Suggestions for Newb in search of improving mid and end game strategy Fairly new to chess, but have fallen in love and want to increase my strategies and techniques. All the reading and videos I’ve read and watched tend to overcomplicate to the point I get lost in the details.

Any suggestions on materials that keep strategy/technique teaching extremely simple and easy to understand would be greatly appreciated!

Approximately, how much can a player improve their winning percentage by reading and watching books and tutorials, versus, learning through playing repeatedly and learning from the mistakes made? Just curious to hear different opinions on this...

Thanks in advance for any positive feedback provided!

Cheers

In order to improve you need to 1) study theory, 2) play games and 3) analyze those games. Repeat until you are world champion.

Specifically to these steps....

Study theory

As a beginner your biggest concern should be tactics. Start training yourself to always be aware of which pieces/squares are attacked, so that you don't blunder pieces in one move. You don't need to scan the whole board each and every time to check this. Use a gradual approach: since a move will only affect part of the board, update (in your memory) the information depending on which new squares/pieces are attacked (and which are not attacked anymore). For the long-range pieces (rook, bishop, queen), it might help if you imagine their range as some kind of "shooting range"/no-go zone,... whatever helps you to visualize it. For instance for a rook on h4 don't imagine that it attacks the squares g4, f4, e4, ..., a4, but imagine it as a piece which covers all of the 4th rank (giving it options to capture everywhere on this rank but also options to move everywhere on this rank). As you improve this will come naturally.

Also at this stage you want to learn and practice simple tactics, such as pawn and knight forks, pins, etc. There are many websites (lichess, chesstempo...) giving you tactics puzzles depending on your strength. For a beginner I recommend chesstempo, because each puzzle is tagged with the tactical motive(s). When solving puzzles (or fail to solve) make sure you recognize these motives in the respective puzzle.

Besides tactics, you need to learn some basic principles for the opening such as: develop pieces quickly, occupy the center, keep your king safe/castle, attack something.

Also learning some basic endgames such as mating with queen, rook, bishops, King+pawn vs king, ... will teach you a lot.

Don't bother learning any opening theory yet, because you are not in the position to understand the ideas behind the openings and will not be able to take advantage if your opponent plays a move you did not learn.

Play games

Avoid short time controls which don't give you enough time to think. I'd recommend at least 20 minutes or more.

Analyze

If you play online (e.g. on lichess) you have the option to automatically have the game analyzed by a computer engine. Do this and look for the main mistakes/blunders (where the evaluation jumped a lot). Understand why that was a bad move. Try to find a better move and compare with the computer suggested move. This will only teach you tactical mistakes.

Figuring out positional/strategic problems in your play is much more difficult and just about impossible if you are on your own. Ideally you'd have another, better player look over your games and point out some problems with your strategy.

For passive learning of strategy, reading/watching annotated games could be an option. Nowadays there are lots of streamers out there commenting while playing games online. Some of the chess24 streamers seem suitable for beginners.

Ideally you'd join a chess club where you can play, get tips from other players, etc.


What moves solve this mate in 2? It’s White to move and mate in 2 moves.

[FEN "7r/1p3Q1p/2q5/3bk3/1Q2p3/2P5/r2P2PP/2KR4 w - - 0 1"]

White to play checkmates in 2 with 1 d4+! exd3 e.p. 2 Qbf4#.

Black to play cannot checkmate in 2 but should win after Bxf7.

7r/1p3Q1p/2q5/3bk3/1Q2p3/2P5/r2P2PP/2KR4 w - - 0 1

1. d4+! exd3 2. Qbf4


With only a king left, how many moves remaining until a draw? I am a beginner in chess. If I have only a king left, how many moves does my opponent have to mate me?

Your opponent has 50 moves, but every time a pawn is moved the count is reset.  So, he could have hundreds of moves if he has a few pawns on the board.  If he has no pawns, then 50.

The count is also reset if any piece or pawn is captured.


Putting pressure on pawns Why is it important to develop your pieces to put "pressure" on opponent's pawn(s)? I hear this a lot from YouTube videos in which experienced chess players commenting as the game develops. It's "just" a pawn! Why design a tactic or strategy around a pawn?

