What are your thoughts on a chess study plan? I'm thinking of some serious chess study and wondering if anyone has tailored a study plan for themselves and what the key aspects are to consider. This is what I'm currently doing on a daily basis:

Playing three games of chess (15 min) real time.

Solving a chess problem with a 20 minute time limit.

Playing three blitz games with crafty (2 min)

Reading a chapter of a chess book at night (currently My System - Nimzowitsch)

Anyone else have a study plan and keen to share?

Playing is counterproductive until you have some basic skill, but a little playing will keep you motivated and may show you things to be aware of unless the other player is also a beginner.
Do NOT do chess problems.  They will not help at all and waste time.
Do not play blitz at all.  Play 10-15 minute games but pace  yourself to move in exactly ten seconds.
Reading books is good.  You wont get much out of My System but it wont hurt you.  You need to find and do tactical problems that are graded from easy to hard and are grouped around the same theme.  See an example then solve ten more of the same type solution.
You need to learn ONE opening really well for white and black.  But make sure it is ONLY ONE opening.  Do not try to do more than that. Obviously there will be variations depending how the opponent plays that will already stretch your ability to master yet.
Eventually you will need to understand positional play and some other things but start with the list above.


Can anyone recommend a positional book focused on preparing pawn breaks? Feel free to share more than one book. I'm very interested in understanding better those preparatory moves.

@Marcelo, it really depends on what you mean by "preparing".

If you mean that VERY specifically "what specific moves" in every case, that is too general, and there are no such books. If you mean that as "how do I play for a pawn break", in general, then you are really just asking about pawn play, and pawn structures.

Here is a fairly complete list of books about opening pawn structures and pawn play, in general.

"Chess Structures: A Grandmaster Guide" by GM Mauricio Flores Rios is the single best book on OPENING pawn structures currently out there, but it misses some.
"Pawn Structure Chess" by GM Andy Soltis is VERY weak in the analysis, but the general ideas still hold up.
"The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings, Algebraic Edition" by GM Reuben Fine
"Chess Opening Essentials" by New in Chess Four Volumes cover every opening, but each one is done fairly lightly, so this is a true beginner's guide.

Here is a list of books on general pawn play.

“Complete Chess Strategy” volumes 1,2 and 3 by Ludek Pachman. (This teaches about many basic plans, and what you are striving for with your pieces and pawns, especially. This made a light go off in my head, and THIS is what made me a master.)
"Winning Pawn Structures" by GM Alexander Baburin
"Understanding Pawn Play" in Chess by GM Drazen Marovic
"Dynamic Pawn Play in Chess" by GM Drazen Marovic
"Winning Chess Middlegames: An Essential Guide to Pawn Structure" by GM Ivan Sokolov
"Chess Middlegame Strategies Volume 2" by GM Ivan Sokolov
"The Power of Pawns: Chess Structure Fundamentals for Post-beginners" by GM Jörg Hickl
"Isolani Strategy: Strengths and Weaknesses of the Isolated Queen's Pawn" by GMs Adrian Mikhalchishin, Alexander Beliavsky, Oleg Stetsko
"Understanding Maroczy Structures" by GMs Adrian Mikhalchishin and Georg Mohr
And the original book on the subject, but it uses some weird terms: "Pawn Power" by IM Hans Kmoch


Pawn tension in the Caro-Kann Very often, I find myself playing the Caro-Kann and encountering positions like this below (especially note the pawns on the columns c and d):

I do have read that knowing what to do (capturing or mantaining the tension) boils down to calculation but in cases like this, where capturing with a pawn does not imply hanging a specific piece (defended by this pawn), I am not sure what to make of this position.

Could you please tell me what do in these situations and what to do in this particular situation and why?

That kind of tension in the center is very double-edged.

On the long term, the pawn exchanges in the center should favor Black: he will get a stronghold on d5 for a knight and the e5-pawn might turn into a weakness in the endgame. Also, exchanges of major pieces down the newly opened c- and d-files will reduce White's attacking chances on the kingside.

In the short term however, pawn exchanges open lines that will favor the better developed side, which is undoubtedly White. All kind of nasty threats may follow, especially because the black King is still far from castled: checks on the a4-e8 diagonal, kinght jumps to d6, threats against the un-protected Pb7, intrusions on the 7th rank before Black can connect his rooks, etc.

That's why what you have read ("knowing what to do (capturing or mantaining the tension) boils down to calculation") is absolutely correct. Most often it will boil down to one tempo whether Black can safely castle or if he get caught beforehand.

In the precise given position, for instance, I would be reluctant to play 1...cxd4?! 2.Na3!? a6 3.Bg5, when it is hard to untangle the knights and white rooks will put huge pressure on the central files. 2...Nc5 3.Qd4 Nf5 is more active, but 4.Qf4 Be7 can be met by either 5.g4 or 5.Rd1, so Black will play longer with the king in the center.

On the other hand, 1...dc4!? is tempting, 2.Qxc4 Nd5 and that kinght stabilizes the position, e.g. 3.Nc3 N7b6 4.Qb5 Qd7 5.Qxd7 Kxd7 and Black has nothing to complain about, or 3.Rd1 Be7 followed by 0-0.

If it was White's move, however, 1.Nc3 would already put strong pressure on Black.


Knowing that AlphaZero beat Stockfish 8 (28 wins, 0 losses, and 72 draws), what would AlphaZero's rating be? I found three different questions here on SEC that asked what Stockfish 8's rating was for the match against AlphaZero, but none that asked what AlphaZero's rating should have been after (if it had been in a rated event, and assuming that it previously had an established, not provisional, rating).

Stockfish 8 was rated 3378 at the time per the official rating list. There was some dispute that it was handicapped, but since we cannot really factor that in accurately, it is better to ignore that for now.

Here's an online calculator for this. 28 wins, 0 losses, and 72 draws is an elo difference of exactly 100.

Do remember that this score +28 =72 -0 score was against a handicapped version of Stockfish. In the full paper, AlphaZero scored +155 =839 -6, which is an elo difference of 52.


Why didn't Donald Byrne capture with the queen instead of pawn (against 13-year-old Bobby Fischer in the Game of the Century)? I watched this video - Game of the Century - Bobby Fischer vs Donald Byrne in which the 13-year-old Bobby Fischer defeated Donald Byrne in an epic match.

But I didn't really understand what happened at 12:40. The narrator says "now Bryne can capture the Knight with (1) the queen or (2) the pawn." Then he gives a sort of brief explanation on why Bryne chose to capture with the pawn, but I didn't understand. Here is an image of the position (White to move - Fischer was Black):

What would be a more in-depth explanation of why recapturing with the queen is a bad idea?

What would be a more in-depth explanation of why capturing with the queen is a bad idea?

If White retakes with the Queen he loses a piece, and stays in horrible position that is 100% lost. Below is the illustration:
[Title "Capturing with the queen loses a piece in all lines"]
[fen "r2q1rk1/pp2ppbp/2p2np1/6B1/3PP1b1/Q1n2N2/PP3PPP/3RKB1R w - - 0 1"]

1.Qxc3 Nxe4 2.Qe3 (2.Qd3? Bxf3 3.gxf3 (3.Qxf3 Nxg5-+) 3...Nxg5-+) 2...Bxf3 3.gxf3 (3.Qxf3? Nxg5-+) 3...Qa5+! 4.Rd2 {Or any other move, it really doesn't matter, Black stays with extra piece with Nxg5} Nxg5 5.b4 Qd5-+

To conclude:
In order to defend the bishop on g5 from the knight fork (after retaking black knight on c3 with the queen), White must keep the queen on the c1-h6 diagonal. This is sufficiently well demonstrated in the above diagram.
Black wins by exchanging the bishop on g4 for white knight on f3 to loosen the defense of the white bishop on g5 after which he wins that piece with the queen's double attack via Qa5+.
The resulting position is just plain horrible for White, and practically 100% lost. Only drunk person would be able to squander such advantage with Black ( and they must be really really drunk). Even though at that time White was renowned GM, I think that a solid candidate master would win as Black easily in that position. That is why White decided to take with the pawn.


Need I be concerned about being classed as a "cheater" if I sometimes play good classical games on LiChess? I'm trying to improve my tournament play, so I play classical chess on LiChess (me on LiChess).  In some (not all) of my games, I do well and have very few or no "inaccuracies" and maybe 15 centipawn loss (example centipawn loss: 6, 14, 19).  Only a few of my games are at this level, though.

I'm paranoid that someone will report me for cheating, and my account will consequently incur problems.  Also, as a result of playing classical chess with a 2100-ish rating, I encounter people who are almost certainly cheating from time to time (at some point in their game history, they just stopped making mistakes), which creates an atmosphere of mistrust.

Question: Need I be concerned about being classed as a "cheater" if I sometimes play good classical games on LiChess?

Lichess is definitely very good at avoiding false positivies and rectifying those false positives when they do occur.

Even though I don't have access to moderator tools on lichess, one can spot cheaters fairly easily. They usually have the following characteristics:

A "flat" time graph where all of their moves took about the same length of time - even simple recaptures.
Having no mistakes, and less than three inaccuracies (obviously)
Perfectly executing a long checkmate sequence in the fastest way possible. This is a good catch because even a good player will likely turn a mate in 6 into a mate in 7 or 8. Computers do it perfectly.

Numbers 1 and 2 are fine by themselves IMO, so you have nothing to worry about unless you spend the same amount of time on each move in those games where you have few inaccuracies. Number 3 is a sort of "icing on the cake" for me; your games look fine.


How much material is needed to force the capture of a lone queen (for example in horde chess)? In horde chess, the following starting position is used:
[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/1PP2PP1/PPPPPPPP/PPPPPPPP/PPPPPPPP/PPPPPPPP w - - 0 1"]

The goal of White is to checkmate Black; the goal of Black is to capture all White's pieces. The main strategy for White is to try to promote a pawn; the main strategy for Black is to get their queen or rook behind White's pawns, and destroy White's forces from behind.
It naturally comes to mind that, with good play from both sides, a situation may arise in which Black manages to capture all but one of White's pawns, and the remaining pawn promotes to a queen. In this kind of endgame, White cannot win because a lone queen cannot realistically deliver checkmate (except in very special cases which are not bound to arise if Black knows what they are doing).
Therefore, Black has to force the capture of White's queen, or accept a draw. This endgame practically becomes a game of "checkmating a queen" before the 50-move rule kicks in.
So how much material is needed to force capture of a lone queen?
I guess Black's plan will begin with promoting all their remaining pawns. To start somewhere, let us assume that Black's material after promoting everything is one king plus N queens.
With a king plus 5 queens, it seems that Black has an easy win. They just needs to set up a domination position, where the 5 queens attack every square on the board:
[FEN "3k2q1/8/4q3/3q4/2q5/6Q1/q7/8 w - - 0 1"]

No matter where the White queen moves, it will be captured on the next move. I do not have a proof, but it seems easy for Black to achieve this position while blocking checks by White.
With a king plus 4 queens, I have not found a way for Black to force the capture of White's queen. While it seems overkill to have to attack every single square of the board in order to trap a queen, maybe the queen's mobility is so large that there is no other way.
So the question is
What is the smallest N such that a Black king with N Black queens can force the capture of a lone White queen?

An easy lower bound would be to set a White queen in a corner and set up an easy mate in 2.
[FEN "Q6r/8/8/8/8/8/4k1p1/r6N b - - 0 1"]

1... gxh1=Q

This sets Black down to a minimum of a king, two rooks, and a pawn in count and value.


