans: Play Bf4, threatening Nd5 with pressure on the dark squares c7, d6 and b6, leading to decent games with White retaining the initiative. So Black should delay ...a6 as much as he can, as Bf4 only makes sense after ...a6.

[fen ""]
1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 Nc6
5. Nf3 a6 6. Bf4 e6 7. Be2

Also, ...Na5 needs to be played immediately, as 8...Bb7 allows 9. a4 with initiative and nasty tricks from White. Example game:

[fen ""]
[White "Vivante-Sowter, John (2259)"]
[Black "Kavc, Andrej (2270)"]

1. e4 c5 2. d4 cxd4 3. c3 dxc3 4. Nxc3 e6 5. Nf3 a6 { B21 Sicilian Defense: Smith-Morra Gambit Accepted, Kan Formation } 6. Bc4 b5 7. Bb3 Bb7 8. O-O Nc6 9. a4 b4 10. Nd5 Na5 11. Bg5 f6 12. Ne5 Bxd5 13. exd5 Nxb3 14. dxe6 dxe6 15. Qxb3 Qd5 16. Nc4 fxg5 17. Rad1 Qf5 18. Rfe1 Bc5 19. Nd6+ Bxd6 20. Rxd6 Nf6 21. Rdxe6+ Kf8 22. Qxb4+ Kf7 23. Qc4 Kg6 24. g4 Qf3 25. R1e3 Qd1+ 26. Kg2 Rad8 27. Rxf6+ gxf6 28. Qe4+ Kf7 { The game is a draw. } 1/2-1/2

To be honest, I see very little there, but Re1 also just looks like it is not in the spirit of the opening since it does little to add any pressure to the center. Of course, if black were to play d5, then it would make sense, but black will probably refrain from playing that for quite a while. Bc2 probably should be played there, and follow it up with the standard Qe2 and Rd1.

Overall, the only compensating factors right now are a slight lead in development, and more space; but as always, in such positions, if the other side is very solid, they can catch up in development, and then the extra pawn will become a major factor.

There is a reason the Morra is only popular at lower levels: It just loses a pawn, and there are not many redeeming factors.


Difference between chess puzzle and chess problem in this episode of The Queen's Gambit? While a chess puzzle is any puzzle involving aspects of chess, a chess problem is an orthodox puzzle in which one must play and win or draw a game, starting with a certain composition of pieces on the chessboard, and playing within the standard rules of chess.

There's this episode of Queen's Gambit where Beth says she doesn't do 'chess problems' because they don't come up in real games. Meanwhile, it appears Lichess gets all its 'puzzles' from games. Soon after Beth is enticed to a mate in X 'problem' (though described as a 'puzzle' here).
Is there any relevant difference between puzzle and 'problem' here?
I cannot imagine any chess player not doing puzzles if they want to increase their rating, except for my dad who once told my (paternal) cousin (who attended university in a chess scholarship) and me half-jokingly 'Stop doing those puzzles. You will never get into that position.' (My dad was and is nowhere near the level my cousin was at the time. He seemed to favour more learning from pro games than puzzles.)
Idk perhaps the show really means 'problems' as puzzles and then it's an exaggeration of players who prefer more to study openings, positions, strategy, etc. than tactics.

As a chess composer, seeing most problems being called puzzles is rather frustrating. A while ago, I personally revamped the problem and puzzles tags.
The problem tag says:

Chess problems consist of a board position and a task. Most ask for a
line of play that mates black in a set amount of moves, or a
combination that results in a winning position. Many other types
exist, including, but not limited to, construction tasks for various
positions and proof games that have numerous goals, selfmates,
helpmates, and retrograde analysis. Tournaments and championships
exist for composing of original problems and for speed-solving.

The puzzle tag says:

Often, a puzzle type of problem in which a tactical or positional
solution is required, like White/Black to move and win”, in what is
often a middlegame of endgame-esqe position. But a puzzle can also be
a chess riddle, chess math. or any other non-normal chess problem.
Questions about solving puzzle, puzzle apps and websites, how to
understand the idea behind a puzzle, etc. are also on-topic.

To my knowledge, these are generally accepted definitions by the chess composing community. I expect @Laska to have more input here.


Java Library for PGN parser I would like to find a Java library that will allow me to read a PGN file that could contain several chess games, probably with comments inserted also. But, it won't be used to generate moves or play the moves in a board. I just want to read the pgn and get the header section and move section, and dump everything into a database.

Any light that will direct me to the right path is really appreciated. I just need the parser and segment the information from the pgn and then I will do the dumping into the database.

Thanks in advance for any help.

After reading a bunch of open source code, I just found out that most of them are relying on Chesspresso which is a solid Java Chess library that can handle move validation, PGN parser (what I was looking for), chessboard renderering, etc.

The code is well-documented and easy to understand. It took me around 30 minutes to read the code and start testing. Pretty happy with this library.

You can download the source code from sourceforge: Chesspresso Source Code

Sample code: (This is a fragment from Game class, I just need to add more detail for the header section and I will be ready to dump each pgn game into my database).

    public String getHeaderString(int line)
{
    if (line == 0) {
        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
        sb.append(getWhite());
        if (getWhiteElo() != 0) sb.append(" [").append(getWhiteElo()).append("]");
        sb.append(" - ").append(getBlack());
        if (getBlackElo() != 0) sb.append(" [").append(getBlackElo()).append("]");
        sb.append("  ").append(getResultStr()).append("  (").append(getNumOfMoves()).append(")");
        return sb.toString();
    } else if (line == 1) {
        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
        sb.append(getEvent()).append(", ").append(getSite()).append(", ").append(getDate());
        sb.append("  [").append(getRound()).append("]");
        return sb.toString();
    } else if (line == 2) {
        return getECO();
    } else {
        throw new RuntimeException("Only 3 header lines supported");
    }
}


When is castling needed? I am a rookie in chess. I can't understand why castling is needed.

In what scenarios is castling useful?

Castling is extremely useful in almost all games.  It lets you do two things at once.  First, it moves your king from the center to the side of the board, where it is much more difficult to attack for the opponent.  Second, it brings one of your rooks towards the center of the board, and it crucial in bringing both of your rook into the game.

There may be a number of potential reasons why these points might not make sense to you. Here is an (incomplete) list:

a) you do not feel that the king is in danger in the center

b) you feel that the danger on the side of the board is the same

c) you feel that activating the rook is not too useful

For a) you should probably have a look at how to attack if the king stays in the center; develop, try to rip open the center e.g., by advancing (even at the cost of sacrificing) some pawns in the center.  Once you find out how to do this and also experience how it feels being torn apart by such an attack, you will appreciate being able to quickly move the king out of the center.

For b) it is important to understand that, generally, the initial pawn positions on the 2nd/7th rank are the most resistant.  It might be that you unnecessarily weaken the protection of your king by pawn moves here.  Also you should have a look at some standard motifs, such as the classic bishop sacrifice (google the keyword).  Avoid such configurations and do not push the pawns in front of your king too much and you will soon realize that the side of the board is a much safer place to be.

Finally, concerning c), it is a sad truth that many players do not use all or even most of their pieces.  Having a rook stuck in a corner essentially amounts to having a piece less; for attack and for defense.  You should strive to activate all your pieces and also to connect the rooks, possibly even double them on an open file.  For this, castling is the single most effective means.  All other ways to activating and connecting the rooks likely take both more moves and require additional, potentially weakening, pawn moves.


What's the name of this opening for white? What's the name of this structure after white castling ?

This is generally known as the Glek System. It looks like Nc3 and Nf6 were omitted.

One of White's general plans is to play d3 and Be3 hoping for the trade to open the f-file, and also to play Nf3-h4-f5. .


King's Gambit Variation (C32 King's Gambit Declined, Falkbeer, 5.de) 1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 3. exd5 ...

Instead I made the move 3. fxe5

What can this variation can be named as?

 [Fen ""]
 [Event "Let's Play!"]
 [Site " Chess.com"]
 [Date "Jul 1, 2016"]
 [White "anandsadasivam"]
 [Black "MaximusXIV"]
 [Result "1-0"]
 [WhiteElo "1168"]
 [BlackElo "1000"]
 [TimeControl "1 in 14 days"]
 [Termination "anandsadasivam won on time"]
 1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 3. fxe5  1-0

Wherein the one with ECO code C32 comes up like this

[Fen ""]
1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 3. exd5 e4 4. d3 Nf6 5. dxe4

1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 is known as the Falkbeer Countergambit.

However, 3.fxe5?? is not a variation but a blunder. As Wikipedia explains, you will either lose material after  3...Qh4+, 4.g3 Qxe4+ (due to a fork between the King and the Rook), or expose your King to the black pieces after 3...Qh4+,  4.Ke2 Qxe4+ 5.Kf2 Bc5+.

I am not aware of a name for 1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 3. exd5 e4 4. d3 Nf6 5. dxe4. Not every opening variation has a name.


How to play a Grandmaster in a simultaneous? Would you play well known Opening theory, or avoid it? What other strategies would you employ to beat a GM in a simultaneous? I have my own strategies which I've used. See link in my profile. But what is best?

I've answered a very similar question here

My take is that GM try to avoid calculating, and try to rely on their superior positional understanding. So striving for a tactical position, seems like a good bet. Your game seems to support this hypothesis.

Here is interesting story, that involved somebody I used to know over the internet and Kasparov:

  [Kasparov] rather nervously asked me if I had a rating. I replied 2084 and he, not looking very happy, asked why I didn't write it down in front of the board next to my name. I replied that no one asked me too and that the Belzberg people knew my rating and only today OK my playing since I am a client. He then stated that if he had known I was rated that highly he would have played differently rather than getting into a very theoretical line. Being aware of the 2000 cutoff I again appologized for the misunderstanding and we quickly realized that the Belzberg staff had erred in not telling people to write down their ratings (these were different people than from the NYC event). I simply stated "I'm sorry for the confusion, I won't play" and started to get up and Garry, reiterating that he'd have played differently vs a rated expert, started resetting the pieces to the starting position and said we can restart. Being rather shocked by this and what was over a minute of commotion and confusion I knew the gentlemanly thing for me to do was to step away and let someone else under 2000 play.

source

The position was a very sharp double-edged Scandinavian. Something even Kasparov wouldn't want to play against a high-rated player.


Any suggested check list for beginners? is there a simple / basic / quick checklist that beginners can use when in super easy games? I am not worried about questions like pawn structure, applying pressure, maintaining momentum, I am talking super basic like, will my knight move open my queen to attack? did his pawn open his bishop to wreck my back line?

I am not worried about getting outplayed, I get frustrated that I didn't see the fact his bishop had a direct shot at my queen. Losing my queen isn't as much of an issue as the fact that I didn't even see it coming.

yes, super beginner, yes, I need a quick and dirty checklist to start with before I can even THINK about maintaining pressure and pawn formations.

The focus is mostly on the piece your opponent just moved, and the piece you are moving. Most of the time, a blunder will involve one of those two pieces. Most of the rest of the time, a blunder will involve a discovered attack or not noticing that a piece was pinned to something more valuable.