Attacking a piece is often not very useful: the piece does not feel any pressure but just moves away. A pawn won't escape so easily, so attacking a pawn forces the opponent's pieces to defend it and thus limits their freedom. There are a few possible gains of an attack on a pawn: the opponent cannot get enough pieces to defend the pawn so you immediately win the pawn, or his pieces are so badly placed defending the pawn that you can gain advantage on another part of the board, or the pawn has to move and leave weak squares on both sides of it because it cannot ever again protect the squares that it attacked a move ago.


Top chess books and online software that would help me increase my rating My current rating is 1200 and I had stopped chess for some time due to school exam pressure.

What steps should I take to increase my rating? I do tactics from chess.com everyday.

Please suggest some books which would help me in tactics, endgames, middlegame.

I would recommend continuing doing tactics everyday, although at your rating doing tactics that aren't time sensitive would be better. I'd recommend doing the standard tactics on the free site chesstempo.com for unlimited tactics that won't dock you points for taking too long. Also 303 tricky tactics is a nice puzzle book collection of problems that should be right around your level.

As for the best books to increase your rating I'd say The Amateurs Mind and Silman's Complete Endgame Course are both books perfect for helping a club level player like yourself improve quite a bit.

I'd also advise finding a favorite youtube IM/GM to follow. Chess 24, the st Louis chess club, and chess.com all have youtube accounts and put out videos that will benefit you and aren't pure book study. There are also masters who put up videos for their blitz games like cubematter, kingscrusher, chessnetwork, among others that are good to follow. You can get a sense of the kind of moves they play and look for just through seeing enough of their blitz games.

Lastly if you want to talk to a community of chess players give twitch.TV's chess section a look through. You can watch chess streamers and live chat with a decent number of viewers.


Lc0 gets slower if weight file gets bigger I have two weight files, one with a size of 6MB and the other 45MB (files is listed here). The problem is that when I start to compute a move, it takes too much time, especially when I use the larger weight file. Below I start lc0 with the larger weight file

$> ./build/release/lc0 --weights=/weights/weight-4305
       _
|   _ | |
|_ |_ |_| v0.23.0-dev+git.9bac230 built Oct 17 2019

and compute a move

position fen rnb1kb1r/pp1p1ppp/4pn2/q7/3NP3/2N5/PPP2PPP/R1BQKB1R w KQkq - 3 6
go  wtime 59000 btime 59000

I get

Loading weights file from: /weights/weight-4305
Creating backend [blas]...
Using Eigen version 3.3.5
BLAS max batch size is 256.
info depth 1 seldepth 1 time 193 nodes 1 score cp 44 hashfull 0 nps 5
tbhits 0 pv d4b3
bestmove d4b3

This takes approximately 3 seconds. Now, when I do this computation again, it seems to take even more time

position fen rnb1kb1r/pp1p1ppp/4pn2/q7/3NP3/2N5/PPP2PPP/R1BQKB1R w KQkq - 3 6
go  wtime 59000 btime 59000
info depth 2 seldepth 2 time 4957 nodes 3 score cp 44 hashfull 0 nps 0 tbhits 0 pv c1d2 a7a6
bestmove c1d2 ponder a7a6

If I use the smaller weight file it takes about 1 seconds.

In my case I would like to use lc0 to play 1 minute games, so these delays are way to huge. For example, I'm also using Stockfish which doesn't have these issues.

I would like to play 1 minutes games with lc0, but with these slow computation times it is not possible. Is there a way to speed things up?

If you want to see it yourself, I've published lc0 on my DockerHub, so you can try it out yourself

Using the smaller weight file:

$> docker run --rm -it jeanluca/leela-chess-zero:1.0.2

And to run the one using the bigger weight file

$> docker run --rm -it jeanluca/leela-chess-zero:latest

After you have entered one of the above commands you can simply past the positions into the terminal and see the result

Also, to get an idea of how I've build lc0, here is my dockerfile

From jeanluca/base:latest

RUN apt update && apt install clang-6.0 ninja-build pkg-config protobuf-compiler libprotobuf-dev meson -y &&\
git clone https://github.com/LeelaChessZero/lc0.git &&\
cd lc0 && ./build.sh -Dblas=true -Deigen=true
COPY ./weights /weights
CMD ["/lc0/build/release/lc0", "--weights=/weights/weight-4305", "--threads=4" ]