Why couldn't I win this Maroczy Bind (vs 2000)? [FEN ""]
[Date "6/10/2018"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Me"]
[Black "Opponent"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "1874"]
[BlackElo "2000"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 g6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Bg7 5. c4 Nf6 6. Nc3 Nc6 7. Be3 O-O 8. Be2 d6 9. O-O Bd7 10. Rc1 a5 11. f4 a4 12. Bf3 a3 13. b3 Qa5 14. h3 Nxd4 15. Bxd4 e5 16. Be3 Bc6 17. Qxd6 exf4 18. b4 Qd8 19. Bxf4 Qb6+ 20. Qc5 Qxc5+ 21. bxc5 Rfd8 22. Nd5 Nd7 23. Bc7 Re8 24. Bd6 Bd4+ 25. Kh1 Ra5 26. Bg4 Nxc5 27. Bc7 Ra4 28. Bb6 Rxe4 29. Bxc5 Rxg4 30. Ne7+ Kg7 31. Nxc6 bxc6 32. hxg4 Bxc5 33. Rb1 Rxc4 34. Rb7 Rxg4 35. Rfxf7+ Kh6 36. Rxh7+ Kg5 37. Rbc7 Rc4 38. Rcd7 Rc1+ 39. Kh2 Bg1+ 40. Kh1 Be3+ 41. Kh2 Bg1+ 42. Kh1 Be3+ 1/2-1/2

My rating: 1874

Opponent's rating: 2000

I felt that I had a big initiative throughout this game and failed to convert it and ended up in a worse position in the end. Feel free to address the following points or any other analysis that is important.

I played 11.f4 with the intention of maintaining control over e5 and keeping open the option of eventually breaking with e4-e5 or f4-f5. Perhaps 11.b3 is a better first move to slow down a5-a4? Perhaps black can also consider ideas with ...Ng4.
12.Bf3 kind of feels like a wasted move at the moment but I felt it would eventually play a role in supporting a knight on d5, perhaps 12.h3 is more straightforward in this position.
I felt happy with 14.h3, considering Nd5 next.
I instantly felt that my opponent made quite an error with 15...e5.
17.Qxd6 looked safe, but perhaps I was better off with 18.Qxf4 or 19.Qxf4 rather than 19.Bxf4?!, allowing 19...Qb6+.
I didn't like 20.Kh1 Rad8 21.Qe7 Rfe8 when I have too much trouble hanging on to the b4 pawn and have to resort to Qc5, so I just played 20.Qc5 right away.
After 22.Nd5 I felt I still had a nice initiative and I really don't understand where I could've improved between now and 29...Rxg4. Maybe I could slow down and not allow 24...Bd4+? And after 26.Bg4 Nxc5 I really felt that I was losing grip.
I was a bit low on time and didn't see much better than 29.Bxc5.
In hindsight, perhaps I should've been a little more patient than 33.Rb1 and try slowly improving my position, perhaps it's still roughly equal though.
My opponent generously offered a draw after 42...Be3+ but I felt he was the one who could play on.

Also, please no computer analysis unless it's absolutely vital to explaining something. Thanks!

You couldn't win mostly due to the mistake on move 19, but you still had chances.

  I played 11.f4 with the intention of maintaining control over e5 and keeping open the option of eventually breaking with e4-e5 or
  f4-f5:

That statement is not enough of a plan, and your following moves don't support either idea.  That pawn cannot move backwards and you might wish it were on f3.

  12.Bf3, perhaps 12.h3

Again you are not playing with any plan, but Bf3 supports e4 and is probably a better square for the Bishop

  I felt happy with 14.h3

Why? How does 14.h3 help your position?  I can't help thinking there is something wrong with your position.  Your rooks aren't connected and the long dark-square diagonal is loose, but I don't know that Black can take advantage of that.

  error with 15...e5.

Yes that is dubious, and I think Black could have improved his rooks before trading knights in the center.

  17.Qxd6 looked safe, but perhaps I was better off with 18.Qxf4 or 19.Qxf4 rather than 19.Bxf4?!, allowing 19...Qb6+.

or 19.Qd8, which looks to give you a big advantage!  19...Rfxd8 20.Bxf4 Rd4?! 21.Ne2 +/-

  After 22.Nd5 I really don't understand where I could've improved

Well, what did 26.Bg4 achieve but to weaken your e-pawn?  How about, 26.Rcd1 Bxc5 27.Bc7 Ra4 28.Bg4

  33.Rb1

Why help Blacks rook get in the game?  Also, every pawn trade makes it harder to win the game.


Can a tournament director nullify a game in progress? Recently I was at a USCF tournament. Six moves into my first round game, the tournament director came to my board and had me stop my clock. It turned out that the person across from me had the wrong board - he was actually supposed to be at the same-numbered board in a lower section (which was playing in the same room.) And the opponent I was supposed to play had sat down at the board in the lower section.

The TD stated that he was nullifying those two games in progress, and that those clocks should be reset and those games restarted with the proper opponent.

Is this the proper action? Can a game in which multiple moves have been played be simply nullified? Also, since my opponent was not at the correct board at the start of the round, and I was, and I properly started the clock, should some time have elapsed from his clock when we restarted?

In FIDE rated tournaments I remember hearing that if the starting position was set up wrong and roughly <= 6 moves were played, the game could be restarted. So if this tournament was also FIDE rated, FIDE rules take precident and restarting was fine. If this tournament was just USCF rated I'm not sure (you'd have to look up the official handbook).

I agree that some time should have elapsed for your opponent. You did nothing wrong but he did. However, you'd have to have said this during the game.


What does it mean for a country to be a FIDE "Affiliated Organization" instead of a FIDE Member? According to the latest FIDE newsletter the Isle of Man has become a FIDE affiliated organization:

The General Assembly approved the admission of the Isle of Man Chess Association as an affiliated organization. This is in recognition of the Isle’s continued contribution to chess, including what promises to be one of the world’s major chess events next year, the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. The vote saw 107 votes in favor and just 4 against, with a further 4 abstentions.
The status of “Affiliated Organization” is slightly below that of full “Member Organization”, which according to Article 9.4 of the FIDE Charter, would demand a territory to be recognized by the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee.

According to the FIDE directory of affiliated associations these are either continental or linguistic groups of countries like the Portuguese-Speaking Federations Association, the European Chess Union, the African Chess Federation, the Chess Association of Black Sea Countries, the Confederation for Chess for Americas, or related chess associations which have nothing to do with countries like the International Correspondence Chess Association, the International Computer Games Association, the International Physically Disabled Chess Association, the World Federation for Chess Composition.
Member federations are normally countries although many of them do not satisfy the criteria of being members of the IOC or United Nations. So, for instance the UK has a seat at the UN and is an IOC member but there is no single UK FIDE member. Instead there are separate England, Scotland and Wales members and there is even one member which crosses borders, the Ireland member which includes the country of Ireland AND Northern Ireland which is part of the UK.
The Isle of Man is a slightly strange country in that it is a Crown Protectorate like Jersey and Guernsey, both of which are FIDE members. It has its own parliament and government with tax raising powers but relies on the UK for defence.
It is also quite small with a population about 85,000. However even in Europe there are several FIDE member countries which are smaller - Andorra (72,000), Guernsey (65,000), Faroe Islands (50,000), Monaco (38,000), Liechtenstein (37,000), San Marino (33,000).
What does this change mean for Isle of Man chess players, who will continue to be England players as far as FIDE registration and representation is concerned?

It doesn't appear that this will have a large impact on the players themselves. The organization can organize events and gets nonvoting representation in FIDE.
According to the FIDE Charter:

14.1 The General Assembly, following an advisory opinion of the Council, can be admitted as Affiliated Organisations:
a) organisations grouping Member Federations;
b) associations or organisations which represent some regions or transnational territories;
c) associations or other organisations representing people with a common ground or with same interests on some specific chess activities.
14.2 Affiliated Organisations have the right to take part in FIDE Congresses and in the General Assembly, without voting.
14.3 Affiliated Organisations can organise and participate in some specific FIDE competitions or events, according with FIDE rules and regulations.
14.4 Affiliated Organisations can be authorised to organise events under the auspices of FIDE.
14.5 Affiliated Organisations can be temporarily suspended or permanently expelled by the General Assembly, for just cause.

As for why the situation with other UK protectorates is what it is, I suspect that these rules have something to do with it (emphasis mine):

9.2 Only one Federation for each country can be affiliated to FIDE as a Member. This rule shall not apply to Federations that were accepted as FIDE Members before the date of this Charter entering into force.

9.4 For new members, the country of the federation must be a country recognised by the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee(IOC).


When is a queen better than 3 minor pieces (or vice versa)? Obviously a lot is going to depend on the exact position, but I'm asking if there are any general signposts - e.g. bishops usually get better than knights if the position is open, or in an endgame, but I can't say the same about Q vs 3 minors.

The queen does a good job when there are a lot of weaknesses to attack, especially if the opponent's king is out in the open, so there are a lot of options for double  attacks.
The pieces are generally stronger if they can coordinate and the king is still relatively safe. Earlier in the game that's usually the case.


What are some games I can watch to become better in playing chess? I have just started learning to play chess and I find it really interesting to learn. I would like to learn as much as possible in order to become a good player. I looked on Youtube, trying to find games to watch that can teach me how to play. In particular my idea is to watch a lot of games in order to understand how the best players in the world think while playing.

So, can someone suggest some games to watch that are considered remarkable games?

First, by far the most popular chess YouTuber is Agadmator. His channel does a nice job of going over famous games, and explaining them.

Other good videos are what are called "banter blitz". Banter blitz is when players, and you want to watch Masters, explain what they are thinking aloud as they are playing. You can then get a better idea of what we see, and what we are striving for. You can search "banter blitz" on YouTube. There are even many games by World Champion, Magnus Carlsen.

That actually gets into a deeper question, and that is if modern games are as easy to learn from, and I think the answer is "no". The problem is that in modern chess, everyone at the top level is so good, that even if one player is a weaker 2650 GM compared to the 2750 GM he is playing, both have a deep understanding of chess. They both counter each other's plans too effectively, that you cannot see a clear path from the beginning of a plan to the end of a plan.

That is one of the reasons that the older greats like Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine are great to study. They often played strong players, but still players that were in a different class, so you could see a clear plan from beginning to end, and the opponent put up resistance, but minimal resistance (I mean positionally, speaking). This also allowed these greats to annotate these games very clearly, showing you what they were trying to achieve, and exactly how they did it.


Where can I find databases of tactical problems, categorized and ranked by difficulty? I'm toying with the idea of building a tactical training tool. For my idea to work, I need positions that are categorized by motif and difficulty.
A lot of tools seem to have this, and I doubt they're all building up thousands of positions by hand. So there must be databases out there, available for use (free or commercial are both okay), and probably already tagged. Any idea where to start looking?

This kind of thing isn't done by hand, but by computer programs. It is not too difficult to run some program on a game database and extract all positions suitable for a tactical exercise.
Sorting them by difficulty will be done over time, when statistics accumulate how often they are solved correctly.