Ways to lose your queen in one move mostly consist of:

You move your queen to a spot where it can simply be taken.
You move another piece which was pinned to your queen, allowing it to be taken.
Your opponent moved a piece which is now attacking your queen, and you ignore it.
Your opponent moved a piece which allowed another of his pieces to attack your queen, and you ignore it.

So that suggests a basic checklist of:

Make sure the piece you're about to move can't be taken for free.
Make sure the piece you're about to move isn't pinned to another piece.
Look at what the piece your opponent just moved is attacking.
Check if your opponent's move allowed another of his pieces to attack you.

Ways to lose your queen in two moves mostly consist of:

Your queen gets pinned.
Your queen gets skewered.
Your queen gets forked.
Your opponent plays a discovered check which also attacks your queen.
Your queen gets trapped.

So the slightly less basic version of the checklist makes sure that your move does not allow any pins, forks, skewers, discovered checks, or trapped pieces, and that your opponent's last move does not threaten any of those.

And you should, of course, always be watching out for checkmate. It doesn't matter if you lose your queen if the game is over.

This is not comprehensive - there are other ways to lose your queen fast. But it does check for some of the most common basic-level blunders.


Is Anderssen's opening playable? There is a certain opening called the Anderssen's opening that plays like this.
[FEN ""]

a3 e5 2. h3 d5.

Black has developed two pawns, occupied the center, and opened up the lines for pieces, while White has only created weaknesses. Why, then, is this opening is said to be playabe?

That specific opening is called the Anderssen Opening: Creepy Crawly Formation, Classical Defense
From about 1,000 test engine games it seems that its a remarkably even set up;
White : 45.5%
Black : 45.5%
Draw  : 9%
Based off that result I would say its very much playable. This is be cause you white usually plays the left side of the board slowly working towards the center;
One Notabale Game describing that concept Michael J Basman vs Yuri Yakovich - Hastings (1994)
 rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/7P/PPPPPPP1/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1

 1. h3 e5 2. a3 d5 3. c4 c6 4. e3 Nf6 5. b4 Bd6 6. Bb2 O-O 7. Nf3 Qe7 8. Qc2 Nbd7 9. cxd5 cxd5 10. Nc3 a6 11. Na4 d4 12. Rc1 b5 13. Nc5 Bxc5 14. bxc5 Bb7 15. c6 Rac8 16. c7 Nd5 17. Qf5 Rxc7 18. Rxc7 Nxc7 19. Be2 dxe3 20. dxe3 f6 21. O-O Nc5 22. Rd1 Rd8 23. Bc3 Rxd1+ 24. Bxd1 Qd7 25. Qb1 Be4 26. Qc1 N7e6 27. Nd2 Bg6 28. Bg4 h5 29. Be2 Qd5 30. Bb4 Kh7 31. Nf3 Nd3 32. Qc8 Nxb4 33. axb4 Qa2 34. Bf1 Bf7 35. Bd3+ g6 36. Qd7 Kg7 37. Be4 Nf8 38. Qb7 Qc4 39. Bc6 Kg8 40. Qxa6 e4 41. Nd4 Qxb4

Src: https://www.chess.com/games/view/657313


Chess software to analyze games My son is into chess and plays chess tournaments. I would like to know what good chess software is available to analyze his games.  The software should analyze move-by-move and should point out weak/strong moves, alternative moves, blunders, tactics etc.
What do you use for this? I googled, I see lots of options and I don’t know which one is good or bad.
Thank you.

One of the problems with chess-analysis software for weaker players is that it just shows the strongest move per the computer, without any explanation why. There are some programs, like the ChessBase programs that, using their "Tactical Analysis" feature, attempt to give some explanation to the moves, but they are all wanting.

That said, decodechess.com seems to do better than most for newbies. As a USCF Master, the explanations are pretty good from what I can see, and the underlying "engine" (program) is Stockfish, which is A LOT stronger than the best humans in history. Although a premium account is $99/year (right now, 50% off with the promo code "DECODESPRING". for the record, I have no affiliation with the site, nor am I a member), you can create an account, and "decode", or analyze three games per day for free. If you like it, I would jump on the promo.

This is not analysis software, but I would also recommend the book "Logical Chess Move by Move". It is a classic, and there is an new algebraic edition for $12.98 on Amazon.


Chess Engine: Faster Move Generation Introduction
I'm in the process of rewriting my chess engine for better performance. I've started with the move generation function first. I've been looking at this person's article (Their Article) about generating moves quickly. At the bottom, they have their list of tips for better performance. They claim using these tips gives them about 100 million nodes per second from the starting position, while qperft (qperft download) does 190 million (qperft does 290 million on my pc). While the fastest I have gotten from my move generation function has been about 10 million nodes per second.
QPerft Output on my PC
From the starting position.
Quick Perft by H.G. Muller
Perft mode: No hashing, bulk counting in horizon nodes

perft( 1)=           20 ( 0.000 sec)
perft( 2)=          400 ( 0.000 sec)
perft( 3)=         8902 ( 0.000 sec)
perft( 4)=       197281 ( 0.000 sec)
perft( 5)=      4865609 ( 0.016 sec)
perft( 6)=    119060324 ( 0.414 sec)

119060324 / 0.414 ~= 290 million

The Tips

Use SIMD instructions to do bitwise operations on multiple bitboards at the same time.
Use Kogge-Stone Generators for calculating moves for multiple sliding pieces at the same time.
Use the o^(o-2r) trick for calculating moves for single sliding pieces.

Problem
The problem I am having is I don't understand how to use these tips.
Problems with Tip #1
Their main tip for performance gain is to use SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) instructions to do operations on multiple bitboards at the same time. The problem is I don't see how these are useful for generating moves. This is an example of how I've been generating moves (rooks for example).
Bitboard rooks = turn ? pieces[WROOK] : pieces[BROOK];
Square from = 0, to = 0;

while (rooks != 0) {
    _BitScanForward64(&from, rooks);

    // GetRookMoves uses magic bitboards (a lookup table using the _pext_u64 instruction for speed).
    // As far as I am aware magic bitboards are faster than Kogge-Stone Generators.
    // & (empty | (turn ? bPieces : wPieces) is to only get the moves that are on empty squares or capture squares.
    Bitboard rookMoves = GetRookMoves(start, full) & (empty | (turn ? bPieces : wPieces));

    while (rookMoves != 0) {
        _BitScanForward64(&to, rookMoves);

        // I am using a 32-bit integer to store all the information about the move
        moves[moveCount++] = /* move information (rook, from, to, etc...) */;

        // This is ofc to remove the move we have just looked at
        rookMoves &= ~(ONE << to);
    }

    // This is ofc to remove the rook we have just looked at
    rooks &= ~(ONE << from)
}

I don't see where using SIMD instructions could help in this move generation function as I don't see any bitboard operations that can be done together. Am I missing some obvious way where using SIMD instructions would actually help or am I just doing the move generation wrong in the first place?
Problems with Tip #2
Their isn't much of a problem with tip #2. I am just wondering if magic bitboards are actually faster or if Kogge-Stone Generators with SIMD instructions are somehow faster. Also, Kogge-Stone is for calculating the moves for multiple sliding pieces at a time for legal move generation (I think). However, I am doing pseudo legal move generation because I think it is faster and easier.
Problems with Tip #3
The problem with tip #3 is the same as number 2. Isn't it faster to use magic bitboards?

Move generation has been tested to death in modern chess engines, and the current consensus is that the following two approaches are optimal for sliding pieces:

A lookup table indexed by PEXT of the relevant occupancies ("Fancy PEXT Bitboards")
A lookup table indexed by the higher order bits of the product of the Bitboard of relevant occupancies and a magic multiplier ("Magic Bitboards")

Option 1 is preferred on CPUs which have a fast hardware PEXT (i.e. Intel Haswell and newer, no AMD CPUs at the time of writing). Otherwise, Option 2 is preferred.
For example, stockfish offers bmi2 and popcnt builds: the former uses PEXT bitboards, the latter uses magic bitboards.
Kogge-stone
The Kogge-stone fill algorithm doesn't tend to be used in top engines for the simple reason that it benchmarks as being worse than the alternatives. I can offer a few reasons as to why this might be the case, but it is more important to recognise the fact that it is the case:

They require a ludicrous number of CPU instructions. Each ray that must be cast (of which there are four) requires 5 shifts, 5 bitwise '&'s, and 3 '|'s, while the lookup operations only require 3-5 instructions per slider.
While Kogge-stone can in theory be vectorised, there tend to not be enough sliders on the board to take advantage of this. For example, there tend to only be 3 (or fewer) rook-like sliders on the board at any given time. This makes the parallelism not worth the speed tradeoff.

 Actually improving move generation
A few things to note based on your code:

Use x & (x - 1) to clear the least significant bit: this is faster than x &= ~(1 << from)
Don't recompute the mask at every iteration: do it before the generation loop instead
Use magic bitboards or PEXT bitboards: this is faster than Kogge-stone
Make sure that hot move generation functions (like GetRookMoves) are inlined.


Human–machine stronger than machine? It seems to be pretty well established since the days of (the second) Deep Blue vs. Kasparov match that top machines can beat top humans at playing chess.

However, Kasparov seems to claim that the best combination is human+machine, assuming the right decision-making process.

I'm wondering if there's any evidence to back up this claim that a human+machine combination would be stronger than a machine on its own, or in other words, whether human reasoning can contribute something valuable to playing chess beyond what the top machines are capable of?

For example, have there been matches along these lines (human+computer vs. computer) that might shed light on this claim/question?

Yes. I remembered seeing a Reddit post on this, so I looked it up;
From /u/MortalSisyphus on Reddit:

At the end of the day engines win and lose games against each other. Which means their analysis is "flawed" in the sense they don't have an infinite horizon. It says 0.27, but if the move ends up with an eventual loss then the analysis of that move wasn't actually 0.27, it was -100.
Of course it is more complicated than that since each move contributes slightly, but the point is the same. The engine does blunder, just not in the way humans typically blunder. The blunders are basically impossible to see even for a 3000+ engine, but if the move(s) lead to a loss it is a blunder.
It is possible that a human seeing 3 roughly equally assessed lines could use intuition to pick the one least likely to be a long-term blunder, meaning a strategic mistake.
And of course humans have highly advanced opening theory, which is probably where most human advantage comes from if the engines in question don't have a very strong book.

If you want to see some human-machine chess, look up some modern ICCF games - ICCF correspondence games are played with engine assistance.


As we come out of lockdown, how much FIDE rated chess was played in June 2020? I asked a similar question about chess during lockdown. Now that some countries are coming out of lockdown and chess is resuming FIDE has published data for June.
NB I looked at May data and as far as I could tell FIDE just repeated the April tournament data with updates from federations for corrections to previous data and new registrations but no new tournament data. The June data does contain new tournament data.
What does the June data tell us about chess coming out of lockdown?
Specifically:

How many games (or half-games) of FIDE rated chess (standard, rapid and blitz) were played in June, by country?
How many players from which countries played FIDE rated chess (standard, rapid and blitz) in June?
How does this compare with the same data for June 2019 for total game counts and total player counts? (Break down by country would be too much)

These statistics should give us some idea what progress is being made and how much further we have to go to get back close to normal.

