Have any tournaments considered a draw to be a loss for both sides? In most tournaments, a win is 1 point and a draw is 0.5 points for both sides. I'm aware of "armagadden matches" where a draw is 0 points for white, and 1 point for black.
Have there been any tournaments where a draw is 0 points for both sides?
This would seem to be another possible solution to the problem of too many draws, by removing any incentive to draw from both sides. (It might have a negative consequence of leading both players to play out draws for the full 50 moves hoping for the tiny off-chance of a blunder.)

Never heard of. A few thoughts:

As we all know :-), chess is a draw.
win 3/draw 1/loss 0 tournaments do exist (same rule idea, less drastic).
In Swiss tournaments, I say this would be an invitation to even more "Swiss gambit" (although evidently you can't overtake in the last round, as all scores are integer)
It's also pointless for an 1:1 match, thus it probably could be tried only in a round robin.
Just for fun, I applied your proposal to a random GM round-robin: Candidate 2020. The ranking did not change much. (But that is obviously no argument, since they would have played differently.)
Evidently, you need even more fine scoring (and could use the standard one, naturally...)
The proposal would suit hazard play: Why not throw in a possibly incorrect sacrifice? You don't lose much if it doesn't work.
Coda: Might be worth an experiment.


White's plans from this position I am not asking for analysis, just want to know what are the plans that white should go for (long term / short term) given that black pawn structure is not so great.

[Title "Black to move"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "2r1k2r/p4p2/p1pqbp1p/3p4/3P4/P3P3/1PQ2PPP/2R1K1NR b - - 0 1"]

Strategically speaking, white stands well for several reasons.

Black pawn structure is bad( 2 double pawns(isolated), d6 is
backward)
Black has bad bishop(his bishop  and pawns stands light squares mostly)
Black has less control on dark squares.

For that reason white should do these following steps;

Change the most active Black piece (Queen)
Put the knight a dark square to control light squares(most probably
f4 or c5)
Put his king a center square,
Pressure on c or b file.
White also can exchange 1 or 2 rooks, because black has many
weaknesses staticly.
If white will manage to pass endgame stage, he has strong initiave.


What is the record for the most pawn double-steps in a professional game? Quite simply, what is the record for the most pawn double-steps in a professional game? Drawn and won games are both considered.  Computer games of any kind are not to be considered.
The most I have found, in quite a few games, is 8. For example, here is a game in which all 8 double steps occur in just 15 moves.
[Title "John Cochrane-Bonnerjee Mohishunder, Calcutta, 1855"]
[FEN ""]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nxf7 Kxf7 5. Bc4+ Be6 6. Bxe6+ Kxe6 7. O-O Kd7 8. d4 Kc8 9. c4 Nbd7 10. Nc3 Kb8 11. f4 a6 12. a4 Ka7 13. b4 Rc8 14. Be3 Kb8 15. a5 c5 16. b5 Ka7 17. d5 g6 18. Qb3 Bg7 19. Rfb1 Rb8 20. b6+ Ka8 21. Nb5 Ne8 22. Ra2 Rf8 23. Na7 Ndf6 24. Nc6 Qd7 25. Nxb8 Kxb8 26. e5 Ng4 27. e6 Qe7 28. Kh1 Qh4 29. g3 Qh3 30. Bg1 g5 31. Qa4 Nef6 32. e7 Rc8 33. fxg5 Ne4 34. Rg2 Nc3 35. e8=Q Nxa4 36. Qxa4 Rf8 37. Re1 Be5 38. Qb3 Kc8 39. Qd3 Kd7 40. Rf1 Ke7 41. Rxf8 Kxf8 42. Qf5+ Kg7 43. Qd7+ Kg6 44. Qxb7 Bd4 45. Bxd4 cxd4 46. Qc6 d3 47. Qxd6+ Kxg5 48. Qf4+ Kg6 49. Qe4+ Kg7 50. Qxd3

This is clearly contrived, but it was an actual tournament game so it wins that record. :)

  [Title "Danny Jazmati-Marcel Harff, NRW-ch U12, 2002"]
  [FEN ""]

1. a4 a5 2. b4 b5 3. c4 c5 4. d4 d5 5. e4 e5 6. f4 f5 7. g4 g5 8. h4 h5 9. Ra2 Rh6 10. Rh3 Raa6 11. Bd2 Be7 12. Bc3 Bf6 13. Nd2 Ne7 14. Nb3 Ng6 15. Ne2 Bb7 16. Kf2 Nd7 1/2-1/2


Feeling cramped in the Najdorf I played this game recently at a tournament, and lost pretty decisively. I thought about it a bit, and I think it's representative of something that happens somewhat often in my games when I play the Najdorf: I get really cramped and white launches a successful Kingside attack.

More concretely:

Is my assessment correct - that misplaying the Najdorf and not creating enough space led to my loss?
Are there any particular moves that stand out as blunders?
How could I have played this differently?

Game as follows:

[fen ""]
1. e4 c5
2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 cxd4
4. Nxd4 Nf6
5. Nc3 a6
6. Be3 e6 {I don't know any theory past this point.}
7. f3 Be7
8. Qd2 Bd7 {Premonitions of a Kingside attack, but I feel safe at the moment}
9. Bc4 O-O
10. O-O-O Ne8 {I was trying to launch a Kingside attack myself, and get my knight to a better square eventually}
11. g4 Nc7
12. h4 Bxh4 {Maybe I was too greedy here - it ended up allowing him to clear out some clutter and really get his pieces working together}
13. g5 Bg3
14. f4 e5
15. Nf5 Bxf5
16. exf5 exf4
17. Bxf4 Bxf4
18. Qxf4 Re8
19. g6 hxg6
20. fxg6 1-0

I resigned here.

Let's forget for a moment that it's a Najdorf.

You were cramped because you never gave yourself space. Instead, you spent a lot of time wandering around with your knight and bishop and opening lines against your own king. You didn't develop. You didn't counter-attack.

When White castled on the opposite side to you, they were making a simple declaration: I will checkmate you unless you checkmate me first.  This is absolutely typical in the Najdorf and it requires Black to carefully balance counter-attack and defence. Attacking on the queenside usually requires ...b5 (kicking the bishop with tempo), ...b4 (kicking the knight with tempo) and ...Rc8 (aiming at the king).

There's a good lecture by Jonathan Schrantz at the St Louis Chess Club that covers a lot of the Najdorf-specific ideas. ...b5 and ...d5 are the big breaks that you need to try to get in.


Playchess client for Mac Is it possible that world's most famous and most popular chess server Playchess is not available in any desktop application for Mac OSX? It is possible to reach it through Deep Fritz for Windows, but what about the Mac users? I know there is a web-client, but frankly, it soo suxx it hurts to even see it, let alone try and use it. Also, I have tried e-mailing them at support@playchess.com regarding this issue, but the e-mail is broken! They can't even receive an e-mail. So much from a customer support. Is anyone else confronted with this problem, and what is the right way to fight it?

Sadly, yes. There were times I installed Windows just because of playchess.com doesn't support other operation systems. Your options are:

Installing Windows

with boot camp
in a virtual machine

Installing a compability layer

Wine (free)
Crossover (commercial)

Helpful links

http://www.howtogeek.com/187359/5-ways-to-run-windows-software-on-a-mac/
http://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/


How can I get informed if a titled chess player will be holding a simul? I would like to go to more simuls, but I'm unsure when they're held and at what location. How can I get informed of such information?

Generally, you should belong to a club if you wish to play titled players in simuls. The more active your club is the more likely the club is able to do, which includes paying titled players to host simuls.

Other than that, you could consider hosting the event. Simply contact titled players on sites like chess.com and the ICC to see if they're interested. They'll usually charge a fee, and off you go.

Sometimes titled players host simuls at tournaments as well, so it would do you well to find out what tournaments are near you or that you can attend. If you're in the US, then both USCF and FIDE are good for finding upcoming tournaments. Outside the US and you'll want to stick to FIDE as well as other national federations to find chartered/sponsored tournaments.


Why does NN + MCTS & AB + handwritten eval dominate engine chess? As I understand it engines can be divided into four groups right now: those that use Alpha-beta (AB) + those that use Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) for search, and those that use handwritten functions + those that use neural networks for eval. The two strongest engines are Leela and Stockfish. Leela uses MCTS + NN, while Stockfish uses AB + handwritten.

Why these two combinations? Why not NN + AB, or MCTS + handwritten? If MCTS is better than AB, why isn't Komodo MCTS stronger than Komodo AB? If AB is better than MCTS, why isn't Leela using AB instead?

Speed

Neural networks operate much more slowly than handcrafted evaluation functions. In the TCEC Superfinal, Leela Chess Zero, running on two GPUs each with dedicated tensor cores, is able to search around 60 thousand positions per second. By contrast, Stockfish, on a single core on my PC, searches over 2 million positions per second.

While modern engines have a huge selection of techniques to cut off unnecessary branches, alpha-beta tree search is still very much a brute force technique, requiring vast numbers of positions to be searched to determine good moves.

MCTS, by contrast, is far more selective, and only expands its search tree towards the most promising moves, which allows it to make the most of the more limited number of nodes that can be searched.

Worst-case behaviour

One of the key requirements of the evaluation function for an engine based around alpha-beta search is that it must have good worst-case behaviour. This is because any large error in evaluation, however rare, can easily be propagated to the root and lead to a horrendously incorrect move being played.

By nature of their complexity, neural networks are prone to overfitting and can only be as good as the data used to train them. For example, in match 80 of the TCEC Season 14 Superfinal, on move 47 Lc0 was apparently unfazed by Stockfish's extra queen, evaluating the position as a cool +0.77, while Stockfish (and most other engines) sported an evaluation of +8.31. A popular explanation for this is that Lc0 may not have had a significant number of games with multiple queens on the board in its training set.

Neural networks, therefore, have poor worst-case behaviour, and hence are likely to perform poorly with alpha beta search. MCTS, by contrast, allows an incorrect score assigned to one position to be offset by averaging it out with reasonable scores assigned to positions nearby in the search.

Quiescence

All strong alpha-beta engines use a technique called quiescence search, a restricted form of alpha-beta search applied at leaf nodes, in acknowledgement that their handcrafted evaluation functions only work well in "quiet" positions, where there are no pending captures or checks.

For example, immediately after the first half of a queen exchange, a handcrafted evaluation function might tell you that the side which just had their queen taken is completely lost, whereas a neural network may be able to understand that the queen will be recaptured soon.