Of course there are tactical exercise positions out there, but I don't know any that are already sorted by motif or difficulty. This is a site with 10,000 tactical positions (surely mined by a computer):

http://www.wtharvey.com


Is it possible for an engine to be stronger at short time controls, and weaker at long time controls? Is it possible for engine A to be decisively better than engine B at short time controls (say, 5 min/game) but decisively weaker at long time controls (say, 1 hour/game)?

If the answer is yes, what could possibly be the source of the discrepancy? If the answer is no, why do we need long time control tournaments like the TCEC superfinal, when we could just get both engines to play each other at short time control much more often?

Why not? I don't have an example here, but cache implementation could be a major factor.

A cache algorithm that doesn't scale well with time will not perform well on a long time control. No matter how much memory you have, at longer control it will surely be filled up very easily and very quickly.


Are there games between top computers which uncovered never-seen-before ideas? Are there games between top computers which uncovered never-seen-before ideas?

And if so, how can humans notice?

Addendum: I understand the position of James Christopher in his answer, but my question goes a little beyond that. It is possible for the computer to find a winning move without understanding the idea behind it, and thus to win the game. If afterwards a human notices that the move discloses a new theme or idea never before seen, that would qualify as a positive answer.

Addenddendum: We have a linguistic problem here. Let me clarify: The computer does not need to have a new idea or even understand what it is doing. But it can find a move that wins the game, and later, when people analyze what happened, they realize "oh! this move wins because of such-and-such!" The computer does not need to know that it forked the king and queen, it just evaluates the material gain and decides that the knight move is best. We call it a fork and add a section in the basic tactics chapter.

My answer is - Yes. A simple example is the use of endgame tablebase. Many positions, which were thought to be drawn, now have a winning line. IMO this is a new idea. One day computers might uncover that castling is bad - it is a new idea, doesn't matter if it was achieved by brute force.

ps: even though computers work on fixed algorithms, they can uncover new ideas. Same algorithm can return different results when run for longer duration and/or better hardware. In the end, chess is deterministic and finite.


Why did Black allow White to capture en passant two times in a row? I read about this game on Tim Krabbe’s website and found it on chessgames.com. I am severely confused by Black’s 30th and 31st moves.
[Title "Sergey Gennadyevich Kudrin-Rudy C Douven, GMA Baleares op, Palma de Mallorca Spain, 12/1989"]
[startply "59"]
[FEN ""]

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5 5. Ng3 Bg6 6. h4 h6 7. Nf3 Nd7 8. h5 Bh7 9. Bd3 Bxd3 10. Qxd3 e6 11. Bf4 Qa5+ 12. Bd2 Qc7 13. O-O-O Ngf6 14. Ne4 O-O-O 15. g3 Nxe4 16. Qxe4 Nf6 17. Qe2 Bd6 18. Ne5 c5 19. Rh4 Bxe5 20. dxe5 Nd7  21. Rg4 Rhg8 22. Re1 Qc6 23. Qe4 Nb8 24. Rf4 Rd7 25. Qh7 Rgd8 26. Ba5 b6 27. Bc3  Qd5 28. b3 b5 29. Kb1 b4 30. Bb2 f5 31. exf6 g5 32. hxg6 Rxh7 33. gxh7 e5 34. Rxe5 Qf7 35. Re7 Qf8 36. f7 Qxe7 37. f8=Q Rxf8 38. Rxf8+ Qxf8 39. h8=Q Qxh8 40. Bxh8 h5 41. Kc1 Kd7 42. Kd2 Ke6 43. Ke3 Kf5 44. f3 Nd7 45. Kd3 Nb6 46. Bg7 a5 47. Bf8 Nd7 48. Bd6 Ke6 49. Bc7 Kd5 50. c4+ bxc3 51. Kxc3

Why would Black let White capture en passant two times in a row and gain two very powerful passed pawns? Sure, the queen gets nabbed, but I just don’t think that it’s a good idea. What good is nabbing one queen when two more might soon pop up?

The point was to win the queen. Yes, White gets two passed pawns, but a passed pawn won't necessarily get to be promoted.

Sure it happened in the game, but that's not really the point here.


Unfinished Chess game between Viswanathan Anand and Garry Kasparov I found many historic games unfinished.
Take this match as an example.
This is a match between Viswanathan Anand and Garry Kasparov in Ch World (match) (PCA) 1995. Anand lost this match as per the result. But I didn't find any confirmed checkmate in the last. Please somebody explain.

High level players usually resign when they have a lost position. There's no point in continuing the game for thirty more moves when defeat is inevitable. Checkmate is actually a rare occurence in elite games. You'll find the same thing in more modern games, too.
While players have the right to keep playing, it is considered bad etiquette to not resign when a player has no realistic chance of scoring.


Calculate the first N unknown moves of a chess game Greetings fellow chess friends,

Here is a quick idea that came to my mind.

I am interested in writing a software that is able to calculate and/or guess the first n unknown moves of a given chess game.
For example take this game:

?? ??
?? ??
Nf3 b6
g3 Ba6
Nbd2 Bb4
a3 Bxd2+
Nxd2 Bb7
Nf3 d5
cxd5 Bxd5
Bg2 O-O
O-O Nbd7
Bf4 c5
dxc5 1/2-1/2

You don't know the first two moves. Would it be possible to "calculate" them from the rest of the game and if yes, with what certainty? For example the move 9. cxd5 implies that a pawn has been placed on c4 earlier during the game.

Do you think this would be possible and if yes, for what maximum amount n of unknown moves?

Cheers

(Edit: corrected the 8th move, but need 6 characters to edit)

Well, this should be semi-simple for a computer, at least. We know with absolute certainty that there are only 20 possible moves for both black and white (pawns and knights) on the first turn. After that, the only possible moves are moving the piece moved again, moving another pawn or knight, or moving a piece freed by the first move.

Knowing this, we can calculate the number of possible board positions after two turns. Luckily this has already been done here:

  There are 400 possible chess positions after two ply moves (first ply move for White followed by first ply move for Black).
  There are 5,362 possible positions (White’s second ply move) or 8,902 total positions after two ply moves each. There are 71,852 possible positions or 197,742 total positions after four moves.

This is a LOT, but it is possible to at least guess which one was used in the game.

The method I propose is to go though all of the movements of the game after the first four, but starting with the default chessboard as if the game had only just started. If a move occurs which is impossible, this indicates that this move has been made by a piece moved in the first two turns.

Despite this, there could be cases where a pawn moved on white's first turn and a pawn moved on white's third turn can take the same piece. If white takes with the pawn moved on the first turn, there would be no way to spot this, since you would assume the pawn moved on the third turn was used.

Sorry that this is only a half-answer; I will try to find more information to improve this.


Where can I get a nice set for Capablanca chess? Because I'm odd, I'm interested in obtaining a nice-looking set (that need not be portable) for Capablanca chess, the third world champion's chess variant which is played on 10 x 8 board and features two new pieces for each side: a chancellor that can move like a rook or a knight, and an archbishop that can move like a bishop or a knight. Is there a place that sells such sets?

I'm recording this answer here because it took me quite a bit of searching to find something, primarily because I never found any sets going under the actual name "Capablanca chess." I did find workable sets under the names "Gothic chess" (apparently because of someone's fairly recent spin-off of Capablanca chess) and "Grand chess" (intended for a 10 x 10 board, see below).

I've only managed to find one 10 x 8 board, this one from House of Staunton. In addition, they have a full set of pieces (including pieces designed to be archbishops and chancellors, with a 3.75" king height) designed to fit the board, so that's at least a working answer to the question. Unfortunately, that piece set runs $200, so an alternative would be nice.

MindSports in the Netherlands has a set of pieces, which they intend for a game they call Grand chess that's to be played on a 10 x 10 board, that would work as a Capablanca chess set; the design of the archbishops and chancellors even reflect their movements, as can be seen in this picture (f- and g-files):

That set costs a more reasonable $40, but features a 3" king, and so that set would unfortunately be out of proportion on the only 10 x 8 board I've found (the one above). If you're happy to use a 10 x 10 board (and ignore part of it for Capablanca chess), then this is one way to go.

From what I know now, the best alternative to the $200 set above for use on the 10 x 8 board would be the House of Staunton's plastic piece set for Seirawan chess. This set runs only $40, has a 3.75" king height, and has a Hawk and Elephant piece for each side,

which can be used to represent the chancellors and archbishops of Capablanca chess.


Game since 2014 with both kings under fire Does anyone know a game since 2014 with both players at least ELO 2000, where both
 kings are about to be checkmated and the game ends because one side cannot avoid
 checkmate ?

Probably you are looking for a game where both players attack the king castled on opposite sides. This is not the case in following game, but it does feature mate attacks from both sides and it is decided by one tempo. With 35....Be4 black threatens mate, but instead he gets mated himself with a nice tactic.

[FEN ""]
[Event "Tata Steel (Group B)"]
[Site "Wijk aan Zee NED"]
[Date "2015.01.18"]
[EventDate "2015.01.10"]
[Round "8"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "David Navara"]
[Black "Bart Michiels"]
[ECO "C06"]
[WhiteElo "2729"]
[BlackElo "2563"]
[PlyCount "75"]

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. Bd3 c5 6. c3 Nc6
7. Ne2 cxd4 8. cxd4 f6 9. exf6 Nxf6 10. O-O Bd6 11. Nf3 Qc7
12. h3 O-O 13. Be3 Bd7 14. Re1 Be8 15. Ng5 Bf7 16. Rc1 Kh8
17. a3 Bg8 18. b4 a6 19. g3 h6 20. Nf4 Bxf4 21. Bxf4 Qd7
22. Nf3 Bh7 23. b5 axb5 24. Bxb5 Qe7 25. Bxc6 bxc6 26. Rxc6
Ne4 27. Re3 Ra7 28. Rb3 Qf6 29. Qc1 Qf5 30. Rc8 Ra8 31. Rc7
Qxh3 32. Rbb7 Ng5 33. Nxg5 hxg5 34. Rxg7 gxf4 35. Qc7 Be4
36. Rg8+ Rxg8 37. Qe5+ Rg7 38. Qxg7+ 1-0


Should a player use the provided carbon copy sheet to record moves in a club/tournament? I've been told some times that I must record my moves in the carbon copy sheet provided by the organizer instead of using my own chess notebooks.
Is there any rule preventing me from using my own record sheets?

According to the rules:

8.1.1 In the course of play each player is required to record his own moves and those of his opponent in the correct manner, move after move, as clearly and legibly as possible, in the algebraic notation (Appendix C), on the ‘scoresheet’ prescribed for the competition.

And also important:

8.3 The scoresheets are the property of the organiser of the competition.


Compiling asmFish on macOS I have been able to make a custom build of asmFish on Linux. However, I have been unable to do so on macOS. I've seen a Mac version of the FASM compiler on the Internet.  But when I tried using it for building it, it didn't generate a binary that could be run.

I am running the latest macOS at time of writing. Any help appreciated.

asmFish is NOT the same engine as Stockfish, so the answer by Dave is wrong. The difference is that asmFish is written in x86 Assembly (~20% faster), while Stockfish in C++.
Here is an issue I opened to test basically the time fasmg did to compile asmFish. It was closed, however, because the latest fasmg version fails to compile asmFish. The latest working version is this one.
You can download the version you want, but this is not necessary. You just need to open a command line and clone the repository:
git clone -b master https://github.com/lantonov/asmFish.git

Then, run cd asmFish to enter the directory and make.bat to compile.
For what it's worth:

There are already MacOS binaries in the main repository. They are in the MacOS_binaries folder.