I downloaded the latest July 2020 rating list and loaded the data into my database and ran a few queries.
First one to show the number of players who played standard, rapid or blitz per federation sorted by standard players descending. I also included the number of active players in the federation to give an idea of which federations were more active. I excluded federations where the number of players playing was less than 4 on the grounds that they were likely living and playing in other federations. That still gave an impressive list of 33 federations which look as if they are back playing chess.
Code    ActivePlayers   Standard    Rapid   Blitz
CZE 10838   2543    17  16
SVK 6704    1357    54  0
SWE 5331    449 1   0
CRO 7654    351 14  54
GRE 20595   338 0   0
DEN 5496    134 0   0
SRB 7436    112 75  69
ISR 4104    96  0   1
NOR 5165    93  0   0
POL 21407   85  38  40
HUN 7928    80  6   1
LAT 2758    69  86  99
MNE 822 69  0   0
SUI 3170    66  6   1
BUL 3038    60  1   0
ISL 1842    36  54  60
FIN 1308    36  0   0
LTU 3813    32  59  22
SLO 4320    31  44  82
NCA 712 23  0   39
GER 22613   22  1   2
EST 1517    22  0   6
BEL 5602    14  0   1
RUS 68077   8   3   1
ITA 18332   6   10  1
AUT 5640    4   2   0
UKR 11853   4   2   22
FRA 55783   4   1   2
TUR 36523   4   0   0
ESP 45444   4   0   1
IRQ 1515    2   47  0
THA 1082    0   14  0
KGZ 2688    0   10  0
What stands out as quite remarkable in that list is that over 20% of Czech and Slovak active players played last month!
Next a query to show the sum of standard players, rapid players and blitz players.
That gave for June 2020:
Standard = 6171
Rapid = 551
Blitz = 524
By comparison for June 2019:
Standard = 35708
Rapid = 18712
Blitz = 10569
Two things stand out

More than 60% of standard chess played in June 2020 was played in the Czech and Slovak republics
Standard accounted for far more of the chess played in June 2020 than in June 2019.

Next a query to show the sum of standard+rapid+blitz games per federation. Here is the top 20. Click on the federation link to see the list of tournaments reported for that federation in June 2020:
Code    Total   Standard    Rapid   Blitz
CZE    16002   7899    100 204
SVK    4848    2424    132 0
LAT    2625    599 672 1427
SRB    2097    435 560 1227
CRO    2074    719 80  636
GRE    1834    917 0   0
SLO    1663    138 300 1387
POL    1221    441 401 339
HUN   1213    601 8   11
SWE   1108    554 7   0
ISL   869 93  330 683
NOR   776 388 0   0
DEN   754 377 0   0
LTU   714 230 404 254
BUL   708 354 9   0
MNE   606 303 0   0
NCA   575 167 0   241
SUI   503 246 36  11
EST   354 144 0   66
ISR   319 155 0   9
The sum of games for June 2020:
Standard = 17562
Rapid = 3774
Blitz = 6844
For comparison the same figures for June 2019:
Standard = 247057
Rapid = 148693
Blitz = 121143
Digging deeper into the data for the Czech republic, you can see the tournaments reported for
June 2020 for the Czech Republic here and for
June 2019 for the Czech Republic here
43 Czech tournaments reported in June 2020 against 21 in June 2019. It looks very much like in June they aimed to catch up with all the matches and tournaments they missed during the lockdown.


Highly inconsistent playing level I have a very inconsistent playing level, which is very strange to me. Sometimes I'd make an almost-brilliant move (usually a tactical sacrifice, which once made an IM stare at me with awe) and other times I'd make a beginner blunder that would shock a 1400 amateur. I'm unrated although my trainer estimated my Elo to be about 1850. I've learnt chess two years ago and studied it seriously several months earlier. I've since been studying chess every free hour I've got. What is the cause of my unusual problem ? Is it inexperience ? A health issue ?

A standard piece of advice that used to be given to inexperienced players was to always write your move down before playing it and in the gap between writing it down and playing it to have one last quick check to make sure it was sound. The new (post July 2014) rules no longer allow this but the thinking behind the advice still applies.

Your computer is always consistent, unlike you. The reason is that it is inanimate silicon whereas you are a human being. You are driven by emotion. When you make a bad move you do that because your emotions temporarily take control. You need a routine to reduce the emotional disturbance to your thinking.

The first step is to try and never make an immediate response to your opponent's move. Try and always write his move down first. Try and have a checklist of questions you go through before making a move. Things like:

Why did he make that move?

What is he threatening?

Do my plans have to change to take account of what he just did?

There are probably more questions like this that you or your coach can come up with.

You must also try and not be affected by how strong (or weak) your opponent is or how strong you think he is. Once you have calculated what you think is the best move then play it. Don't change your mind and play a tricky but possibly bad move because your opponent isn't so strong and you hope to trick him. If you've calculated that the best move is a difficult, tricky move but your opponent is much stronger don't chicken out and play a weaker "safe" move.

I know from my own experience how difficult this can be especially when I am playing a much stronger player. The fear can be very strong but always try and play the position on the board not the other player or the other player's rating.

This way you will reduce your bad moves and become a better player.


What is Black's best move in this position? [Title "Black to move"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "r1b1kb2/pp1p2pp/2n1qn2/3P4/3p4/2N4P/PPP2PP1/R1BQR1K1 b q - 0 1"]

What is Black's best move in this position?

Would black's best move be Qxe1?

[FEN "r1b1kb2/pp1p2pp/2n1qn2/3P4/3p4/2N4P/PPP2PP1/R1BQR1K1 b KQkq - 1 1"]

1... Qxe1+ 2.Qxe1+ Ne7 (2... Kd8 3.dxc6 dxc3) 3.d6 dxc3 4.dxe7 Bxe7

Yes, Black's "best" move is Qxe1+. His queen is pinned against his king, so it will be lost on the next move whatever happens. Black may as well get as much material back for the queen as possible, which means taking the rook.  But then Black is down queen for two minor pieces, with his king stuck in the centre and bad development: he should just resign.

The real question is not "What should I do if I get into this position?" but "How should I avoid getting into this position in the first place?"


What is black's best sixth move in the Sicilian Grand Prix? 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.f4 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Bb5 Nd4 6.O-O Nxb5 is most common.

[FEN ""]
1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.f4 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Bb5 Nd4 6.O-O Nxb5 (6...a6)

Instead of 6...Nxb5 if black plays 6...a6, it seems white has some difficulties. Can anyone give the best move after this position with continuation? If possible give some games after the move 6...a6 which gives a easy play for white.

Things don't look too difficult for White after the natural 7.Bc4 (in your 6...a6 line); not that I think White has some great position, but I at least don't see why you write "it seems White has some difficulties." Since you didn't elaborate on what you think these difficulties are, I'm going to guess that they revolve around White's light-square bishop getting harassed by expanding black pawns. Assuming that is the concern, I don't think there's really any reason to worry.

For instance, if Black immediately lashes out with 7...b5, White can keep the bishop active on the a2-f7 diagonal without fear of getting trapped by ...c4 since he can gain time against Black's rook: 8.Bd5 Rb8 9.d3, when 9...e6 can be safely met with 10.Bb3. After say 10...Bb7, Black has a perfectly good position, but the same goes for White. (Note that White should welcome 10...Nxb3 11.axb3 with good central control and play down the a-file. And in any case White shouldn't mind losing the bishop pair in this position, especially since he played into a line in which Black had the earlier option of 6...Nxb5 anyway.)

Similarly, if Black prepares ...b5 with 7...e6, I think White should simply play 8.d3 with play similar to the above line, e.g. 8...b5 9.Bb3 Bb7, and again White should be content with something like 9...Nxb3 10.axb3 Bb7 as well.

Perhaps I'm wrong about what difficulties you see for White after 6...a6 (in which case please correct me with more detail in your post), but if that is where you think trouble lies, it seems to me that everything is fine for White (though fine for Black too).

[fen ""]

1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.f4 g6 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Bb5 Nd4 6.O-O a6
    ( 6...Nxb5 )
7.Bc4 b5
    ( 7...e6 8.d3 b5 9.Bb3 Bb7
        ( 9...Nxb3 10.axb3 Bb7 )
    )
8.Bd5 Rb8 9.d3 e6 10.Bb3 Bb7
    ( 10...Nxb3 11.axb3 )
*


Only the king remains, but he is stuck, can't move I played with my friend yesterday, and we reached a point when I cornered him from everywhere. I had a queen and a king, and he had only his king left, but he could not do any move because any move would be considered checkmate. So he told me it's a draw because it's a stalling position. Is that true?

If you mean he can't move his king anywhere because if he does his king will be in check, but none of your pieces are attacking him at the moment, and it's his turn, then yes, it's called a stalemate because he has nothing to play but his king isn't attacked by any one of your pieces, and this is a draw.

P.S. that is if none of his pieces are able to move, if he has another piece which he can play with it's not a stalemate. xD


Chessboard Materials [FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR"]

Starting a game with a total of 78 point-value, how many legal moves are required to produce the maximum total point-value on a chessboard?

Of course, promoting all the pawns to queens must be done. Creating sixteen passed pawns requires sacking eight pieces, four per side. The sacked pieces should be the knights and bishops to preserve the higher value pieces. From there, it's merely an "Onward, ho!" to a total point value of 182, which comes from the nines queens and two rooks on each side.
Here is one example game in 51 moves, or 102 plies. Since getting 18 queens alone takes 48 moves, or 96 plies, this is almost optimal, I feel.
[FEN ""]
[startply "102"]

 1. c4 f5 2. c5 f4 3. c6 f3 4. b4 g5 5. b5 g4 6. h4 a5 7. Nh3 Na6 8. bxa6 gxh3 9. g4 b5 10. Bg2 Bb7 11. cxb7 fxg2 12. h5 a4 13. h6 a3 14. Bb2 Bg7 15. hxg7 axb2 16. a4 h5 17. a5 h4 18. e4 d5 19. e5 d4 20. Nc3 Nf6 21. exf6 dxc3 22. d4 e5 23. d5 e4 24. f4 c2 25. f5 e3 26. f7+ Kd7 27. f6 e2 28. d6 c5 29. Kd2 c4 30. f8=Q c3+ 31. Kd3 e1=Q 32. g8=Q b1=Q 33. a7 Rc8 34. Rf1 Qde7 35. f7 g1=Q 36. Qh7 Ke6 37. d7 b4 38. a6 b3 39. a8=Q h2 40. a7 Qa2 41. b8=Q b2 42. Qab7 c1=Q 43. a8=Q Qf4 44. g5 c2 45. g6 b1=Q 46. g7 h1=Q 47. d8=Q Qhg2 48. g8=Q h3 49. Qfg7 h2 50. Qge8 h1=Q 51. f8=Q c1=Q+


How to switch the engine off in Arena? I use Arena. I want to input my game and create a pgn. But I have a problem, because if I make a move, the engine automatically makes a move as well. I want to make moves for white and for black.

