How to play against little kids? Say, in an age range of 7-12 years. One of my friends holds the opinion that you should trounce them at every opportunity, so that they can learn from their mistakes. Another says that you should allow them to win sometimes, so they won't lose interest/stay encouraged to play chess. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle. What do you guys think is appropriate in such circumstances?

(Context: I volunteer at a local elementary school to play/teach kids occasionally. Some are highly motivated, others seemed to be forced to be there by their parents.)

I think the best approach is what I call live annotated chess.  In this case you basically play normally but provide live feedback on the student's position and why you are doing the things you are doing.  This allows you to understand where the student needs additional help and allows them to learn from you.

This approach also allows you to adjust your play according to student needs.  If the student is making a lot of careless errors and doesn't seem too into it, you can tone down the annotation and your game and let them play more for fun.  If the student seems really motivated in a given game, you can introduce more challenge by upping your game and your discussion.

You can even do this within a game if you sense the student getting frustrated or bored.

I would also say that not all chess needs to be played by "chess rules" kids at that age get a kick out of manipulating the world around them. Let them make up new games that still teach chess principles but are not so rigid.  Let the bishops move like queens, or allow them to win back material for consecutive captures, etc...  I don't think these types of things teach bad practice because they let the student experiment with the "world" and understand how it reacts.


How does Stockfish know if the king is in check? I am writing a chess engine. I need to know how to tell if the king is in check. I was thinking that maybe I can use the approach that Stockfish uses. Where and how in Stockfish's code is check detected?

If you're curious about the Stockfish code, it can be found here:
 si->checkersBB = attackers_to(square<KING>(sideToMove)) & pieces(~sideToMove);

We call the attackers_to method to figure out if any pieces are attacking the king's position, including pieces on the king's side.

 Bitboard Position::attackers_to(Square s, Bitboard occupied) const {

    return  (pawn_attacks_bb(BLACK, s)       & pieces(WHITE, PAWN))
         | (pawn_attacks_bb(WHITE, s)       & pieces(BLACK, PAWN))
         | (attacks_bb<KNIGHT>(s)           & pieces(KNIGHT))
         | (attacks_bb<  ROOK>(s, occupied) & pieces(  ROOK, QUEEN))
         | (attacks_bb<BISHOP>(s, occupied) & pieces(BISHOP, QUEEN))
         | (attacks_bb<KING>(s)             & pieces(KING));
 }

We then call the pieces function, which returns all the pieces owned by the opposite side

Finally, we run an AND operator to confirm if any of the opposite side's pieces are threatening the king.

The code is very well written and relatively straightforward to follow, in case you'd like to explore it further.


Elo points after game completion When playing an opponent and winning, are the points taken from the opponent's Elo at the beginning of the game or end of the game? For example, I may play someone who begins at 1900 and is at 1600 when the game ends as they have played other players at the same time.

My guess is that the ratings used for the calculation are the ratings you and your opponent had at the beginning of your game. The change of rating is applied on your ratings after your game is done. For example

  Scenario: when the game starts, your rating is 2000 and the
  opponent's is 1900. When the game finishes, your rating is 2150 (due
  to other finished games) while your opponent's is 2100. Then, under my
  assumption above, the following happens (if you won the game)

  Your New Rating = 2150 + 2000_wins_against_1900

  Opponent New Rating = 2100 - 1900_loses_against_2000


Endgame training for a 7 year old kid My 7 year old son plays competitive chess. He can checkmate with king and rook nicely. He can make a queen from a single pawn & king. Now, how to proceed for further endgame training?

When he is mating, is he just following a method blindly or does he understand it?

For instance in the two examples you mention, zugzwang and opposition are important themes, which are also relevant to many endgames. You can find many easy pawn only endgames with these motifs and since they are so fundamental, I'd start with these motifs. Somewhat related, triangulation, key/corresponding squares could also go here. All of these you can do in pawn endgames which, because of the few options you have, are generally easier to understand than if you add any other pieces.

Some more specific topics could be king and rook-pawn vs king (draw/stalemate), mating with two bishops (which is not all that difficult if you understand that two bishops can build something like a "wall" that the enemy king cannot cross and your own king can relatively easily push the enemy king to the border), square rule to quickly assess whether a king can catch a pawn before promotion.

If you think that these are too complicated at his current level, I'd forget about endgames for the time being and focus on opening/middlegame play.


Why does the London System have the reputation it has? After being out of chess for many years, I became interested again. While I never studied in my earlier playing days, I always played e4 openings when white. That was partly due to that being recommended by the one book I read and partly because that is what Fischer (usually) played and Fischer was the world champion and something of an idol at the time.

Now, I'm trying to take chess a bit more seriously. Much of what I've read recommends the London System as an opening for beginners. That has been backed up by a couple coaches (one a National Master, the other an International Master) from whom I've taken instruction.

It seems the London System has a reputation as a "safe" opening. I've read this in several places online and heard it from the coaches I mentioned above. Furthermore, I've even read things that say you can develop in the London without paying attention to what your opponent is doing.

Of course there is a learning curve with a new opening, thus I don't expect to get win after win after win with the opening. However, my results with the London have not left me feeling that it is "safe". In one tournament game against a beginner I lost two pieces because I really didn't pay attention to what he was doing until too late. In a "friendly" against a master, he destroyed me with a tactic I'd never seen, but which he said is well known as an attack against the London. In other games in which I've tried it, I have felt like I'm being forced out of the system very early.

Thus, why is the London System considered safe? Why do proponents say you can utilize it regardless of what your opponent does?

Well, I want to give you a third master's opinion, and most coaches teach the London because they can teach students an opening that the students can, for the most part, be mindless for the first 10 moves (d4,Nf3,Bf4,e3,Bd3,0-0,c3,Nbd2,Qe2,Re1, etc.) or so, against almost any black response. Of course, in chess you can never totally ignore what the opponent is doing, but if you have studied the London System at all, you know what I mean, and to the level I mean you can be "mindless". The coach can then say, "look, you got out of the opening, so I taught you well", when in reality, the problems are just beginning, and the coach has taught you nothing. This seems to be what you are experiencing: You get to the end of those 10 moves, and you are lost.

I do not agree with that approach at all, and it is just a lazy way to teach.

The London, while not a bad opening, is considered "safe" because it is, primarily, a very solid position for white; but it is not particularly ambitious as it does not hit back in the center as successfully as an early c4 does. It can be played against 1...d5 or the King's Indian Defense. Because c4 is not played, it also rules out the Benoni, Benko and Grunfeld. Since black usually wants to play c5, it also, in effect, rules out the Slav, or a tempo is wasted. Limiting black's defensive options is another reason some coaches like to teach this lazy opening, but if you ever get to a certain level, you will find yourself having to learn a whole new set of openings from scratch, and you will have lost years of experience playing against so many mainline defenses. That is not a good thing.

One of the biggest problems with the London for novices is that the resulting positions, where white must get in e4 and try to attack require a lot of positional skill, as well as tactical skill. Against anyone stronger, they are ready for e4, and they are prepared to take c5xd4, and get counterplay. So you get students a solid position after 10 moves, but then what is required from there is often just way over their heads. It does not make sense to teach this way.

Weaker players have trouble with deep strategic play, which is why I constantly talk about studying tactics, tactics, tactics; but these London positions do not bring up the open, or semi-open types of positions that favor that type of tactical play, which is easier to grasp, and thus, easier for novice players to play.

What this means is that this opening either does not really fit in with your ability level or style (you were an e4-player for a long time, after all), or you must learn the plans associated with it, from move 10 on, much better.

I wanted to give you a recommended book, but as I looked at them, there was nothing particularly great at telling you how to play these positions IN WORDS, but this was probably the best of the bunch: "Win with the London System".


Is there a standard way of scoring a position for chess programs? It seems most chess programs score a position basically the same way, give or take a few tenths of a point, for a given position. For example, Stockfish might score a position as .65 while Houdini might score the same position .80. If this is essentially the case, are there general "rules" for scoring a position?

This is certainly not the case. Traditional engines "score" a position by running their evaluation function (which differs from engine to engine) on the best position at the end of their search tree (which also differs from engine to engine, since this position depends on their search algorithm).
Sure there are standard concepts for scoring a position - e.g. which side has more material, which side has doubled pawns, which side has rooks on open files - but ultimately each engine does it differently, and there are positions which one engine can be very optimistic on while another is not. There are even positions where one engine thinks White has an advantage and another engine thinks Black has an advantage. Example from the ongoing TCEC Season 18 superfinal.


Why are avoidable openings played instead of systems? It's been a while since I've played OTB chess, but I've gotten back into playing it online. Before my break (I was rated ~1400 USCF), I was a heavy advocate of the English Opening:
rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/2P5/8/PP1PPPPP/RNBQKBNR w kqKQ c3 0 1

[Event "Local Tournament"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "Opponent"]
[White "BaroclinicPlusPlus"]
[Black "?"]
[Result "*"]

1. c4

with the idea that instead of seeing any opening prep that I make not being thrown out the window, I could force my opponent into lines that I felt comfortable playing. For example, if I was preparing the Scotch Game, and was faced with an opponent who played the Sicilian
rnbqkbnr/pp1ppppp/8/2p5/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq c6 0 2
[Event "?"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "BaroclinicPlusPlus"]
[Black "Well Prepared Opponent"]
[Result "*"]

1. e4 c5 *

I'd be in murky waters. So to prepare for the Scotch Game, I'd have to learn the Sicilian Defense, Caro-Kann defense, French Defense, and any other defense I could see.
My question is this: If you do not know your opponent ahead of time, what advantage is there in preparing openings like 1. e4 when your opponent can nullify any preparation?
That is, most opening prep for white relies on Black playing 1. ... e5, which is not only avoidable, but also lines that I am not usually prepared. The same can be said about 1. d4 and the Queen's gambit (ignoring the increasing popularity of the London System). I've tried moving beyond the English, just to be left with either needing to learn a ton of theory and opening traps or face a better-prepared opponent.
*Speaking from experience, where I have a Black defense for 1. e4, 1. d4, and 1. c4.

When chess players reach a certain level, they will know how to play against non mainstream openings(often also they can figure many things over the board as well). Therefore, if you play anything other than e4,d4,Nf3, or c4, the black player will be fine as the other moves are objectively not as good and white will find it hard to get any edge. So basically the advantage of playing 1e4/1d4/1Nf3/ or even 1c4, is that they are objectively good and offer white good chances to fight for an advantage. While if you play something like 1g4, you will not be able to fight for an advantage at high levels(in fact, you will be struggling to not lose).
That is, despite your opponent having knowledge about how to play against 1e4 or 1d4, it's still a good idea to play 1e4 and 1d4 because those first moves are that good, and you also have knowledge of those openings. If instead you choose to play things like 1b3, 1f4, strong chess players will equalize easilly against them.
At lower levels, it very much would be advantageous to play something people don't know much about. So at the lower levels, you can have a repertoire of unsound gambits and tricks, and you'll be fine. But of course, if you face stronger oppositions, you'll have trouble.