There is also an archive of the executables in the executables branch, which is rarely updated.

You can directly compile asmFish from MacOS from the command line just having the whole x86 folder and the fasmg file:
 fasmg "x86\fish.asm" "asmFishX_type" -e 1000 -i "VERSION_OS='X'" -i "PEDANTIC = 1" -i "VERSION_POST = 'version'"

Replace type and version with the version post you want (base, popcnt, bmi1 and bmi2)


Is any rating information available for human/computer hybrid players? So we know that the right computer can beat the best human.   And computer players are rated as well as human players.

Is there any rating information available for hybrid players?  (Humans moving the pieces, augmented by software doing analysis in the background)?

Is there support for the claim that human/computer hybrids are ranked the highest in the world?  (Higher than either humans or computers alone)

Computer-human hybrid chess is known as Advanced Chess or Freestyle Chess.
There used to be Advanced Chess tournaments in Leon (now it's normal rapid chess, I think), and Chessbase reported on some "anything goes" online Freestyle tournaments, that were generally won by "Centaurs", i.e. computer-human-hybrid players, not by sole engines.

In recent years there hasn't been much coverage of these kind of events, but apparently Freestyle chess is going strong as ever. Based on PAL/CSS, Infinity Chess and FICGS tournaments there even exists a rating list. (Keep in mind that you cannot compare the absolute values of the ratings on this list with the Fide rating list or the engine ratings.)


Is White controlling this game? Which side is in a better position here : white or black ? Is White controlling this game as all rook, knight, bishop, queen are in open position now ? What are the chances for black to come back ?

[fen "rn1qk2r/1p1b1pp1/pPp1p1np/P1PpP1b1/3P4/1Q3N1P/1B1NBPP1/R3R1K1 w Qkq - 0 1"]

Yes, white is better in this position, because it controls more space. The black position is somewhat cramped, particularly the queenside pieces (Bd7, Nb8, Ra8) are difficult to develop.

The queenside pawns are blocked so the play is going to happen on the kingside. (there might be some tactical ideas for white in the far future related to a piece sacrifice on a6 or c6 creating a strong passed pawn on b6; but for the time being nothing is going to happen on the queenside.)

Typical plans for white in this position:

quickly move pieces to the kingside before black can develop any counterplay
potentially exchange the active black pieces (such as Bg5).
create a pawn break/pawn storm with f4-f5 at some point

Typical plans for black:

develop queenside pieces
create some kind of counterplay (perhaps playing f6 at some point later on, without weakening the e6 pawn or kingside pawn structure; having played h6 already is rather bad in this case)

Without giving any concrete lines it seems to me that the white plan is much easier to achieve than black's


How do I understand White's +6 advantage here? [White "White (to move)"]
[Black "Black"]
[FEN "rnq1kb1r/ppp3pp/4pn2/4N3/2QP4/2N2P2/PPP3PP/R1B1K2R w KQ - 0 13"]

In this position, White can still castle, but Black cannot (having moved the king twice). Stockfish 10+ (depth 18) assures me that White has an advantage of +6.1, but I am unable to really see why the advantage is so great. I tried some continuing lines of play but Black can hold on to roughly equal material for a long time, so I do not even know how much of the advantage is due to a future tactical threat or merely a superior position.

I am hoping that there is some simple reasoning that is humanly understandable and does not require looking at all possible lines of play for the next 10 moves. Anyone can help?

It really is about king position, but also about how it affects the evaluation when it programmatically adds up the and compares the differences in mobility for each side's pieces. This is where you get the huge difference, and I think this is what you are looking for.

In each of the following lines, deemed best by Stockfish 11, you can see how little the black pieces can move. in particular, it is of note that in each case, the Ra8 and the Qc8 hardly move, and when the Qc8 finally does, it is just to sacrifice itself, or loses material on the move. The same for the Ra8 in the main line that follows. By comparison, look at the mobility of every white piece. The difference is enormous.

For example:

 [FEN "rnq1kb1r/ppp3pp/4pn2/4N3/2QP4/2N2P2/PPP3PP/R1B1K2R w KQ - 0 1"]

 1. Bg5 Be7 2. f4 Nbd7 (2... c6 3. O-O Nbd7 4. Rae1 Rf8 5. Nd3 Nb6 6. Qb3 Nbd5 7. f5 exf5 8. Nxd5 cxd5 9. Nf4 Rf7 10. Bxf6 gxf6 11. Rf3 Kf8 12. Rg3 Bd6 13. Ne6+ Qxe6 14. Rxe6 Bxg3 15. Qa3+ Kg8 16. Qxg3+ Rg7 17. Qd6) (2... Rf8 3. O-O Nbd7 4. Rae1 Nb6 5. Qd3 c6 6. f5 exf5 7. Rxf5 Kd8 8. Rff1 Qe6 9. Ng6 Qc4 10. Nxf8 Bxf8 (10... Qxd3 11. Ne6+ Kd7 12. cxd3) 11. Rxf6 gxf6 (11... Qxd3 12. Rxf8+ Kc7 13. Bf4+ Kd7 14. Rf7+ Kd8 15. Bg5+ Kc8 16. Re8#) 12. Bxf6+ Kc7 13. Be5+ Kd8 14. Qxh7 Nd7 15. Rf1 Qb4 16. Qh4+ Kc8 17. Qg4 Kd8 18. Qh4+ Be7 19. Qh8+ Nf8 20. a3 Qxb2 21. Rxf8+ Bxf8 22. Qxf8+ Kd7 23. Qf7+ Kd8 24. Bf6+ Kc8 25. Qe8+ Kc7 26. Qe7+ Kb6 27. Na4+) (2... Nc6 3. O-O Nxe5 4. fxe5 Nd5 5. Nxd5 exd5 6. Qxd5 Bxg5 7. Qf7+ Kd8 8. Qxg7 Be3+ 9. Kh1 Re8 10. Qf6+ Re7 11. d5 Bd4 12. Qg5 Ke8 13. Qh5+ Kd7 14. Qg4+ Ke8 15. Qxd4) 3. O-O Nb6 4. Qd3 Nfd7 5. Bxe7 Nxe5 6. dxe5 Kxe7 7. f5 Qd7 8. Qg3 Ke8 9. Rad1 Qf7 10. fxe6 Qe7 11. Ne4 Rd8 12. Nd6+ cxd6 13. exd6


Sicilian Defence or Caro-Kann also help with Queen's pawn opening I know and play the Sicilian defense. Specifically, I mix it with the Hyper Accelerated Dragon with the kingside rook pawn movement akin to the Najdorf. I am also learning the Caro-Kann, in which most of my opponents play the advanced variation or I start the exchange variation. But most of my opponents never play the mainline past the first move, so I just employ basic chess tactics such as central control and development.
Which opening should I learn the best? I learned the Dragon to the point where I can consequently out develop my opponents early with the Hyper Accelerated Dragon, but I have also heard that the Caro-Kann is good enough to know.
Also, I know the Queen's and King Indian Defenses enough to counter any 1. d4 players. Although not many people do it, I still think it's worth it. Should I add it to my arsenal, for Black at least? For White, I used to play the Queen's Gambit, but now I play the English.

For a more meaningful answer, it'd be a great idea to know what your current skill level is. That being said:
Knowing an opening is not about knowing "what's on the book". If you can't find the correct response when your opponent deviates, then to all practical effects it's as if you didn't know anything the opening, no matter how depth into the mainline you've studied. Mainlines also change over time and from author to author. Study the key strategical ideas of the opening, not concrete variations.
Also consider that at lower levels, it's not really worth studying the opening, since:

The difference between playing well in the opening or not is not that big and there's a lot of time to catch up during the rest of the game if you are worse.
Studying the opening is harder as a beginner because you need to memorize more. GMs can remember hundreds of 20-move deep lines because they only have to remember a few critical points, the rest comes intuitively to them.

When choosing between Hyper-accelerated Dragon and Caro-Kann, I personally prefer the former because as you'll have to know a fair amount of theory for both, you'll better play the opening that puts your opponent into bigger trouble if he messes up. But there are deifnitely arguments for the Caro-Kann and it's hard to tell what suits you best without knowing your skill level or "playing style".
The Queen's Indian is a great opening that can teach you a lot about chess. If you already know about it, there's no reason not to include it in your repertoire


Saving opening tabiyas in scid When I use scid to study an opening I do the following:

start new game
play through the opening up to a position I am interested in
search database for "current board"

I am sure there must be a more efficient way to do this. Is it possible to save positions and use these saved positions in searches?

I'm sorry if I don't understand your question correctly, but if you don't want to enter moves manually every time to reach a certain position you can simply create a database for all the openings\tabiyas you're interested in and add it to your bookmarks. So, whenever you need some position you open that database via the bookmark you created (it's much faster than going through open dialog box and looking for the file on your hard drive) and copy that position from there.

Btw, you can also download eco.pgn file containing all the known openings here: https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/pgn-extract/

Then, if you want to see the names of openings and variations that the file contains in your Game List you need to do the following: open eco.pgn as a text file in a plain text editor of your choice and replace "Opening" with "White" and "Variation" with "Black". While doing so, don't forget to enable "match case" option. That's it.


Playing chess on a Mac with Stockfish and some GUI I have a Macbook OS X 10.6 and want to play chess against a challenging program. I'm not very computationally inclined but it seems that I need to download Stockfish and some UCI-compatible GUI. I also want to spend $0 to make this happen. I downloaded Stockfish 231 for Mac and also downloaded pChess 1.9.2 which is reported to have an update that:

Added a wholly new module — pChess.command — copy it into the 'Engines'
    folder of Sigma Chess or Stockfish, and you can play pChess as a UCI engine!!

I could not find the Engines folder for the Stockfish download that I have. What's more, I'm not even sure what I should do once the pChess.command file is in Stockfish in whatever location is appropriate. When I open the Stockfish-231-mac folder that I have downloaded, the only files are copying.txt (a public licence), logo.bmp, polyglot.ini, readme.txt. The folders are Logos, Mac, and src.

In the readme.txt file:

Stockfish is a free UCI chess engine derived from Glaurung 2.1. It is
not a complete chess program and requires some UCI-compatible GUI
(e.g. XBoard with PolyGlot, eboard, Arena, Sigma Chess, Shredder, Chess
Partner or Fritz) in order to be used comfortably. Read the
documentation for your GUI of choice for information about how to use
Stockfish with it.

I looked through the suggested GUI's and most seem only PC compatible or cost. Any help would be awesome. Thanks!

I wrote a long post on how to do this for latest Macs:

Chess analysis on Mac Os X Lion 10.7 using Stockfish and HiARCs engine


Why didn't Giri go for the pawns against Ding Liren (Tata Steel 2015)? This game at move 69 - https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/tataSteelMasters2015/9/1/3

[fen "8/2p5/1pBpK1k1/1P1P2N1/7r/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]
[White "Anish Giri"]
[Black "Ding Liren"]
[Event "Tata Steel Chess"]
[Date "2015.01.20"]

Giri thought for 6 minutes and decided to save the knight. Is the continuation for sacrifice really counterintuitive?

When I saw the live broadcast yesterday I was sure he would go for the knight sacrifice. And I still think he probably intended to. It is in no way counterintuitive, I think it is rather the obvious candidate for a winning continuation.