I don't know how to switch the engine off.

Version 3.5: Under the "List of Moves" Panel/TabControl there is a toolbar. The last component on the toolbar is the "Edit" button. The tooltip tells you when this button is down, the engines do not respond and you can enter your moves.


Chess software that enables you to set up a position from scratch? I'm looking for chess software (free or otherwise) that will allow me to completely clear the board and set it up as I wish in order to analyze a specific situation. All of the chess puzzle software I've seen seems to have only pre-loaded positions to solve.

You don't mention what platform you are using, but on Android I use the "Analyze This" app - it lets you set up positions from scratch, and also use an engine to analyze.  There is a free version of the app, and a paid "Pro" version.  In the free version, the only available engine is Stockfish; in the "Pro" version, you can add other UCI engines.


Find color of the pieces Given the following position, what colour are the pieces and what was the last move played?
[FEN "B1KRN3/PP6/2QK1R2/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

The difficult part of this puzzle is the realization that the pawn on b7 can actually be black. When this is established, the rest of the puzzle can be figured out without too much difficulty. Thus, if we assume that the pawn on b7 is black, what does this entail for the other pieces? Well:

The bishop on a8 must be white, since it must've gotten there by means of pawn promotion. This further implies that the path to a8 must've been cleared for a white pawn at some point. Hence, the pawn on a7 must be white as well.
Next, we realize that the rook on d8 and the queen on c6 must be of the same color (otherwise both kings would be in check). Moreover, these must be of the color opposing that of the king on c8; otherwise the king on d6 would be in check by the queen and the rook, which cannot be the result of a legal move on the previous turn. This, in turn, proves that the king on d6 is of the same color as all of the heavy pieces and the knight, since it couldn't possibly be in check.
Finally, we determine the color of the king on c8. If it were white, then the rooks, and queen must be black by the previous point. But there is no legal move on the previous turn that black could've made to achieve this. So the king has to be black, which leads us to the realization that the last move played must've been cxd8=R, since the move must've been a discovered check (Note that this implies that the pawn on b7 must indeed be black, since the arguments concerning the heavy pieces are not dependent on the color of this pawn).

So, this must be the solution (the knight is indeed the only possible piece that could be on d8 in the initial position, as pointed out by James Martin in the comments):
[FEN "B1knN3/PpP5/2QK1R2/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

1.cxd8=R


Looking for a chess database with MCO style reports I'm wanting to make some binders of different opening lines in a columnar layout like MCO uses. Is there any database program that can produce this type of output, or would I be better off creating it manually in a spreadsheet?

In addition, I'd like to be able to print out annotated games with diagrams.

My suggestion does not link to a database, but you can use Tex to format chessboards, add your own annotations and put the content into column format.

We even have a Tex stack exchange! The link is of a question regarding a new Tex user learning how to use the chess specific packages.

Please note Tex is just a text editor though. The times I have used it (for my mathematics dissertation), I've used it to neatly represent content only. As far as I know Tex doesn't have analysis features, databases of master games etc., it just is to display text and text like objects.


What move did I miss? I played b4. According to computer, it is a "missed win" move by me. But what move did I miss? What move should I have played?
(I am white. And played b4 but I got "missed win")

After 23...Ra6? White has the option of going for an immediate kill, as black's king is in danger of getting checkmated: 24.Re7+! is a very strong move, forcing black to play 24...Kc8 (since the reply 24...Kc6?? would be immediate checkmate after 25.c4! followed by 26.Rc7# whatever black plays).

After this, white may play 25.Rc7, after which black is practically forced to play 25...Kd8 (if black goes 25...Kb8, white can play 26.a5! after which the simple plans of Rd7-d8# or Ne7-Rc8# are quite crushing) and in this situation, white may choose a few different winning plans. The most basic one is to just take pawns by either Rxb7+ or Rxf7+ using the fact that there is a discovered check. But the most crushing move seems to be 26.a5, after which black will lose at least the exchange, if not more.

A sample line: 26...Ke8 (stepping out of the pin) 27.Rxb7 (threatening Nc7, and the rook on a6 is trapped; there is no way of preventing the move, and black loses the rook on a6 for at most the bishop on b6.)


Do chess engines really prune more than 90% of branches? I was looking at Fritz Online (https://fritz.chessbase.com/) engine's parameters/performance. Here is screen relating to one of made moves.

It means that there was a general depth equals to 15 but some branches were even explored to depth 39. Engine was analysing at average speed 530k positions per second. It lasted 5 sec. so ~2.6M nodes were evaluated.

Let's consider branching factor 3 at each level. Then there are 3^15=14M leaves to evaluate (not taking into account internal nodes). As we see in case of branching factor 3 we have more nodes to analyze (14M) than it really took place (2.6M) (not even considering branches explored deeper than 15).

Branching factor in chess is aproximately 35. I'm aware there are many, many sophisticated techniques to prune branches in search tree. But really from 35 to less than 3? How it's possible that more than 90% of branches are pruned?

Two remarks:

Provided parameters/performance come from phase between opening and middlegame. This is NOT taken from ending where branching factor is significantly lower.
Depth 15 is not something unusual. In most cases program performed analysis to depth between 13 and 16 in couple of seconds.

Yes. Chess engines prune moves quite extensively. Chess programming is all about pruning.

When an engine says "search up to depth 15", it really mean depth as in iterative deepening depth-first search. It doesn't mean that the engine attempts to search everything up to depth 15. No good chess engine would search everything to depth 15.

It's complicated, but most of the bad moves should be reduced by depth (or even eliminated), and some critical lines variations extended beyond depth 15.

90% pruning is not uncommon, in fact it'd be more like 99.999999999999999999% according to your definition.


Where can one get a large .bin opening book? SCID uses .bin files as opening book format, but the opening books it has available on its site are rather small in size. Is there a better place to get larger .bin opening books? Alternatively, does SCID allow taking a large database, and turning that into an opening book? Polyglot uses pgn's, which probably won't work for building truly large .bin books.

The Stockfish opening book works with scid, follow the directions there to use it with the engine.  To use it in scid itself copy the book.bin file to the same location you have all your other scid opening books. I hope you have scidvspc and not the original...


Why is drag and drop more popular than click-click in online blitz? There are two ways to move the pieces in interactive interfaces, to drag and drop or to click-click. Drag and drop is by far the more common choice. Why is that given the two advantages of click-click?
1) Click-click avoids making mouse slips in online blitz play.
2) Click-click is easier from the ergonomic point of view.

I have switched to click-click in online blitz very soon after starting to play regularly in order to avoid mouse slips and it works. I am a fast click-click player mostly using a touchpad and see no reason to think that my opponents play faster with their drag and drop technique. But they slip.

Perhaps the answer lies deeply in the psychology of making a move on a real chessboard when there is clearly the moment of taking hold, then an interval of keeping hold of the piece, and then the moment of releasing. Drag and drop instantiates the same psychological experience while click-click has no relation to the original hand movement. Any ideas?

Is there any research/poll that supports your claim for drag&drop being more common choice?

Personally, I use click-click, and most people I know also prefer this option. It's just as fast as drag&drop and it's much less prone to slip, as you already stated. And that's especially true when using smartphone instead of the mouse. :)

Perhaps, apart from being similar to real-life behavior, drag&drop gets used more when there's GUI that presents it as preferable (although I would say it's a bad design). For example, when you click on a piece, it pops-out/enlarges immediately, so it's somehow more obvious to just drag it; I guess some people don't even bother trying if click-click works at all afterwards.


Analyzing complete games on iPad? I have several apps on my iPad that will analyze the current position as I move through a game, but I can't seem to find any that will do an analysis of a complete game, ala the sort of analysis I used to do with Fritz when I still had a working PC. I don't need Grand Master level preparation insights (as in, I'm not trying to replicate the depth that Fritz could look at), just looking for something that will point out blunders and mistakes etc.

Smallfish as mentioned is good, the website lichess.org has made an app, you can downnload it and make an account. It needs internet connection for the database but not for the complete game analysis


The strength of Smith-Morra gambit I am a beginning player in chess.(~1300 on chess.com/blitz: 5 and 10 minutes) And I mostly like to attack and favor fully open positions to closed and defensive. In response to e4, when the opponent plays c5, I don't have much options left. I don't like nf3, d4 too much. So, I have to resort to d4 and the Smith-Morra gambit. And, I really like this opening. However, this opening is not famous among top chess players and I wonder why. Please explain the merits and demerits of this opening apart from the early loss of a pawn to white.
Further information about openings I like and I'm comfortable with: Scotch Gambit, King's gambit. Please explain in simple terms and don't use terminology related to chess theory as I'm not familiar with those. I only play chess on chess.com and sometimes practice a few puzzles.

If you like the Morra gambit, then there is no reason not to play it. It indeed leads to open positions where white has a lead in development. Moreover, black players are typically more familiar with the main lines than the Morra, while white's initiative can be quite dangerous.

Profound analyses can be found in Mayhem in the Morra!, written by IM Marc Esserman in 2012. The forewords in the sample pages are interesting and fun to read.

The theoretical status of the Morra is that black is fine: white has enough compensation for the pawn, but nothing more.
White has better chances for an advantage in the main lines after 2.Nf3 and 3.d4. Therefore, the Morra gambit is not seen very often at the top level.


Chess engine - Losers variant I often use the Pulsar engine to analyze my Atomic games for better play (post-mortem). I definitely learn something, since I am not as smart as Pulsar. I am interested in doing the same thing for Losers chess. Pulsar is not very good at Losers, but Sjeng is better at this variant.

I use both Pulsar and Sjeng under the WinBoard interface. Does anyone know of stronger engines that play Losers chess? I have Googled for several days, did not find any. Both Pulsar and Sjeng are free, but I would be willing to buy better software.

PLEASE NOTE
Many sites have confusing terminology for variants. Losers chess is not the same as Suicide or Giveaway. In Losers chess, the King can be checkmated, and you must respond to check. This makes a big difference in the strategy for Losers chess compared to Suicide chess.

I've never used it myself, but I believe that Wizard is a strong and free Loser's Chess engine. An undated reference table on the same website shows that Wizard used to be one of the strongest Losers engines on FICS - however, I understand that the creator passed away many years ago so it may be outdated.


What is the maximum DTM with K+J vs K? What is the maximum DTM in the endgame king + janus vs king on a 10x8-board ?

The janus can move like a bishop or like a knight. Since both sides have two
 additional pieces, the board has 10 columns and (like the chess board), 8
 rows.