How do you implement Alpha-Beta search when you can only compare 2 positions to each other? In their paper about DeepChess, http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~wolf/papers/deepchess.pdf, David et al show a cool way to train a net to play chess. I've trained my net to some degree of success and I want to test how well it performs in play. The neural net can only compare 2 positions to each other - it has no static evaluation function. The paper briefly talks about Alpha-Beta search for this net. I'm trying to write the pseudo-code for this algorithm, and would appreciate any help:

function alphabeta(node, depth, α, β, maximizingPlayer)
      if depth = 0 or node is a terminal node
          return eval(node, α, β, maximizingPlayer)
      if maximizingPlayer
          v := -∞
          for each child of node
              α := alphabeta(child, depth – 1, α, β, FALSE)
              if net(β, α) == β //beta is the winner
                  break (*β cut-off *)
          return α
      else
          v := ∞
          for each child of node
              β := alphabeta(child, depth – 1, α, β, TRUE)
              if net(β, α) == α //alpha is the winner
                  break (* α cut-off *)
          return β

function eval(node, depth, α, β, maximizingPlayer)
    if maximizingPlayer and net(node,α) == α //alpha is the winner
         α = node
    if not maximizingPlayer and net(node,β) == β //beta is the winner
         β = node

Am I on the right track? Is this totally wrong? I know that I haven't account for no legal moves, which means I have to return negative infinity, and I'm also not sure how to initiate the call... Any help would be appreicated!

This looks right to me, but there are two big caveats, one technical nitpickery in your pseudocode and one much deeper.  The nitpickery is that your net() function shouldn't return a position because comparing positions is expensive; instead it should return something along the lines of 'left is better' or 'right is better' (i.e., a boolean) and your conditionals should be on the value of that boolean.

Your negative infinity case (as well as initiation) can be handled pretty easily with sentinel positions: these are fake positions that serve exactly the same function that −∞ does in 'traditional' alpha-beta, in that (using your pseudocode convention) net(sentinel, P) will always return that P is better for any (non-sentinel) position P.  (The simplest way of doing this is likely with something like an IsSentinel boolean in the position structure, but that's a very code-specific decision).

There's a much deeper caveat, though: you're making the implicit assumption in this pseudocode that your neural network is linearly ordering positions, or at least close enough to linearly ordering them to make this algorithm viable; that is, there are no three positions A, B, C with A<B, B<C, but C<A (where A<B here is just shorthand for 'net(A,B) returns that B is better').  If your neural network isn't at some level returning a value for each position, or at least the results of comparing two values one generated from each position, then it's almost certain that it will run into some measure of this 'rock-paper-scissors' issue.  Unfortunately, there isn't an easy answer there, because the very premise of game tree search (that there is an Objectively Best position) breaks down in that case.  There are certainly ways of trying to tackle that issue, but now we're starting to get into thesis-level research mathematics, in the sense that you could probably get a pretty good thesis out of working through various approaches to the problem...


How to use TWIC files for study I'd like some feedback and suggestions on how you use The Week In Chess pgn/cbv files for study. Here are a few things I do with them:

1. Play from a won position - here we go down the list of decided games and using a chess engine, get to the point in the game where the evaluation flips to +/- 2.00 or greater. Play the game out at that point against the computer and try and find a winning continuation.

2. Update your repertoire - Using the ECO Keys, gather the games in your main repertoire from the TWIC file and at least review those games and possibly add them to your repertoire games database. This allows you to see potential new ideas and how to play certain middle-games coming out of your repertoire.

3. Hold the Draw - Take a drawn game and jump in and play it against the computer and try and hold the ending with 10-20 moves left. Try it from both sides, alternatively. This ii a great way to understand endgame play.

4. Defend your King - this is the opposite of #1 - Take the losing position and try to defend it. You might want to consider reducing the +/- to  a pawn down on the comp. valuation. This is good defensive practice when in a worse position.

Just some thoughts...

Grandmaster Larry Christiansen recommends studying 200 recent games per week from games that relate to your opening repertiore.  TWIC is ideally suited for doing that.


Pawn promotion movement If a pawn is promoted, does that count as a move?  What if a rook is waiting and could capture the new queen in one move? What exactly happens when a pawn is promoted?

The pawn promotion is part of the move of a white pawn to the eighth (or for a black pawn to the first) row. So you move the pawn to eighth row and replace it immediately with a piece of your choice (except kings, pawns or pieces of the opposite color). You don't need to spend an extra move for the promotion.

If a rook can immediately take your new queen, well such is life … ;-)
Maybe promoting wasn't such a good move then ...


How many games to play in a chess match? I gave someone 3 months to become as good a chess player as I am. She was just a beginner and I'm a slightly below average player (around 1500 elo).

To see if she managed to do this, I figured we should play a chess match consisting of multiple games.

But what is a reasonable or standard amount of games to play in a chess match (or a 2 player tournament, if you will)?

The amount of games in a match is usually* even, to guarantee an equal balance between White and Black. 2 game (mini)-matches are rare, except in knock-out tournaments like the Chess World Cup. More games will produce a more reliable result, so you should play as many games as you have time for, but 4 games should already give a good indication about who's the better player. With some mathematics and the expected performance formula you can calculate the odds of losing an X-game match to a player who is Y ELO points better/worse than you.

*: The only exception is an Armageddon game which can be used after a match which ended in a draw (i.e. the same score for both players).


New to SCID, Where should I begin? I read "SCID database" mentioned many times in different chess forums. As a regular chessbase/pgn user, I wonder what difference it makes and where I should begin. Thanks!

The Start here section of the SCID official webpage provides a lot of different links explaining the functionalities of the program, what can you do with it and what can you do to help back, among many others.

SCID provides a free alternative to commercial software, compatible with the standard .png format but with an own format .si4 said to be one of the key points when it comes to the speed of SCID analizing and mantaining a huge database.

It is compatible with very powerful engines like Rybka or the famous Stockfish used for everyone from an amateur to top GMs.

This is just an intro to all the info that you can find in the official page. The FAQ section is also very useful if you're approaching SCID for the first time.


What is the meaning of "dead draw"? I heard the term "dead draw" a lot, but I don't know its meaning and when a position is "dead draw".

A dead draw is  a position in which no player has any chance of winning.
Sometimes erroneously used in a position where theoretically someone could win but both players believe it is so basic and simple that neither will make a fatal mistake so the other player would win.


How to proceed with the book "Pawn Structure Chess" by Andrew Soltis? Should I memorize everything in the book, or use it in some other way?

I'm not familiar with the book itself, but for learning pawn structures it isn't important to memorize every single thing. The key is to understand the general ideas behind each structure. E.g.: what are the main plans, which pawns are weaknesses, what squares work well as outposts for pieces, can the structure be changed as the game goes on, etc.

Knowing these things would be useful if you were playing a real game with the structure in question. And the key is to know them, not to memorize them by rote. If you can understand why certain structures give rise to certain characteristics, then you could generalize when facing a new structure over the board.


How long would it take China's Tianhe-2 Supercomputer to produce an 8-man tablebase? Wondering how long it would take a TOP10 Supercomputer to fully construct an 8-man tablebase.

From the bottom of this page:

  Unfortunately the size of 7-man tablebases (sic. - the author means 8-man here) will be 100 times larger than size of 7-man tablebases. To fully compute them, one will need about 10 PB (10000 TB) of disk space and 50 TB of RAM. Only top 10 supercomputers can solve 8-man problem in 2014. So don't hold your breath expecting new breakthroughs too soon - the first 1000-move mate is unlikely to be found until 2020 when a part of a TOP100 supercomputer may be allowed to be used for solving this task.

This doesn't give a complete answer, but it would suggest that if you could find an estimated time for the Tianhe-2 to generate a 7-man tablebase and then multiply that result by 100, you should get a ballpark figure for the time required, probably accurate to within an order of magnitude.


Dealing with flexible opening positions For some reason I feel uncomfortable in positions where the opponent has not committed any of his pawns in the center and was wondering why is that? I guess it feels like I'm not sure how to carry on in positions such as those. Here is an example of what I'm talking about.

[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq -"]
1.g3 e5 Bg2 d5 Nf3 e4 Nd4 c5 Nb3

I also tend to be very concerned about pawn breaks and my opponent using flank pawns or something else to attacking my center. Is this fear a valid one? Such as if lets say as a continuation from the previous example

[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq -"]
1.g3 e5 Bg2 d5 Nf3 e4 Nd4 c5 Nb3 Nf6 d3

Something like d3 in those situations really bother me for some strange reason. Like I want to keep my pawns intact and so on. I have a feeling that paranoia such as that may have an impact on my thought process and then game.

As a general principle, when my opponent is breaking (in a loose sense) the opening principles by not occupying the center, I try to combat this by following the principles even more. As a result, I would try to avoid making multiple pawn moves and instead try to get my pieces out once establishing e5 and d5.

For example, in your line I would play something like 1. g3 e5 2. Bg2 d5 3. Nf3 Nc6, defending the pawn and getting started on your own development. It's worth noting that while 3...e4 looks good because it seems to gain a tempo on the knight it also cost you a move to make, allows your opponent's bishop to be opened up (the pawns probably won't last long as they are) and you're committed to d5/e4 instead of retaining the flexibility of being able to make either pawn move in response to what your opponent is doing.

I guess you could argue that 3...Bd6 is also an option as it allows c5 soon, but it also removes a defender of d5 and goes against the advice of developing knights before bishops. Nc6 looks good to me and I'd just keep moving pieces to useful squares and see what kind of setup white ends up going with before making too many more pawn moves.


FIDE Laws of Chess pre-2017 I have to hold a lesson for B-Trainers about the law of chess, and I have to tell them what has changed in the last years. While I’m quite sure that I can teach the actual LoC (that’s what I regularly do), I cannot remember older versions in every detail. FIDE rules commission has an archive, but my browser shows me only a blank page for the 2014 LoC. Can someone provide a readable link to the archive?

The Chess Arbiters Association, which you can join as an associate member, keeps records of the laws going back, in the case of FIDE, to the first set of FIDE laws in French in 1928 and in general the laws back as far as the 1617 version in Italian by Carrera.