But of course a knight is a knight and the queening of one of the white pawns is still some ten moves away. He probably tried to work it out completely to the point where black has to give his rook and the ending is beyond any doubt one hundred percent winning, and after 68 moves of an extremely hard fought game he just couldn't do it.

And in the end, instead of wasting any more time, he decided to play it save. So my take on this is that tiredness and the irrational fear to overlook some miracle save lead to a more practical decision.


Top player with the lowest drawing rate Which player of the top 50 has the lowest drawing rate ? Who is it in the top 100 ?

And which woman in the top 50 has the lowest drawing rate ?

Looks like I am late to the party. Anyway:

Free PGNs of many top players are available here. Almost all 2700+ players are there. As for women, only a few from very top are there. These PGN files have anywhere from few hundred to couple thousand games available for each player. Although this does not fully comply with OPs request, it seems like an improvement over the current only answer. If you have some better/more PGNs available, you can post a download link in a comment or run them through this script and suggest an edit to this answer.

The results

EDIT

Bonus - world champions.

Also of interest - Morphy and Anderssen have amazing draw rates of 0.085 and 0.1, respectively.


How to get out of "Hope" chess into "Real" chess I was reading this article by Dan Heisman on playing 3 different types of chess:  "Flip-Coin", "Hope", and "Real".  I think I am stuck in "Hope" chess where I make a move that I think is pretty could and hope it works instead of playing a move based on sound analysis, so how do I get from "Hope" to "Real" chess.  I know it is not a simple solution, but are there any techniques/tools that can help?

Just to ensure that we get the definitions correct, I will quote Dan Heisman on the definition of these two terms:

  "HOPE" Chess - This is NOT when you make a move and hope your opponent
  doesn't see your threat. Instead, Hope chess is when you make a move
  and don't look at what your opponent might threaten on his next move,
  and whether you can meet that threat on your next move. Instead, you
  just wait until next move and see what he does, and then hope you can
  meet any threats. In my first 3 tournaments I played Hope chess and
  never won more than 1 game in any of the three. The speed at which you
  can play Hope chess also explains why I usually took only about half
  an hour for each game in these tournaments, even though the time
  control was 50 moves in 2 hours. Most high school level players play
  hope chess, but almost always lose when they run into a serious player
  who plays "Real Chess."

and...

  Real Chess: In a nutshell, it’s making sure that before you make a
  move, you make sure you can safely meet your opponents checks,
  captures, and threats that he could play in reply to your move, and
  you must do that every move. So in terms of threats:

  ...

  3) Real Chess - you make sure you can meet next move's threat
  (actually checks, captures, and threats).

If you still sometimes play Hope Chess you need to train it out of you as a player. The fact is, you will play the way you train and thus you should always train the way you want to play. Regardless of what sort of training you are doing you must always ensure that you are meeting the exceptions of "Real Chess". If you are doing tactics puzzles DO NOT simply push your pieces into the most forcing moves you can find without having come to a real conclusion, instead think about the position. Make sure you have evaluated all of your checks, captures, and threats as well as your opponent's checks, captures, and threats. The same goes for training games or anything else you are doing. If you don't make a rigid habit out of it, you will not do it during an over-the-board game.

In my opinion the best way to train playing Real Chess is ensuring that you are meeting the expectations in chess puzzles (those from real games), K+P(s) v. K(+Ps) endgame puzzles, "solitaire chess" and, of course, practice games against either a computer or human player at long time controls. I think Practical Chess Exercises is a great collection of problems for this sort of training because it does not include only tactical positions but also has strategic themes and endgames all mixed together so that it really lends itself to this sort of training. Some of the positions even have bad combinations in them that don't work because they allow your opponent to equalize or even pull a combination of their own. Instead you have to find the best move, even if it isn't a forcing move.


Openings that reach endgames? I'm looking for some openings for white and black that have a high probability of trading queens early on without being significantly worse. Does anyone know any openings that fit this criteria?

There's a "drawing line" in the Petrov Defense for White:

[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. Qe2 Qe7 {Black has to play this or 6. d3 wins a piece} 6. d3 Nf6 7. Qxe7+

Playing 7. Qxe7+ loses White's opening half-tempo, but queens are off, and if that's what White wants he's gotten it. Not playing Qxe7+ can still lead to a queen trade, until either side decides to block the e-file with minors.

The Berlin Defense is another well-known opening with early queen trade:

[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.dxe5 Nf5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8

This opening has gained a reputation for drawishness at GM level.


Does using a less common opening make you a stronger player? I want to ask about whether using and adopting a rarely used opening makes you a stronger player.

I just started playing online chess (Lichess) a year ago, and as a beginner, I used to play the common 1.e4 as the opening in all my games. I found that by doing so I was stuck around 1300-1400 (below average rating at the website). Last month, I read an article about different openings, and suddenly switched to regularly use the 1.a3 Opening (usually starting 1.a3 2.b4 when white, and 1.h6, 2.g5 when black, using the bishop to occupy the diagonal), and my rating suddenly went up to 1700-1800, and stayed there. I found that by using this opening made the middle-game much easier to play, making my opponents make more mistakes than usual compared to the typical 1.e4.

Is this normal? Or does it happen to anyone if they suddenly want to switch to a different, more rarely-used opening?

In general, less common openings tend to give weaker opponents issues, since they have yet to properly grasp many fundamental ideas of opening play and middlegame strategy, and if they don't know the concrete lines they may very well end up completely lost from a nonstandard opening position.

But a nonstandard opening doesn't make you into a stronger player just because you have good results on lower levels. In the end, you will hit a plateau with the nonstandard opening as well, when your opponents get sufficiently strong. Don't forget that these nonstandard openings are nonstandard for a reason: with correct play from your opponent, you're very unlikely to get any advantage, and you may even be running a serious risk of getting in trouble out of the opening.

With that being said, nonstandard openings are not to be written off completely, and at the 1700-1800 lichess rating range they can be quite a potent weapon, catching many players completely off-guard.


What are all the world chess championships (such that...)? Wiki says: Magnus Carlsen is 'the current World Chess Champion, World Rapid Chess Champion, and World Blitz Chess Champion'. Wesley So is 'current World Fischer Random Chess Champion'.

What world chess championships are both Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So eligible for (aside from possibly World Championship of Chess Composition, World Chess Solving Championship and World Team Chess Championship aaaand world women's in case fide allows transgender)?

I wasn't able to find a list of world championships in chess except for the wiki one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:World_championships_in_chess
One reason I'm asking is that I want to clarify my understanding:

Magnus Carlsen is the world chess champion in every possible standard category. He is the world chess champion in every possible category except chess960. Wesley So is the world chess champion in the only category that Magnus Carlsen can be but isn't. (The previous sentences exclude World Championship of Chess Composition, World Chess Solving Championship and World Team Chess Championship.)

Please correct if I misunderstood something.

Where can I find an official list of world championships in chess? I mean, the one above is just wikipedia. Idk I just figure FIDE might have some list on its site somewhere.

Where can I find an official list of world championships in chess? I mean, the one above is just wikipedia. Idk I just figure FIDE might have some list on its site somewhere.

The closest official FIDE list is in section D. REGULATIONS FOR SPECIFIC COMPETITIONS of The FIDE Handbook. There you will find many subsections specifying the regulations for all the different competitions that FIDE organises.
For most of them it is obvious whether both players qualify. For example, neither of them qualify for the various age-limited world championships for juniors and seniors (detailed in most of D.04).
Slightly more difficult is to decide whether or not a competition qualifies as a World Championship. Your mileage may vary. For example I would classify the FIDE World Cup (D.01.03) as the World Knockout Championship. It isn't classified as a world championship because many people think knockout is an unfair form of competition - too much luck of the draw.
Section D.07 has the regulations for the world open rapid and blitz championships and D.08 for Fischer Random.


Setting up BugHouse on my computer I want to have a setup on my computer to play BugHouse with three engine. One engine would be my partner and the other two would be the opposing team. How can I setup such a scenario? I use Linux but I can also use Windows.

I have seen the support for BugHouse and XBoard as a client, but I have not found a way to connect the two to play BugHouse with two open XBoards.

I found such a program in the android playstore, but the engine in the app was very poor not much fun.

The only way I know of playing bughouse using XBoard/Winboard is to play via FICS, see e.g. https://github.com/ianfab/Fairy-Stockfish/wiki/Setting-up-Fairy-Stockfish-on-FICS#bughouse (it works very similar for other bughouse engines), i.e., it does not work offline. You would just use four FICS guest accounts whereof three are your engine instances, and create two bughouse teams from them. I tried this several times already and for me it works fine, although of course it is not very convenient to set up, but once set up it works smoothly.


Outsmarting an intelligent copycat in the Ultrasymmetrical English I used to be a fan of the English, but some ultrasymmetrical variations bugged me, especially if a lower rated player decided to play for a draw against me with them. There seemed to be a lot to consider to get any sort of meaningful advantage, if Black really wanted to be annoying. No players ever did, but that's probably because they themselves were worried about slipping and losing a painfully boring game where they never really had a chance.

I played e3 after c4/Nc3/g3/Bg2, so obviously one solution is to play c4, Nf3 and d4...or an entirely different first move.

But I'm wondering, how would someone get around an opponent who deliberately tries to frustrate them with smart copycat moves? Are there a couple lines that give clear convincing edges? I can see how the pawn trades at d4/d5 create a  structural imbalance, but I don't see when and where White has an edge.

Fritz evaluates the position as equal below.

[FEN ""]
1. c4 c5 2. g3 g6 3. Bg2 Bg7 4. Nc3 Nc6 5. e3 e6 6. N1e2 N8e7 7. d4 cxd4 8. Nxd4 d5 9. cxd5 Nxd5

In this case, Black finesses the copycat by not playing ...d5 on move 7, which would be bad then, but it can't be stopped on move 8.

And now it doesn't seem like anything White does gets an edge. With Nxd5, Black's pawn is isolated, but Black can return the favor. If White moves the knight, Black has a nice diagonal, and White's QB is bad.

Also, even if a symmetrical position is achieved, as after 10. Nxd5 exd5 11. O-O Nxd4 12. exd4 O-O, what is a good plan to try to shake it up? I think something like Qa4 might work. But it just seems very drawish.

Usually it's White who can force the symmetrical pawn structure e.g. with the Slav or French exchange. But here Black forces it on White.

Is it what White "deserves" for not playing more in the center, and does waiting for ...d5 defuse things for Black, or am I missing possibilities e.g. a way to inject life into this by pushing d4/taking on d4 differently? Or is there a good concrete line with, say, Nf3, where Black can copycat me for only so long? In that case 1. c4 c5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. g3 g6 4. Bg2 Bg7 5. Nf3 Nf6 6. d4 cxd4 7. Nxd4 d5 looks bad for Black, as does 6. ...d5.

Thanks!

In general, the best way to prevent Black from copying you is to go for the d4 push.  If you play the e3 system, it is indeed very easy for Black to equalize with no problems at all.

It's best to go for the main line with 1. c4, 2. Nc3, 3. g3, 4. Bg2, 5. Nf3, 6. 0-0.  If Black copies you up to castling, then you immediately go for 7. d4! with a slight edge.  If Black plays 6...d5 instead of castling on the 6th move, then you just take on d5.  Black's now playing the position you would have had with 7. d4, just a tempo down.  This tends to allow you to pressure Black with Qb3 / Qa4 ideas, combined with pressure on the g2 - a8 diagonal from your Bishop.