The bigger weights file corresponds to a larger Neural Network, which means more computation per node, but better evaluation per node.This is expected, and there is nothing that can make a bigger NN as fast as a smaller NN. The best solution is to use a small NN for blitz time control. I would personally recommend LD2 (available at Lc0.org/LD2)


Am I actually playing against a 1425 rated player? I am using Deep Shredder 13 and somewhat struggled with the engine at 1400. I then managed to defeat 1425 with great ease. The game went as follows

[FEN ""]
    1. d4   e6
        2. Bf4  Nf6
        3. Nf3  d6
        4. Nc3  h6
        5. e4   g5
        6. Bg3  d5
        7. e5   Ne4
        8. Qd3  f5
        9. h4   Nd7
        10. hxg5  Nxg5
        11. Nxg5  Qxg5
        12. f4    Qg8
        13. O-O-O h5
        14. Bh4  Bh6
        15. g3   Qf7
        16. Nb5  Nf8
        17. Qc3  Rg8
        18. Nxc7+  Kd7
        19. Nxa8 Qh7
        20. Qc7+ Ke8
        21. Qd8+ Kf7
        22. Qe7+ Kg6
        23. Qf6#

Thus, this brings me to question whether I am actually playing against a 1425 rating. On my iphone app I struggle with a 1350, thus I am unsure what to make of this. During the game, I saw obvious threats (Nb5xc7+) which could've been avoided. The engine instead of avoiding mate with Qxc7, it went for the dubious move Kd7. Afterwards, when I added a new variation, it actually went with Qxc7. Why does this occur? I mean it seems as if I was playing against a 1300 rating. What is the logic behind this? (Also, I should add that during the game the engine was limited to book knowledge)

I don't know if the engine was really playing at 1400+, but it was quite weak. 1400+ rating sounds fair to me.

Please note:

Shredder is not the iPhone app you mention. It's rating system is not the same as what Shredder is using.
The iOS app you mention is definitely under-rated. I tried it several times, I know.


Is the advance Caro-Kann becoming less popular? In my own games I have seen fewer advance Caro-Kann games (1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5) than the semi-open games (3. Nc3 or 3. Nd2) or the Botvinnik systems (3. exd5 cxd5 4. c4 or 2. c4).

My questions are:

Has the advance Caro-Kann become less popular at club or master level?
How do we know? E.g. how can we mine a database to show opening popularity over time?

Summary

From the plot of games played under the Caro-Kann ECO codes (B10-19), the advance variation (in B12, but B12 does hold some other miscellaneous variations) has been consistently the most popular line since the 1990's and peaked at 1,803 games in 2008.

Methodology

I extracted the games from the Fritz for Fun 13 into PGN format
I ran the following R code, which extracts the year (mandatory) and the ECO (optional). The games are filtered to ECO codes B10-19 (Caro-Kann) and for games from 1927. Why 1927? That is when it debuted at the top:

  He [Capablanca] used it [the Caro-Kann] in his crushing strategic destruction of Aaron Nimzowitsch in the great New York tournament of 1927.

Source: The Caro-Kann: Move-by-Move by IM Lakdawala

The raw number of games are then plotted over time. Unfortunately my data only goes to 2009

library(ggplot2) # For making the charts look nice

dat <- readLines("C:/Users/Peter/SkyDrive/Chess/Fritz for fun 13 database.pgn") # Read in the data from a local file

eco <- dat[grep("\\[ECO ",dat)] # Extract the ECO, if there is one
eco <- sub("\\[ECO \"","",eco)
eco <- sub("\"\\]","",eco)

year <- dat[grep("\\[Date ",dat)]
year <- sub("\\[Date [\"]","",year)
year <- sub("\\..*","",year)
year <- as.numeric(year)

ecoindex <- grep("\\[ECO ",dat) # Find which lines have an eco
yearindex <- grep("\\[Date ",dat)
yearindex <- yearindex + 5 # The date is always the 3rd pgn tag and is mandatory. The ECO, if present, is the 8th tag
matchindex <- yearindex %in% ecoindex  # This code finds which games have both a year and eco tag

year <- year[matchindex] # Filter out games without an ECO

countgame <- table(eco,year)
countgame <- as.data.frame(countgame) # Convert to a data frame