Online defensive tactics training problems? I've been doing the tactics problems at jrobichess.com and shredderchess.com pretty regularly, and recently added chesstempo.com. I find I'm much better at attacking tactics than defensive tactics: that is, I can solve "Find mate in X"-type problems at a much higher level than "Avoid mate"-type problems, even when the calculations are basically the same. I know how to deploy various attacking ideas, but I haven't learned to see them coming and defend against them. What are some resources I could use to improve this side of my tactical play? Is there a site like the above that stresses defensive tactics, or where you can select specifically defensive problems?

I enjoyed Andy Soltis' The Art of Defense in Chess.  It was all about finding hidden resources.

Remarkably, this book is available electronically for no cost, and legally I assume.  Here are a few links.

http://torrentz.eu/solt/Soltis%2C%20Andrew%20-%20The%20Art%20of%20Defense%20in%20Chess.pdf-3692550

http://ebookee.org/The-Art-of-Defense-in-Chess-by-Andrew-Soltis-1975-_1168031.html

Paper book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Defense-Chess-Andrew-Soltis/dp/0679141081


What was the biggest blunder made by Boris Spassky in Game 6? I just wanted to inquire about the biggest mistake or blunder by Boris Spassky In game no. 6 against Bobby Fischer.

I am tempted to say "agreeing to continue the match after Fischer's protests!" which some argue was a key psychological defeat.  If you're looking for specific moves that were mistakes, there are a few candidates.  I haven't looked at all annotations, but have Kasparov's My Great Predecessors, vol 4 handy and looking over his notes, it would be either (notations and comments are his):

...d4?
"This move, conceding the important c4-square, was rightly condemned by the commentators.  20. ...Nf6 really was better...but the most accurate solution was the continuation 20. ...c4"

and

...Rb8?!
"The last critical moment."


Empirical question: Is a drawish opening line really a concern for an ambitious player? While similar questions have been asked before and many comments were given, I couldn't find a thread dealing with my particular experiences. So:
Whenever I discuss openings with professional and even with semi-professional players the issue inevitably reaches the point where somebody says that he doesn't like a particular line because he would have no prospects of winning this position at all - meaning that it is equal and dull, too drawish etc.
This fear is not foreign to me but after all those years I concluded that it is hypothetical in nature. I played several thousand classical games but I cannot remember a single one that resulted in a draw exclusively due to both sides knowing a long main line. Very seldom did I reach a position after about twenty moves that a book's author evaluates to "=". And even in these rare cases, the rest of the game saw complications that granted winning chances to one side. Without checking it, I guess I had more decided games then draws in the Exchange French and the Exchange King's Indian.
Even on low GM-level I don't have the feeling that this is a common scenario. In the few cases I witnessed a GM game where both players were blitzing out their prep and agreed to a draw quickly, I never had the feeling that one of them was disappointed and doubted his opening choice, although this is different on world class level.
For some years now, I bring up this point again and again - this "empirical" objection to a concern understandable form an "analytical" perspective. But it never catches on. (Most surprisingly, a lot of people expressing this concern also show a tendency to make quick draws.) Recently I heard of a talented 9-year-old. His caregiver was concerned that he exclusively plays the Petroff against 1. e4. His supposedly weaker opponents learnt about this and prepared drawish lines against him. As it turned out, during that tournament he didn't draw a single game in the Petroff.
So to my eyes, this is an unjustified concern for players below, say 2500. Sure, you can loose half a point due to being out-prepared. But not in lines of which you know the details. But nonetheless every opening adviser seems to be proud to state that a certain position is full of life, although there is no objective advantage. I wonder whether I am misled by my subjective experiences. Is the scenario of a fully bloodless game more common than I am willing to grant? Is there anyone who is experiencing this regularly? And anyone who got so bored by this that he quit chess? And if not: Why is this concern so pervasive anyway? Might it be that weaker players mimic super-GMs, pretending we all share the same problems?
And if someone shares my feelings: What is the threshold above which this becomes a problem?

You're right that drawing lines don't really affect people who are lower rated. However, your bar for 2500 isn't practical. Most people who are close to master rated (say 2100+, and even some lower rated) will have memorized some of the main drawing lines in their main weapons. That being said, there's a huge difference between playing openings that give you level positions but with a lot of play left in the position (such as the Petrov or the London), and playing openings that give you drawing lines (such as the forcing variations of the English attack Najdorf or Bg4 Panov-Botvinnik attack).
If it's easy and practical to memorize one or two main branches in a "drawing line" you can be sure: the higher-rated your opponent, the more likely they are to know these lines. If your opening simply gets you a roughly equal position, but there are enough pieces still on the board that you have something to actually play for, then that should be totally fine for most people up even to the highest levels of chess.


Trading queens in the opening Which standard openings in chess usually pave the way for an early queen trade in the game? In other words, which opening has a high probability of exchanging the queens in the opening itself? Does any opening contain queen trade as a part of standard theory?

There is not opening that usually paves the way for a queen trade. There are plenty of specific lines that allow for it, but it takes cooperation from your opponent.

The first line that comes to mind is hugely popular at the GM level: The Berlin in the Ruy Lopez.

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

Another one, but that is only particularly popular at club level is the King's Indian Exchange Variation.

 [FEN ""]

 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Nf3 O-O 6. Be2 e5 7. dxe5 dxe5 8. Qxd8 Rxd8

GM Edmar Mednis wrote a book called "From the Opening into the Endgame", which covers a lot of early transitions to the endgame, including quite a few lines that were popular, and lead to an early queen trade, but again, you cannot force your opponent to allow the queens to come off.

Here are a few of the lines covered.

The Grunfeld

 [FEN ""]

 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. e4 Nxc3 6. bxc3 c5 7. Nf3 Bg7 8. Be3 Qa5 9. Qd2 {Can lead to an early exchange of queens on d2.}

This line in the English was hugely popular in the 1980's.

 [FEN ""]

 1. c4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3. cxd5 Nxd5 4. Nf3 g6 5. e4 Nxc3 6. dxc3 Qxd1+ 7. Kxd1

Another Ruy Lopez Exchange line that was popular in the 1980's.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 dxc6 5. O-O f6 6. d4 exd4 7. Nxd4 c5 8. Nb3 Qxd1 9. Rxd1

The French Tarrasch Variation.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 c5 4. exd5 exd5 5. Bb5+ Bd7 6. Qe2+ Qe7 7. Bxd7+ Nxd7 8. dxc5 Qxe2+ 9. Nxe2

The Modern.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 g6 2. d4 Bg7 3. c4 d6 4. Nc3 e5 5. dxe5 dxe5 6. Qxd8+ Kxd8

It is not impossible to trade in the Pirc, but it leads to a position that white has a 75% winning percentage, and it not in the spirit of the type of position that black wants when playing the Pirc.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. Be2 O-O 6. O-O e5 $6 7. dxe5 dxe5 8. Qxd8 Rxd8 9. Bg5

And one last one, first played by the great Capablanca as black.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 Bf5 4. Bd3 Bxd3 5. Qxd3 Qa5+ 6. c3 Qa6 7. Qxa6 {Avoiding the exchange of queens makes it difficult to develop.} Nxa6

The Petrov.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. Qe2 Qe7 6. d3 Nf6 7. Bg5 Qxe2+ 8. Bxe2 Be7


Famous celebrity chessplayers? Are there any celebrities, such as artists, politicians, etc, that also have a FIDE title? Also I don't want people whom had chess as a catapult to their job, because Karpov would be a great example of a politician who became so because of chess, or Carlsen whose modeling career is chess-based.

here's a list of some famous chess players who were able gain fame in other areas.Just to mention ,none of them are actors or politicians.

Former world Champion Mikhail Botvinnik was a famous computer scientist and electrical engineer. He was one of earliest pioneers of AI.

Attacking player Extraordinaire Rashid Nezhmetdinov was also a checkers player,strong enough to participate in Soviet Checkers Championships.

Fred Reinfield was an author who wrote several books ranging from Philately,Numismatics to Physics,Geology and medicine.

Milan Vidmar was a very well known academic and electrical engineer who actually became an university's Chancellor(Equivalent to Dean) and went on to build a Institute which now bears his name.

Former world champion Max Euwe- Mathematician

Mark Taimanov- Concert Pianist

Robert Hübner is a papyrologist and was recognised as a leading player of Xiangqi(a chinese board game) who was not from China.

Here are some players who does not fit "famous in other areas" bill, but still were able to build their own career in other fields.

Lajos Portisch- Opera Singer

John Nunn- Mathematician


What does Kasparov mean by "I was behind in three and even in one after six games"? This not a question about chess exactly but I'm reading Deep Thought by Kasparov and I didn't understand what he meant by "I was behind in three and even in one after six games" when he was describing his matches with Karpov.

  In my five world championship matches against Karpov, I was ahead after six games in only one, our last match in 1990. In the other four I was behind in three and even in one after six games, but didn’t lose any of them in the end, winning two and drawing one. (Our first match was terminated after I came back from 0–5 to 3–5.)

Does this mean that he was three games behind in the first six in one match and one game behind in the other?

He is talking about the score after the sixth game of each of his matches with Karpov. To be precise, these were the scores after game six (shown as Kasparov-Karpov, not counting draws, to follow the same convention as the quote from the book):

1984: 0-2
1985: 1-2
1986: 1-1
1987: 1-2
1990: 1-0

As you can see, Kasparov was behind after the sixth game in three matches: 1984, 1985, and 1987. The score was even in one: 1986. Put both facts together and you have "behind in three and even in one". And indeed in only one match, 1990, Kasparov was ahead after the sixth game.


Game with computers choosing the worst possible moves Since chess engines in one way or an other rank alternative moves, it should be able to search for the worst move as well as the best. Have engines played each others trying to lose, and what has come out of that? Do they for instance set up for devastating tactics against themselves? (It might be a style of chess that I recognize...)

Yes. Chess engines can be reprogrammed to play a bad move. This is not very hard, just pointless and waste of time.

Some possibilities:

Choose the worst move statically without even going into search
Choose a move randomly from the move generator
For each legal move in the position, play it internally and the run a regular search. Choose the move that gives the worst score.
Reverse piece material sign, so that the engine would give away materials for free. For example, scoring +9 for giving away the queen without any compensation.
Similarly, play around the piece square table values.