I don't know the exact answer for the 10x8 board (used e.g. in Capablanca Chess, where your Janus is called the Archbishop), but I have something that could get you well along toward an exact answer, though with some effort on your part (see further below). On the 8x8 board the max DTM is 17 moves (as you may already know). My conjecture is that the 10x8 answer won't be far off from that, and I'd bet a small sum that it's no more than 19 moves. (After all, if the defending king starts in the center of the 10x8 board and you start corralling it, you're almost immediately into a situation in which, as you start pushing to an edge/corner, the rest of the mating sequence will be indistinguishable from how it would play out on the 8x8 board, as the rest of the board's real estate becomes simply irrelevant.) But as for getting an exact 10x8 answer ...

A few years ago, I was toying around with generating tablebases for Seirawan Chess, which is played on the standard 8x8 board, but features the same extra pieces as Capablanca Chess. In the Seirawan variant, the Janus/Archbishop piece goes by the name Hawk. I just now placed into a github repository my old C++ source code for generating a complete KHK (or, KJK in your terminology) tablebase on the 8x8 board, along with the output files, where e.g. KHK.0 is the set of all mate positions, and KHK.34 is the set of all positions where it is 34 ply until black is mated. It hasn't undergone tons of testing, but this and similar ones for e.g. KEK (king-and-elephant/chancellor vs. king) appeared to function correctly and agree with known results. For instance, the max DTM of 17 moves on the 8x8 board indicated by my KHK stuff is the same value given at the wikipedia page for the Princess piece (yet another name for this particular fairy chess piece).

My code would need to changed a bit in order to adapt to your 10x8 board question. In particular, my code makes full use of the symmetries of the 8x8 board in order to reduce the number of positions needing to be examined, and of course the 10x8 board is less symmetric; so that would need an alteration. Additionally, my somewhat crude representation/storage of positions in this simple program would need to be changed and accounted for (in terms of some hard-coded arithmetic that's performed, for instance) in order to adapt to the 10x8 board. You can see the sort of thing I mean in the following snippets:

// Constants to name the symmetries of the board.
const int sym_id = 1;
const int sym_x = 2; // reflect across x axis
const int sym_y = 3;
const int sym_d1 = 4; // reflect across a1-h8 diagonal
const int sym_d2 = 5;
const int sym_r90 = 6; // rotate 90 degrees clockwise
const int sym_r180 = 7;
const int sym_r270 = 8;

int Apply_Symmetry (int sym, int square)
{
    // Applies the specified symmetry of the board to the specified square
    //     (in 0x88 terms).

    if (sym == sym_d1) {
        return (square / 16) + ((square % 16) * 16);
    }

    else if (sym == sym_y) {
        return ((square / 16) * 16) + (7 - (square % 16));
    }

    else if (sym == sym_d2) {
        return (7 - (square / 16)) + ((7 - (square % 16)) * 16);
    }

    else if (sym == sym_x) {
        return (square % 16) + ((7 - (square / 16)) * 16);
    }

    else
        return 0;
}

But anyway, the structure and the functionality is there if you wanted to modify the code to produce an answer for the max DTM on the 10x8 board, and all told there's only a few hundred lines of code.


What is the most complex game you know since 2014? Which classical top player chess game is the most complex since 2014 you know ?

A good candidate for such games are games with few pawns but many figures.

This year, Timman played a rather complicated game in Tata Steel. It was his only win
 in the B-group in this tournament.

Other examples ?

Played a few days ago and commented upon on chess24, this game is quickly a real tactical mess:

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
[Event "European Individual Championship"]
[Site "Jerusalem ISR"]
[Date "2015.03.03"]
[EventDate "2015.02.24"]
[Round "7.6"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu"]
[Black "Ivan Bukavshin"]
[ECO "B48"]
[WhiteElo "2654"]
[BlackElo "2622"]
[PlyCount "137"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nc6 5. Nc3 Qc7 6. Be3 a6
7. Qd2 Be7 8. O-O-O Nf6 9. f3 b5 10. Kb1 Ne5 11. g4 h6 12. Qg2
b4 13. Na4 d5 14. f4 Nexg4 15. Bc1 e5 16. fxe5 Nxe4 17. e6
Ngf2 18. Qxg7 Bf6 19. Nb5 Qxc2+ 20. Kxc2 Bxg7 21. Nc7+ Ke7
22. Nxd5+ Kxe6 23. Bg2 Be5 24. Rhe1 f5 25. Nc5+ Kf7 26. Nxe4
Nxe4 27. Bxe4 fxe4 28. Rxe4 Re8 29. Rf1+ Kg6 30. Nf4+ Bxf4
31. Rexf4 Bh3 32. Rg1+ Kh5 33. Rxb4 Re2+ 34. Kb3 Rf8 35. Rg3
Rxh2 36. Rb6 Rh8 37. Rxa6 Bg4 38. Rc3 Bf5 39. a4 Kg4 40. Rb6
Be4 41. Rf6 Re2 42. Ka3 Rd8 43. Bxh6 Rd1 44. Bc1 Bc2 45. Rf4+
Kh5 46. Rh3+ Kg6 47. Rg3+ Kh5 48. Rf8 Kh4 49. Rg7 Rd3+ 50. Ka2
Bb3+ 51. Ka1 Rd5 52. Rf1 Rd1 53. Rxd1 Bxd1 54. a5 Re4 55. Kb1
Ra4 56. Bd2 Bb3 57. Be1+ Kh5 58. Rb7 Be6 59. b4 Kg4 60. b5 Kf5
61. b6 Ra3 62. Kc2 Ra2+ 63. Kd3 Ke5 64. Re7 Ra3+ 65. Bc3+ Kd5
66. Rxe6 Kxe6 67. b7 Rb3 68. a6 Kd7 69. a7 1-0


How many places can the queen move at each position? For each square on the board, how many moves could a queen on that space move, including not moving?

Ideally I'd like to see this visualized but I understand if that's not possible.


What are books about the French Defence which feature a Black repertoire that tends to lead to solid/positional/closed/slow/quiet/strategic positions? I am a 1750 Elo player with a very positional, quiet and strategic style of play.

I am looking for one or more books about the French Defence which fits these 3 conditions:

It must offer a complete Black repertoire. It must cover the French Defence from the point of view of Black only. (I don't care about playing the French Defence as White since I don't play 1. e4) (And if the diagram boards in the book show Black at the bottom, ie. with the board flipped, that would be great.)
The Black repertoire proposed in the book must (on average) tend to lead to positions which are as much solid, positional, slow, closed, quiet and strategic as possible. I want as few sharp and tactical lines as possible.
If possible, I would like that the repertoire tries to avoid playing the Pawn break ...f7-f6 (except when it's totally necessary).

.

.

.

Edit:

.

I don’t really like 3.Nc3 dxe4 and 3.Nd2 dxe4. I’ve looked in my ChessBase Mega Database and on Chess Tempo games database and here is what I found out:

.

3...X: A | B | C | D

X: The Black move

A: The average Elo that Black is expected to lose, ie [Average Elo] minus [Performance Elo] - Statistics from Chess Tempo

B: The average Elo that Black is expected to lose, ie [Average Elo] minus [Performance Elo] - Statistics from ChessBase (selecting only games where both players were rated between 1700 and 2200)

C: The percentage of games that ended in a draw - Statistics from Chess Tempo

D: The percentage of games that ended in a draw - Statistics from ChessBase (selecting only games where both players were rated between 1700 and 2200)

.

3.Nc3:

3...Bb4:  43 | 33 | 34.3 | 27

3...Nf6:   37 | 19 | 38.4 | 27

3...dxe4: 57 | 40 | 47.7 | 34

.

3.Nd2:

3...Nf6:   53 | 35 | 34.1 | 28

3...c5:    43 | 28 | 49.7 | 32

3...Be7:  40 | 33 | 39.8 | 33

3...dxe4: 59 | 27 | 47.2 | 30

3...Nc6:  58 | 27 | 33.0 | 33

3...a6:    43 | 34 | 43.1 | 35

.

Conclusion: 3... dxe4 scores extremely poorly both against 3. Nc3 and against 3. Nd2. And against 3. Nd2 it isn't even efficient at making draws.

I don't know much about the French so I don't know exactly which of these moves are sharp/tactical and which of them are solid/positional/quiet.

But I would guess that against 3. Nc3 I should probably choose 3...Nf6 (I heard that 3...Bb4 was extremely sharp and tactical)

And against 3. Nd2 I should probably choose 3...c5 and answer 4. exd5 with 4...Qxd5 (I heard that 3...Nf6 was extremely sharp and tactical) (and 3...Be7 looks too subtle for a non-GM)

So any more suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

There are several excellent books covering the French Defense.

Unfortunately, you cannot avoid complications, despite how much you want to, there are going to be complications, just because you play this line, doesn't mean the game can't somehow explode into a tactical mess.

Also how can you be a French player if you don't want to play the critical f7-f6 pawn break? That "break" defines so much of the French!

Probably the definitive French Defense repertoire book is Play the French by John Watson (4th Edition) (3rd also fine), which I highly recommend
http://www.amazon.com/Play-French-4th-Everyman-Chess/dp/1857446801/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403968578&sr=8-1&keywords=play+the+french

Also good is Chess Explained: The French by Viacheslav Eingorn and Valentin Bogdanov, this covers the Rubinstein variations of the French and more
http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Explained-French-Viacheslav-Eingorn-ebook/dp/B00H8ZDATS/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1403968623&sr=8-15&keywords=french+defense

There is also the Grandmaster Repertoire Series on it, with two volumes by Emmanuel Berg
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/products/1/207/grandmaster_repertoire_14_-_the_french_defence_volume_one_by_emanuel_berg/

And lastly, The Flexible French by Viktor Moskalenko (French Defense expert) should not be ignored http://www.amazon.com/The-Flexible-French-Strategic-Explanations/dp/9056912453/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1403968623&sr=8-8&keywords=french+defense

Hope this helps


What tools can I use to help me memorise my opening repertoire? I have been taking some lessons with an opening coach, and I have now got an extensive repertoire that I need to memorise. I have a big qualifying tournament in 2 weeks and up until that time I want to try and memorise at least the mainlines of all the variations, but best case scenario would be to commit the entire thing to my long term memory.
The repertoire is in Chessbase, and I am currently using the 'replay training' and simply looking through the moves to try and memorise them. I feel that this strategy is inefficient and ineffective, and I was wondering if anyone knew a better way to memorise opening moves or if anyone knows some software I can export a game file to and then use to help me memorise.
From brainstorming I think it might be useful to try looking at games of the openings, to get good feels for the ideas behind the moves so that I can remember them more easily rather than just arbitrary numbers and letters - from my research the human mind is much better at remembering ideas instead of numerical data.

ChessTempo has an opening trainer where you can input your repertoire. Then it will throw you a random-ish position from it and let you continue.


Is taking the opponent's king an illegal move? In competition blitz games, making an illegal move and then pressing the clock forfeits the game if the opponent claims the illegal move as long as they do not make a new move, as a new move would void the previous illegal move according to FIDE blitz rules.

I've seen all kind of forfeits because of this reason in blitz games, including one player taking one of his own pawns.