In any case, in this line both options for Black (copying you up until castling and playing d5 first) lead to asymmetrical positions that should be marginally better for you.  But most importantly, they are not dead equal like the line you demonstrated above.


King's Indian c5 against Samisch I'm a 2000 Fide player and I played an interesting opening game last sunday.

It was a King's Indian Samisch (I was playing white) and my opponent played the c5 gambit. That was the first time I saw this move.

      [FEN ""]
      [StartPly "11"]

      1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f3 O-O 6.Be3 c5

I accepted the gambit and was not happy with my position. Both sides played not so accurate moves and I ended up winning a piece.

But analyzing the game, either Stockfish and I seems to not like the position.

Here is what happened

      [FEN ""]
      [StartPly "11"]

      1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f3 O-O 6.Be3 c5 7. dxc5 dxc5 8. Qxd8 Rxd8 9. Bxc5 Nc6 10.Be2 Nd7 11.Be3 Nde5 (11... Bxc3!? 12. bxc3 Nb6 13. c5 Na4) 12.Rd1?! (12. Nd5! e6 13.Nc7 Rb8 14.Rd1) Rxd1 13. Kxd1 Na5 14.Nd5 e6?? (14... Nexc4) 15.Nc7

Does white have better lines when accepting the gambit? How do you play against c5 (d5 for Benoni like positions or let the status quo hoping for sort of maroczy bind, or something else?

I remember reading somewhere in an opening book that the c5 line against the Saemisch is the primary reason why the Saemisch has stopped being popular among the elite. Moreover, it is recommended for black in two repertoire books on the King's Indian Defense: one by Bologan and one by Dejan Bojkov.


My game against AI, please analyze [Event "4444 vs AI"]
[Site "multiplayerchess.com"]
[Date "2015.08.12"]
[Round "1"]
[White "4444"]
[Black "AI"]
[Result "1-0"]

[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. d3 d5 3. Ne2 g5 4. Nbc3 d4 5. Nb5 c6 6. Na3 Bxa3 7. bxa3 b5 8. Rb1 Be6 9. Rb4 Bxa2 10. f4 gxf4 11. Nxf4 exf4 12. Bxf4 a5 13. Rb2 Qh4+ 14. g3 Qe7 15. Rxa2 Nd7 16. Bh3 Nc5 17. Qg4 Nf6 18. Qg7 Rg8 19. Qh6 Rd8 20. O-O Ne6 21. e5 Rg6 22. exf6 Rxh6 23. fxe7 Rxh3 24. exd8=Q+ Kxd8 25. Kh1 f5 26. Bb8 Kc8 27. Ba7 Kb7 28. Bxd4 Nxd4 29. c3 Ne6 30. Rxf5 h5 31. Rf7+ Kc8 32. Rg2 c5 33. Rgf2 c4 34. Rf8+ Nxf8 35. Rxf8+ Kc7 36. Rf7+ Kb8 37. dxc4 bxc4 38. Rf4 a4 39. Rxc4 Kb7 40. Rb4+ Kc6 41. Rxa4 Kb7 42. Rb4+ Kc6 43. a4 Kc7 44. a5 Kc6 45. a6 Kc5 46. a7 Rxh2+ 47. Kxh2 h4 48. gxh4 Kd6 49. h5 Kc5 50. h6 Kd6 51. h7 Kc5 52. h8=Q Kd6 53. Qf6+ Kd7 54. Rd4+ Kc7 55. Qd6+ Kb7 56. a8=Q+ Kxa8 57. Rb4 Ka7 58. Qb6+ Ka8 59. Ra4#

Against AI of multiplayerchess.com

I had fun with this one, I never knew AI will make blunders :3
Also, if you can analyze my game for me will be appreciated.

2...d5 risky but playable,

3.Ne2 not that good either Nf3 o exd5

3...g5? positionally bad, better dxe4 and later QxQ taking away castle to white or better develop a piece

4.Nc3 provocative but later N is uncomfortable in b5 and ends badly in a3

6...Bxa3 fine now white has some holes too in the pawn structure

7...b5? again positionally unsound it appears black does not know how to develop pieces

8.Rb1 what for? better Ng3 and later Be2 to complete development and control the white squares that are weak for black

10.f4?? till 12.Bxf4 why? this is not correct, simply loses material white is close to lost: as above you had to develop with Ng3, Be2 and 0-0

13...Qe4 a useless check that forgets the B in a2 under attack and returns the material advantage

till 21.e5 relatively normal play (no huge blunders) but 21...Rg6?? loses material in 3 moves sequence (white takes Q R and N vs Q and B) 21...Nd5 was better: after 24...Kxd8 white is totally winning

26.Bb8 till 28.Bxd4 this again was a useless material sacrifice why go in b8 in the firs place? You had to rearrange pieces bringing the rook from a2 to e1 and start attacking: white is still winning but it is harder

30... h5?? is a huge blunder and black is again totally lost now: the rook is trapped and can be captured with Kg2, a move you never played

32.Rg2?? white had to play Kg2 attacking the Rh3 now black could free it with 32...h4, but this remains valid for just a move

from now on white wins by taking all the black pawns which was fine still the rook hanging in h3 was to be taken with Kg2 attacking it-

as suggested you should learn the basics of material counting


In King's gambit, is Fisher's conclusion that "3...P-KN4 ... is inexact" inexact? I was reading  A Bust to the King's Gambit by Bobby Fischer. The game starts with

1 P-K4 P-K4 2 P-KB4 PxP 3 N-KB3

  [FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/8/8/4Pp2/5N2/PPPP2PP/RNBQKB1R b KQkq - 0 3"]

Bobby Fisher commented that

  "the move I played 3...P-KN4 against Spassky, but this is inexact
  because it gives White drawing chances in the ensuing ending: e.g., 4
  P-KR4 P-N5 5 N-K5 N-KB3 6 P-Q4 P-Q3 7 N-Q3 NxP 8 BxP B-N2  and now 9
  P-B3! (replacing Spassky ’s 9 N-B3) 9...Q-K2 10 Q-K2 B-B4  11 N-Q2
  leads to an ending where Black’s extra Pawn is neutralized by  White’s
  stranglehold on the dark squares, especially KB4."

It seems that the move 3...P-KN4 is still played frequently even today (even more popular than Fisher's recommended move P-Q3). So does this mean that Fisher's conclusion that "3...P-KN4 ... is inexact" inexact?

Apparently instead of 5...Nf6 in the line Fischer gave, 5...d6 6.Nxg4 Be7 is superior for Black.

You might look to Shirov for what is best in the King's Gambit.   He gave 1.e4 e5 2.f4? in his book and said "Prove me wrong".  In the past I saw him play a 3-minute game against 3000 rated computer on ICC in the King's Gambit and he crushed it.


In early FIDE ratings files what does a flag value of "n" indicate? Here are examples from the January 2002 FIDE ratings file -

   4603745  Kabisch, Thilo                         GER     2256   12   06.01.63 i
  13701940  Kabov, Sergey                          KAZ     2140    0   28.06.67
    931900  Kacarevic, Dejan                       YUG     2068    0   13.10.79 n
   4136497  Kachanov, Alexander                    RUS     2091    0   02.07.59 n
   4140729  Kachar, Vladimir                       RUS     2363    0   19.01.41 n
  13600613  Kacheishvili, Giorgi             g     GEO     2584   25   10.02.77
   4623614  Kachiani-G., Ketino (IM)         wg    GER     2460   17   11.09.71 w
   4138996  Kachkin, Konstantin                    RUS     2134    0   21.04.78 n
   4167678  Kachkina, Ekaterina                    RUS     2079    0   03.11.86 wn

The flags value is the last field. The value "i" indicates that the player is inactive, "w" that the player is female.

Interesting to note that Kachiani-G., Ketino has "(IM)" after her name as well as titles field "wg". Presumably this is meant to show that she was both an International Master and a Woman Grand Master.

Going through the January 2002 list, I notice that these "n" marks seem to concentrate on certain countries.  Everyone from Russia, Yugoslavia,  Cuba, and Latvia seem to have this "n" mark.

If you look at the April 2002 list, you'll notice that now everyone from the Philippines also has an "n".  Perhaps the "n" stands for "nation" and designates something about the player's country.


Fischer: 1. e4 "Best by test" Fischer famously scribbled "best by test" on one of his score sheets after playing 1. e4.

Yet when I look at chess.com's database of games, 1. d4 yields a larger win %age for while than does 1. e4.

Was Fischer wrong?  If not, what changed to make this so?

Aside from the fact that the difference is only .3% at master level games on chess.com's db, I think Fischer was referring to his own personal results.

A search on chess tempo for Fischer's games reveals that this is the case:
http://chesstempo.com/gamedb/player/239563

e4 (51.3% win)
d4 (15.4% win)

update: The statistics above are skewed because Fischer never played d4 as white. See comments. Still, my initial point is valid. It was his preferred opening. I don't think .3% makes him wrong.


What was the question asked to Magnus Carlsen which he refused to translate? Does any one know what was the question asked to Magnus Carlsen on 7th Nov during inaugural press conference of world championship 2013 which he refused to translate in english? And also, what was the answer he provided?

According to Tarjei Svensen, the question was "Kasparov compared you to Harry Potter this week, Stensbøl compared you to Petter Northug, which comparison do you prefer?" to which he replied that he preferred to be compared to real people, therefore Northug. See this Twitter conversation.


Vitamins to improve memorizing of variations in chess Has anyone tried vitamins for improving memory? How about Memo Plus Gold, has anyone tried it?

Do you think it will improve memorizing theories and variations?

There is no credible evidence that supplements benefit cognitive functioning in people who don't have clinical disorders.  The only people making those claims are people trying to sell you something.  As mentioned above, the only indicated rationale for such treatment is with a nutritional disorder, or some other type of clinical problem.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3311304/

"Dietary supplements are one of the most common forms of complementary and alternative medicine that patients use and although limited, evidence for their potential interactions with other treatments has been documented. Considering the insufficient evidence for their efficacy, potential for interaction with other therapies and costs to patients, physicians should be aware of the use of dietary supplements among their patients so that they can advise their patients on the potential benefits and harms."


Identifying “big pawn” bishops I use to trade my bishop pairs for opponent’s knight pair most of the time. But since my recent peak of interest in the game, I have been doing studying and learning. Thus, the bishop is one of my points of interest now.

I was watched this video by agadmator that demonstrated amazing gameplay by Aronian Levonm

[Title "Aronian Levobn-Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, FIDE Chess.com Online Nations Cupm 6/5/2020"]
[FEN ""]
[startply "96"]

1. Nf3 d5 2. e3 c5 3. c4 d4 4. exd4 cxd4 5. Bd3 Nc6 6. O-O Nf6 7. Bc2 Bg4 8. Ba4 Nd7 9. h3 Bh5 10. d3 e5 11. Re1 Be7 12. Nbd2 O-O 13. Ne4 Qc7 14. a3 a5 15. Ng3 Bg6 16. Bxc6 bxc6 17. Nxd4 exd4 18. Rxe7 Qd6 19. Re2 Nc5 20. Ne4 Nxe4 21. dxe4 Rfe8 22. f3 a4 23. c5 Qxc5 24. Bf4 Qb6 25. Rc1 c5 26. Rc4 f6 27. Qc1 Ra5 28. Rec2 f5 29. Rxc5 Rxc5 30. Rxc5 fxe4 31. fxe4 d3 32. Be3 Qe6 33. Rc7 Qxe4 34. Bd2 h6 35. Qc5 Bf7 36. Bc3 Qg6 37. Re7 Rxe7 38. Qxe7 Kh7 39. Qe5 Be8 40.  Kf2 Bf7 41. g4 Bb3 42. Ke3 Bc2 43. Kd2 Bb3 44. Ke3 Bc2 45. Kd2 Bb3 46. Qe7 Bc2 47. b4 axb3 48. Bb2 h5 49. g5 h4 50. a4 Kg8 51. a5 Kh7 52. a6 Bd1 53. Kxd1 d2 54. Qxg7+ Qxg7 55. Bxg7 Kxg7 56. Kxd2

On move 48, it can be seen that Black’dsbishop is trapped, which led to blacks defeat. Would this bishop be considered a “big pawn?”