A few years ago, someone made a chess engine Moron for exactly what you descrbe.

  http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47026&highlight=julien+loser


What does it mean to win "by force"? I occasionally see annotations/commentary where a move / line is said to make (for example) white win "by force". I am unsure if it has the general sense of "this move initiates a forcing sequence where white will come out on top" or something more specific, say, "with this move, white exerts indefensible pressure ('force') on a particular square / sector (say more attackers than defenders on f7 with further defense impossible) that will give them victory."

What exactly does it mean?

"Wins by force" means that the move leads to a series of moves that makes it impossible for the losing side to defend the position. Here, the definition of "winning" can vary between annotators. Checkmate is the extreme case of winning. Having an advantage of two pawns without any compensation for the opponent is somewhere at the low end of a winning position. The whole term "by force" refers to the fact that the opponent is unable to avoid getting a worse / losing position. At what point does a position become winning? That can depend on the position and the players involved. Usually, higher rated players have higher expectations on them to win better positions. If a game is annotated as "this move wins by force" then it means that the annotators expects the player at the board to win the position that arises after the sequence of moves is completed.


What is the longest professional chess game that ended in a checkmate? Quite simply, what is the longest professional chess game that ended in a checkmate?


What is the thought process of a GM playing bullet? I have read other posts (e.g. this) with descriptions of the thought process when playing long time controls, but I'm wondering what kind of information a GM processes during games with very short time controls.

Well, of course in very short time controls one cannot assess all the details prescribed in the answers of that good post. Grandmasters rely mostly on their vast experience, as much as it happens in other fields. But we can say that pattern recognition for tactics and mate threats play a major role. And they also learn to polish their intuition. They can efficiently and quickly prune the decision tree (even if they are wrong, they have the process automated) and they learn to recognize the critical points in which they should take some more time evaluating a position. They will have time saved for that critical moment, if it appears.


What checkmates are appropriate for 7 year old kids? I give chess lessons to children and I've been told by my boss that the most important ability at this age is the capacity of delivering checkmate to the opponent.

I've taught them the back rank mate, the smothered mate, pillsbury's mate, mate with a rook, ... Among many others.

I was wondering what checkmate patterns would also be appropriate for children this age. I know that, for example, it would be too difficult for them to learn the 2 bishops checkmate.

P.S. The children are not going to engage in any kind of competition, the most important objective of the class is that they have fun.

The approach I use (also with older kids) is that the process of mating involves putting the king in jail and making the walls smaller and smaller ...

For something like smothered mate it is the pieces on the king's own side which build the walls! But when there is not much material left on the board you have to build the walls with your pieces. You can then show them the kind of walls the queen, one rook and then two rooks make. I would also show the wall that one king makes for the other, even though this is only 3 squares long. It comes in handy for KRvK. Of course every wall (apart from the queen wall because the king can't approach the queen) has at least one hole in it where the piece stands.

Once you have this principle established it is easier to teach them the KQvK, KRRvK, KRvK endgame mates. With the ideas behind the "build a prison wall and make it smaller" I believe you can even introduce the KBBvK endgame to young kids although they likely won't succeed most of the time. However it introduces some more interesting ways of handling the two bishops which may help them in the middlegame and I think is still well worth while.


Another Unusual Mate in One Here is another mate-in-one of my own i.e. a not quite usual one...
    [title "Mate in one"]
    [FEN "3b4/R3P3/2kPR1n1/P1p1n3/4K1p1/2Nr4/5p2/1b6 w KQkq - 0 1"]

Imagine, you walk into a chess club, an abandoned chessboard hangs out on a table. You take a look at the position. You don't know where white or black is, who to play, yet one thing is certain: there is checkmate in one move...

There are two checkmates per orientation:
    [title "Mate in one"]
    [FEN "3b4/R3P3/2kPR1n1/P1p1n3/4K1p1/2Nr4/5p2/1b6 w KQkq - 0 1"]

1. exd8=N#

and
    [title "Mate in one"]
    [FEN "3b4/R3P3/2kPR1n1/P1p1n3/4K1p1/2Nr4/5p2/1b6 b KQkq - 0 1"]

1... Rxc3#

and
    [title "Mate in one"]
    [FEN "6b1/2p5/4rN2/1p1K4/3n1p1P/1n1RPk2/3P3R/4b3 b KQkq - 0 1"]

1...c6#

and
    [title "Mate in one"]
    [FEN "6b1/2p5/4rN2/1p1K4/3n1p1P/1n1RPk2/3P3R/4b3 w KQkq - 0 1"]

1. e4#


Elimination of the knight: Direct or Indirect? Between 18. Na2 and 18. Rac1, which is more favorable for white?

IM Silman gives this position as problem 3 in The reassess your chess workbook. He recommends 18. Na2:

  Short played the surprising and strong 18. Na2!!. This idea ... shows that White considers the b4-Knight to be more important than its brother on e4. The reason is simple: the b4-Knight is the main guardian of Black's weak points on a6, c6 and d5.

IM Silman does not consider 18. Rac1 in his analysis.


Feedback and advice on a slav position for White I play d4 with White and against the slav/semislav I start with the order of d4,c4,e3,Nc3 usually. But when I face the 3...Bf5 variation in the slav I do 4.Nf3. My problem is with a certain variation where I can't play Nh5 trying to capture the the light-squared bishop at the right time as illustrated in this variation:
[FEN ""]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.e3 Bf5 4.Nf3 e6 5.Be2 Nd7 6.Nc3 Bd6 7. O-O h6 8. b3 Ngf6 9. Bb2 O-O 10.Rc1
Qe7 11. h3

After move 7...h6 I really don't know for which pawn structure I should go for. I noticed that Radjabov went for a b3 system and played the moves that I suggested up. But Black is better out of the opening and this really pisses me off! I mean I'm playing with White, I should have a slight advantage. My dark-squared bishop is bad, and Black's bishops are well developed! I would really appreciate your feedback about this position after move 3...Bf5 or 5...Nd7. How White should set up his pieces? and what are the general plans in these positions? In the variations where I'm allowed to play Nh5 to capture the bishop, I always do it. But if I can't, this is where I get stuck. btw I also checked the move 4.cxd5 cxd5 5.Qb3 or 5.Nc3 and then 6.Qb3
[FEN ""]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.e3 Bf5 4.cxd5 cxd5 5.Qb3 (5.Nc3 Nf6 (5...e6 6.Qb3)(5...a6 6.Qb3)6.Qb3)

but I'm not sure about it. Let me know what you think.

After 4.cxd5 the Queen cannot take because of 5.Nc3 Qa5 6.Bd2 which renders black in a horrible game (Stockfish says +1.4).
So black has to play 4.cxd5 cxd5 5.Qb3 which either wins the pawn on b7 or forces black to play Qd7 (or Bc8)
[FEN ""]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.e3 Bf5 4.cxd5 cxd5 5.Qb3 Qd7 6.Nc3 e6 7.Nf3 Nc6 8.Bd2

However, this is 0.0 or maybe +0.1. So it is not desirable for White. Instead, I advise you to play 4.Bd3
[FEN ""]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.e3 Bf5 4.Bd3 Bxd3 5.Qxd3 e6 6.Nf3

or 3.cxd5. Even though it is frowned upon as a Remis variant.
[FEN ""]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.cxd5 cxd5 4.Nc3 Nc6


What are the common mistakes make by chess engines at ELO range 1500 - 1800? I'm a software developer and occasional chess player at elo rating 1500.

Chess engines of different level play different type of games with some mistakes according to that given level.

I'm really eager to know that what are common factors differentiate
the playing ability of chess engines from one level to another
level?
Can somebody explain what are the common mistakes make by chess
engines at ELO range 1500 - 1800 ?

Thank you in advance for your help.

I'm also a chess engine developer, let me answer you from my own experience:

There're lot of reasons differentiate the playing ability. Actually, a lot. This is an area where one could write a PhD thesis, but let's take a quick look at the two major factors.

Ability to do a cutoff quicker
Ability to evaluate a position better

Unlike a human player, a computer chess algorithm doesn't need a sophisticated position evaluation. Lots of weak engines tend to use some very complicated evaluations, such as cubic interpolation of material values but none have been proven to work. Simple is the key. Stockfish, the strongest engine in the world, has an evaluation about Elo 1800. It might sound amazing that an Elo 3000+ engine has a simple evaluation that is only about Elo 1800 level. But remember, a computer needs to use this evaluation function for hundreds of thousands of positions. The simpler, the faster the engine can search, the higher depth it can reach and therefore the more tactics it can see.

Weak engines tend to use only alpha-beta. It's insufficient because the search space is too large. One would need to consider null-move, late move reductions and other advanced algorithms.

Now, to your second point. The common mistake made by chess engines at ELO range 1500 - 1800 is that their programmer doesn't understand chess programming. MicroMax, a super light chess engine (Google it if you don't believe) can play Elo 2000. Anything weaker than it is an indication that the engine has bugs and not performing as expected, as it should.

In general, an engine with a correct material evaluation function can perform Elo 2000.


Adventures in the ODCL Pt. 2 - How about this endgame? Another week, another match, and this time as Board 2 for the second team instead of bottom board for the firsts. Background: In the review my rating has gone up slightly to 142 ECF (~1765 Elo). My opponent I've played a couple of times before with one win a piece, but this is my first black against him. I know he doesn't like to mess about and is pretty direct, but then again that's my style as well so no problem there! I'm mildly surprised to see he is now ECF 126 (~1645 Elo), he's been higher than that. The time limit was 75 minutes for all moves (no increment), and time is a bit of a factor as at the end I have ~20 minutes left whereas he is down to his last 2.

[White "A.N.Other"]
[Black "Ian Bush"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "A60"]
[PlyCount "86"]
[FEN ""]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 e6 4. e3 exd5 5. cxd5 d6 6. Nc3 g6 7. Bd3 Bg7 8. Nge2 O-O 9. O-O Re8 10. Qc2 Na6 11. a3 Nc7 12. e4 b5 13. Nxb5 Nxb5 14. Bxb5 Rxe4 15. Bc6 Rb8 16. Bg5 Bf5 17. Ng3 Re5 18. Nxf5 Rxf5 19. Bxf6 Qxf6 20. b4 cxb4 21. Rab1 a5 22. axb4 Rxb4 23. Rfe1 Rxb1 24. Qxb1 Rxf2 25. Qb6 Rb2 26. Qe3 Qd4 27. Qxd4 Bxd4+ 28. Kf1 Rf2+ 29. Kg1 Re2+ 30. Kf1 Rxe1+ 31. Kxe1 f5 32. Kd1 Kg7 33. Kc2 Kf6 34. Kd3 Ke5 35. g3 Bg1 36. h3 Bf2 37. g4 fxg4 38. hxg4 h5 39. Bd7 Kf4 40. gxh5 gxh5 41. Kc4 Kg3 42. Kb5 Be1 43. Kc6 Bb4 0-1

I have four points of interest.