However, the most common case for illegal moves is neglecting that the King is in check or unprotecting the King. In this case where the King is checked, if the opponent takes the exposed king and presses the clock, are they making a new illegal move, hence voiding the previous one?

I've been told that taking the King, even as a kind of "joke" to expose a previous illegal move, is an illegal move by itself, because the King cannot be taken, only mated. Is this true under FIDE rules?

Capturing the King is an illegal move according to FIDE.

Refer to Article 1.2 from the Laws of Chess

  The objective of each player is to place the opponent’s king ‘under
  attack’ in such a way that the opponent has no legal move. The player
  who achieves this goal is said to have ‘checkmated’ the opponent’s
  king and to have won the game. Leaving one’s own king under attack,
  exposing one’s own king to attack and also ’capturing’ the opponent’s
  king are not allowed. The opponent whose king has been checkmated has
  lost the game.


At what point does the opening end, and middle game begin? Just curious if there's a set of guidelines to determine when a player can call the opening pretty much done, and move into the middle game. I know some rules of the opening that would apply are

All pieces developed
King castled
Rooks connected

And by those definitions, it's easy to see that white may begin a middle game strategy while black is still in the opening phase, or vice versa.
I'm pretty sure there is no hard and fast rule such as

By move 10 all players should be thinking middle game, regardless of position

As all games are different (sometimes one side plays aggressive and there may be no time to castle).
I see a related question on the line between middle game and endgame, but not this one.

The opening is for "deploying." The middle game is for "fighting." So the middle game begins when the fighting begins in earnest.

Think of two armies marching to a battlefield. The opening is when they "leave camp." The middle game is when they arrive on the battlefield and get down to fighting.

If there is serious "fighting" a middle game can begin as early as the seventh or eighth move. On the other hand, the middle game can begin as late as the fifteenth move or so if both sides opt for a "slow" development.


What is the idea behind this move? I was watching Nepomniachtchi - Liren match on Chess24 Legends Day 2. After having a pretty significant advantage [+7.1 (Stockfish 11)], White [Nepo] has played g4, and according to the engine, the game could be drawn by something sort of perpetual checks or three-fold repetition,

Since after g5+, Kh5; Black can make his king pretty safe in the pawn structure and also its active queen bishop combo can neutralize white's attack by giving perpetual checks; so my question is:
What is the idea behind the move g4 in this situation?

First of all, I do not think Black's king would be safe at all on h5. After Kh5 simply Rd4 would threaten Bf3#. Many other concrete threats also come to mind with the king on h5, but the idea is the same: the king is one check away from checkmate, since no squares are available for him. Of course all of this is ignoring the fact that Black can force a draw.
I believe g4 is simply an overlook (yes, they happen in the elite too). Nepo was probably too enthusiastic about the threat of g5+ with all the subsequent mate threats after Kh5 that he overlooked the forced draw. So to answer your question: I think the idea behind g4 is simply to create a mating net against the enemy king. A strange overlook by such a strong player anyway.


Why do Americans hail Fischer when he was anti-American and idolized Hitler? Whenever I talk chess legends with some Americans I know, they love to hype up Fischer and call him the greatest ever and what not.

While I appreciate Fischer's talent for chess, and he is certainly one of my top 5 players as well, I do not understand this love that Americans in particular have for Fischer, who, as a person, was as anti-American as it gets, and in general a vile human being.

Didn't he profess his support for Nazi Germany? So why do Americans show this bias for a person that actually hated Americans?

Fischer had psychological problems. He was American and hated the US. He was jewish and hated Jews. He was clearly paranoid from a pretty early age, but it got much worse after he stopped playing.

It is hard to see an antisemitic Jew as evil. I think it is more reasonable to feel some empathy for his mental problems. And we can all count ourselves lucky that his mental health held up long enough for him to create a large number of chess masterpieces.


Would games played between two perfect players always end up on a draw? Imagine a scenario where you have two perfect players (i.e. they can consider all the possibilities in a very short amount of time and they choose always the right movement).

If they decided to play against each other, would all of their games end up on a draw?

The answer is currently unknown. If you don't consider the opening (generally the first 8-15 moves or so), strong AI like Stockfish will generally show a clear optimal move in any position, and the majority of openings tend to yield a draw in these computer matches. However, as there are an incredibly large variety of openings, and this number scales exponentially with the number of moves, it is infeasible, at least in the present, for us to find a definitive answer to this question.


Stop pinned knight opening How can I stop my knight getting pinned like this in an opening.

I'd like to advance my knight and avoid the pin.

There are a few ways to deal with pins in general:

Break the pin. In the position you posted, a long term plan might be to play e3, Nge2 and O-O
Ignore the pin. In the position you show, if black takes on c3, he surrenders the bishop pair (specifically his better bishop) for a knight whilst giving you a semi-open b-file. But this is at the cost of a weakened pawn structure
Play prophylactically. This depends on the position though. Sometimes it is a weakening move, e.g. playing h3, O-O may allow a sacrifical attack with ...Bxh3
Put the question to the bishop. White may want to test black with a3, putting the question to the bishop of 'are you going to take or retreat?'
Play a cramped  game with Nbd2, which allows c3 if the bishop comes to b4


In this YouTube video, the author says that 10...f6 "leads to disaster"...Why? Why is that at 10:44 of the video, 10...f6 leads to a disaster?

https://youtu.be/BrbChWI89ek

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d4 exd4 5. O-O Nxe4 6. Re1 d5 7. Bxd5 Qxd5 8. Nc3 Qa5 9. Nxe4 Be7 10. Bg5 f6?

The video's author might be overstating it by calling it a "disaster" as there is no clear knockout blow.

Nevertheless, white is clearly better, and the attack will continue with best play, but it requires accuracy or the extra piece may tell the final tale. White will remain down a piece for two pawns, and will probably win a third in the near future due to the indefensible black king. Here is a couple of sample lines, but since neither side is forced, there are many other possibilities.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d4 exd4 5. O-O Nxe4 6. Re1 d5 7. Bxd5 Qxd5 8. Nc3 Qa5 9. Nxe4 Be7 10. Bg5 f6 11. Nxf6+ gxf6 (11... Kf7 12. Ne4 {And white is not down any material, and the attack will continue. The black king is just too open.} Re8 13. Bxe7 (13. Nxd4 {Or this.} Bd7 14. Bd2 Qb6 15. Qh5+ Kg8 16. Nf3 {Idea Qd5+ and taking the Bd7.} Nb4 17. Neg5 Qg6 18. Qxg6 hxg6 19. Rxe7 Rxe7 20. Bxb4 $18) 13... Rxe7 14. Neg5+ Kg8 (14... Kf8 15. Rxe7 Nxe7 16. Nxh7+ Kg8 17. Nhg5 Bg4 18. Qxd4 Bxf3 19. Nxf3 Qd5 20. Qg4 $18) 15. Qd3 g6 16. Qc4+ Kf8 17. Rxe7 Kxe7 18. Qf7+ Kd8 19. Re1) 12. Bxf6 Rf8 13. Bxe7 Nxe7 14. Qxd4 Qb6 15. Qc3 Bf5 16. Rad1 Rd8 {This is clearly the best move here.} 17. Rxe7+ $1 Kxe7 18. Qe5+ Qe6 19. Qxc7+ Rd7 20. Qc5+ Rd6 21. Re1 Be4 22. Ng5 Qd5 23. Qe3 Qd4 24. Qxe4+ Qxe4 25. Nxe4 {And the position has finally clarified.}


Are the best engines better than the best humans? I think the title asks it all.

Under match conditions, would the best chess engines routinely beat the best grandmasters?

If you say yes, have there been enough matches played under tournament conditions to offer credible evidence?

The engine alone is just one factor; the number of CPU's used, memory, etc. makes the engine stronger. The same engine on an Intel 286 will not be nearly as strong as on the Cray Titan supercomputer, for example.

Also, the number of cores makes a difference too. For example, Houdini 3 can take advantage of 32 cores if available. But from the list below, which gives the PC configuration along with the Elo rating, it is clear that the best engine on these PC's is even much stronger than the best chess players.

Houdini 3 64-bit 4CPU, 3254 Elo
Critter 1.6a 64-bit 4CPU, 3177 Elo
Rybka 4 64-bit 4CPU, 3168 Elo
Stockfish 2.2.2 64-bit 4CPU, 3167 Elo

(source)

This is why you do not see GM's play against computers any more (no GM wants to end up with 12-0 match result, even if it is against a computer).

So, yes, we humans are no match to computers in chess any more, it is a lost case. But we still have the game GO where humans are much stronger than computers (still). So it is not all lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go

PS: I was sitting in the theater in London watching the game where Kasparov lost to the computer in the 25 minutes chess game, I think this was in 1996 or so. Kasparov was really upset after the game. He rushed out of the theater surrounded by 10 or so of his entourage, and he did not look happy at all. This was what, 15 years ago?, I took many pictures of the match, since this was the first time I saw Kasparov in person. Here are 2 pictures from my personal collection:

update:

I found 3 more pics that are better quality. Thought to post them. I think this event was the first time Kasparov lost to a computer in an official game. This was in 1994, not 1996. I found a newspaper reference to this event

"THE WRITING is on the board for human domination of chess after
 the world champion, Garry Kasparov, was knocked out in the first round
 of the Intel Grand Prix by Pentium Genius 2, a remarkable piece of software
 enhanced by a new super- fast processor.

 With each player restricted to 25 minutes' thinking time, the computer won
 the first game with 8 minutes to spare.....
 .....
 He stayed at the board this time, hitting his head and pulling at his hair...."

So these pics are from the above game !


Identify this chess set with heavy painted metal pieces Could someone please help me identify this chess set?

I purchased this from a flea market because I love the look of it. It now sits in my game room so the paint won't wear off.

I have looked all over each piece using a magnifying glass and cannot find anything that would resemble a Makers Mark or other identifying marks.  The pieces are fairly heavy and feel like they are made of some type of metal yet a magnet does not stick to them.  I have pictures of each of the pieces so I could enlarge them to see better but even doing that I cannot find anything to help me identify this set.  Each of the pieces has a felt covering on the base.  I thought about removing one to see if there is anything to help me but am afraid of causing unnecessary damage.

Please let me know if I can provide any other information - not that I have much more - or any additional photos I can provide in helping with this question.

Some of the colors are a bit different, but that could be age or the nature of being hand painted. Also, you don't say how tall it is. That said, it looks very similar to a Crusaders vs. Saracens set, which has 5 inch tall kings. It is made of "polystone", a material made from crushed stone and polyurethane which is supposed to be durable and provide a heavy feel.


.. c5 in Queens Gambit Declined I've been playing c5 as black in Queens Gambit Declined lately.

i.e.

[FEN ""]
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. e3 c5

I just want to know, how bad an idea it is to play in this way? I saw someone play it in bullet game but I don't know when it's best to play.