Carocode <- paste("B",10:19,sep="") # ECO codes for the Caro-Kann are B10-B19

Carogame <- countgame[which(countgame$eco %in% Carocode),] # Keep the data for the Caro-Kann ECO codes

Carogame$year <- as.numeric(as.character(Carogame$year))
Carogame <- Carogame[Carogame$year>=1927,]

p1 <- ggplot(Carogame,aes(x=year,y=Freq,group=eco))+geom_line(aes(colour=eco)) # Plot count of games

p1 <- p1 + ggtitle("Number of Caro-Kann games over time") + ylab("Number of games")

print(p1)


Why is Bf8 a blunder in this position? Here is an analysis of a game I played recently in Chess.com app.  I won this match in move 19 as the opponent resigned.
Please see the image attached for the position. On move 16, after the White captured the pawn on d4 by his Knight, I moved my bishop back to f8 from e7. This move opened the rook on e file and caused a double attack on the e4 pawn.
But the chess.com analysis marked this as a blunder, can anyone explain why?
Thanks in advance for any explanation ( my chess.com rating is around 1200 so I'm a new player ).

Thanks for the people who explained about the pawn capture move, but my doubt is : usually this kind of ignorances are called "Mistake", "Inaccuracy" or "Missed win" in chess.com right? Why the term "Blunder"?

Bf8, while a nice positional move, an excellent idea for a 1200 rated player, is a mistake as Nxe4 wins an important central pawn for no compensation. The Queen can't recapture due to the coming skewer down the long diagonal. See the lines below.
Remember tactics always trump strategy!
[White ""]
[Black ""]
[FEN "1k1rr3/1bpqbp2/ppnp1n1p/6p1/3NP1P1/P3Q1BP/1PP1NP2/2KR1B1R b - - 0 1"]

1...Nxe4 2.Nxc6+
    ( 2.Qxe4 Nxd4 3.Qxd4 Bxh1 )
2...Qxc6 *


Empowered Army Knight-move Opening How powerful is it for the Empowered Army to open by using knight-moves for their Empowered Rooks and/or Bishops?

In Chess 2: The Sequel, the knights, bishops, and rooks of the Empowered Army are considered empowered and can move as any adjacent empowered piece in addition to their own movement.  To a beginner such as myself, it seems particularly strong to open by taking advantage of this by developing the empowered pieces immediately.  All of the pieces can be developed through knight-moves in this way after a total of 6 moves.

1. Ra1 b3
2. Rh1 g3
3. Bc1 d3
4. Bf1 e3
5. Nb1 c3
6. Ng1 f3

How strong is the use of empowered movement as opening moves?  Should one focus on performing all 6 of these moves, or is it more sensible to do a subset of them?  Is their an ideal order to these moves?  Does the asymmetry of the King and Elegant Queen affect these things?

My intuition might be totally off because this is very different from real chess, but I don't see why you wouldn't still want to try to control the center with pawns as white. You can develop all your pieces quickly this way but black can make a couple pawn moves (say, e5 and d5 while you are bringing your rooks out) then develop his own minor pieces to defend them. I wouldn't go with this opening strategy.


What are the rapid and blitz forms of chess? I have no clue-I am a recreational player who wants to join FIDE tournaments.

Rapid and Blitz are both form of fast chess

Rapid, as the name suggests, is a faster version of chess

Time controls for each player in a game of rapid chess are, according to FIDE, more than 10 minutes, but less than 60 minutes. Rapid chess can be played with or without time increments for each move.

Many tournaments with a large player count opt for this faster format to try and finish off an entire tournament in a day or two.

Blitz is even faster than rapid, with times less then 10 minutes on the clock.

Time controls for each player in a game of blitz chess are, according to FIDE, 10 minutes or less per player. This can be played with or without an increment or delay per move—a more recent development due to the influx of digital clocks.

Both these formats have their own rating category in FIDE in 15+10 and 3+2 time control respectively.
Source:Wikipedia


What is the idea behind Schuhler Gambit? The Schuhler Gambit is a line in the Sokolsky Opening.
[FEN ""]

1. b4 c6 2.Bb2 a5 3.b5 cxb5 4.e4

White gives away their b-pawn here. Stockfish claims this actually gives a small advantage to White, (although I analyzed only to depth 25) while bxa5 gives a small advantage to Black.
Why is it good and what is White's plan?