This makes handcrafted evaluation functions similarly unsuitable for MCTS due to absence of quiescence search, resulting in the handcrafted functions performing poorly much of the time (although Komodo 12 MCTS gets around this restriction by using short alpha-beta searches anyway, to get quiescent positions and hence allow its handcrafted evaluation to return a reasonable score)


Just for fun and curiosity: is there cheating on professional chess tournaments/games? Just for fun and curiosity. Has any GM ever tried to cheat during a game? Maybe even making (on purpose or not) an illegal move that was not caught by his opponent?

NOTE: Of course when you are playing on the computer there is no cheating, because the computer won't allow it. I am talking about face-to-face real-life games.

There have been cheating scandals in top level chess, most notably in 2010 involving French top 100 player Sebastien Feller and in 2012 involving German GM Falko Bindrich.

These two scandals involved computer assistance. There are other forms of cheating, like throwing games, which are harder to prove.

Illegal moves aren't an issue, but Kasparov allegedly violated the touch-move rule in a game against Judith Polgar.


Is this position a fortress? I am unsure how to break through as white here. There seem to be no way to get a passed pawn on the e file. Stockfish evaluates this as +3 at high depths but gives no plan. Any plans?
[fen "3Q4/5pk1/6rp/6p1/4K3/6PP/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

Edit: On further analysis, the following position is winning, is there any way to force this position?
[fen "8/5p1k/6rp/8/3QK2P/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

I took the liberty of consulting with the Syzygy tablebases for a while, and came to the following conclusion: the endgame is drawn. This is far from obvious, but it has to do with the following fortress:
[fen "4Q3/5pk1/7r/6KP/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

Black draws this by shuffling the rook between e6 and h6. Bizarrely enough, as long as the h-pawn remains for white there is no way for white's queen and king to simultaneously attack the rook on h6, which is the key realization behind this fortress. The only thing black needs to watch out for is the fact that if white's queen is threatening to get to f8, then black needs to prevent this by making sure that their king is on g7 to cover the square. However, this is always possible for black to do, since with the black pawn on f7 there is no square on the board for white's queen where it would be covering g7 and at the same time would be threatening to go to f8. I chose to highlight the last part of the sentence, because it is critical. One final note before we move on: this fortress would hold no matter where white's queen and king is placed (as long as the white king stays on the 5th rank and below).
Let us now analyze a few key positions with the above fortress in mind, beginning with the tablebase win that OP found:
 [fen "8/5p1k/6rp/8/3QK2P/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

This position is a win for white if white is to move, and the only winning move is Qc5. Don't ask me why this position is winning if white is to move, I actually don't fully understand it myself and can only say that it is indeed a tablebase win. I would actually recommend going over the winning lines with the tablebases online (https://syzygy-tables.info/?fen=8/5p1k/6rp/8/3QK2P/8/8/8_w_-_-_0_1), the way the queen manoeuvres to break black's fortress is quite astonishing.
In fact, place white's king wherever in the rectangle drawn up by a1 and f5, and you find that white is winning every time as long as they are to move in the above position. But things change if black is to move. It is immediately obvious that ...Rg4+ in the diagrammed position would be winning for black, but even if this move were not a possibility (as when white's king is anywhere except for e4), the position would still be a draw.

Question: what is the drawing idea?

 The drawing idea is for black to play their pawn to h5. After this, there is no way for white to make any progress unless the white queen reaches f8. But this is easy to prevent, as black's king will always be able to reach g7 when this is threatened, as mentioned before. Even if white were to eliminate the h5 pawn this would still not be enough, since black would then achieve the fortress I discussed at the beginning of this answer.

Follow-up question (to test how well the previous information has been processed): If white is to move, why is Qc5 the only winning idea?

 This is because Qc5 is the only move that sidesteps the skewer with ...Rg4+ while simultaneously preventing black from achieving the draw by means of ...h5, since white's queen threatens to infiltrate on f8 from c5.

We are now finally ready to deal with the initial position immediately:
[fen "3Q4/5pk1/6rp/6p1/4K3/6PP/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

We note three key points:

The position is drawn if white were to play g4 here. Why?

 This is because black would then shuffle their rook between e6 and g6 indefinitely, and the only way for white to make progress would be to push the h-pawn forward. But this would allow a trade of pawns, and the g-pawn cannot be used to stop the rook shuffle between e6 and g6. Again, all that black has to keep in mind is to avoid letting the queen into f8.

If white were to push h4 in the above position, black has a concrete drawing line. What is it?

 The drawing line is: 1.h4 gxh4 2. gxh4 (the only feasible winning attempt) h5! (and the drawing fortress is achieved for black).

The only way for white to make any progress in the above position is to play either g4 or h4 at some point, since otherwise black will just shuffle the rook between e6 and g6, with no way in for the white king.

Using points 1, 2 and 3, we can say with confidence that the initial position must be a draw, as claimed in the first paragraph.


How do I improve my checkmate skills? I am able to develop my pieces systematically and purposefully. I am also good at defending my pieces. However, when the game gets closer to an end, I need to be able to see different mate variations easily. But alas I am having difficulty seeing them. As a result, I often start losing my positional advantage and win the game in more moves than it should actually take. Thanks in advance for your help!

I'll try my best to answer this rather ambiguous question however I'd like to note that if you want help in chess your best bet is to familiarize yourself with terms like "tactics", "strategy" and so forth.

A little bit on 3 major terms in chess, or at least how I perceive them to be:

Tactics

patterns in chess(calculable) that lead to something factual such as winning a pawn, winning a piece, mating and so forth. Usually a forced sequence of moves.

Strategies

Really just the general plan you're following. If you try to pressure a certain square or use a sequence of moves to go on the offense and had that as your plan that's an implementation of a strategy.

Positional play

The most ambiguous term, it's generally just logical chess; Knights are strong in the center so you'd play your knight there if you had the opportunity. You don't follow a particular strategy nor did you calculate variations to see if this knight will lead to a definite advantage but because experience and general chess knowledge dictates knights are strong in the center you can conclude there is no downside to having it there, the opposite even.

All these terms can become moot easily, miscalculations, positional play that's not backed up by proper think-work and strategies that become invalid due to the opponent playing out his own game... You get the point.

So what we're looking for here is the term tactics, the pure act of seeing forceful moves that lead to a certain advantage. Tactics are something usually gained through practice and lots of experience, it also helps when you are familiar with the basic mates(mentioned before like King+Queen, King+rook, and King+2xbishop or King+bishop+Knight if you're feeling really up to the task) but also mates that simply involve certain patterns. Here's a supersimple one but you get the idea:

1K6/PPP5/8/8/8/4r3/3k4/8 b - - 0 1

There's a few ways to practice tactics:

Books

Books that involve endgames will always be great, they involve a great deal of tactics and will surely strengthen your ability to see them throughout the entire game.

Chess puzzle books are another great idea.

Websites

Let's not forget this great resource called the internet, there's websites out there with tactics trainers designed to take in account your playing strength as you do their puzzles. Two of these I'm aware of are:

www.Chess.com
www.Chesstempo.com

Especially Chesstempo is a great resource.


What is a "club player"? I often see this phrase being used in chess articles, apparently used to distinguish these players from professional chess players, grandmasters, etc.

But what exactly are they?

What Elo range?
Only players associated with a club?
Why not call them amateurs?

If you call somebody a club player, you not only distinguish him from professionals and masters (though those obviously play in clubs too), but also from hobbyists. And that distinction makes some sense, because hobby players usually don't reach a strength beyond 1500 Elo or so.

So a club player is somebody who is serious about chess, plays rated games regularly and knows something about the game. He is only implicitly not a master (otherwise you'd call him that). Depending on which distinction you want to stress, you might also call him a "rated player" or an "untitled player".

The term amateur is also often used, but of course, depending on context, an amateur can also be a hobbyist or even a non-professional world class player (like, Euwe, McShane, Malakhov …).


Storing tournaments for use in Arena I want to store a collection of games (say 20) from a certain tournament as a single unit, so when I open the file, I can view all the matches of the tournament as one, instead of viewing each game separately(each game in a different file).

Arena does this automatically for engine tournaments (tournament files) , but how do I do it for OTB games whose PGN I have?

As an example, how do I save the matches of the ongoing Chess World Cup as one unit?

You don't need Arena. Simply open a new notepad window. Then proceed by opening each individual PGN file in notepad, copy its contents and paste them in the new window you opened (i.e. put the contents of all of the PGN files in one file), then save as a PGN file. Open this file in arena and you will have all games in one file.


Longest forced sequence that ends with checkmate and every move is a check What is the longest move sequence that ends with checkmate and every move is a check by both players?

I'm not aware of any resources documenting the specific situation you're asking about. The closest available is probably this page from Tim Krabbé's chess records which documents the longest known series of mutual checks, but not ending in checkmate.

One of the puzzles from the page could end in checkmate via 14.. Qb7# instead of 14...Bxb7+, so this would be an example of a checkmate after 27 consecutive checks. This series of checks could be considered "forced" by the objective of the puzzle.

[Title "G. Leathem, Fairy Chess Review, 1938, 28 Consecutive Checks"]
[FEN "K2kn2r/NP1P1PPP/1PPPnNq1/1Rr1Bb1Q/4R3/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

1. c7+ N8xc7+ 2. bxc7+ Nxc7+ 3. dxc7+ Ke7+ 4. g8=N+ Rxg8+ 5. hxg8=N+ Qxg8+ 6. f8=Q+ Qxf8+ 7. Qe8+ Qxe8+ 8. d8=Q+ Qxd8+ 9. c8=N+ Rxc8+ 10. bxc8=N+ Qxc8+ 11. Bb8+ Bxe4+ 12. Nd5+ Bxd5+ 13. Nc6+ Bxc6+ 14. Rb7+ Bxb7 (14...Qxb7#)


Which are the ideas in the Van't Kruijs Opening? In a game with a friend, he made a really unexpected move, e3:

[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/4P3/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

Afterwards, when analysing the game I found its name is Van't Kruijs Opening and I was wondering which are the ideas to play it.

For white, this seems a passive move, giving advantage in the centre to black. But on the other side, like e4, it opens the way to the King's Bishop and Queen. It can also lead to aggressive variations like the Keoni-Hiva Gambit, where white sacrifices a pawn for development, which seems dangerous.

[FEN ""]
1. e3 d5 2. Nc3 e5 3. f4

Could you confirm/refute this analysis? Could you discuss other ideas?

White can transpose to the Stonewall or the Colle systems after 1...d5 or if 1...e5 attempt a reverse French.

Otherwise 1. e3 is a move which needs no attention or search for ideas, because there can be none.