1) (Least important) I forgot to ask him afterwards but the body language clearly said his 4. e3 was a finger slip-I assume he got ahead of himself, forgetting Nc3 (and cxd5) came first. My thoughts here were "Great, no nasty flick knife attack, and the bishop isn't getting to f4 quickly so I should have a nice easy opening as d6 won't be under pressure," so I just played the obvious moves. It went OK, but in the very unlikely event I ever see this again, can anybody see anything better?

2) Again I'm pleased with my play, but any constructive comments are appreciated

3) For once I remembered something from Mr. Silman, enough to know that the opposite coloured Bishop ending was winning for black, hence Re2+ as the extra pawns are sufficiently separated. Is this the most practical decision here? Is there any easier way to convert? If it is relevant, time pressure was beginning to tell on my opponent by that point.

4) I have a feeling that my opponent didn't make life as difficult for me as he could in the ending, again possibly time pressure. So did I play the ending OK, did I have the right ideas? And is there anything different I should have done, especially if my opponent had found some stronger moves?

Time for an answer! :-)

Overall you played a wonderfully strong game. White played weakly, and you used that to your advantage. Very nicely done!

I plugged the game into Stockfish to see if the computer could find any moments of missed tatical shots. Here are answers to each of your four questions.

1) Instead of playing 4... exd5 as you did in the this game, next time you could play the Stockfish recommened 4... g6, which is slightly better, preparing to fianchetto the bishop and gain a slight lead in development

2) A missed middlegame chance:

b4?! was in fact an inaccuracy by White! This is be because you have a battery comprised of your queen and bishop on the a1-h8 diaganol. 20... Qxa1! is in fact the best moving, giving up the queen for two rooks. Black now has a much better postion.

3)  Your move, 29... Rxe2+? misses an oppurtunity, as you suspected. There was a chance  a piece. This is because of the move 29... a4!! and White must give up a piece for Black’s passed pawn, whether or be the rook or the bishop, at some point. If 30. Bxe4, Black wins the White bishop via a discovered check from the rook. If White move their king to avoid it, 30 Kh1, 30... a5 is next. Now White’s light square bishop can’t reach it. The rook will have to capture the promoted Black piece once the pawn promotes, if not taking it earlier, as Black’s dark-squared bishop protects the promtoion sqaure.

4) I think that what you consider the endgame in this game is after the rooks are excahnged, and as such I will answer this question regarding the moves that happen after 31. Kxe1.

Playing your pawns out to get a passed pawn and activating your king are good, standard practices. You played much better than White did. All in all, you played thiss endgame more strategically than White did, you did miss a few moves. Really, there were no stronger moves that White made.

After White played 35. g3?!!, aka a blunder, you were correct to play 35... Bg1.

g4?! was another blunder. Instead of 37... fxg4?, f4! was the better move, gaining a second passed pawn.

After 43. Kc6? you should have played 43.. a4! instead, the second time this move was missed by you. After 44. Bf5 a3 45. Bb1, 45... h4! is the move to play, and soon you shall queen one of your two rook pawns.

White’s attempt to create their own passed pawn was a natural stragety, but it was not perfect. Yours wasn’t either, but it was superior.


How to force the computer to play another move on Chess.com? I am playing a game against the computer on chess.com. The computer made a move that looks absurd, so I would like to make it do another move instead and analyse the game.

How to do it?

I tried to share the game with you, but when I hit the "share" button I cannot get a link to that particular moment into the game. Anyway I did Qxd7, Ka8 which is check mate after Qa7. I don't understand why the computer does not want to do Kxb6

Judging from the position, you were not playing the strongest computer level. Weaker levels simulate human blunders by deliberately making weaker moves.

Why not just go back a move? There should be an undo button.


What strategic plan, for the White player, needed to implemented in the middlegame? I played a game yesterday on chess.com with the Pirc Defence. I am kind of weak in the endgame but I was concerned about the middlegame plan. Was my approach the wrong one? Why, and where, did I lose?

[FEN ""]
[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2017.05.22"]
[Round "-"]
[White "ISeth"]
[Black "qwcnm"]
[Result "0-1"]
[BlackElo "1954"]
[ECO "B07"]
[TimeControl "900+10"]
[WhiteElo "1869"]
[EndTime "6:21:19 PDT"]
[Termination "qwcnm won by resignation"]

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d6 3.g3 h6 4.Bg2 g5 5.c4 Bg7 6.Ne2 Nd7 7.Nbc3 Nf8 8.Be3 Nf6
9.h3 Ne6 10.d5 cxd5 11.Nxd5 Nxd5 12.exd5 Nc5 13.Bd4 Qa5+ 14.Nc3 O-O 15.Bxg7
Kxg7 16.O-O Bf5 17.Qd4+ f6 18.Rfe1 Rfe8 19.g4 Bg6 20.Ne4 Nd7 21.Ng3 Ne5
22.Be4 Rac8 23.b3 Qc5 24.Qxc5 Rxc5 25.Bxg6 Kxg6 26.Kg2 a6 27.Ne4 Rc7 28.Rec1
Rec8 29.a4 b5 30.axb5 axb5 31.c5 Nd3 32.Rc3 Nxc5 33.Nxc5 Rxc5 34.Rxc5 Rxc5
35.Rd1 Rc3 36.Re1 Kf7 37.Re3 Rxe3 38.fxe3 e6 39.e4 exd5 40.exd5 f5 41.Kf3
f4 42.h4 Kf6 43.hxg5+ hxg5 44.Ke4 b4 45.Kd4 f3 46.Ke3 Ke5 47.Kxf3 Kxd5
48.Ke3 Ke5 49.Kd3 d5 50.Ke3 d4+ 51.Kd3 Kd5 52.Kd2 Ke4 53.Ke2 d3+ 54.Kd2
Kd4 55.Kd1 Kc3 56.Kc1 Kxb3 57.Kd2 Kc4 58.Ke3 Kc3   0-1

You can see that black wasted some tempos with his Knight in the opening, so I decided to strike in the centre with d5 or e5. I played d5 and was expecting some fireworks and tactical superiority, but could not achieve anything.

Can anyone suggest something better?

If you look at the position round about move 20 you see that you are already strategically worse. Black has a very good bishop and you have a very bad one thanks to your pawns on c4 and d5. Your pawn on c4 is much weaker in the endgame than black's on e7. You have set up the conditions for black to launch a winning minority attack on the queenside which he eventually did.

Your best chance at that stage in the game was to launch your own kingside attack. To that end you needed to keep pieces on the board and not swap them off as you did. On move 19, instead of g4, double rooks on the e file starting with Re3, then push your f pawn to break open his kingside. His pawns on d6 and e7 form a block making it difficult for him to bring his queen and a8 rook over to the defense. That should give you good chances of winning on the kingside before he wins on the queenside.

As it was you swapped off into a losing endgame.

Going back further in the game you can see that your pawn push to d5 set up the conditions for his win. In that kind of position you should be looking for the e5 push instead. If you can make that work then you will be much better.


Establish Rating System for My Community I want to establish a rating system for my community.

I've decided to publish the rating every 1st January, April, July and October.
Every new player will be given a rating of 1200.
Using result submitted to me by tournament organisers, I will get
every players' Rating Performance for any tournament.
Every time I want to publish a new rating, I will calculate the Average
Rating Performance for every player.
Let say between January to April, Player A's Rating Performances are
1300, 1200, 1400 (Player A participated in 3 tournaments)
So by April 1st, Player A's rating is (1300 + 1200 + 1400)/3 = 1300

Is this correct?

Edit

To put it simple, am I correct to use Player's Rating Performance to base my rating system?

Or should I calculate players' rating based on every player's encounter using calculator like this: https://ratings.fide.com/calculator_rtd.phtml ?

It is better to look at every game. Only looking at tournament performances causes you to lose some important information.

Should a 4 round tournament count the same as a 9 round tournament? Under your system, they count the same. That doesn't seem right.

I had a tournament recently where I won against 3 low-rated players and drew against a player rated over 2000. My performance rating was 2041. But there's a difference between a 2041 performance done this way, and a 2041 performance achieved by scoring 2/4 against players rated over 2000.

It's worse when a player wins (or loses) every game in a tournament. Are you going to make a player's rating go down after they win every game, if their opponents were too weak and thus the performance rating for that tournament was low? That doesn't seem fair.

Also, what happens during the next rating period? How do you account for the fact that the player already has a rating? Are you averaging in the old rating? But if a player with a well established rating plays in one tournament in a period, simply averaging the old rating and the one new tournament seems to put too much weight on the one new tournament.


Decent Playing Strength Chess Engine I'd like to make a chess program to play decent strength chess (say around 2100 ELO). What are the factors in Eval & techniques in Search that one would consider to achieve that rating?

Bug-free material evaluation
Null move heuristic
Common knowledge such as rook on the seventh rank, king safety, weak squares etc
Q-search
Transposition table
Killer heuristic
Efficient move generator
Nega-max
Iterative deepening
Aspiration windows


What is most important for improving chess skills? There's a lot of advice out there about how to improve your chess skills, some say, study openings, others say practice is more important that theoretical knowledge.

I'm aware that the advice depends on the current skills of the player asking, so feel free to share your knowledge by skill level.

Disclaimer: USCF B-player here.

My advice would be to play marginally higher-rated players and ask them for help in determining what one could do better.  Most people will fall over themselves to help someone who puts forth an honest effort (hence, web sites like this one.)  At tournaments, I've never had an opponent unwilling to go over a game.

I have had some surprises by entering my games into Crafty and letting it analyze every move.  You can see pretty quickly where things go sideways.  At my level the reason I lose is always tactical.  That is, after my move, Crafty shows how I'm losing a piece ;-)  It is encouraging that my opponents don't always make the best move, either, so I am not wholly doomed.

Back in the day I had an instructor (USCF Master) who advised A and B players: tactics, tactics, tactics.  That is, we could win all our games just by concentrating on the next 4 moves or so.  When that quit working, we'd be much better players.

I'd advise:

get an instructor who can beat you every time (+400 rating points, or so.)
learn a few openings pretty well.  It's hard to stay motivated when every game is a mess by move 7.
study problems
focus on having good games, not on winning per se.
don't be afraid to lose.
play a lot, record your moves, then run them through the computer.


The chess.com engine didn’t show a checkmate I've attached a screen shot of my game. It is Black’s turn to move. Their king was under check, but not checkmate, as the website didn't show mate.