Trades off time and space for a side pawn that loses more time for black if they try to keep it.
c6 was not a good response for black on move 1
in the position shown master results show an 80% win rate (draws =1/2)
for white with zero losses
black would do far better with 1 ...   d5 e5 or nf6


Advanced video chess lectures Could you recommend any video lessons online? I know STL Chess Club on YouTube and I am looking for something similar for 2000+ FIDE players.

Chessable offers advanced courses (free and paid). Many of those courses have videos.
https://www.chessable.com/courses/for-advanced-players/


Carlsen-Anand, Game 2. Could Black hold if not for 34...h5? At Black's 34th move in Game 2 of the Carlsen-Anand match, Anand blundered with 34...h5??. What were his chances for salvaging the draw if he had defended actively via, say, 34...Qd2 or 34...Qd4, counterattacking the f2 pawn?

[fen "5rk1/4R1pp/3q1p2/p1p2P2/P3Q2P/5p2/2P2PPK/8 w - - 0 1"]
[Event "WCC"]
[Site "Sochi"]
[Date "2014.11.09"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Magnus Carlsen"]
[Black "Viswanathan Anand"]
[Result "1-0"]

1.g3 h5??
    ( 1...Qd2 )
        ( 1...Qd4 )
2.Qb7 1-0

I'm looking for explanations of how White should then push for victory, and how Black should best respond, backed up with concrete analysis. Please note that I'm not at all interested in pure engine evaluations, but rather verbal, human annotations of the possibilities (though engine-checked analysis is certainly encouraged).

Anand could have chosen

[fen "5rk1/4R1pp/3q1p2/p1p2P2/P3Q2P/5p2/2P2PPK/8 w - - 0 1"]
[Event "WCC"]
[Site "Sochi"]
[Date "2014.11.09"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Magnus Carlsen"]
[Black "Viswanathan Anand"]
[Result "1-0"]

1.g3 Qd2 2.Qxf3 Qxc2 3.Kg2

After which we reach a Queen+Rook middlegame. In such middlegames, the following factors are critical:

King safety
Piece harmony (coordination and collaboration between the Queen and Rook)

My evaluation of the position above is as follows. Black's King is less safe, since the f-pawn is on f6, exposing the seventh rank for the white Re7 and making it possible for white to attack the g7-square. Further, the white Re7 is better placed than the black Rf8. The white Qf3 is controlling the h1-a8 diagonal, safe guarding the white Kg2 as well as threatening Qf3-g4, Qf3-d5 and Qf3-b7.

White can have the following strategy: use the better King safety and harmony to attack the enemy King and checkmate and/or win material along the way.

Black can have the following strategy: keep the pieces active, try to make them collaborate better, seek a counter attack on the enemy King, try to exchange queens.

I think the position is better for white yet black can still fight. For example

[fen "5rk1/4R1pp/3q1p2/p1p2P2/P3Q2P/5p2/2P2PPK/8 w - - 0 1"]
[Event "WCC"]
[Site "Sochi"]
[Date "2014.11.09"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Magnus Carlsen"]
[Black "Viswanathan Anand"]
[Result "1-0"]

1.g3 Qd2 2.Qxf3 (2.Qe6+ Kh8 3.Qf7 Qxf2+ 4.Kh3 Qf1+ 5.Kg4 h5+ 6.Qxh5+ Kg8=) Qxc2 3.Kg2 Kh8 4.Qg4 (4.Qb7 Qxf5 5.Rxg7 Rd8) Rg8

Conclusion from the position after 1...Qd2:

[fen "5rk1/4R1pp/3q1p2/p1p2P2/P3Q2P/5p2/2P2PPK/8 w - - 0 1"]
[Event "WCC"]
[Site "Sochi"]
[Date "2014.11.09"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Magnus Carlsen"]
[Black "Viswanathan Anand"]
[Result "1-0"]

1.g3 Qd2

Black should play Kg8-h8, Rf8-g8 and h7-h6 to secure the kingside.
Black should trade all the pawns on the queenside and play 3 against 4 on the kingside.
White should try to prevent this from happening.