What was the first chess-playing automaton? One well-known automaton is The Turk. What is the first one and when was it constructed, including fake ones?  [1]:

In 1910 Leonardo Torres developed a machine he called "El Ajedrecista". It was capable of automatically playing K+R vs K endgames without human intervention. It was publicly demonstrated for the first time in 1914.


What are the chess time limits used by FIDE? I was wondering, what time limits does FIDE use for its professional matches?

Interestingly there are two FIDE documents specifying these. Fortunately they don't contradict each other.
First, FIDE Handbook - General Rules and Technical Recommendations for Tournaments / 07. Time Control / says:

There is a single time control for all major FIDE events: 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move one.

The list of FIDE events where this single time control will be used:
Chess Olympiads
World Team Championships
Continental Team Championships
World Cup
Continental Championships
Zonal Tournaments
World Youth & Junior Championships
Continental Youth & Junior Championships
World School Championships
Continental Club Championships

There are some obvious omissions here. What about the World Championships? The Women's World Championships? The Candidates? What about rapid and blitz championships?
Well, section 12 of FIDE Handbook C. General Rules and Technical Recommendations for Tournaments
02. Standards of Chess Equipment, venue for FIDE Tournaments, rate of play and tie-break regulations Approved by the 2018 FIDE General Assembly
taking effect from 1 July 2019 has a full list.

The following time controls are approved for FIDE World Events:
No EVENT TIME CONTROL
1 World Championship Match 100’/40+50’/20+15’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
2 Candidates Tournament 100’/40+50’/20+15’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
3 World Cup 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
4 Grand Prix 100’/40+50’/20+15’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
5 Women’s World Championship Match 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
6 Chess Olympiad 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
7 World Team Championship 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
8 Women’s World Team Championship 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
9 Women’s Grand Prix 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
10 World Senior Championship 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
11 World Senior Team Championship 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
12 World Juniors and Girls U-20 Championship 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
13 Continental Individual Championships 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
14 Continental Team Championships 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
15 World Youth 14-16-18 Championships 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
16 World Cadets 08-10-12 Championships 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
17 World Schools Individual Championships 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
18 World Schools Team Championships 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
19 World Amateur Championship 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
20 World Olympiad U-16 90’/40+30’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1
21 World Rapid Championships 15’ with incr. 10” per move, starting from move 1
22 World Blitz Championships 3’ with incr. 2” per move, starting from move 1

Just to decipher what that means. Take -

1 World Championship Match 100’/40+50’/20+15’/end with incr. 30”/move, starting from move 1

This means that
There is a 30 second increment starting from move 1
The first 40 moves have to be played in 100 minutes
The next 20 moves have to be played in an additional 50 minutes
After this (so 60 moves already played) the players get an additional 15 minutes to complete the game


How should I defend against this sacrifice in the Two Knights Defense? I often get to play this opening :

[fen ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d3 d6 5. Nc3 Bg4 (5... Be7 6. Be3 Bg4) (4... Bc5 5. Nc3 d6 6. O-O Bg4)

Sometimes there may be other moves or developments before the pin, like in the variations. In any case, now that my light squared bishop is outside my pawn chain, it's hard for it to come back and defend my knight on f3. So I usually feel like I need to kick the bishop from g4 with a move like h3. After it retreats and 7.g4, I'll sometimes see my pawns captured :

[fen "r2qkb1r/ppp2ppp/2np1n2/4p3/2B1P1b1/2NP1N2/PPP2PPP/R1BQK2R w - - 0 6"]

6. h3 Bh5 7. g4 Nxg4 8. hxg4 Bxg4 (7... Bg6)

I looked at this position in Rybka and used the Chess.com computers to analyze the position, both of which label 7... Nxg4 as a mistake. However, I'm not sure how to punish this mistake, as afterwards, my knight is still pinned to the queen, and my bishop on c4 still can't find any good way to come back and defend.

Can someone explain to me the correct way to continue this position as white? I usually find myself losing the knight on f3, and eventually lose the position. Here is a link to the position in Chess.com's Game explorer. It isn't seen very often at master level play.

I almost always play 4. d4 instead of 4. d3, to keep that line open for the bishop, and open up the game a bit as well. That's not to say d3 isn't ok.

Without computer analysis:
That said, once they make the mistake of sacrificing that knight, you should quickly play Be3 to defend against them double attacking your pinned knight. Once that is accomplished, you can play Qe2 with the plan of castling queenside and evacuating your destroyed kingside pawn structure. Your goal should then be to carefully simplify by trading down until you get to an endgame where you're up a minor piece.

With computer analysis:
Stockfish recommends playing 9. Nd5, with the plan of playing 10. Ne3 for most responses, attacking the bishop on g4 (causing him to retreat with ...Bd7 or ...Be6, probably. The great thing to notice here is that 9... Nd4 is not actually a threat, even though at first glance it appears to lose the knight on f3. After 9... Nd4, White's tactic is as follows: 10. Nxd4! Bxd1 11. Bb5! Qd7 (there is no other option to prevent mate, either 11... Qd7 or 11... c6 12. Nxc6 bxc6 13. Bxc6 Qd7). Bad news for black. After the dust settles it probably looks something like this.

Back to the main line: 9. Nd5. Black can respond with a dozen reasonable moves (...Na5, ...Be7, ...h5, ...Qd7, ...Qc7, ...Qc8, ...a6, ...Rc8, ...a5, ...Rb8), all of which follow with 10. Ne3 (except for 9... Bxf3, in which case 10. Qxf3 is rather necessary). After this, you can start a kingside attack somewhat with Rg1, and getting your pieces out of the way for a castle queenside. You can turn your destroyed kingside pawns to your advantage by starting the attack there. Plenty of options from here on. You end up with something like:

For your second line, after you've already castled, I would not play h3 + g4, which weakens your king's defenses (even if they don't sacrifice a piece there). If you really want to play g4, you can still recover with Be3, defending against ...Nd4. They'll probably bring out the queen to attack (...Qf6), and you need to get your king out of there, undoing your castle to get your rook back outside of the king: Kg2 followed by Rg1 or Rh1. This situation isn't nearly as good for white; you'd be better off just avoiding g4 after castling, at least at this early stage.


World Cup: passed pawns vs extra piece [fen "N7/P3pk1p/3p2p1/r4p2/8/4b2B/4P1KP/1R6 w - - 0 34"]
[white "Max Illingworth"]
[black "Pentala Harikrishna"]

White to move.

In this World Cup game, Black demonstrated the power of pawns and won the game despite being a piece down. I think White's defense in the game was very weak (possibly due to time pressure). I think this is the critical position,  White needs to decide what to do with the extra piece. Despite a piece down, I think this is close to winning for Black, but the computer thinks it's only slightly better for Black.

Is there a defense for White? Is there a better line than the continuation played in the game?

Despite this post being over 2 years old, the position seems to be very interesting and caught my attention. So here are my two-cents on it:

I'm rather surprised by white's follow-up moves in that game, I just don't see what is being gained! Instead, first thought that comes to my mind is to bring the h3 bishop into the game, which in fact in the actual game is left on h3 for at least 10 moves, then moved to f1 and eventually e3-Be2 is played, but in all that the light square bishop has played no role whatsoever to justify white for being up a piece.

So let's simply focus on that and try to revive the bishop with Kf1 and Bg2. Once our bishop is in play, the trade of black's bishop for our knight will likely be in our favour as we'd still have our two pawns, and two active pieces against the single rook, whereas in the game itself, once the bishop is brought into the game, white has already lost the h2 pawn and black's pawns are already storming down the board.

Here's an annotated diagram to study Kf1-Bg2 idea:

 [title "A different approach for white: reviving the bishop"]
 [fen "N7/P3pk1p/3p2p1/r4p2/8/4b2B/4P1KP/1R6 w - - 0 34"]

 1.Kf1 Rxa7 2.Bg2 g5 {the early g-pawn push is mainly aimed at stopping white's h-pawn from advancing and attempting to undermine black's pawn chain. If black is allowed, g4 is next.} 3.Bc6 {Important move here: stops the Ra4 - Rf4+ - Rg4 maneuver, and leaves g2 as Luft for the king thus freeing the rook from the first row, more active prospects compared to g2, and temporarily untouchable on c6 as Ra6 can be answered by Be8+ and Nc7, all while maintaining control over the important long diagonal. } g4 (3...e6 4.Rb7+ Rxb7 5.Bxb7 {and if anything the draw is well in hand, as we've kept the knight next to the opposite color bishop situation.})  4.Nb6 {hard to find an immediate plan for black} Bd4 {prophylactic vs Nd5} (4...Bxb6 5.Rxb6 {and unlike the actual game we still have the h-pawn, our bishop is in play, and our rook in time to go behind the pawns} h5 6.Kf2 h4 7.Rb8 Ra3 8.Bd7 e6 9.Rh8 {forcing h3 with all the pawns on light squares, then we just have to stop f4 and black cannot make progress.} h3 10.Rh6 f4 11.Kg1 {side-stepping g3 with check, as that would probably be losing on the spot} Ra1+ 12.Kf2 Rh1 13.Bxe6+ Kg7 14.Rh4 Rxh2+ 15.Kg1 Rxe2 16.Bxg4 h2+ 17.Kh1 Rf2 18.Rxh2 {it's worth exploring some of these lines as they're very sharp and concrete therefore highly non-trivial.}) 5.Nd5 e6 6.Nf4 Rc7 7.Ba4 {Even Rb7 looks sufficient for a draw, but requires more calculation to make sure.} d5 8.h3 {if Be3, Ng2 works which is lucky. As for the rest: we've brought all pieces into play, pinned most black pawns to light squares, and managed to trade our h pawn, and big prospects of holding this position, and even winning it if black goes wrong.}

So in summary, it seems that by bringing the bishop into play immediately, we've managed to muster up an actual defense against the pawn storm, and even create active play, thus in fact making a case for being a piece up! This seems to be far more playable than the version of the endgame that transpired in the actual game.


Should playing chess against yourself always end up in a draw? You play against yourself, using your own opening repertoire.  Thus by playing both White and Black, you reach positions that should be fairly equal, and then you continue to play both sides, obviously knowing each sides' plans.  Should the game always end in a draw?  How often is White expected to win?

No.

When you are playing seriously against yourself, you still have to commit to moves. After making the move you start analysing again and see things you previously have not seen, and you may discover an error in the moves you have already made and the game becomes a win for one of the sides you play.

Or you may find a winning way without really catching an error in the previous moves.

Note that there are no secret plans in chess, the full truth is always on the board. It is up to you to read the board and draw the best consequences of that reading.