Here are my observations.

1) Almost every example of big pawn that can found, such as here are situations where a player has played in such a way that they end up with pieces called big pawn. In the Levon game, it was trapped ( basically pushing your own pieces inactive(or passive) vs forced inactive(or passive))

2) Everytime a bishop is blocked by pawn and has restricted movement, it's supposedly a big pawn

3) In the book “What It Takes To Be A Chess Master” by Andrew Soltis, which is Wikipedia source for the definition of a big pawn,its seems just like a funny comment. Like, is it even supposed to be like a Chess term!

A "big pawn" bishop is kind of an informal term. In general it can be thought of as a bad bishop with especially limited movement. In the game you posted, that bishop could be considered a big pawn - there are pawns on its same colour, and they clearly restrict its movement.

However, whether it's technically a bad bishop is debatable, since the b3- and d3-pawns are fixed by White's pieces (not pawns). If the king or bishop moved away, perhaps these pawns would have advanced while the bishop was still on the board, allowing it to escape and not be considered bad or trapped.

To summarize, a big pawn is essentially a bishop which is both technically bad (pawns on its colour) and clearly inactive (lacking sufficient mobility on useful squares).


Why is White considered so much better in this position? I'm not sure I understand why Stockfish considers White so much better here. A look at the two strongest lines for White by Stockfish doesn't really give me much intuition about what White is playing for. I see that Black's LSB is stuck defending the pawn on d5, and Black's rook looks awkward on h5, and White has a potentially strong passed pawn on c5, but I'm not sure I understand why this is worth a score of +2.3.
If someone could explain what the essence of White's advantage is (or a combination of key elements that gives rise to the advantage) that hopefully naturally explains the rationale behind the moves suggested by Stockfish I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

Here's my theory for this position. The engine is evaluating +2 advantage because black's rook can be trapped.

First, watch carefully, that rook on h5 is isolated from the main game and has only another safe square to move (i.e, f5), where it can be backed by Queen (on e6), as well as the pawn on g6. So it is dubious to exchange white queen for a rook.
So now, white's idea is to activate its knight in the game. Watch carefully, Nd4 can trigger a threat to the Queen on e6, as well as on f5 square (previously discussed safer square for the rook). And, after black's reply, white can simply play Bf3, that creates some nasty threat for the rook on h5. If rook goes to h3, then after Kg2, it's completely trapped.
So, black can try something like Rh6. And then, white can simply take by Bxh6. Now, as rook is worth 5 pawns, and the bishop is worth 3; so it's (5-3) = +2 advantage for white.


Quickly converting board to bitboard representation using python-chess library I would like to convert a given chess board into its bitboard representation, but my implementation is rather slow. Here is what I'm doing (using the python-chess package):

board = chess.Board('rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1)

w_pawn = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.PAWN, chess.WHITE).tolist())).astype(int)
w_rook = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.ROOK, chess.WHITE).tolist())).astype(int)
w_knight = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.KNIGHT, chess.WHITE).tolist())).astype(int)
w_bishop = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.BISHOP, chess.WHITE).tolist())).astype(int)
w_queen = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.QUEEN, chess.WHITE).tolist())).astype(int)
w_king = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.KING, chess.WHITE).tolist())).astype(int)

b_pawn = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.PAWN, chess.BLACK).tolist())).astype(int)
b_rook = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.ROOK, chess.BLACK).tolist())).astype(int)
b_knight = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.KNIGHT, chess.BLACK).tolist())).astype(int)
b_bishop = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.BISHOP, chess.BLACK).tolist())).astype(int)
b_queen = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.QUEEN, chess.BLACK).tolist())).astype(int)
b_king = (np.asarray(board.pieces(chess.KING, chess.BLACK).tolist())).astype(int)

return np.concatenate((w_pawn, w_rook, w_knight, w_bishop, w_queen, w_king,
                       b_pawn, b_rook, b_knight, b_bishop, b_queen, b_king))

For the starting position this function returns:

[0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0]

Which is what I want. The only issue is the speed of this function.

python-chess already has the built in utilities to handle conversions. Here is an example:

import chess

board = chess.Board('rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1')

WP = board.pieces(chess.PAWN, chess.WHITE)
BP = board.pieces(chess.PAWN, chess.BLACK)

print (int(WP), int (BP))

print (list(WP), list(BP))

print ("\nWHITE PAWNS:\n" + str(WP))

print ("\nBLACK PAWNS:\n" + str(BP))

Output:

65280 71776119061217280

[8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15] [48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55]

WHITE PAWNS:
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
. . . . . . . .

BLACK PAWNS:
. . . . . . . .
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .

From a list, or from an integer, you can easily construct a Bitboard however you choose to define it.


Rejected game variant for adding a new chess piece Some time ago İ had a book on chess, that proposed new chess variant invented by some guy, in which a new chess piece was added. so instead the usual 8 by 8 board would get replaced by a bigger 9 by 9 board in which a new piece could be added. This piece would be like the queen but it would be able to jump like knight making it a lot more powerful than the queen.

So my question is, what did you call this new piece that was proposed and who made it at what year? Any info on the subject is appreciated.

I was unable to find a variant with a 9x9 board that included this piece, but that doesn't mean such a variant doesn't exist.

Perhaps you slightly misremembered the powers of the piece. Modern Chess was invented in 1968 by Gabriel Vicente Maura, according to Wikipedia.  It has a 9x9 board and features a piece called the "prime minister" which combines the powers of the bishop and knight.  Unlike any piece in normal chess, it is capable of delivering checkmate without the help of another piece, if the opponent's king is in the corner.

It's also possible you may be thinking of Chancellor Chess.  This was  invented by Benjamin R. Foster in 1887, according to Wikipedia.  It has a 9x9 board and features a piece called the "chancellor", which combines the powers of a rook and knight.

If you're sure that the piece was actually a queen and knight combined (and not a bishop and knight or rook and knight), then Wikipedia says this is called the "amazon", and that it has also been called "angel, ayanu, commander, crown prince, elephant, empress, general, giraffe, grand chancellor, maharajah, rettah, royal guard, superqueen, tetra queen, and wyvern".


Is this same colored-Bishop ending really drawn for Black? I was playing as Black. Was there something I could of done to win in this position? Or was the game truly drawn? What are some endgame ideas for this position as Black?

Black to move

[FEN "4B3/8/7p/p1p1k1p1/P7/1bP1KP2/7P/8 b - - 0 1"]

1... Be6 2. Bb5 h5 3. Be8 h4 4. Bc6 Kd6 5. Bb5 Kd5 (5...Bd7?? {White has an attack now} 6. Bxd7 Kxd7 7. Kd3 { Targeting both e4 and c4} Kd6 8. Kc4 {Threathening with Kb5} Ke5 {Only thing to do is counter attack} 9. Kb5 Kf4 10. Kxa5 Kxf3 11. Kb5 g4 12. a5 g3 13. hxg3 hxg3 14. a6 g2 15. a7 g1=Q 16. a8=Q {With tempo, white will capture the last pawn of blacks, and keep his last pawn, mates in 42 according to Lomonosov tablebase}(8...Kc6?? 9. h3 { Black in zugzwang, White mates in less than 55 moves}) )6. Kd3 Ke5 7. Ke3

Black has fortress: All black pawns are in black squares, also the king in the center in a black square.

Potential White attacks: White has white bishop but there is no target. White king can try to sneak into blacks position via white squares but black can avoid this with his white-square bishop.

Verdict: White cannot progress.

White has a weaker fortress: White king occupies center with opposition, that's nice, but there are white-squared pawns which can be target for Black.

Potential Black attack: Black can target white-squared pawns by bishop, but these can be easily defended by bishop.

King can try to sneak but again, opponent bishop can successfully block it.

Also for any side, trying to sneak would result losing center and enemy can successfully counter-attack instead of preventing wing sneaks.

Thus we can say, any side who tries to sneak on wings using king, will lose center and will face a strong(probably winning) counter-attack from center.

Therefore the position is drawn.

Notes about edits: Edited the diagram to cover Dag Oskar Madsen's attacking idea.


Idea behind e-pawn sacrifice in Open Sicilian: Najdorf, Freak Attack (6. Rg1)? There are 10 games in my database with this variation played on a high level and the White score is +6-2=2, almost always White is the elo-wise weaker player. The highest rated White player to employ this line is GM Tigran L. Petrosjan and he won his two games on a 2400+ level, against higher rated opponents.

Since it is played at such high level, repeatedly and with success, I suspect there is an idea to this sacrifice, but reviewing games and consulting the engine did not give full clarity. In fact the engine gives lines different to what is played, mostly going for Bf4 and trading queens.

The sacrifice in question is 8. g5!? (instead of say 8. Bg2), which compels Black to take on e4.

Only one Black player supported his Bishop with 10...d5, the rest retreated with 10...Bb7. My questions are: Why does White not only give, but provoke Black to take the pawn and why do most players not play ...d5 (after ...d5, f3 Bg6 and the position would seem very solid for Black)? Is it because they do not know the position and it looks as if the Bishop could be harassed and restricted after closing the diagonal?

[White "Petrosian, Tigran L (2568)"]
[Black "Smirnov, Pavel (2645)"]
[FEN ""]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 { B90 Sicilian Defense: Najdorf Variation } 6. Rg1 b5 7. g4 Bb7 8. g5 Nxe4 9. Nxe4 Bxe4 10. Qg4 Bb7 11. Bg2 Qc7 12. Be3 g6 13. O-O-O Bg7 14. f4 O-O 15. h4 Nd7 16. Bxb7 Qxb7 17. f5 Ne5 18. Qh3 Qe4 19. h5 Nc4 20. Rge1 Rfc8 21. hxg6 hxg6 22. fxg6 fxg6 23. Kb1 Qd5 24. Bc1 Rf8 25. Ne6 Qf5 26. Qxf5 Rxf5 27. Nxg7 Kxg7 28. Rxe7+ Kf8 29. Rh7 Kg8 30. Rh6 Kg7 31. b3 Ne5 32. Rxd6 Rf1 33. Re6 Ng4 34. Rexg6+ Kf7 35. Rxa6 Rd8 36. Rhd6 Re8 37. Rd4 Rg1 38. Kb2 Ree1 39. Rd7+ Ke8 40. Rh7 1-0

Here's a game where Black played ...d5:

[White "Nadj Hedjesi, B. (2311)"]
[Black "Milosevic, A. (2269)"]
[FEN ""]

1. e4 c5 2. Ne2 Nf6 3. Nbc3 d6 4. d4 cxd4 5. Nxd4 a6 { B90 Sicilian Defense: Najdorf Variation } 6. Rg1 b5 7. g4 Bb7 8. g5 Nxe4 9. Nxe4 Bxe4 10. Qg4 d5 11. f3 Bg6 12. f4 e6 13. Be3 Qa5+ 14. Bd2 Qb6 15. f5 Bc5 16. fxg6 Bxd4 17. gxf7+ Kxf7 18. Rg2 Nd7 19. g6+ hxg6 20. Qxg6+ Ke7 21. O-O-O Rae8 22. Rg3 Kd8 23. Ra3 Kc8 24. Ba5 Qa7 25. Bc3 Bc5 26. b4 Be3+ 27. Kb1 Qb6 28. Bxg7 Rhg8 29. Qf7 Rd8 30. Bh3 Rge8 31. Rxd5 exd5 32. Bxd7+ Rxd7 33. Qxe8+ Kc7 34. Rc3+  1-0

I think that a lot of the answers to your various questions about "why this or that" come down to the fact that it is just very unexplored theory, and the black players are just using their best judgment, probably mostly on-the-fly since Rg1 is so rare. I have just 18 games in my database after 9...Bxe4, and 7 of those games were played by white players below master level. That is not a lot of practical practice.