Frankenstein-Dracula variation and other variations with funny names I recently discovered that on January 2016 the ICCF will start a thematic tournament on the Frankenstein-Dracula variation of the Vienna game.

[FEN "..."]
1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bc4 Nxe4 4.Qh5 Nd6 5.Bb3 Nc6 6.Nb5 g6 7.Qf3 f5 8.Qd5 Qe7 9.Nxc7+ Kd8 10.Nxa8

Tim Harding gave it this name

  "because of its hair-raising and bloodthirsty nature."

Now I am wondering: are there other variations with funny names?

You can just browse through this list:

http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/7378/eco.htm

I suspect a lot of the names out there aren't official like the Reversed Rat (1. d3 e5) and Double Duck (1. f4 f5 2. d4 d5), while the Pterdoactyl variation appears to be recognized.

Some other funny or interesting names: Creepy Crawly Formation, Bayonet attack (recognized), Pork Chop, Nescafe Frappe attack in the Budapest Gambit, the Apocalypse attack in the Caro-Kann.


Phone apps for playing chess variants A group of local friends and I have become fairly engrossed in playing a certain chess variant over the last few years. We play on a regular basis; we've coded a program that allows us to play online, and we play over a board in person.

However, there is one situation in which we cannot play, and it is unfortunately the most common one: when we are together in person, but not in front of a board.

In these situations, we have our phones (which are all Android, as it happens). We could use an app that simulates a chess board (letting us put pieces on the board and moving them around without restriction), or an app that just lets you edit the board position (we could "edit" it to make each move as necessary).

We have found an app that allows you to edit a chess board (it is unwieldy and not the intended use of the app), but this is where the "chess variant" part really comes into play: like many variants, not every piece is a standard chess piece.

In this variant, every standard chess piece is used, in addition to one additional piece (one of the rooks is replaced). This piece could be represented by anything, as long as it isn't one of the other pieces.

I feel like the most likely solution would be an app that lets you place chess pieces and checker pieces (like a "tabletop simulator" of sorts, where you just place your own pieces and play as you want).

And just to clarify, the app does not need online functionality (although that would be amazing), and it needs to not restrict your moves (like most people, we all know the rules and can referee our own games).

So the question is: Do you know of any Android apps which could be used as an impromptu chess board in order to play a variant of chess that includes a nonstandard piece in addition to all standard pieces?

(Disclaimer: If you're interested in the chess variant, details can be included in a comment reply, but I don't want to include this information in the question itself because it is not relevant. For the purposes of answering the question, it should be assumed the chess variant in question is something of our own creation.)

There is now an app called Chesscraft on Google play which allows custom boards and pieces. It plays reasonably well.


Kasparov said human+computer beats just computer. What does human bring to the table in such teams? Its seems to me nowadays computers simply play better, i.e. they consistently choose better moves. Where does human factor come into play, how can a human help engine to beat another engine?

Or was Kasparov simply wrong?

Edit: here's the podcast, most of it is politics, chess part is near the very end
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-putin-question

Experienced human correspondence chess players with a strong chess engine definitely play better chess than just the engine itself.

If you think about it, the human player could always simply follow the engine moves without any thinking.  However, you're not going to win the world correspondence title if you don't do your own analysis. You have an engine, but your opponent also have an engine! You just can't win a game unless you guide the engine.

A strong International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster know how to analyze a chess position with a chess engine. They can make a move on a board, and evaluate the new positions again with the engine. There is no way the engine by itself can beat this human+engine perfect combination - tactics + long-term strategic thinking.

Human can make some moves on the board, that simplifies the search process (searching at depth x is not equivalent to x+1)
Human understands drawn endgames. They can guide the engine not to choose a line that wins a pawn but draw 50 moves later in a rook ending
Human can try the engine lines, play some training games, test the new positions etc. Chess engines can't do that by itself!


Yusupov - Spiridonov training question One of the lessons on the Chess.com site uses the Yusupov - Spiridonov match, with Black to play after 1.Nf6+:

[fen "5rk1/pb3p1p/1pr5/8/2P1p1N1/qPQ1P3/4B1PP/3R2K1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Nf6+

The "correct" move to make here is for the rook to take the knight, which is fine.