I need to get rid of Black's light-square Bishop I've self-taught myself Chess, and played against computers (as in the board shaped ones) and I quite quickly found an opening that isn't strong, but it is not bad. I'm fairly new at this "Algebraic chess notation" so if I slip up and use something like the more verbose NB1-C3 please just go with it.

f2-f4 is bad. Immediately white is defending (because black WILL do Nf6, this is a great move for black as it protects h5 and g4, h5 is a good square for a certain queen.... (another long term thing I have found to be good for black is a7-a6, as this protects b5))

g2-g4 is another bad one, Black moves d7 and the light square bishop gets it. This does achieve my goal, if my goal is also to lose my queen.

My opening (all these are white's moves) goes as follows:

d2-d4
Bf4
e2-e3
c2-c3

Depending on what black does I may do any/all of:

Bd3
OR Bb5 - this is either a check or a knight lock (putting pressure on black to castle high-side, giving me a good chance to attack by getting my queen to H7, a checkmate)
ND2 (this is a good defensive move and brings that knight into play on the high side, if I've played NF3 these two cover each other Ng5 covers that A7 square I want to get my queen into, thus would be a checkmate)

This - feels - like a good technique because it forces black to keep a lot of pieces on the high side (keeping that checkmate valid)

The only problem is it doesn't really keep black's queen busy, which is why I move my dark-square bishop out of the way early, it doesn't stop me from castling if I can see something bad coming later. It's also not very useful, I find my dark-square-bishop just.. gets in the way really. Putting it there gives me the chance to sacrifice it to get rid of something annoying, it might also keep the queen off d6. Which is the only way she can attack my high-side with the pressure this puts on black's high-side (which keeps the H7 checkmate valid).

HOWEVER I am constantly foiled by Black's "useless" Bishop. The light square one that starts at C8, especially if it gets on the B1 to H7 diagonal, especially on the higher end of it.

I need help finding a variation of this that can get rid of that irritating Bishop! This method "feels" good because it has that backup-night (if my high-side one is taken, the other knight is a move behind)

Now some of you might thing this is too vague, but there is a surprisingly small number of "good moves" I think the description here should be adequate to give you an idea of what I am talking about.  If not I can expand it (give me a question to answer) but I've tried loads of plays and then gone back a few moves to try a different line! I don't know how to salvage this.

There's not much I can do with my light-bishop in this game other than try and get black to castle with it. Unfortunately it's pretty much stuck on the (rather empty) low-side. I cannot bring it back onto that diagonal (B1-H7) as bait for that Black-light-square-Bishop because I cannot protect it to trade with, I'd be giving up a piece and stalling the game by a move.

I'm not quite sure what I hope for as an answer either, I found this a week ago (or so) and thought "it can't hurt to ask".

John : I need a new car.

  Joe : Ok, let's buy one!

  Mark : Wait. Why do you need a new car?

  John : Because the battery in my car is really bad and my car doesn't
  start quickly.

  Mark : Have you tried installing a new battery?

  John : Gosh! Why didn't I think of that?

It seems to me you are saying something similar to "I need a new car" when you say "I need to get rid of Black's light-square Bishop".

That bishop is NOT necessarily your problem and if you think it is, then you still have a lot to learn.

First of all, if you play d4 and the system you described (Bf4, e3, c3), you cannot always prevent the bishop from coming to the b1-h7 diagonal. If you forcefully try to always achieve this, you will definitely compromise your own position.

It seems to me that the reason you find this bishop "irritating" is because you are limiting your plans to checkmating Black on h7. The bishop on the b1-h7 diagonal does foil these ideas. But maybe that should teach you that the "checkmate on h7" plan will not always work. So you should ask yourself, "What else can I do instead of checkmating on h7?" instead of asking how you can get rid of black's light squared bishop.


Why is it allowed to request an increment in time trouble? From the FIDE Handbook:

III.2.2 These Guidelines shall apply only to standard chess and rapid chess games without increment and not to blitz games.
III.4 If the player having the move has less than two minutes left on his clock, he may request that an increment extra five seconds be introduced for both players. This constitutes the offer of a draw. If the offer refused, and the arbiter agrees to the request, the clocks shall then be set with the extra time; the opponent shall be awarded two extra minutes and the game shall continue.

According to this, if I crush my opponent in a rapid game using all of my clock time except for a minute, then I can simply request an increment of 5 seconds for continuing the game (my opponent gets two minutes, but that will not affect the game due to his/her hopeless position). Is this fair enough?
There have been many examples where this rule could be used but wasn't, for instance, the Unofficial Chess960 World Championship, Carlsen could have requested an increment and tried to win the R + B vs R endgame instead of flagging. Why didn't he do so?

but that will not affect the game due to his/her hopeless position

Well, if your opponent has a hopeless position, they would be better off accepting the 'automatic' draw offer which is implied whenever you make this request: "This constitutes the offer of a draw."

Therefore, invoking this III.4 rule is only beneficial if you have a worse position and very little time left on your clock, which sort-of makes sense: especially in classical games, we want the stronger side to win on the board, not by simply moving their pieces around.

One of the strengths of this rule is that it's an objective rule. An older rule (III.5.1) is that the player in time trouble can claim their opponent isn't trying to win by normal means; validating this claim required a subjective decision by an arbiter. I had never heard of rule III.4; I wouldn't be surprised if once it's wider known, rule III.5.1 will be abandoned entirely.


What is the probability that an exchange sacrifice leads to a win? I seem to win a lot of games when I sac a rook for a bishop or a knight. Is this just me, or do exchange sacrifices often lead to a win?
I realize that any fool or noob can go overboard and do it all the time, but there are positions when it just feels right and they almost always lead to a win.
What guidance is there to better know when that sac of a rook for a minor piece is likely to pay off?

In my experience, it's best to just check what it gives, for example: if I now sacrifice my legs and in return all my tools will be active and the opponent's passive, then it's right to sacrifice my legs, every time I have to act like math, feet equal point, activity equal 1.2, direct attack On the king is worth 1.3, and so on, everyone has to decide for him what is worth to him an attack on the king, what is worth my feet, and thus decide whether to sacrifice or not. Hope I helped


Are certain foods or drinks better to consume than others when playing chess? Whenever I play long tournament games, I find that I drink simply enormous amounts of water, far more than my typical rate in daily life (and maybe even more than when I am unusually physically active). I don't do this deliberately, or with any purpose in mind; it just seems that my body desperately seeks hydration when I play chess. I know that some famous players swear by particular drinks during games, e.g. Boris Gelfand during his recent match with Anand talked about an energy drink that he always has in his thermos, and Magnus Carlsen seems to keep plenty of OJ around:

More generally, what I'd like to get here is this:

  Pointers to any studies concerning the advantages or disadvantages of the consumption of particular foods or drinks during sustained, concentrated mental activities or competitions like chess (but not necessarily chess).

One interesting read I stumbled on is FM Mike Klein's article "The Grandmaster Diet," which references some scholarly studies related to this matter, as well as items such as a survey by Roberto Baglione of the nutritional habits of 72 GMs and WGMs, which includes anecdotes like the following:

  "[GM John Fedorowicz] won’t eat a meal if he cannot complete it at least two hours before a game (according to Fedorowicz, GM Walter Browne used to advertise a free steak dinner to his opponent, with the caveat it had to be eaten right before the round). ... Fedorowicz almost always shuns food during games as well, though he did confess to eating a piece of cheese during a seven-hour round at a U.S. Championship several years ago.

I'd appreciate pointers to any other reliable sources that touch on this general topic of food and drink consumption during activities like chess.

Here is an article I came across a while ago.

This is probably the key part:

  Chess players should try to have breakfast daily.

  Avoiding “heavy foods” or foods of difficult digestion before games
  must be adopted as a regular habit for chess players. The last “main”
  meal before a game has to be had at least three hours in advance. If a
  player wishes to have something to eat nearer the time of the
  beginning of a competition (one or two hours before, e.g.) he/she
  should choose among fruits (whole ones, fruit salad or juices,
  raisins), cereal bars, pretzels, cookies, low fat yogurt with fruit or
  cereals, sports drinks.

  During the games, it is recommended fluid ingestion, and, if the chess
  player wants it (or when the game becomes long), solid foods. Mineral
  water, fruit juices, tea, coffee, sports drinks, cereal bars, fruits,
  raisins, dry fruits (almonds, e.g.), chocolate, cereal cookies, can be
  chosen. In all cases, moderate quantities should be taken.

  The best strategy to hydration is to drink small quantities at regular
  intervals, instead of greater quantities at a few intervals, and avoid
  being thirsty. The same indication should be followed during board
  training and physical activity. It is also important to begin the
  activity properly hydrated.


What is Alpha Zero's Play Style? (Including its Openings and its Middlegame) If you want to read about its opening strategy, it is down below the link. If you want to read about its middlegame strategy or basic play style, it is at the top

I want to know how I can play more like Alpha Zero. I think if we can see the main ideas that Alpha Zero uses (like fianchettoing his bishop) and put them into our own games, we could understand chess better and play better overall. Listed below are some few styles I learned from Alpha Zero, and below that are questions to spark your imagination about the different styles to look for in Alpha Zero's plays.

It tries to immobilize pieces.
Particularly the light square bishop is most of its games but it can be implemented on other pieces too.
It prefers position over the material.
(Unlike other chess engines, Alpha Zero is fine sacrificing a material to get an advantage, such as sacrificing a pawn to immobilize a light-squared bishop.
It prefers fianchettoing his light-squared bishop and castling kingside.
This could be because most of the games were against The Queen's Indian Defence with Stockfish, but I still think it prefers this idea.

Here are some questions to spark your imagination!
Would you describe Alpha Zero plays positionally of aggressively or anything in between?
Does Alpha Zero prefer bishops or knights more?
Does Alpha Zero use his f-pawn to attack the center or does it reject this idea?
Does Alpha Zero Move his Queen to c2 often? I've seen it played in some of its games and I don't know the purpose why?

I also suggest you look at this link:
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/alpha-zero-vs-alpha-zero-10-lesser-known-alpha-zero-lines

This link shows the openings that Alpha Zero plays if it has the black and white pieces. You can see that it doesn't barge into the center. One theory, for this reason, is that it plays flexible moves like c4 that attacks the center and waits for his opponents to barge into the center so it could pressure the center. Since white already attacks the center, the black pieces which are now in the center will have a lot of tension and fall. Also, it is a more flexible move and the formation in which to attack the center could be changed by what your opponent plays. (we still don't know what is the best way to attack the center once we found our opponents reply, we need help on that. ) In this time, it seems like white is trying to get kingside safety. There are still much more openings to explore (d4 and e4) and see the main ideas for the white and black side.