The move 4... c5 is good because:

It is thematic in the Queen's Gambit Declined to break with either ...c5 or ...e5. With 4...c5, this is done without loss of time
White isn't putting pressure on the centre, so Black can take it

Here is a sample game, which ended in a draw, between top players Karpov-Sveshnikov

[FEN ""]
[White "Karpov"]
[Black "Sveshnikov"]
[StartPly "8"]

1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. e3 c5 5. Nc3 Nc6 6. cxd5 Nd5 7. Bb5 cxd4 8. Nd4 Nc3 9. bxc3 Bd7 10. O-O Nd4 11. Bd7 Qd7 12. cxd4 Be7 13. a4 O-O 14. Qb3 Rfc8 15. Bd2 Rc6 16. Rab1 Rb6 17. Qa2 Ra6 18. a5 Bd8 19. Qb3 Ba5 20. Ba5 Ra5 21. Qb7 Qb7 22. Rb7 Rc8 23. Rfb1 g6 24. h3 Rc2 25. R1b2 Rb2 26. Rb2 Ra1 27. Kh2 h5 28. g4 hxg4 29. hxg4 a5 30. g5 a4 31. Rb8 Kg7 32. Ra8 a3 33. Kg3 Rg1 34. Kf4 Rg2 35. f3 a2 36. e4 Kh7 37. Ke5 Kg7 38. f4 Rb2 39. d5 exd5 40. exd5 Re2 41. Kd6 Rd2 42. Kc6 Rc2 43. Kd7 Rd2 44. d6 Rc2 45. Ke7 Re2 46. Kd8 Rd2 1/2-1/2


What is/are the bests poems about chess? I know only a couple. Fictions refers to movies or novels but not poems. Do you know any of them?

I like this one -

I'd be a happier man if I could play the Caro-Kann
But it seems to me when I play pawn to QB3
White gets a knight on K5, and then as sure as I'm alive
My Rook file's opened and my Queen exposed to dangers unforseen
By Nimzowitch and all that lot who think the Caro rather hot
Then if I reach the middle game my play is lifeless cold and tame
White's game is logical and bright, while nothing I can do is right.
I grow so tired of "Check", "Check"
"Check", that I become a nervous wreck
And get into a hopeless pin, allowing White an easy win.
Tell Nimzowitch it's all a plant. The opening's really Caro-Can't

- Huxley St. John-Brooks.


Why is Bd6 better than Be7, Bc5 and Bb4? [FEN "r1bqkb1r/p4ppp/2p2n2/3p4/8/2N5/PPP1BPPP/R1BQK2R b KQkq - 1 9"]

Be7 protects knight from getting pinned, Bc5 pins the pawn on f2 after Whites, castles, and Bb4 pins the knight.
Whats logic behind Bd6? (It also can't be a battery in future via Qc7 because of 1... Kh1 2. Bxh2 g3, and the bishop will be trapped.)

Part of the problem with Bc5 is that they can respond with Na4, which threatens the bishop and grabs the tempo.  Be7 isn't great because its range is inhibited by the knight and it impedes the kingside rook's power on the e file after you castle. Bd6 is nice because it is protected by the pawns, the bishop can be retreated to b8 or c7 while still controlling either of the second longest diagonals.  I'm a 1500 rated player, so take that into account.


Have there really been more books published on chess than any other sport? In the history of sport — and publishing — it’s not even close: one sport has had more books (and for that matter, magazines, tracts, pamphlets and handbills) published about it far more than any other: Chess.

Source: publishingperspectives.com

I often hear, but have never seen justification for, the claim that there are more books published on chess than any other sport.

My questions are:

Is this true?
What are the origins of the claim?

The below answer is incorrect because it includes newspapers and magazines. If you go under "Advanced search" and do the same search string, you can see that the results reported on the main page include magazines and newspapers. After omitting these, google search does not give a number of results.

It stands to reason that there will be a large number of newspaper and magazine accounts about football.


How could I have played this opening better? This was a recent game on chess.com. The "Maximum" analysis tool they have says my first mistake isn't until move 9, but I felt like I misplayed the opening even earlier. Indeed black's white squared bishop came back to haunt me. So: am I correct and if so, what could I have done better?

I include the entire game, complete with several embarrassing blunders (I'm still very new), for the sake of completeness. It may be worth nothing this was a blitz game.

[fen ""]

1. e4 b6 {I don't see this response to e4 often, but I figure it allows me to control the center better.}
2. d4 Bb7
3. Nc3 e6
4. Nf3 Nf6
5. e5 Nd5 {I instantly regretted my pawn push here since, in particular, it opened up the long diagonal for my opponent's white squared bishop. Better was maybe 5. Be2 or Bg5?}
6. Nxd5 Bxd5
7. b3 Bb4+ {I was preparing for 8. c4, which as foiled.}
8. Bd2 Nc6
9. a3 Bxd2+
10. Qxd2 Bxf3
11. gxf3 O-O
12. O-O-O Qh4
13. h3 d5
14. exd6 cxd6
15. Rg1 d5
16. Rg4 Qf6
17. Be2 Rac8
18. Rdg1 g6
19. h4 e5
20. dxe5 Nxe5
21. Rg5 Nxf3
22. Bxf3 Qxf3
23. R1g3 Qh1+
24. Rg1 Qxh4
25. Rxd5 Rfd8
26. Rxd8+ Rxd8
27. Qe3 Rc8
28. Rd1 Qf6
29. Qe4 Qa1+
30. Kd2 Rd8+
31. Ke2

I resigned here.

Some thoughts, mainly about your opening (to be fair, this game jumped right from opening to endgame in short order):

Your first four moves are very good, taking control of the center while developing.
5. e5. General rule of thumb: If you have pawns adjacent to each other and well-defended, you don't want to push one of them (unless you have a good reason! And achieve something concrete with it, say, if you had a bishop on g5). The reason is that by doing so you lose a lot of flexibility. As a pair on the same rank, the pawns control a line of squares of both colors, with no obvious opening to attack by your opponent while at the same time retaining the potential of two different pushes by yourself as soon as you see an opening in the opponent's structure in return. If you move one of them without a clear target, you weaken your own line of defense (as you noticed yourself, the bishop diagonal is now open) and you also commit yourself to one attacking angle, which means that your opponent now doesn't have to worry about the other as much anymore (you cannot easily play d5, so your advance has essentially come to a halt and is not much of a threat to him anymore). Bg5 is a much stronger move here, Bd3 is fine too (development + protection of e4).
6. Nxd5. Actually makes a lot of sense, despite moving a developed piece a second time, as it offers a way to "repair" your pawn structure in the center. A pawn on c4 makes it only half as bad, since then the e4 pawn has regained hope of being mobile again with the support of his neighbour.
7.b3. But then you fail to execute that plan. Why not play 7. c4 straight away? The pawn will be defended adequately by your bishop on f1 and scare back the enemy bishop with a gain of tempo. Why do you need more support of c4? The only way black can attack it once more is by ...b5, and he cannot do so because of Bxb5.
8. Bd2. Makes sense.
9. a3. Allows Black to play 9...Bxf3 10. Qxf3 Bxd2+ and you are forced to retake with your king and strand it in the middle of the board behind a less than optimal pawn structure. Lucky that he played it the other way around.
Moves 10 & 11 are obvious.
12. O-O-O. Not the best choice, in my opinion. Your kingside might look just as weak as the queenside, but the doubled pawn actually offers some interesting possibilities, too. Many pieces have been exchanged already, so you don't actually have to worry about your king's safety after castling short: Bg2 fills the gap nicely (and can exploit the long diagonal where Black is actually weak now that his bishop is gone) and Black cannot bring in more pieces other than the queen anytime soon. Your f-pawn can support e5 from f4 to keep the center closed so that this stays this way and it may even attack on f5 in the future. You, on the other hand, might be able to use the half-open g-file to threaten his king. Black's counter plan will be to open files for his rooks. As this will happen on the queenside or center, castling long happens to have moved your king into future lines of fire. h1 would have been a much safer place to hide.
13. h3. Kinda unnecessary at this point in time, but it's alright, you want to make the rook more mobile.
14. exd6. Obviously, following my commentary on move 12, I don't like this move either. En passant looks fancy and all, but I think your strategy at this point should be to keep the center closed and use your (small, but hey) advantage on the kingside before he can break through on the queenside.
Rest of the game, in short, as it doesn't really concern the opening anymore: After opening the center, his rooks can join the fight, and your inferior pawn structure quickly shines through. Castling long proves to be absolutely inefficient in terms of king safety because of said whole-y structure.


Why does the GCT 2017 use delay? The Grand Chess Tour 2017 events use delay, not increment, according to event regulations.

Have the organizers made an official statement as to why, or is there a consensus on what the unofficial reason is?

As literally everyone hated this pseudo-novelty, Grand Chess Tour reacted on some guy's tweet 'I see! I imagine the results are more decisive with the delay?'.
GCT answered that 'Yes and increment is confusing for spectators who aren't familiar with chess clocks', which is ridiculously wrong.
I had a much harder time explaining this strange delay rule to my non-chess-players colleagues than to explain them the simple increment one. I am not even sure I understand it properly myself, and I guess I am not the only one.

Another suggestion was that replacing increment with delay would limit the amount of time a game can last. But you could simply switch to 3min+2s if that is the real goal. I think the real goal behind that was to try to get the tournament to a format acceptable for TV broadcast, which is obviously what all tournament sponsors are dreaming of (money money).

But the most likely reason was to catch the players in situation they aren't familiar with and create time trouble, to make the games and results more spectacular and decisive. Again, that serves the goal of making the sport more exciting to the global audience to hope for TV broadcast.

See this article from chess24 where they discuss on this (point number 4)


Which free chess (learning) programme would you recommend? I sadly do not have the time for a paid engagement regarding chess, yet I would like to use a good (learning) programme in my spare time.

I used an old programme from my grandfather, but it doesn't work on the new OS anymore. Any suggestions?

Take a look at Lucas Chess.

http://www-lucaschess.rhcloud.com

From its web:

Play: The program has 21 engines prepared to play from the start, and with very different levels, from 1300 to 3000 elo.

Train:
You have an extensive list of trainings with which to try to improve your chess:

Training positions
Play like a grandmaster
Training mates

Compete: In Lucas Chess there are several competitions, and in two of them you can publish the results.


How this game is denoted as French Advanced Variation? I had started playing this game with Scandinavian Defense opening. How it is been denoted as French Advanced variation as of 3rd move. Please refer to the attached screen-shot.

I apologize for posting a comment as an answer, but this is the only way for me to include diagrams, which I find helpful.

You have entered Advanced French defense by transposition.

After 1.e4 d5 2. e5 e6 3.d4 we get the following position:

[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbqkbnr/ppp2ppp/4p3/3pP3/3P4/8/PPP2PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq - 0 3"]

The usual way of reaching the above position is with 1.e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5

[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbqkbnr/ppp2ppp/4p3/3pP3/3P4/8/PPP2PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq - 0 3"]

Lichess was smart enough to figure this out.


Caruana vs Carlsen game 10 (WCC) why not 18...Nxb6? In game 10 of the Caruana-Carlsen WCC, why did Carlsen (black) not take the terribly annoying and strong dark squared bishop on b6 on move 18 when given the chance? Instead, Carlsen moved the queen with Qe8.