After awhile, Black had to resign due to not being able to make any valid move.  Analyzing the game with a computer results in the move 41. gxh3 being suggested.

How is that possible?

As White's previous move was pawn on h2 to h4 then pawn g4xh3 is a legal en passant capture.

For more info - see Rule 3.7.d of the laws of chess


1. e4, 1. d4, 1. c4, or 1. Nf3? Which opening move has given the greatest scoring percentage for White in World Championship Matches? Which opening move  out of 1. e4, 1. d4, 1. c4 and 1.Nf3 has given the best scoring percentage for White in World Championship matches? What are the percentages?

1. b3 has the greatest scoring percentage (100%), although it's statistically insignificant because it only appears in one game out of 1,506.

The successful openings played more regularly are:

Nf3 (61.7%, 102 games)
c4 (59.3%, 129 games)
e4 (57%, 631 games)
d4 (55.4%, 632 games)

That data's compiled after downloading all 1,506 World Championship games from 1886 to 2013 from the chessgames.com WCC archive. Here's what Scid's Tree Window shows:


Unable to understand why N.McDonald - A. Stromer (1991) is a draw and not a win [Title "Black to move"]
[FEN "3k4/3r4/8/8/p7/8/4K3/1N6 w - - 0 1"]

1... 58. Kc7 59. Nc3

McDonald notes that if 59...a3, then "60 Nb5 wins it." I don't understand why this wins it. Can't the King just deflect the check and continue the game? Or by saying "... wins it", does McDonald mean that after that, the game is practically a win as he can mate easily?

If anything, I'd assume it'd just be another draw.  Can someone please clarify?

I suspect he means wins the pawn, as opposed to the game. A lone knight is insufficient material to mate, and black would have to cooperate to be mated with the rook vs. knight.


Main idea of Bird's opening I want to ask a question about Bird's opening (1. f4). My question is:

What's the main idea of this opening?
Is 1. ... d5 the best counter to 1. f4? Why 1. ...d5?

What's the main idea of this opening?

Main ideas for white:

surprise weapon as it is rarely played (since it is not all that good)
playing the Dutch opening with an extra tempo, but this is not a big deal IMO
avoiding opening theory as you can basically learn a "system" (certain position of pieces that you want to achieve) and follow this almost independent of what black plays
in some cases the pawn being already on f4 can be handy for kingside attacks

Basically there are three set ups:

stonewall with pawns on f4, e3, d4, c3; gives you good control of dark squares but weakens the light squares; Usually you only play this if black plays d5 at some point as otherwise black has the option to play something like d6 and e5 which is often unpleasant for the stonewall setup
fianchettoed bishop on  b2 often in combinations with pawns on e3 and f4. This gives you good control along the a1-h8 diagonal
fianchettoed bishop on g2. This can lead to king's indian like setups if you combine it with d3, e4.

In the end it depends whether you like the resulting positions. Check a few games from the database and look at the positions around move 10.

  Is the best counter of 1.f4 is 1...d5? Why 1...d5?

Yes, d5 is most popular and best. It takes control of the center, opens the way for the light squared bishop and is just a natural move. A reason not to play 1. ...d5 could be if you are worried about losing control of the dark squares in the center. In that case you could think to wait with d5, perhaps develop the bishop to g7 (which would work well against the white setup number "2" above) and leaving the option open to play d6 e5 later which would work well against the stonewall.

As a former 1. f4 player I would discourage you from playing this or any other off-beat opening if you want to be serious about chess. You can learn a lot more (and get better positions) if you play more normal openings.


Classical Time Control Armageddon? The fate of chess has been discussed for a long time and in recent years it has become more and more common. Examples of this include the 2018 World Chess Championship(12 draws) and the 2016 World Chess Championship(10 draws). It has become a problem to the degree that now major super tournaments such as Altibox Norway have a straight-up Armageddon for breaking ties. I was wondering if the idea of having classical time control Armageddon (say white 90 minutes and black 120 minutes) has been debated. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of having such a game?

I would tend to think that you are the very first person to propose that, mostly because I really do not think it would work for this reason:

Even with the control you proposed, 90 minutes to 120, the guy with 90 minutes still has A LOT of time to think not only on his time, but also on the opponent's time. That makes draw odds a MUCH larger advantage at that control than in blitz.

I tried thinking about alternative controls that might even it up some, but they would have to be so unbalanced, that the players would be playing under radically different time controls like 15 or 30 minutes to two hours. Whatever the control, you would need to create a situation where white with the extra time has some reasonable chance to out-think black and win, and that is hard at that level to begin with, but it is all but impossible with that much extra time that black can think on while white is thinking.


Can the Nc3+e3 Chebanenko Slav, the Exchange Slav and the 4...Bg4 Slow Slav transpose into each other? I would like to know if the following three variations can transpose into each other?

The Nc3+e3 Chebanenko Slav: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e3 a6
The Exchange Slav: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. cxd5 cxd5
The 4...Bg4 Slow Slav: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. e3 Bg4

?

I'm asking because:

d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e3 a6 5. Nf3 b5 6. cxd5 cxd5 looks like an Exchange Slav

d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e3 a6 5. Nf3 b5 6. b3 Bg4 looks like a 4...Bg4 Slow Slav.

d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. e3 Bg4 5. cxd5 looks like an Exchange Slav.

No, they don't transpose to Exchange Slavs.

In the Slow Slav and the Chebanenko, white plays e3 to prevent trouble with the c4 pawn. The bishop stays inside the pawn chain which is somewhat passive, but the plus is that c4 is defended, so that black can't stir up trouble by taking it and defending it with ...b5.

In the Exchange, white has dealt with that issue drastically by just exchanging the pawn away, so there's no need to make further concessions because of threats to it. I've never seen an Exchange Slav where white chose to keep Bc1 inside the chain, it goes to f4.


Select and deselect piece to move mode in Arena In Arena I select one field with piece I want to move or click some field accidentaly. Suppose after that I changed my mind and want to make move by other piece, now when I click new piece nothing happens and I have to find what field is selected and deselect it first by clicking on it. This mode is very annoying for me. How can I switch it off? I want to select new piece to move just by clicking it once.

Although there may be a solution for your problem, I suggest you get used to it instead, as it follows the official laws of chess and deters you from doing otherwise.

  4.3 Except as providedin Article 4.2, if the player having the move deliberately touches on the chessboard:

  a. one or more of his own pieces, he must move the first piece touched which can be moved

Good practice for visualization and proper chess etiquette.

Source: https://www.fide.com/component/handbook/?id=124&view=article


Autobiography by Sonja Graf In the book "Chess Bitch" by Jennifer Shahade I have read that Sonja Graf has written an autobiography in Spanish. Can anyone help me locate the book? It could be in Spanish, German, English or Russian.

She wrote two autobiographical books while in Argentina: "Así juega una mujer", Buenos Aires 1941 and "Yo soy Susann", Buenos Aires 1946. Susanna was her real first name.
Bibliographic data in WorldCat:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/asi-juega-una-mujer-impresiones-y-recuerdos-de-la-carrera-ajedrecistica-de-la-autora-y-psicologia-de-los-ajedrecistas/oclc/55440304

and

https://www.worldcat.org/title/yo-soy-susann-relato-intimo-y-autobiografico-impresiones-reales-recuerdos-y-confidencias-amorosas-historia-de-la-vida-en-si-misma-con-su-ensenanza-y-su-verdad/oclc/65716357

And this page contains photos of both books (scroll down): http://www.tabladeflandes.com/gabriel/gabriel-capo-16.html


Checkmate via en passant capture I tried to get the smallest sequence of moves that would result in a checkmate*( or rather Helpmate)* with the last move being a en passant . This is the shortest I could get :

[Title "Shortest En Passant Helpmate?"]
[fen ""]

1. e4 f6 2. Qe2 Kf7 3. e5 Ke6 4. Qe4 Nc6 5. Be2 Nb8 6. Nc3 Nc6 7. Nb5 Nb8 8. Nf3 Nc6 9. d3 Kf7 10. Nfd4 Nb8 11. Nb3 Nc6 12. Na5 Nb8 13. Nc4 Nc6 14. Nb6 Ke6 15. Bh5 Nb8 16. O-O d5 17. exd6#

Is there a shorter way to achieve it or 13 is the limit ?

I found one in 8 moves:

[Title "Shortest En Passant Helpmate?"]
[fen ""]

1. e4 f6 2. Bb5 Kf7 3. Qe2 Ke6 4. e5 Qe8 5. Qe4 Qf7 6. d4 a6 7. Bf4 d5 8.exd6#


Answering slow Sicilian set up (including Bc4) as Black I usually answer 1. e4 with the Sicilian, then after 2. Nf3 I play 2...d6 hoping for a Najdorf or other open Sicilian lines. I have quite a hard time though with slow set up like 3. Bc4 followed by d3 and Nf3 (not necessarily in this order). I tend to lose against these set up (I just find them boring).
What plan would you recommend for Black? I feel like refusing to play d4 early in the game should be punished but I don't see how. Thanks in advance!

I don't think that 3.Bc4 is so bad that Black should get an advantage. I believe that Adams played it several times with decent results, and it's not the worst way to avoid deep theory. But Black has easy equality.
You can play ..a6 (to which he will usually play a4) and ..e6. What then is that Bishop doing? Having played against it once or twice I agree that it's boring but there is not much you can do about it.


Why doesn't the computer take my knight? [FEN "3r4/p1p1kp2/1pn1b2p/4P1p1/P3pN2/2P1P1B1/2P2PPP/R5K1 b - - 0 1"]

 1...Nxe5 {This was the original question with black to move.} (1...gxf4) (1...Rd2)

NB: Black's knight was on C6 and has just moved to e5 and captured a pawn.

So I'm a beginner, playing the chess.com app on level 5 and periodically turning 'show best moves' on and off. I'm playing white; I got my white knight cornered on h3 so at the computer's suggestion moved it to f4, fully expecting black's pawn on g5 to capture it. It's what I would do. But instead black moves Rd2. Surprised, I try again on level 20; this time black moves Nxe5.

Why are Rd2 and Nxe5 better than gxf4?

If I understood correctly, the knight was on c6 and you play Nf4 whilst having a pawn on e5 still (which is important as it prevents f6 by black after gxf4 Bh4+). In this case, gxf4 is not necessarily the best as it leads to the exchange of B+N for a rook an a pawn (see below), which gives white some chances, despite it still being better for black.