Anyway, my point is that we got a lot to learn from this information and it is going to take a long while for me to sort this out. For the chess community, let's collaborate and learn from this beast that is also known as Alpha Zero.

I want to know how I can play more like Alpha Zero. I think if we can
  see the main ideas that Alpha Zero uses (like fianchettoing his
  bishop) and put them into our own games, we could understand chess
  better and play better overall.

I don't think AlphaZero is any useful for teaching us chess. While I understand your enthusiasm, you learn more from your local master than a supercomputer.

  Here are some questions to spark your imagination! Would you describe
  Alpha Zero plays positionally of aggressively or anything in between?
  Does Alpha Zero prefer bishops or knights more? Does Alpha Zero use
  his f-pawn to attack the center or does it reject this idea? Does
  Alpha Zero Move his Queen to c2 often? I've seen it played in some of
  its games and I don't know the purpose why?

There is absolutely no way to infer from just 10 public games, but generally all modern engines prefer bishop a little better.

What we actually learn:

We haven't improved our chess playing strength from AlphaZero. What we learn is - machine learning works well with chess engine programming. Leela is a good example.

I've voted to close the question for too broad. If you can pinpoint your question to something more answerable, I'll modify my answer.


Trapped by this strange opening line, how to proceed? I play this kid that does strange things in the game. I thought in this following game that he was using the Pirc defense as Black, when it opened 1.d4 d6 2.e4 Nf6 3.Nc3. Then he goes off with 3...d5. It seems that I get trapped by this kind of (to me) irrational thing. Any advice on how best to proceed?

[FEN ""]
1. d4 d6 2. e4 Nf6 3. Nc3 d5

I have never seen this idea before, but it is not as stupid as it looks.

There are basically three options for white:

Play the Veresov, i.e. 4.f3. In that case black will argue that he has the black side of a Caro-Kann-Fantasy variation and that he will at one point play c5 in one move, regaining the tempo lost with d6-d5.
Play exd5. In that case black will say that he has a Scandinavian defense and that compared to the line 1.e4 d5 2.ed Nf6 3.Nf3 Nxd5 there is no 4.c4 kicking the knight from d5 and establishing a nice space advantage.
Play e5. In that case black will probably play 4...Ne4 and you can try to be tricky with 5.Nce2, trying to catch the knight with f3. Taking the knight directly with 5.Nxe4 is also possible, but there is probably no way to quickly assault the weak pawn on e4.

I think 4.e5 is the most principled option, but it is no refutation. You'll get a very complicated fight were the most you can hope for is that your opponent has to be more careful than you.


Traps in the Jobava Attack Are there any known early tactical traps in the so-called Jobava Attack (1.d4 d5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bf4) for both sides? Leaving out the Barry Attack (early g6 by Black).

Here are some mistakes you should avoid while playing the so-called Jobava Attack.

3...c5 is one good answer, and as you can see 4.Nb5 is not working here.

The video below also shows many tactics in the middlegame, after other continuations like 3...c6 and 3...e6.

After 14...Rfc8?! 15.Nf5 the best response is taking the knight and accepting a shattered pawn structure. Otherwise white is much better (+1.3 in the least: https://lichess.org/analysis/standard/r1r3k1/3bqppp/p3pn2/np1p2B1/3P4/P1NB3P/1PPQ1PP1/3RR1K1_b_-_-_1_17)

      [StartPly "5"]

      [FEN ""]
      1. d4 d5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. Bf4 c5 4. e3 (4. Nb5? Qa5+
5. Nc3 cxd4 6. Qxd4 Nc6 7. Qa4 Qxa4 8. Nxa4 Nb4 (8...e5)) cxd4
5. exd4 a6 6. Bd3 Nc6 7. Nge2 e6 8. Qd2 b5 9. O-O Be7 10. a3 Bd7 11. h3 O-O 12. Rfe1 Na5 13. Rad1 Qb6 14. Ng3 Rfc8?! (14... Rfe8!) 15. Nf5 Qd8? (15...exf5) 16.Nxe7+ Qxe7 17.Bg5

You can find a more detailed video explanation here:

https://youtu.be/5joSsNpJ9qw

Related games:

https://lichess.org/OfUGrtY6

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1838817

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1857787


Are engine ratings directly comparable to human-level play? Yesterday, I play a game against Stockfish 7, and it has 2200 rating points.

I drew 2 games, and lost 1. The point is that if I play against a human-rated 2200 player, I would probably have a positive score against him.

I also noticed that Stockfish 7 played much better than the average 2200 human player strength.

Do human-ratings and machine-ratings show the same strength of play?

What you have to understand is, first, that any rating is just a comparison of players within that pool. So a 2200 on chess.com is not the same as 2200 on lichess.com, or on ICC. They are probably close, but it is not the same.

Second, you need to realize that your three game sample is just not enough to draw any valid conclusions. You are human, so even if your winning expectancy were .95, you can always defy expectations, and make a blunder, and the computer, even handicapped, would still likely take advantage of it.

Lastly, at 2200, you are playing a handicapped computer. It is playing "not best" moves, but how is it playing them? Is it being told to play the fourth best move every time, or is it being told to play the best moves every time, but on the 5th move, play the 10th best move? Either way, you could have an anomaly where it plays less bad moves in an individual game, and when those worse moves do pop up, maybe you miss the opportunity.

The computer can only be handicapped so much.


It seems to me that draw is all Black can get, but maybe I am wrong? Recently I have played a game against a computer and came to the following position :

[Title "Black to move"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "3r4/p3Q1pk/1pp3p1/8/3qP3/P7/1P3RPP/6K1 b - - 0 1"]

I have played ...Rd7 and soon the game ended as a draw by threefold repetition.

Was I able to win?

I didn't see a thing, and nether did Stockfish.

[Title "Black to move"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "3r4/p3Q1pk/1pp3p1/8/3qP3/P7/1P3RPP/6K1 b - - 0 1"]

1... Rd6 2.Qh4+ (2.Qxa7?? Rf6 ) Kg8 3.Qh3 Qe5 4.Qc8+ Kh7 5.Qh3+ Qh5 6.Qxh5+ gxh5 7.b4 Kg6 8.Rf8 Rd4 9.Rc8 Rc4 10.Ra8 Rxe4 11.Rxa7 Rc4 12.Kf2 Rc2+ 13.Kf3 b5 14.a4 bxa4 15.Rxa4 h4 16.Ra6 Kf5 17.Ra5+ Kf6=

Just because there's no forced win doesn't mean the game is without tension and opportunity. I have lost games similar to this game after move 12.


Confusing question about the "Pawn" I enjoy playing chess and thought that I knew all of the "rules"??? However, I just found out now something interesting, though very confused regarding what exactly the "Pawn" is able to perform??? This may be hard to understand, but as we were playing, my opponent that I was playing against had eventually moved one of his "Pawns" almost to my end of the board (more than half way) and then took one of my pieces using some kind of a crazy format move??? I had always thought that in order for a "Pawn" to take an opponents piece, it had to take it with using only a one diagonal square move??? In this particular case, he moved his "pawn" in two spots using a two step process, one diagonal and then one forward and then he took one of my pieces, which I had thought was in a very safe position????? I apologize for the confusion question, hoping that you understand my question and can help me understand what I do not know???Thank you in advance for your help...

Check out en passant... a very common rule to overlook.


Longest way to mate with 1 queen against 4 queens What is the longest way to checkmate with 1 queen against 4 queens, with no other pieces on the board?

Since there are 13 moves long games with a queen vs two queens, I conjecture this should be possible also for this certain endgame, but I am not sure. The maximum position I know has the disadvantage that the first move is a capture. It would be nice if the first move is not a capture.

The best I could come up with is 7 moves, I don't believe it could take much longer, because with 4 queens there's not as much freedom as with 2, I cannot put black king in the middle of the board when capturing black queens while keeping king in check:

3q4/q7/q7/q7/8/8/8/k1K4Q w - - 0 1

And I made it nice as you asked -- the first move it not a capture! =)


What's the best way to learn the French? Recently, I have been very attracted to the French defense, as I feel as though it is perfect for my style. However, I am aware that the French is highly theoretical, which is why I need a good, detailed, and organized way to study the theory and move orders of all the variations. Any suggestions?

The fact is that you will need to pick a good book, which is difficult since there are a million books out there on the French.

When starting out with a new opening, picking a book that is heavy on theory is not so important as is a book that presents ideas well. For this purpose, I suggest the book "Mastering the French" by GM Neil McDonald.

I also suggest the book "Winning With the French" by GM Wolfgang Uhlmann. He was probably THE authority on the French during his peak years, and never played anything but the French in response to 1.e4 during his career (or so they say). The book is exclusively taken from 60 of his games, and the explanations are very good, but watching how a master of this opening handles it will be invaluable.

From there, you need to just start taking in one chapter at a time, but not necessarily in order. You want to take the most common lines first since you are more likely to encounter them early on. Spend at least a week on each chapter, and play some blitz games with a friend, who is willing to give you practice in each variation.

You will pick up the main ideas pretty quickly this way.


Is this endgame winnable for White? Playing White against a computer, I reached this position (White to move):

[fen "8/5pp1/p4k2/5n1p/1PN5/P7/5PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1"]

White has a queenside pawn majority, but Black's king is closer to the action, and its knight has the idea of Nd4-c2. I played this position through to the end about a dozen times, and usually only managed to draw: Black was able to pick up my queenside pawns, and even in lines where I got one of Black's kingside pawns in compensation, the position was still drawn. A couple of times I did manage to push the queenside pawns and win, but I didn't keep track of exactly what I did and it's possible the engine made a defensive error (it was set at a fairly easy level). So what should White's plan be in this position? Does White have a win here, or is this a draw?

EDITED ( January 7th, 2014 ):

Based on the member shivsky's comments I have edited the entire solution.

  Does White have a win here, or is this a draw?

Yes it is won for White.

  So what should White's plan be in this position?

At first, I wanted to provide an answer with 1.a4 and simply force the win, but I do not have computer strong enough to analyze the variations I come up with, so my conclusions can not be 100% true.

I do not think that you can achieve much by creating the passed pawn immediately, at least my engine shows some convincing defensive lines.

And again you were right-even if you trade queen side pawns for his king side pawn, he might still draw.

My engine shows some lines where 1.a4 continuation allows you to get f7 pawn for your queen side pawns-giving White an advantage, but I strongly believe you can not win since all the pawns are at one side and Black's Knight can do a good job at defending and blocking.

Being strong endgame player, I must say that I do not like 1.a4 anyway.