The position is shown in the following diagram:

 [title "Caruana vs Carlsen, game 10, why not 18...Nxb6 instead of 18...Qe8"]
 [fen "r1bq1rk1/1p1nb1pp/1B1p4/P2Pp3/2N2p2/8/2P1BPPP/R2Q1RK1 b - - 0 1"]

From a purely positional point of view, 18...Nxb6 would have been a
terrible mistake, as it would have allowed white to then forcefully trade the light squared bishops with the immediate Bg4
move, leaving exposed all the light square weaknesses that black has
created with the d6-e5-f4 setup.

These weaknesses (created holes) would then have been permanently exploited by white's
knight (and queen), in other words, white's minor piece (b6 knight) would have
dominated the game and been virtually untouchable on light squares for the rest of the game.
Notice that next to the knight controlling key light squares from b6,
it's also for example quite feasible for white to re-route the knight
to e4, established centrally (permanently) and constantly eying black's
weak d6 pawn.

And as for black, Carlsen would have simply been left with a bad dark
squared bishop hemmed in by his own structure.
Therefore, Carlsen chose wisely to play Qe8 instead of Nxb6, thus,
preserving his c8 bishop as Bg4 no longer forces a trade thanks to
the well placed knight on d7.

In summary, this is a purely positional decision where black is well
aware that having weakened their light squares, any scenario with the
knight vs dark square bishop would be unfavorable for them, and
arguably,
at that level even objectively lost! Instead having kept both the d7
knight and c8 bishop, black has in fact preserved two pieces that can
provide light square control.

The following situations would have ensued had Carlsen played
18...Nxb6:

18...Nxb6 19.Nxb6 Ra7 20.Bg4

which would have led to positions of the following nature, infested with light square holes:


Why is the king powerless and the queen powerful? Historically, real kings were powerful (Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte etc.) and women were powerless. The game of chess began in Asia, some say, and the women were definitely powerless there. Maybe Cleopatra was powerful, but still doesn't explain why the people who created modern chess made the king so powerless and hopeless, hiding behind his army and his queen
Is it because of Queen Mary, aka Bloody Mary Was she the one who influenced the people who created the modern chess? Is she the reason why kings are hopeless and queens are ruthless?

Practically speaking, if the king were any more powerful, checkmate or capture would be impossible.

The Queen originated as the Advisor.  The Advisor was powerful, but not as powerful as the modern Queen, however.  Why did the Advisor become the Queen?  Having more than one Queen per side would debase the game, and there are two each of the other pieces.  Thus, the Advisor is the only candidate.

Why is there a piece with huge Queen-like powers at all?  It looks like the Europeans wanted to speed the game up.  So they made a more powerful Queen, pawns started moving 2 squares on the first, and castling was created.

Finally, I am not sure that the piece we call the Queen is called that in other languages.  The game and its ancestors have piece names like camel, elephant, advisor, minister, horse, etc.


How to make a chess engine that can identify tactics in the position? I want to make a program that can identify chess tactics in the position, while searching moves according to given heuristics. but I am not sure exactly how to go about this.
Related to this Is there a chess engine that does NOT use brute-force search?.

For example let's analyze this position:

[FEN "5rk1/p2Q1ppp/1q2pb2/2rp1b2/5B2/P1N1P3/1P3PPP/R4RK1 w - - 0 1"]

The best move is Na4 forking rook and queen. But Bd6 also forks two rooks but leads to a bad position.
A train of thought could be like:

If Bd6 attacks two rooks, Rxc3 captures knight;
    If bxc3 captures rook, Rd8 skewers queen and bishop on d6,
        If Bc7 attacks the queen, Rxd7, Bxb6 axb6
    If Bxf8, Rc7 attacks the queen,
        If Qe8 defends bishop, Qc6 attacks Qe8,
            If Qb8 moves the queen, Rc8 attacks queen and bishop.

In this position single move Na4 has the tactical motive of double attack, which should be fairly easy to spot. But it will also spot Bd6 move as a double attack, but needs to be searched further to decide that it's not working, maybe we need to spot all the other moves as uninteresting and not include in the output or the search.

A simple way to get started is to identify about pins, skewers, attacks, pressures, hanging pieces etc.
Apart from that, I am not sure what the next step should be, I mean I don't even know what the input and output should be to this program.

Is a single position enough to identify a tactical motif or a line needs to be given as input, in which case I need to come up with the best lines as
well.

Yes, you can of course create a chess engine that does that. What you're saying is just a tiny part of engine search tree. You will need to read about more chess programming to get yourself started. Please come back when you have a concrete question.

Stockfish is free, why  not start from it?


What are some good books or articles on how to play coffeehouse chess? A coffeehouse style is what players who work hard to improve their skill at finding the objectively strongest moves in a position, having taken account of the objectively strongest moves available to the opponent, often disdain. Used by hustlers, by some recreational club players, and by many who play friendly blitz games, it is about playing what works in practice, in games with short or no time controls and which may be but are not necessarily played for money.

It includes playing moves that set traps that for some reason the opponent is likely to fall into. For example a classic example of a coffeehouse opening by Black is the Blackburne Shilling Gambit, 1 e4 e5, 2 Nf3 Nc6, 3 Bc4 Nd4. If White plays 4 0-0, 4 c3, 4 Nc3, or 4 Nxd4, he can get an advantage, whereas Black hopes that he will play 4 Nxe5, grabbing the pawn, after which he gets walloped by 4 ... Qg5, perhaps in the line 5 Nxf7 Qxg2, 6 Rf1 Qxe4+, 7 Be2 Nf3 mate.

But coffeehouse is not reducible to tactically trappy play and can be more subtle psychologically. For example if facing the line in the Alekhine Defence 1 e4 Nf6, 2 e5 Nd5, 3 c4 Nb6 White plays 4 a4, that move is not objectively weak but if it is played with a view to influencing Black to believe that White is weaker than he actually is, as if he were prone to lashing out aggressively with lots of pawn advances even when objectively unsound, it would be coffeehouse.

I would appreciate recommendations of titles not just on trappy coffeehouse openings, but on any aspect of how to play strong coffeehouse.

One book on coffeehouse is John Healy's Coffeehouse Chess Tactics (2010) and there is also John Emms's The Survival Guide to Competitive Chess (2005). What other titles are there?

Maybe it's not exactly "coffeehouse" but Simon Webb's excellent Chess for Tigers is all about finding what works rather than looking for objectively best moves. From page 2 of the 2nd edition:

  Next time you sit down to play a match, ask yourself what is your aim in playing. Are you aiming to play the best moves? Or are you playing to win? There is a difference. Many players aim merely to play the best moves, objectively speaking. They never succeed, of course, but that doesn't stop them trying. But chess is not a science — it's a game, a struggle between two mortals who make mistakes, deceive themselves and each other, get tired, allow themselves to be distracted, and altogether have no hope of attaining perfection at the chess-board. If you want to become a Tiger, you must forget about playing the best moves and concentrate on winning.


What is the purpose of editorial comments in Informants? I was browsing an old Informant today and came across an editorial comment, marked with RR. I've seen several of them at the beginning of a game that reference another game, involving a completely different opening, by other players. What is the purpose of these comments?

RR = Redaction Remark, meaning they consider recommended line to be better, or that the game/line they pointed out is relevant...

{Credit to AlwaysLearningNewStuff's comment above}


What can I play against 1.d4? I've been playing chess for some time and I've studied lots of theory, but I don't know what to play against 1. d4. I'm searching for something with good chances for black but without much theory.

Note: If someone has some videos or theory on Chigorin that would work really fine.

Unfortunately for you, there is no such opening.

You see, the problem with 1.d4 is that d pawn is protected from the very start, unlike his "colleague" e pawn. While it is possible to cut down on theory learning against 1.e4 by simply attacking the e pawn ( Alekhine's defense, Scandinavian defense, Petroff defense in a way ) thus forcing White's response, you can not use the same method against 1.d4 since the pawn is protected as I mentioned earlier.

So your only chance is to find an opening that has the least amount of theory to learn, but be warned--all good defenses against 1.d4 have lots of theory worked out to move 30 and sometimes beyond. Just because the number of branches is small does not mean that the sub-variations are short.

Yet another problem with 1.d4 and an important one--I use this all the time to quickly demolish opponents with weak opening knowledge--most of the good defenses to 1.d4 can be dodged by careful move order transposition!

Your problem is far more complex because of this. Currently Nimzo-Indian scores very well against 1.d4 but can be dodged if White plays 3.Nf3 instead of 3.Nc3. Then you are forced to adopt Queen's gambit declined or Queen's Indian defense and both of those openings give slight advantage to White, which severely reduces your chances to win.

King's Indian defense still holds but is prone to become "refuted" from time to time, only to be revived again with some great novelty. Still this defense, along with Queen's gambit declined does offer you one benefit other defenses do not:

White can not use transpositional tricks to kick you out of your opening!

You can play both openings against anything White throws at you, whether it is 1.c4/1.Nf3 or 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3/g3 or whatever. Still, if White is a weaker player he can exploit the King's Indian defense to exchange early and try to draw--he has good chances to fulfill this goal as things currently stand.

Queen's gambit declined is also immune to transpositions and has that benefit that its exchange variation is everything but a draw! It leads to some exciting positions and both opponents must know what they are doing. It is highly theoretical but the number of lines is fairly low. They are not razor-sharp but you need to know them or else you will be "smothered to death". Black usually parries White's threats first, and "shoots" later. Most of the time you get the king side attack but it usually draws. Queen's gambit declined lines without the exchange variation are also theoretical, but the number of lines is relatively small there as well.

If we compare King's Indian defense and Queen's gambit declined then KID gives you better winning chances compared to QGD, but you will benefit more as a player from playing QGD since its pawn structure can arise in many other openings ( Nimzo-Indian, Caro-Kann to name just a few ). Also, QGD lines have withstood the test of time while KID is always in some kind of crisis from time to time.

To make the choice between these two, you should see what type of pawn structures you play against 1.e4 and base your choice on that:

If you play Caro-Kann/French defense/Alekhine's defense... then go with the QGD, but if you play the Sicilian/Ruy Lopez/1...e5 in general then go for KID since the pawn structure is similar. That way you will shorten the amount of time you need to learn the opening and its middle-game.

A SMALL NOTE REGARDING YOUR EDIT:

[fen ""]

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nc6!? 3.g3!

and "bye bye" Chigorin! You will enter a Catalan if you are lucky or will get smashed by the pressure White's light squared bishop will exert on your center.

If you still need something on Chigorin defense seek games of A.Morozevich. I think he also wrote a book on the Chigorin defense as well-Google and you shall find it!

Still, be prepared to learn another opening as well just in case wHite "kicks you out" of Chigorin with the move order I posted above.

END OF NOTE

This is my Achilles heel as well, and this is what I did to solve it.

If you have questions leave a comment and I will reply.

Hopefully this answer will help you to solve your complex problem.