 [title "Game position before Nf4, white to move"]
 [fen "3r4/p1p1kp2/1pn1b2p/4P1p1/P3p3/2P1P1BN/2P2PPP/R5K1 w - - 0 1"]

 1. Nf4 gxf4 2. Bh4+ Ke8 3. Bxd8 Kxd8 4. exf4

Instead, considering that white's lacking both coordination and activity, and the fact that black has all pieces centrally established and controls the only open file, it might be simpler (and even best) to not create an imbalance (like the line we saw above) and aim to maintain the assured edge by avoiding an over simplification that might be hard to judge and playing against white's shattered queenside pawn structure. Here's one possible continuation to exemplify:

 [title "Game position before Nf4, white to move"]
 [fen "3r4/p1p1kp2/1pn1b2p/4P1p1/P3p3/2P1P1BN/2P2PPP/R5K1 w - - 0 1"]

 1.Nf4 Nxe5 2.Ne2 Kf6 3.Nd4 Rd5 4.Kf1 Rc5 5. Ra3 Bd7


How many steps to mate the only king with all pieces? Suppose Black has only one king in its initial place and White has all 16 pieces in their initial places. How many steps does it take to ensure a checkmate? And what are all solutions?

Now that White changes his position with Black. White has only one king. Then How many steps does it take to ensure a checkmate? And what are all solutions?

Your first question: It takes 6 moves to mate the black king.
The only move is 1.e2-e4. All other white moves would take more than 6 moves... Also after 1.e2-e4 there are a lot of variations to long to post it right here.

The simplest way is to get the details and answer the second question yourself is using the program popeye, see http://sourceforge.net/projects/popeye-chess/

Final remark: There is a well known chess problem with white initial position and black king on h4. How to mate in 3 (white to move...)


How to organize a chess tournament I want to organize an amateur chess tournament inside the company I work for. I am looking for a convenient way of creating groups, keeping the scores, and getting some statistics.
Is there an online solution to organize a chess tournament? Do you have some examples, stories, or tips for organizing similar office/company tournaments? Please share them!

This isn't an online solution but one program you could use is swiss perfect, which manages tournaments and allows various options.


How often does FIDE review clocks to update their approved list? The approved list seems to be rather old:
5.5. The electronic chess clocks endorsed by the FIDE
5.5.1. DGT XL (year 2007)
5.5.2. DGT 2010 (year 2010)
5.5.3. Silver Timer (year 2007)
5.5.4. Sistemco (year 2009)
5.5.5. DGT 3000 (year 2014)
5.5.6. CE Clock (year 2017)
5.5.7. KK9908 Clock (year 2017)

How often does FIDE review what clocks are available.  The only ones on that list that I might consider are very old now.  There are many better ones available. When will FIDE update that list?

They seem to have just finished the process literally YESTERDAY, but the new clocks have not made it into that list.

You would think that there would be a set of criteria that a company would have to meet, and if met, then they would get approval, but it appears to be more of a "money thing" than a "this-clock-is-good" thing.

I remembered looking for that when I was buying my clock, and they appear to do it as a bidding process, in other words, the companies pay for the right; and if they pay enough, they are approved.

https://www.fide.com/news/77

https://www.fide.com/news/346 (Note the date: Friday, 31 Jan 2020)


Why are USCF quick ratings lower than USCF regular ratings? I noticed that my USCF quick rating is lower than my USCF regular rating.  At first I thought maybe it was because I was relatively weaker at faster time controls, but it seemed like the difference was too large to be just that.  This got me to looking at the ratings of everyone in my section (It was the open section, there was another section of sub-1200 and unrated) of my most recent dual-rated tournament.  On average, the pre-event quick ratings of the 50-ish players in this tournament were 170 points below their regular ratings (and that even includes one player who never played quick before and was therefore given a provisional quick rating equal to his regular rating.)

It occurred to me that maybe I'm just in an area with local weirdness in the ratings, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  Wesley So has the highest regular rating in the nation, but his quick rating is 166 points lower than his regular.  The 100th best regular rating is 2474, but the 100th best quick rating is 2263, which is 211 points lower.

Although I know the player pools of the two rating systems are not identical, it would seem that the pools have significant overlap - all are USCF members who play in tournaments.  Initial quick ratings are literally based on the regular rating, if the player was already regular-rated.  And both rating systems appear to use the same algorithm to calculate ratings.

But despite that, quick ratings are significantly lower, apparently by nearly a full class.  Why are they so much lower, given the same algorithm and many of the same players?  And, assuming it's desirable that the ratings be similar, what could be done to correct this situation?

This may be partially due to ratings floors.

When a player hits his rating floor, his rating cannot go lower if he loses, but his opponent's rating can still go higher.  This adds ratings points into the system.

There is an absolute rating floor of 100 which nobody can go below. (For every event you play in and quarter-point you win over the board, this is raised by 1, to a maximum of 150.) Rating floors exist at every 100 points from 1200 to 2100, and these can be achieved by getting a rating at least 200 points above the floor. There's a rating floor at 2200 which can be earned by getting the Original Life Master title. And finally, if a player earns $4000 or more in an under-2000 section, their rating floor is set high enough so they become ineligible to win the prize again.

Regular and quick ratings both have ratings floors, but they are independent from each other. Most events with very large prizes are probably not quick-rated. And I don't think the Original Life Master title can be earned with a quick rating. This probably means that fewer people are at a floor with their quick rating, and that if they are, the floor is lower than it might otherwise be.

To add rating points to the system, it is insufficient for a player to simply be at the floor - he must actually play games.  I would hypothesize that more regular-rated games are played than quick-rated games, especially at the 1200+ level where floors come into play.  I would also hypothesize that older players are more likely to be at a floor (because they won a large prize sometime on their life, because they once managed to raise their rating beyond its ordinary level, or because their skills are not what they once were) and that older players in particular play more regular games than quick games.

And if younger people play relatively more quick games, that may be another reason why quick ratings are lower.  Younger players are more likely to start with a very low rating but be rapidly improving.  When a player's ability improves, his rating lags behind, and his opponents will tend to lose rating points.  This tends to have a deflationary effect on ratings.


What are some ways to get better at Antichess? I have recently found out about a new chess variant called antichess. I was wondering how to get better at it. Are there any opening moves or strategies in antichess that might help beginners in this chess variant better learn the game? If so, please explain in detail.

A strategy that I use when trying to get better at antichess is to open up your bishops. Once you to that, you are able to get your opponent in a pawn trap, making them continuously attack your pieces.


Which pairing programs have been authorized by FIDE for use in FIDE rated tournaments? There are lots of questions about pairing programs here, some of them mention being authorized by FIDE, but how can I check and know which programs are currently authorized?

FIDE publish a list of such programs here.
Currently there are 8 programs on the list varying in price from completely free (STOP), free on Linux (Vega), partially free (ChessManager) to 150 euros (Swiss Manager).
Program - Author
Vega - Luigi Forlano (ITA)
SwissSys - Thad Suits (USA)
SwissMaster - Royal Dutch Chess Federation (NED)
Swiss-Manager - Heinz Herzog (AUT)
Swiss-Chess - Franz-Josef Weber (GER)
UTU Swiss - Neil Hayward (UK)
ChessManager - Tomasz Żyźniewski (POL)
STOP - Alexander Lenhard (GER)
The landing experience also varies widely. Most are excellent, giving you useful information about provided functionality and limitations upfront, but some are appalling.


What does the FIDE do besides organize the international tournament? What does the FIDE do besides the organize the international tournament?  Or does the FIDE specialize in the tournament?

(I am not an expert so the following list will be incomplete.)

FIDE does:

calculate Ratings
issue Titles (CM/WCM, FM/WFM, IM/WIM, GM/WGM)
defines the chess rules
umbrella organization for national organizations
issue "Medal of Merit Awardees"
and overall try to promote-improve chess (like try to make chess part of the Olympic games)


Is there any position where not promoting(illegally) would be the best move? Is there any position, where moving a pawn to last rank but not promoting it to any piece would be the best move?

By the way, I know this is an illegal move. Assume it is legal.

Edit: Now we have a nice answer from Dag Oskar which ends with stalemate. That's good. But I wonder, if there is winning position, winning by not promoting, and the only winning move is not promoting.

Edit #2: I think a winning position is impossible, as this seems to be occurable when opponent stalemates with promotion. If opponent is not stalemating, then there is no point of not promoting anyway. But if opponent stalemates with a knight, then bishop or rook doesn't stalemate, and etc. It's impossible to have a position where knight, bishop and rook stalemates. So, in every such position, there will be a correct promotion. Not promoting won't be the best move anyway.

Therefore, I'm accepting the answer.

Edit #3: Rosie F's answer demonstrates that it's possible to win with a 'not promoting move'. It's very entertaining to see it's possible. Thanks for the effort.

Here is an example:

[fen "8/4P3/8/4p1p1/2p3Pp/p4p1K/k1p2P1P/8 w - - 0 1"]

1. e8 leads to stalemate next move, while all legal promotions lose to 1... c1=Q followed by 2... Qf1#.


What does "+-" mean in algebraic notation? I'm familiar with chess notation, but this has left me scratching my head. Looking at this answer, I see two games ending with moves marked as "+-" or "-+" (plus-minus or minus-plus). What does this annotation mean? Is it standard? And why are the two games using it with the symbols in different order?

Wikipedia does not mention this symbol, and I find searching for it quite difficult. Looking at the two boards allows me to rule out plenty of things - it's not check, checkmate or stalemate - but doesn't decisively reveal what it is. Is this perhaps some indicator of positional advantage (which I can see on both boards)?

What does “+-” mean in algebraic notation?

This symbol means "White has decisive advantage", which means that White's advantage is big enough to secure him victory. As for symbol -+ it means "Black has decisive advantage".

  What does this notation mean?

This notation is introduced to bypass the language barrier so any reader ( Japanese, English, Arabian, Marsian, it doesn't matter! ) can understand the comment behind the move. In the old days before this notation, commentaries were given in words, which required the reader to know commentator's native tongue or to find the translation of those commentaries. This way, when commentator writes +- behind the move, everybody ( Japanese, English, Arabian, Marsian, it doesn't matter! ) know what it means. It is shorter and cleaner this way.

  Is it standard?

Yes, it is. The symbols were invented by Chess Informant and accepted as a standard. You can find out more about chess notation here.

  And why are the two games using it with the symbols in different order?

Because the positions in those games are different -> in one White has the decisive advantage while in the other it is Black who should win.

Hopefully this answer helped you. If you need further clarifications leave a comment. Best regards.


Is it OK to adjust your opponent's pieces, and what if he objects? With all the questions lately about pieces being knocked off the board, being forced to adjust a fallen piece, etc., it made me think of this common scenario.