ANSWER:

Your only chance is to deaden the position and to win by using your queen side pawns to distract his pieces from defending king side, when your pieces could invade there and get enough material to enforce queening. You need to start the action at the right moment.

1.Kf1 can achieve that, when you could freely maneuver into the favorable setup which will create passed pawn and win.

TO CLARIFY MY ANSWER:

I have tested this line with the engine to see if there is a valid defense, and engine could find none.

I have tried to find one myself and 1. ...Nh4 was the best try I could find.

It is the only way to prevent White from activating his king ( if Black allows that then its game over ) and the idea is to harass White's King side pawns so Black could play f6 + g5 + Nf5 hoping to achieve something like this:

[fen "8/8/p3kp2/5npp/PPN4P/3K2P1/5P2/8 w - - 0 1"]

1. hxg5 fxg5

This would give him some counter-play ( he threatens to queen with h4 ) and would provide him a chance to exchange all king side pawns.Then he could try to catch the queen side pawn ( a6 pawn will 100% be exchanged for the b5-White has to play it at some point ) or to sacrifice the Knight for a pawn ensuring the draw.

This is how I would try to save the game as Black, but White can refute this plan:

[fen "8/5pp1/p4k2/5n1p/1PN5/P7/5PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Kf1 Nh4 2.g3 Nf3 3.h4 Nh2+ 4.Ke2 Ng4 5.f3 Nh6 6.Ne3!

This move restricts the Knight completely refuting the above plan.Without the ability to create counter-play Black is simply lost-White creates the queen side passed pawn distracting one or both of Backs pieces and then wins by taking all of Blacks pawns on the king side.

HOW TO EXACTLY WIN THIS:

First rule of endgames-king is extremely powerful piece-use it!

Second rule-of all the available moves that can implement your plan always play those that make the least commitment. This gives you the flexibility to adapt when position changes in its character drastically.

The 1.a4 continuation breaks both rules, as it neglects the king and forces the matters-which unnecessarily sharpens the game and provides Black with counter-play based on his strong King.

In endgames you need to slow down the pace and see the whole picture. Raw calculation here is useless if you do not have a clear plan.

To create a plan, we always start with the analysis of the position. Yours is sufficiently good for a start so let us go from there:

  White has a queenside pawn majority, but Black's king is closer to the action, and its knight has the idea of Nd4-c2.

Third rule in endgames-in order to win, most of the time you will have to create at least two DISTANT weaknesses in the opponents camp ( if they are close then opponent might defend successfully ). Here we already have one-extra pawn on the queen side.

Our pawn structure is healthy-we have no pawn weaknesses on queen or king side ( doubled/isolated pawns... ).

The weakest piece in our setup is our king and that is our only weakness.

Our Knight is A MONSTER! This piece alone actually won this endgame! He is ideally posted-he can aid in creation of a passed pawn, he can attack on the queen side, he restricts the opposing Knight and King, he can harass the king side pawns if black king abandons them and he can defend our king side. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PIECE! A HERO!

Now let us see what Black has:

Black's king IS active as you have correctly noticed, but he is badly placed-he needs to be closer to the center to balance the lack of a pawn at queen side ( e6 would be nice )-and that is something you have missed.

Black's knight is OK, he is posted well, but is decentralized which limits his actions-he can only attack on the king side at the moment.

Black has no pawn weaknesses, but is a pawn down. He also has started to probe the king side since h-pawn has advanced and can be supported with he knight and a king. He should try to create counter-play there, since he has no time to attack the queen side.

Let us see the entire picture:

Black's pieces are misplaced ( you missed this fact and this is important to notice ), they need 1 or 2 moves to centralize them selves ( they must do this in order to hold queen side ), and will spend even more moves to organize a defense/create counter attack.

This will give White enough time to activate his king.

Now we see the first phase of our plan-improve the king's position.

The second part should be about creating the second weakness-this type of endgame is well known and the usual plan is to create passed pawn on the queen side to distract king/knight/both and then to use our extra pieces to break through on the king side.

You saw what happens when Black tries to generate counter-play on the king side, now let us see what happens when he tries to centralize his pieces so he can attack on the queen side:

 [fen "8/5pp1/p4k2/5n1p/1PN5/P7/5PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1"]

 1.Kf1 Nd4 2.Ke1 Ke6 3.Kd2 Kd5 4.Kd3

At this point Black is in zugzwang, and no matter what he plays, White will simply parry his threats and eventually play a4 fulfilling the plan described above. Let us just see one sample continuation so you "get the feel":

 [fen "8/5pp1/p4k2/5n1p/1PN5/P7/5PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1"]

 1.Kf1 Nd4 2.Ke1 Ke6 3.Kd2 Kd5 4.Kd3 Nc6 5.Ne3+ Ke5 6.Kc4 f5 7.a4 f4 8.Nd5 g5 9.Nc7 Nb8 10.b5 axb5+ 11.axb5 Kd6 12.b6 Kc6 13.Nd5 Nd7 14.Kd4 Nxb6 15.Nxb6 Kxb6 16.Ke5

And White wins. The queen side pawn majority did its job-it has distracted the knight, and eventually the king from defending the king side which was exploited with White's last move.

One thing I must mention is the usage of zugzwang. At certain point Black did manage to centralize his pieces, but so did White. At that moment everything boils down to small nuances and here it is White knight that saved the day-by restricting both king and knight he enabled the creation of zugzwang after which the creation of the passed pawn was easy.

Notice also, how the activity of the Black's pieces just wasn't good enough for a draw, since they were badly misplaced and notice how that gave White the time to improve his own king.

I think that this is enough for you to understand how to win this alone, so set up the position on your computer and try to win this time.

Good luck!

Best regards and a Happy New Year!


Illegal move or forfeit on time - who wins this 5-minute match? In a 5-minute match a player makes an illegal move leaving his king in a check position. This usually gives the victory to the opponent, if he sees it and captures the king.
Otherwise, if the opponent doesn't claim the illegal move within 2 moves, the game just continues as if nothing happened.

But what happens, if the opponent runs out of time just before he captures the king?
Is it a time win, since the opponent didn't claim the illegal move within his time limit?
Or does the illegal move automatically lose, once it is noticed?

If the illegal move automatically loses, that raises the following theoretical question:
What if nobody immediately sees the illegal move, and the game is considered to be lost on time. But after a while the opponent notices the illegal move and claims it. Is there a time limit to that, and how is it enforced after the clocks have stopped ticking?

And lastly, would the decision be any different, if the match was longer/shorter?

When an illegal move is completed once the opponent’s clock has been started. The opponent is entitled to claim a win before he has made his own move. However, if the opponent cannot checkmate the player’s king by any possible series of legal moves, then the claimant is entitled to claim a draw before he has made his own move. Once the opponent has made his own move, an illegal move cannot be corrected unless mutually agreed without intervention of an arbiter.

As far as the time/check priorities go... As far as I'm aware(and in any tournament I have played in thus far) any player that is first to claim for a win will win the game, UNLESS both flags have fallen in which case it becomes a draw. It is part of the game(especially in blitz) for a player to be aware of the clock and there is no default loss when a player's time hits 0 unlike online chess where this is done automatically.

EDIT:

Since someone wanted a conclusive pointer to a rule that enforces this... which took a while it is found in the fide rulebook which can be found at http://www.fide.com/component/handbook/?id=124&view=article
There is also a short section regarding blitz(which is less than 15 minutes) which seems to handle the same format.


What's the right approach of storing moves generated using bitboards? I am building a chess engine from scratch using bitboards and, so far I am able to generate pawns moves. But, I am stuck on what should I do after finding all possible moves for pawns.

Right now the current function is generating QUIETS moves pushing pawns ONE or TWO squares. Later i will deal with en passant and validations.

My question is, Am I doing right generating all pawns moves at once? And, I would like to know what is the right approach of storing the moves? What information need to saved and what data type should I use?

Here my code (C++):

#include "moves.h"

//Pawns moves
Bitboard single_push(Color color, Bitboard pawns, Bitboard empty) { // EmptyBoardBB
   return color == WHITE ?  north(pawns) & empty :
                            south(pawns) & empty;
}

// also used for en-passant
Bitboard double_push(Color color, Bitboard pawns, Bitboard empty) {
   return color == WHITE ?  north_north(pawns) & empty & Rank4BB :
                            south_south(pawns) & empty & Rank5BB;
}

// Right now just testing pushing pawns 1-2 squares
Bitboard generate_pawn_moves(Color color, GenType type, Bitboard Us, Bitboard Them)
{
    Bitboard bb, empty;
    empty = ~Them;

    if (type == QUIETS)
    {
        bb = single_push(color, Us, empty);
    }

    return bb;
}

Thanks in advance for any info that can take me on the right path.

Q1: Should I generate all pawn moves at once?

Yes. There's no reason not to do that. But... your code wouldn't work because you're returning a bitboard in your function. You should instead return a list, Stockfish does that:

  https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/src/movegen.cpp

  ExtMove* generate_pawn_moves(const Position& pos, ExtMove* moveList, Bitboard target);

The function generate_pawn_moves takes a position object and append new pawn moves into a list (ExtMove*). You shouldn't just return a bitboard because:

It's not a convenient data structure for looping over moves (you'll need to loop over moves while doing your engine search)
It doesn't tell you where you pawn starts and thus you can't undo a move
By squeezing all the pawn moves into a single integer, you lose important information. For example, if you have a pawn on c4 and e4 and you can capture on d5. You need to save c4-d5 and e4-d5, not just d5.

Your function should look like:

void generate_pawn_moves(List *moves, Color color, GenType type, Bitboard Us, Bitboard Them);
{
    if (type == QUIETS)
    {
        for (... all single push ...)
           moves++ = <single push move>

        for (... all double push ...)
           moves++ = <double push move>
    }
    else
    {
        for (... all captures ...)
           moves++ = <captures move>
    }
}

You will need to allocate enough memory for the moves pointer, there're other ways to do that but C++ discussion is off-topic here.

Later on, you'll need to do a search (otherwise why'd you generate the moves?). Like this:

  for (auto move : moves)
  {
       <make the move to the internal board>

       ..... search and evaluate the position after the move ....

       <undo the move>
  }

You see, you'll need to undo the move and it's only possible if you know where your pawn starts.

Q2: What do I need to save a move?