As far as white having a lesser Elo-rating, I assume that I have most of the same games as you (I use Mega 2020), and for the most part, the rating differences are not that great, so I do not consider it a big deal. 5 of the 11, white out-rated black, and the other 6, black out-rated white. Only one had a huge disparity with a 2500 white player vs. a 2100 black player.

Obviously, the main idea is to get a lead in development where black has barely even started developing the kingside. The latter part of that sentence is the key. In addition, it seems to me that sometimes, it can also be hard to get that development going. For example, I think that instead of trading the Bf1, that a quick Bd2 and 0-0-0 may be even more dangerous, highlighting that inability to develop.

As to why the bishop goes back to b7, I think that it is much more natural. The bishop going to g6, while solid, could still come under attack by h4-h5. It is too early to tell, and most strong players would probably be weary of that. With the bishop on b7, it controls a lot of squares, and it almost forces white to trade the light-squared bishops since on d3, the white light-squared bishop will surely be blunted by the natural g6. Trading off a potential attacker in this position is, clearly, desirable.

There is a lot of room for analysis in this opening.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Rg1 b5 7. g4 Bb7 8. g5 Nxe4 9. Nxe4 Bxe4 10. Qg4 Bb7 (10... d5 11. Bf4 {This developing move, stopping e5, is probably best.} (11. f3 Bg6 {And while solid, the kingside is still far from being developed, and the Bg6 may still become a target.})) 11. Bg2 (11. Bd2 g6 12. Bc3 e5 {If this is the computer's best suggestion, then I really like this as white.} 13. O-O-O {May even be more dangerous.} exd4 $4 14. Bxd4 Rg8 15. Bg2 Nc6 16. Bf6 Be7 17. Rge1 $18) 11... Qc7 {Trying to keep control of the h1-a8 diagonal.} 12. Be3 g6 {This is where I would rather have this on c3, really giving the black king nowhere to go.} 13. O-O-O Bg7 {And black has a solid pawn, but the position is very open, and tactical in nature.}


Who is winning is this game of chess? What do you think are the chances for the black to win?

It's game over for Black. Down by material, mating attack, zero counterplay etc. The Black's rook is under attacked.

  1...Rd6 2.e5 Qxe5 3.Qg4+ Qf5 4.Qxh5 winning easily

1-0 unless White makes a horrible mistake.


How does the chess24 rating compare to other server ratings? My question is how the chess24 blitz-rating compares to the rating of other servers, like ICC or the ChessBase server. And whether the chess24-rating inflated over the last few month.

The reason for my question is that I used to play a little on chess24 and I had a rating of around 2100, which is comparable to my blitz rating on ICC or on ChessBase. But now after a hiatus of a few month I blitzed my rating quite steadily over 2300. Of course I want to know whether I'm just in stellar form (doesn't feel like it) or whether this is a peculiarity of chess24.

Edit: Maybe it was just stellar form. My new year tournament went very well indeed ...

Edit: Now it's four years later and I am usually rated around 2600 on chess24 with peaks up to 2800. Seems like there is a steady inflation going on.

From my own experience chess24 ratings are quite inflated. I can get a 2200 rating easy on chess24 but struggle to maintain a 1900+ rating on chess.com.


To what extent (if at all) is the new Komodo 13 MCTS an AlphaZero Lite? The new Komodo 13 MCTS has been announced with the claim that:

  Komodo 13 MCTS thinks like no other chess engine in the world.
  Inspired by the ideas of AlphaZero and Leela, Larry and Mark set out
  to reinvent Komodo. What they came up with was Komodo 13 MCTS - a
  engine which searches for candidate moves in an incredible new way,
  and finds moves no other engine can

They are clearly trying to cash in on the publicity behind AlphaZero and LeelaZero. But is the hype justified?

There seems to be no mention of an AlphaZero like database of training results. Is the use of MCTS on its own enough to produce worthwhile improvements? More detailed information seems to be hard to find (possibly for commercial reasons).

Komodo MCTS isn't a neural-network based engine. It just uses a different search algorithm, in particular MCTS instead of AB. Alphazero also used MCTS, so KMCTS is an "Alphazero lite" in that sense; however a distinguishing factor of Alphzero is that it uses a neural network to perform the evaluation, and KMCTS does not do that.

Is MCTS "better" than AB? Yes and no. From what I've seen, MCTS is exceptionally better when you want multiple PVs (because they effectively get it for free, while AB engines need to spend computational power). However MCTS loses firepower in tactical shoot-outs, and it's also really bad at winning a technical position. For example I remember seeing a KMCTS game in TCEC where its eval read "I have a forced checkmate" one move and then "wait, I don't, I only have a very large advantage" another, and then back to "I have a forced checkmate", etc.

Having said all that, KMCTS eliminated regular Komodo from the latest TCEC cup, so it's absolutely a respectable engine. In a straight-up game against another engine, it's not as strong as Stockfish or Leela, but it's comparable to everything else.


Annotated games in the Makogonov Grünfeld? I would appreciate references to sources, be they books or any other sort of media, that contain annotated games in the Makogonov Variation of the Grünfeld Defense (two possible move-orders for which are given below):

[FEN ""]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.e3 (4.Nf3 Bg7 5.e3 O-O 6.b4) Bg7 5.b4

I would imagine that some books specifically on the Grünfeld would have what I'm after, but I don't know that literature well at all, and the couple I've looked at don't have tons of info. For instance, The Kaufman Repertoire for Black & White proposes the Grünfeld against 1.d4, but the sum total of its coverage of the Makogonov (unless I missed something) is to give the following single line assessment, with no words or additional analysis:

[FEN ""]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.e3 Bg7 5.Nf3 O-O 6.b4 c6 7.Bb2 a5 8.b5 a4 9.Ba3 Be6 $10

I mention that only as a fact, not as criticism, since the Makogonov doesn't seem to be regarded as a critical test for the Grünfeld, and Kaufman has to choose where to focus.

Avrukh's Grandmaster Repertoire 8: Grünfeld Defence, Volume One gives more to chew on, offering 4+ solid pages on the Makogonov in tree-of-variations form, and it mentions a handful of games where some of the lines come from. But still, that's not quite what I'm after; I'd like to find some Makogonov Variation games that are annotated qua complete games, in order to get a "feel" for this variation. So, to recap:

  Can someone point me to some complete, annotated games in the Makogonov Grünfeld?

chesspublishing.com has seven well-annotated (by GMs Glenn Flear and Neil McDonald) games starting with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.e3 Bg7 5.Nf3 O-O 6.b4, ranging from 1999 to 2009. They're not free, though.

The games are:

Rabrenovic - Atalik 1999
Aleksandrov - Oral 2000
Bruzon Batista - Sutovsky 2004
Suvrajit - Harika 2004
Georgiev - Holzke 2007
Akobian - Perelshteyn 2007
Akobian - Ponomariov 2009

All have lots of verbal annotations and variations, at about the level of detail you'd expect to see in a opening book that is organized by annotated games.


What are some ideas for black in the Ruy Lopez when white plays an early d3? If white plays an early d3 in the Ruy Lopez (presumably after c3 to give the light-squared bishop a retreat square) what are some ideas for black? I'm talking about those lines where white doesn't push d4, at least not immediately, but plays more calmly with d3. Svidler made a video series about the d3 Spanish on Chess24, but it's a little hard to tease out the ideas from the moves. I'm looking for an answer here that articulates in plain words what plans and ideas black has at his/her disposal when playing the Ruy Lopez against an early d3.

I've outlined, below, some plans and ideas with which I am familiar. But some of them may be faulty. This is just my modest knowledge of an opening (d3 Spanish) with which I am not that familiar.

Playing d5 and often then d4. This can be followed up by dxc3 bxc3 b4 to undermine the pawn on c3 and free up the d4 square for occupation (perhaps by a knight).
Rerouting the f6 knight to d7. This gives black the possibility of f5, which could be viable depending on the situation. It also allows the dark-squared bishop to go to f6, where it pressures d4 and might eventually end up on g7. The knight on d7 can then go to b6.
Playing on the kingside, Kings Indian style, by maneuvering the f6 knight to g7, playing f5, perhaps rerouting the c6 knight to f7. Why often responds to this plan with an early g4, discouraging black from playing f5, and playing on the kingside him or herself.
Playing on the queenside, starting with the moves Na5 Bc2 c5. A rook can go on c8, and then black can push c4 or b4, and try to open up the queenside. However, it can sometimes be difficult to pry open the queenside without an open c-file, as you often get in other lines.

Plans 3 and 4 are general plans that apply to most Spanish openings, whereas 1 and 2 are more typical in the d3 Spanish. I guess I have a passing knowledge of what to do in this opening, but, I still feel like it's not nearly enough.

Are there any key ideas or characteristics that I am missing, that are specific to the d3 Spanish? How is it strategically different from other Spanish openings? Are any of my above plans faulty? Can any of the above plans be elaborated more?

[fen ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. d3

I have found some ideas for you from an online source. I hope that this helps you!

Quote: “All this being said, there is some downside to playing d3 one move earlier -- there always is. Seeing as the idea of playing 6.d3 following 5...Be7 is to have black commit to developing their bishop to that square, playing d3 a move earlier with 5.d3 allows black to play differently and more advantageously. This is done by black playing d6 (protecting the e5 pawn) followed by g6 and Bg7, which is a useful and common maneuver found in many Ruy Lopez lines. Black here is able to develop their bishop to g7 immediately, and white can't punish this with an early break in the center with d4 (a la the Fianchetto/Smyslov Variation of the Ruy Lopez with 3...g6), as it comes with a loss of tempo (time) because the d3 pawn has already moved. Therefore, black is thought to equalize rather easily if they conduct this early Bg7 maneuver against 5.d3 (occurring roughly 20% of the time according to databases), as black essentially reaches a Deferred Steinitz or Russian Defense type of position with an extra tempo. You can think of 5.0-0 as a very useful waiting move in relation to the 6.d3 variation, in that it waits for black to commit their bishop so that white may potentially hang on to an advantage somewhat longer.” -Source: https://hubpages.com/games-hobbies/Chess-Openings-The-Ruy-Lopez-with-6-d3