Players often adjust more than their own pieces if one is particularly off-center. Is it OK per the rules to adjust your opponent's pieces, and what if he objects?

Can you do it anyway, and then when it is his move, he can readjust them to be off-center?

In practice, I doubt many people would have a real problem unless one player is constantly doing this, but it made me wonder.

Is it OK per the rules to adjust your opponent's pieces?

YES

The rules are clear:

  4.2.1 Only the player having the move may adjust one or more pieces on their squares, provided that he first expresses his intention (for
  example by saying “j’adoube” or “I adjust”).

  4.2.2 Any other physical contact with a piece, except for clearly accidental contact, shall be considered to be intent.

When it is your turn, you may adjust the pieces. There is no distinction between your pieces and your opponent's pieces.

The next article makes it clear by implication that both your and your opponent's pieces are covered by this:

  4.3 Except as provided in Article 4.2, if the player having the move touches on the chessboard,with the intention of moving or capturing:

  4.3.1 one or more of his own pieces, he must move the first piece touched that can be moved

  4.3.2 one or more of his opponent’s pieces, he must capture the first piece touched that can be captured

  4.3.3 one or more pieces of each colour, he must capture the first touched opponent’s piece with his first touched piece or, if this is
  illegal, move or capture the first piece touched that can be moved or
  captured. If it is unclear whether the player’s own piece or his
  opponent’s was touched first, the player’s own piece shall be
  considered to have been touched before his opponent’s.

If you touch one of your opponent's pieces without saying "I adjust", or the equivalent in your language, then you must capture it. By implication, if you did say "I adjust" or "j'adoube", then you may adjust it.

  What if he objects?

Call the arbiter. Make sure you ask for extra time (2 minutes) for the disturbance your opponent caused you. A good arbiter should give you this automatically unless there were extenuating circumstances.

  When it is his move, he can readjust them to be off-center?

As long as he first says "I adjust" or "j'adoube".

Once, in a mischievous mood, when helping the arbiter set up the room before playing in a competition I deliberately positioned the knights, on all the boards I set up, either one facing forward and one backward or the left knight facing left and the right knight facing right (i.e. both knights facing away from the action). Most of the players, being at least mildly OCD, would have adjusted the pieces before the game, regardless, even if the pieces were perfectly placed :-).


Is this Rook versus Bishop endgame winning for white (white to move)? [fen "8/8/5b2/5k2/8/3R4/4K3/8 w - - 0 1"]

In this endgame can white win ? If so what is the plan here for white or how sould black try to defend this position

This ending is drawn, and the main thing that Black needs to avoid, and which White should aim for, is having her king driven toward the a1 or h8 corner (the problem being that those squares are the color that the remaining bishop travels on). White cannot force Black into either of those corners from this position, and so it is drawn. To see that the others are "good" corners, note that in the following position Black need only keep shuffling the bishop along the b8-h2 diagonal, and White has no way to progress toward mate, as a rook check on the eighth rank can always be blocked safely (which isn't true in the "bad" corners).

[fen "k7/4R3/K7/8/5b2/8/8/8 w - - 0 1"]


Why is there a draw in professional chess? I'm not a serious chess player, but I heard that about 80% of professional chess games end as a draw.

In other similar abstract strategy games, such as Shogi and Janggi, when it is impossible to checkmate, they evaluate pieces value and determine the winner (in a professional game).

Why does chess not adopt this way?

First of all let's put the numbers correct.

The 80% draw ratio is for correspondence chess, not something that the average person would associate with "chess".

In regular top level chess, the draw ratio is around 50%.

In either case, most games are not played out until a postions when it is impossible to checkmate, but rather most draws are agreed draws, i.e. draws in a position that could in principle be won by either player through checkmate.

If I understand your proposal correctly, you want to get rid of draws completely by evaluating dead positions (that cannot be won by either player, not even if cooperating) according to the piece value.

I see several difficulties/issues with this approach:

You'd have to decide what to do with perpetual check, stalemate and the 50 moves rule.
What do you do with positions that are equal/drawish with equal material but that are not dead draws (i.e.  either player can still checkmate)? Forcing players to continue until dead draws could lead to very long (and boring) games, similar to what we see with some games under Sofia rules.
Positions where it is impossible to checkmate are pretty rare. Basically only King vs King or King and one minor piece vs King (and a few exceptional/constructed cases). In the large majority of positions checkmate is possible if players cooperate. So the proposed change would not alter much.
If players in the dead draw position would have equal material it would still be a draw.


When to transition into an ending I know the rule of thumb about trading pieces when you have a lead (and pawns when you're behind), but how does one decide an advantage is sufficient enough to transition into an ending by trading queens?  I've found that a small lead of a pawn or even a piece often isn't enough to win in that case.

There is no easy answer to that question. You need to be able to accurately assess your winning chances in the possible endgame and to do that you need some knowledge and a lot of experience.

You can acquire the knowledge by looking at the basic theoretical endgames. That will tell you that two knights aren't enough for mate, that bishop and pawn might still be a draw, that rook and bishop vs rook or knight vs rook is tricky but a draw and many other things.

For the experience you'll have to play. Then you will also notice that apart from winning chances, there is another factor to the decision of going into an endgame: Minimising the risk of losing. Often simplification decreases both: The chances of winning and the chances of losing. So if winning is more important to you: When in doubt, keep the queens.


Is it legal to record moves that have not yet been played? In a hypothetical tournament game where there is a completely forced series of moves for your opponent (e.g. their next move is an only-move and you have already decided on the response), would it be legal to record the moves before they have been played?

Well, it isn't legal for two reasons,

One, lets say that the opponent gave you an handshake. That would mean that the recorded moves are null, and it may cause some troubles with the arbiters.

Two, Article 8.1:

  In the course of play each player is required to record his own moves
  and those of his opponent in the correct manner, move after move, as
  clearly and legibly as possible, in the algebraic notation (Appendix
  C), on the score sheet prescribed for the competition. It is forbidden
  to write the moves in advance, unless the player is claiming a draw
  according to Article 9.2 or 9.3 or adjourning a game according to the
  Guidelines of Adjourned Games point 1.a.. A player may reply to his
  opponent’s move before recording it, if he so wishes. He must record
  his previous move before making another. Both players must record the
  offer of a draw on the score sheet. (Appendix C.13) If a player is
  unable to keep score, an assistant, who must be acceptable to the
  arbiter, may be provided by the player to write the moves. His clock
  shall be adjusted by the arbiter in an equitable way

Note especially the:

  It is forbidden to write the moves in advance, unless the player is
  claiming a draw according to Article 9.2 or 9.3 or adjourning a game
  according to the Guidelines of Adjourned Games point 1.a..

You can find the rulebook here.


A way to add an "opening names" column to the SCID game list I've been googling and looking through SCID's options but just can't seem to find the answer.
The database gamelist in SCID has a few informative columns for all the games in the gamelist, including the first few opening moves and the ECO code. But I was wondering if it's also possible to, in addition to the ECO code, also add the actual opening names. Either as another column or maybe even add them to the ECO column so that it shows them like this: B96 [Sicilian: Najdorf]
There's obviously also the ECO browser tool. And that also shows ECO codes in addition to the opening name. So the information is there. Is there a way to also show that in the game list window?
I added a terrible MS paint example for reference.

There doesn't appear to be a way to do this directly. There's a predetermined list of columns available, and this isn't one of the choices. And, while the ECO Code field will allow you to type in a different ECO code than the one it auto-detects, it won't save anything other than a valid ECO code, so you can't just type in something like "Sicilian" or even "B96Najdorf" and have it work; the first will be ignored and the second will be truncated to "B96".
One option is to take a column that displays free text, like "Event" or "Site", and use that for the opening names instead. But this takes a lot of manual work, and you lose the information that used to be in that column.
Otherwise, SCID is open source, so you could modify the code yourself to add an opening name column, if you know programming.


If a Woman Grandmaster (WGM) transitions to a man, does he retain the WGM title? If a Woman Grandmaster (WGM) transitions to a man, does he retain the WGM title?

Related, but not part of this question: Are there any rules for transgender players in chess? which establishes that if a male GM transitions to a woman, she does not instantly acquire the WGM title, but says nothing about the reverse situation.

FIDE has not ruled on that possibility yet.  No national federation is known to have ruled on that yet.

A related case is going to the US Supreme court that might influence how others do eventually rule should such an event ever actually happen.


Should captured pieces remain visible? I don't think there's a rule about this, but maybe it's a matter of etiquette. Nearly every player I've encountered puts the pieces they capture next to the board, but I've met some who like to store the pieces as soon as they capture them (maybe they are "neat freaks"? :-).

I found this a bit unsettling, but maybe it's just me? I must admit that I semi-consciously use the captured pieces for counting in the early parts of the game, when most of the pieces are still on the board. I also suppose that it could be inconvenient to have to ask the other player to dig out your dead queen in case of a promotion (that situation didn't arise in my experience, however).

There is certainly no explicit rule about this, and players often fiddle with captured pieces (e.g. Boris Gelfand can often be seen twirling a pawn by its head).

However, pieces should remain accessible to your opponent in case of a promotion, particularly in blitz; at some events (usually the higher level), players are given an extra queen, but not all tournament organizers have that many extra queens!

Having said so, it looks like your question is in the context of a friendly game, presumably where the box/pouch is just next to the board. In that case, if you need to see the captured pieces as a counting aid, just ask!


What is alternative to Zobrist hashing? Zobrist hashing is very good method save position but it is not good to read position - is any good alternative to this algorithm which allow to store and restore position with minimum of bits.

For sure FEN is good to store position but it no the best representation using bits. I found that I can store position with use 202 without move count and half move count which is not need for position analysis (or not very important).

Zorbist use 64 bits as I remember.

If you are looking for a way to restore the original position back, you need something totally unlike Zobrist, because the main goals when constructing a hashing algorithm are absolutely opposite to what you want:

A hash should fit into the computer representation of an integer (32 bits or 64 bits, or, maybe in the future, 128 bits). Anything beyond that slows down things considerably.
Hashes for the similar positions (which tend to arise during the game at the approximately same time) should be as different as possible to avoid hash collisions that, again, impact the performance.

So, basically, you don't have enough bits for the full representation, and even if you had, the use of easy-reversible conversion will harm the quality of the hashing and will slow down the engine.

Not sure, why you need this, but if you need to store positions somewhere, I'd recommend to use a dictionary or a map, that maps the Zobrist value to the FEN string or something similar. Maps have O(1) access time, so it's going to be quite fast, and you're only limited by the amount of memory.