Let's take a look at Stockfish.

  https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/src/types.h

/// A move needs 16 bits to be stored
///
/// bit  0- 5: destination square (from 0 to 63)
/// bit  6-11: origin square (from 0 to 63)
/// bit 12-13: promotion piece type - 2 (from KNIGHT-2 to QUEEN-2)
/// bit 14-15: special move flag: promotion (1), en passant (2), castling (3)
/// NOTE: EN-PASSANT bit is set only when a pawn can be captured
///

Destination
Origin
Promotion
En Passpant
Castling


What are some techniques for BvN endgames? Let's say all the pawns are on one side of the board, either left, middle or right. (If there were two pawn groups far from each other, I imagine the Bishop would be much better than the Knight.)

So what are some techniques or rules of thumb for these kinds of endgames? (Are tactics the same thing as techniques?) All I know so far is what I gathered from Wikipedia and my own experience.

If you have the Bishop, an enemy pawn promoting on the wrong color is harder to stop, so try to deal with it earlier. But I have no idea if your own pawn promoting on the wrong color is easier, harder, or makes no difference.
A Bishop orthogonally adjacent to a Knight cuts off half of the Knight's moves (unless one of those moves is defended by another piece). A Bishop 3 squares orthogonally away from the Knight does the same thing.
The Knight is better when most pawns are on the same color as the Bishop. Apparently this is true whether or not the pawns are enemies or allies of the Bishop.
An edge pawn is harder to stop for a Knight. (Thanks to user1583209 from my previous question.)

What I'm really hoping for is a some kind of rule of the triangle or rule of key squares as they exist in King and Pawn endgames.

In races when bishop can sacrifice itself for last pawn, it can stop one pawn for loooong time. Don't expect to build a knight bridge faster then the enemy king kills other side and promotes. You need rook pawn or two pawns (one to win a bishop, one to make a queen) for races. Good to have some idea about this rule.
Bad bishop itself doesn't lose often in blocked positions, bad handling of it does. Have in mind you don't need to guard all pawns. In f4 g3 h4 vs. f5 g6 h5 you must often give up on a g pawn as you need to cut the enemy king and be active. The remaining two can be protected from active swuares. Be patient. You can also give up on pawns that blocks your king. In Kc3 Bd6 d4 f4 h4  vs. Ka4 Ne6 d5 f5 h5 the f4 pawn is very good one not to care about. Guard h4 with bishop if needed, guard d4 with king and control opponent's king. The f4 don't need protection as after taking you move king to f3 and use 1.) if your opponent wants to race. Otherwise just sit and wait.
Surrounding the knight is used very often, often as indirect pawn protection. You would be surprised how easily the knight can be locked. On smaller areas killed, on bigger repetitioned to draw or just imprisoned with no way out. Imagine Bg1 Ke5 and enemy knight stupid enough to hunt pawn on b2. You win the knight after Nxb2 in few moves with Kd4.
Knight wants connected pawn formation.
Knight can stop last pawn only with king assistance, bishop can fight longer and against some pawns more in the center not far enough it can stop them forever without needing an assistance.
Good to have an idea about elementary 1:0, 2:0, 2:1 pawn ratios. For example Kf5 Nf3 g4 h5 vs. Kh6 Bc1 is draw! Knight also has big problems helping h+f pawns to promote, here rules are more difficult and big precision and patience needed. Also Kf5 Ne4 f3 g4 vs. Kh6 Bc1 g5 is easy draw as you never lose g5 pawn. When you need to protect it, you are on h6, when Nf7 is threatening, you go to g7.
If you are patient like a zen master and you can calculate like a computer, you can do miracles with bad bishop.
Have in mind wrong bishop to rook's pawn always.
On one wing both these pieces should be able to stop x+1:x majority to x being 3 and less. Not easily of course. Maybe horsie defending 3 vs 4 is lost with good corner bishop, but don't think so.


Is there a way to prove a checkmate in 3 problem is not solvable? I have been working on a checkmate-in-3 problem for a long time. So long that I am becoming convinced it is not solvable.

Is there a way to prove it is not solvable?

I want to avoid putting the problem in an engine, in case it will show me a solution. For the same reason I do not want to share the problem.

Three moves is probably in the realm where you could manually brute-force it, although it may take some effort.

Pick a move, a reply, a second move, and a second reply. Then start looking at whether White has a checkmate from that position. If not, then White's second move was incorrect, so change it. If you eliminate all possible White second moves this way, then go back to White's first move, and change it. If you eliminate all White first moves too, then you have proven that a mate in 3 does not exist.

If you do find a White checkmate from one of these positions, then change Black's previous move. If the solution is valid, White will have a checkmate for all possible Black replies.


Visually disabled and chess I am very curious as I have seen many of them playing: How do visually disabled people learn chess? And what are all the types of equipment they use to learn the game?

There are chess sets made for the visually impaired.  They are called 'tactile' chess sets.  The game is played by touch. The pieces lock into the board.  Removing a lock constitutes "touch move".

Here's an example, though I am not sure it is a 'tournament quality' tactile set.


Why do people make a huge pause before making even a simple checkmate? Are they already so happy about the victory or is this behavior of the cheat program? I don’t believe in what they think over the simplest move.

I do not know what other players do. I pause because I

have time on the clock,
am (at Lichess classical 1590) not a strong player,
am not a quick calculator,
have insufficiently memorized some basic mating patterns, and
do not wish to blunder.

If your opponent still has time left on his or her clock, do you know a reason he or she should not pause?

When an annoyed online opponent of mine (usually an opponent who is losing) demands that I move faster, I merely

kill the chat so that I can finish the game in peace and
block the opponent so that he or she need suffer no further annoyance in connection with me during future games.

Meanwhile, if my opponent prefers not to wait while I use the time on my clock to think, then he or she can always resign.

Admittedly, it is indeed slightly impolite to run one's clock down for the mere sake of running it down, but I seem to encounter this peculiar form of impoliteness in no more than five percent of all games. When I do encounter it, I relax, stretch my legs, review the game's earlier moves, read a nonchess book, catch up on the news, do chores, attend to children, etc., and don't let the play bother me much. Otherwise, the time on a player's clock is the player's to use as he or she sees fit. A player owes no explanation of a thinking pause, not even before delivering mate.

A sportsman should probably not presume to instruct an opponent regarding how fast to think.

As to whether cheating is occurring, I have no idea. I doubt that it happens much in my games. It isn't happening on my end; and on the other end, who knows? Insofar as cheaters are not especially targeting me and insofar as the online platform on which one plays makes a reasonable effort to detect and deter cheating, I have not found it profitable to worry too much about that.


Can an Irwin Cheat Detector catch a user who is using a Leela chess bot for cheating? I’m a big fan of chess cheat detection apps, like Irwin that was created by lichess.org.

But I heard that there is a new bot called Leela that is teaching herself how to play chess, and to think in a human-like way. Is that true, and are there any ways to detect it?

Leela works by performing an exceptionally sophisticated positional evaluation at a relatively shallow search depth, whereas most chess engines work by performing a simple evaluation at as deep a search as possible.  In theory this should produce a more positional style of play, and it does seem to be an effective strategy versus today's best conventional chess engines.

So in general, the moves selected by Leela will be different from those selected by Stockfish (Irwin's reference engine) in key positions.  But the differences in move evaluation may be small from Stockfish's point of view; it's not that Stockfish thinks Leela's moves are bad per se, just that it doesn't reliably choose them for itself, because it doesn't see their unique advantages relative to a move that it has deeply researched tactically.

However, there are other characteristics of engine-users' play that differ from that of strong human players, and are observable and measured by Irwin.

Move timing statistics are an important one, and that probably won't change with Leela.  Good human players recognise key moves, where many possibilities of nearly equal apparent strength exist, and plan ahead during them, taking more time.  Then they play quickly when their opponent responds in the way they expected, or in easy positions where there is only one obvious good (or even legal) move.  An engine user doesn't do this - for every move, they must enter the opponent's move into the engine, and wait a few seconds to see what to do.

Another characteristic which Irwin checks for is large variations in playing style, either between games or during a game.  A player who plays some games extremely well with very few mistakes, but then plays other games (at the same time control) rather badly with several blunders, is probably a weak player who uses an engine for his good games.  This is especially true if he seems to play his strong games against players with high ratings.  Or a player might find himself losing a game, then get out the engine, in which case he will show blunders and a declining position, followed by extremely accurate play which salvages the game.

In short: yes, I believe Irwin can detect engine users, even if the engine in question happens to be Leela.


Convert ChessBase format to PGN on Linux I have some ChessBase-format database files, and I would like to convert them to PGN so thatlinux-compatible programs (like scid, chessdb, etc.) could read it.

Since I am running on linux and not windows, I can't use that workaround that involves downloading ChessBase Light then converting from there. However, I really need to use those files.

How can I convert them painlessly ? Is there an free online service that can do so ? Is there a linux-compatible program that can do so ? Is there an opensource program that can do so (regardless of platform), so that I can port the conversion source to linux ?

Scidb can do it.

Here is how

Open the CBH database.
When it is opened, go to the Database tab.
Right-click on the rectangle of the CBH database and click on Export.
Choose PGN or any other format.
Enter the filename and click on Save.

The only drawback of Scidb for now is that it cannot unarchive .cbv file by now.

I made to tool to unarchive .cbv files. I believe it will be integrated into scidb in the future.


What openings were former and current masters experts in? In referencing the following article, it is stated that one way to efficiently learn new openings is to study masters that were experts at the particular opening you want to study.  Part of the article states:

  Say, you want to learn the Najdorf Sicilian for Black, then get the
  games played by Kasparov who was the biggest expert there.  Looking to
  play the Petroff?  Then Vladimir Kramnik is your man!

So what other masters were considered experts in certain openings?

I will limit the question to specific openings:

Grunfeld
English
Ruy Lopez
Scilian
Kings Indian
Queens Indian
Nimzo Indian
French
Pirc
Caro-Kann
Catalan

Black (1.d4):

King's Indian: Fischer, Radjabov, Kasparov, Gufeld
Queen's Indian: Anand, Karpov, Carlsen
Grunfeld: Svidler, Ftacnik
QGD, Slav: Wang Yue, Sokolov
QGD, Semi-Slav: Shirov, Anand
Nimzo Indian: Kramnik, Ivanchuk
QGD, Classical: Petrosian, Karpov

After typing this, I realized that any answer covering all the common openings played at top level would be ridiculously long. I think you can make things easier for yourself by consulting chessgames.com whenever you want to see top practitioners of any particular opening. For example, typing in "Sicilian, Najdorf" in the search box will give you this page, where you can see which top level players employ it the most. Of course, this doesn't mean that they are the authority on said openings. But, given that the list will almost always include strong GMs (2650+), you can be assured that studying their games in said openings will allow you to learn a lot about those openings, which I assume, is the point of you asking the question in the first place.

Another way of going about this is looking at the player profiles of some of the strongest players of all time (like World Champions, and World Championship contenders), and looking at their opening repertoire.

In the end, "expert" is a very loose term in your question. So really, you'd be safe in assuming that some of the strongest GMs (and some IMs as well, such as Nezhmetdinov) of all time are/were experts in whichever openings they employed the most.


Confused about ChessBase I'm really confused about the differences between the products that ChessBase offers. For example, on the website, Deep Fritz is said to be an engine. But after a bit of research, it turned out that it holds a database, a multimedia directory, a playchess.com client, and a tactics trainer! ChessBase is only said to be a database although it also features training courses. Also, ChessBase markets Houdini which is said to be "the world's strongest engine". So, if it is, doesn't that make Deep Fritz rubbish ? Please clear my confusions.

Deep Fritz 14, Houdini 4, Komodo 9 and Rybka 4 all use the same Graphic User Interface (GUI).  It allows you to blundercheck, do full game analysis, calculate elo ratings for sets of games.  It has a Handicap and Fun mode for dumbing down these engines, so you have a chance.  You can also play timed games, and adjust the engine's style.  There is also a hotness meter that shows you how sharp or dynamic the position is.

ChessBase 13 cannot do timed games or full game analysis, but it can do infinite analysis.  It can create opening and endgame theme keys, and has a search mask for locating games with certain traits quickly.  Lists of games can be sorted by player name, year, result, elo rating, tournament just by clicking on the header.

Komodo 9 is probably stronger than Houdini 4 which is stronger than Rybka 4 which is stronger than Deep Fritz 14.  Some people like the slightly weaker engines because they believe they have special characteristics, for example a sharp or solid style, more human feel, or the like.

Both ChessBase and the engine GUIs allow you to annotate games, add variations, draw arrows on the board, watch videos, do infinite analysis, play on Playchess.  The Engine GUIs have some basic database functions.  The Engine GUIs are mainly for playing against, and ChessBase is for building an opening repertoire, and preparing to play specific opponents.


Why is Chinese chess (xiangqi) harder for computers than international chess? Why is Chinese chess (xiangqi) harder for computers than international chess?

When one looks at Chinese chess in comparison to international chess, one cannot help but notice how extremely limited several of the pieces are:

Kings are confined to 9 positions overall (the palace) and have 4
possible moves at most (only 1 step orthogonally).
The two advisors are confined to 5 shared positions overall (diagonals of
the palace), where except for the central palace position they are
confined to 1 move.
The two elephants are confined to 7 shared positions (two touching diamonds side by side, like an 8 on its side), due to having a move that naturally restricts them to a quarter of the board (only every other square the same color as its starting square (on a checkered board)), but then also being restricted to not move across the central dividing river which cuts it down to an expected 1/8.  In fact the 7 positions out of 90 which the elephants can reach is an even worse ratio than 1/8 which is due to the specific board dimensions penalizing it even further.

Is there something about the two horses, two chariots (rooks), two cannons, and five chinese pawns that makes this game harder for computers than international chess? Or is it mostly due to the larger board size, 90 vs 64? Or is there some other consideration that I have overlooked?

As far as I can see there is no fundamental difference between chess and xiangqi that would make xiangqi more difficult for a computer.

The state space complexity of chess is somewhat higher, whereas the game tree complexity of xiangqi is higher. Also the branching factor of xiangqi is 38 compared to 35 for chess, not much of a difference.

I suspect that while chess has been in the focus of computer research for many decades, there just weren't the same resources devoted to optimising xiangqi engines.

Possibly the slower game (because of the weaker pieces) requires the calculation of longer variations (see game tree complexity), increasing the hardware requirements, but I think that should only be a minor difference compared to demonstrably more complex games like shogi or go.

It is a bit difficult to find out precisely how strong xiangqi engines are right now, but any of the two factors would explain if they lagged one or two decades behind.


Is there a standardized chess test that can measure one's chess playing condition? Chess players often say that in a given tournament they were "in good shape", or the opposite. One tournament goes well, another goes horribly wrong. One can also sometimes feel that your head is working well, and tactics are calculated more easily than usual. There are days when it feels the opposite. Is there a test that can tell me "how well is my head working today"? The goal is not to measure relative skill of several players, but rather to measure the day-to-day condition of a single player, whose overall chess experience and strength is roughly stable.

I do not know of any such standardized chess test.

But here are some general questions you should ask yourself. The "correct" answers are provided in parenthesis. If you answer all correctly, you should be in good shape.

Physical Preparation

  Have I had enough sleep? (Yes)
  Have I had enough food to give me sufficient energy for the game? (Yes)
  Have I over-eaten? (No)
  Do I feel stressed out? (No)
  Is my body in good shape without any kind of aches? (Yes)
  Are my eyes relaxed? (Yes)
  Do I feel sick? (No)
  Do I feel fresh? (Yes)
  Do I feel tired? (No)

Mental Preparation

  Is anything bothering me? (e.g. angry exchange with co-worker) (No)
  Is there something else on my mind that can be a distraction (e.g. date with girlfriend)? (No)
  Do I have a headache? (No)
  Am I under the influence of alcohol or any such other drug? (No)

Chess Preparation

  Have I made good opening preparation for the game? (Yes)
  Am I afraid of my opponent? (No)
  Have I practiced chess tactics recently? (Yes)
  Am I confident that I can play well? (Yes)

If you answered all "correctly", you're in really good shape.

P.S. (I'll add more to the list as and when I remember)


How can I find good tactics problems? Say you have a database of a lot of games.

How would you go about finding good tactics problems? I suppose you would search until there was a spot where the score shifted, and there was only one good move on the previous move. But that isn't the whole story, sometimes you need to go back a couple of moves to find where the tactic really started.

For now, ideas of how to do this manually is fine (with the help of an analysis engine), but automating this process is the idea.

One approach might be to go through all the moves of a high level game, and if the engine evaluation changes significantly, then save the position for human review.

In this case, "significantly" is probably half a pawn or more, although you could also require it to be one full pawn for easier tactics.

The rationale behind only looking at high level games is that the score will really only change significantly with a blunder.  High level games won't have obvious blunders (i.e. hanging a piece) so the blunders will possibly be a not-so-obvious tactic.

This won't be perfect, but it might get some positions worth looking at "by hand".

Just one more note - if you allow the chess engine to search to a sufficient depth (14-16 in most positions should be good) - then you won't have to worry about missing the start of the tactic.  The engines will be able to see most tactics, even if they are complicated.


The history of the 175-move draw rule The U.S. Chess Federation piloted a 175-move draw rule in the fourth edition of its Official Rules.  This interesting rule ended a game automatically after 175 moves, whether or not either player had claimed a draw.  (The rule also included some verbiage regarding a particular kind of chess clock, but it is not clocks that I ask about today.)

In the fifth edition of its Official Rules, the U.S. Chess Federation abandoned the 175-move rule.

I liked the 175-move rule and was sorry to see it go, since it lightened certain burdens of subjective judgment and of overextended hospitality from the shoulders of a tournament organizer.  I suppose that someone else must have disliked the rule or it would not have been abandoned, but at any rate, is there an interesting story behind the abandonment of the rule?

There was this (PDF) at the time, but it did not explain much.

UPDATE AND APPENDIX

@AndrewNg has given an interesting, informative answer; but an answer to a slightly different question than the question I had meant to ask.  At the risk of so long an update that few may read it, let me clarify.

Insofar as I have correctly inferred its purpose, a hard limit on the number of moves in a game exists to protect the interests less of the players than of the players' host (the tournament organizer, hall owner, etc.), without stranding the host in the unfair, distasteful position of having to interject a subjective, third-party judgment into the game.  Examples of potentially relevant games include Nicolic v. Arsovic, Belgrade, 1989.

Of course, it is possible that I have misunderstood the rule's purpose.  The reason for my understanding however lies in the crucial difference between the 50- and 175-move rules:  the 50-move rule takes effect only when one of the players chooses to invoke it (which the aforementioned Nicolic and Arsovic declined to do); whereas the 175-move rule automatically takes effect, without consulting anyone's subjective opinion in the matter.

In short, the 175-move rule prevents the unlikely but nevertheless mechanically regular (and possibly indeed sportsmanlike) play of the game of chess from forcing a mechanical irregularity when the host's patience runs out.

Another, related purpose of the rule -- a purpose explicitly mentioned in the fourth-edition rulebook -- was to relieve a tournament director of the burden of adjudging "insufficient losing chances" in certain technical circumstances.

I admit that, like @AndrewNg, I too doubt that it was ever the rule's purpose to guarantee that every, theoretically forced mate could be carried to its infinite conclusion.  Indeed, like the 50-move rule, a 175-move rule if enforced becomes a new, mechanical constraint on the theory of the game; such that -- per theory under the rule -- 176-move mates simply no longer exist.

Maybe the new mechanical constraint on the theory is precisely what the fifth-edition rules committee did not like, but I cannot substantiate such a guess.  Thus the question.

EDIT: As I reconsider the question, I believe that adjournments played a role in the abandonment of this rule, as detailed in my comment below. I understand that this still is not an exact answer to the question and I suppose only the USCF committee would have the answer to that :)

Also, there is the problem of neither player invoking the fifty-move rule, as referenced in your appendix. However, I have never encountered such a scenario in my chess-playing career, although I'm sure it has happened. I suppose such an occasion is extremely rare and the organizer probably would step in.

I cannot supply the story given by the USCF on the subject as I couldn't find any specific information online. I can, however, supply my reasoning on why such a rule would be taken out.

In modern chess, there no longer exists (practically) the need to claim a draw. As a result of delay clocks, the fifty-move and threefold repetition rules take precedence. Therefore, there are no real "judgement" calls to be made as the TD doesn't have to make any decisions regarding draw claims - he simply has to count the number of moves before the last capture/pawn move or see if the resulting position from the claim occurred at least three times.

Therefore, if a game were to progress past 175 moves, there must have been captures or pawn moves within the last fifty. This implies that there is a fair chance that one player can emerge victorious. Even if the game is a technical draw, it is ensured that the game will not progress fifty moves past the last capture or pawn move.

It is for the aforementioned reasons that FIDE re-established the strict fifty-move rule in 1992 even after many winnable positions were proven to take more than fifty moves (without a capture or pawn move) as referenced by Akavall in the comments. Indeed, before this date FIDE had changed the rule to allow certain exceptions, but the number of these winning positions grew so large that it was easier to leave a strict limit in place. This likely influenced the abolishment of the 175 move rule as there were no more exceptions to be had of the fifty-move rule.