What I didn't understand was the explanation of why that is the correct move:

  Had he moved his King to h8 White would have played Rd1-a1 after which
  Black loses his Queen to a discovered check with the Knight on f6.

I can't see anyway that black would lose his queen. The knight moving will put the king in discovered check, but the only way I can see black losing his queen is if white sacrifices a rook.

What am I missing?

After the moves 1. ... Kh8 2. Ra1 from your diagram position, the black queen is attacked and the only "safe" squares it has available (where it wouldn't be immediately captured on the following move) are then c5, d6 and e7. The text you quoted is pointing out that no matter which of those the queen might move to, there is a discovered check by the knight which nabs the queen anyway:

2. ... Qc5 3. Nxe4+ (or 3. Nd7+)
2. ... Qd6 3. Nxe4+ (or 3. Ne8+)
2. ... Qe7 3. Nd5+

At best for Black in those lines, he's losing his queen for knight. Because of that, after 1. ... Kh8 2. Ra1, Black could instead bite the bullet and play 2. ... Qxa1 3. Qxa1, hoping to "only" give up queen for rook (and I think that's the line you have in mind at the end of your question). Now as it turns out, from that position Black actually has no way to avoid a further loss of rook for knight (again because of discovered check threats that still remain), and so would ultimately end up with a net loss (starting from your diagram position) of queen for knight in that line too.

[fen "5rk1/pb3p1p/1pr5/8/2P1p1N1/qPQ1P3/4B1PP/3R2K1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Nf6+ Kh8 2.Ra1 Qxa1+ (2...Qc5 3.Nxe4+) (2...Qd6 3.Nxe4+) (2...Qe7 3.Nd5+) 3.Qxa1


What determines an opening continuation vs an opening varation? Are these determined from historical play?  For example, when the English was first played with 1. c4, why was the English in this case determined to just be 1. c4 and anything afterwards is considered a variation?

The original distinction was mainly so that chess players have a common vocabulary (for teaching, discussing, kibbitzing) there is the concept of a "main line." Other reasonable continuations are said to be variations. This helped the teachers and the players to learn the opening lines.

Yes, history did play a role in what was considered the main line, and which options were variations. Very often, variations would be given the name of the GM who first played it as a novelty, or the one who plays it very commonly to good results. (Remember, this was in the days when most people learned about games printed chess magazines that showed up several weeks after a game was played.)

These days, thanks to very powerful chess engines and massive databases, the mainline is arguably simply the line that is the most frequent continuation (played by those with high ELOs.)

It is also important to remember that as more games are added to the database, the mainline tends to shift to other moves, especially as refutations are discovered by the opponents.

Hope that helps.


How should I prevent the quality of my game from declining? So, I was a very good player 4 years ago and then due to academic commitments I had to discontinue playing chess. Now, I want to start again but I seem to have lost the old skills and it seems that the quality of my game has dropped very much. I want to again start playing but I don't know where to start from? Is it advisable to start again from scratch as that will take a lot of time? Should I just focus on playing more games? Any pointers or suggestions please?

I have always found the fastest way to get rid of some rust to be tactics training.

I would recommend two steps:

First you do a lot of relatively simple exercises, like game typical 'mate in two' (not chess problems, those can be quite difficult). This will remind your brain to automatically spot the easy stuff and reduce the probability of really bad blunders. You can go through the same positions several times.

Then you do some hard problems with something like 15 minutes per problem, here every problem should be new to you, you should sit down with a clock and write down your solution. This should get you back into tournament shape.

In my experience this works a lot better than playing blitz online. Playing long games seriously should have a similar effect, but I usually want to get back into shape before I play a really serious game.


Are modern chess programs tactically perfect? In a given situation, can we assume that a chess engine is tactically perfect - meaning that it can find all possible tactics which are there in that position. Is it possible for the best of modern chess engines to miss a tactic in a given position? Has this ever been observed in any recent game?

EDIT: @Henry Keiter: For the purpose of this question, I would define tactic as a combination or sequence of moves which wins material(if playing the winning side), or a combination or sequence of moves which defends a difficult position successfully (meaning preventing a loss of material which seems imminent). I know that the general definition is broader but for the purpose of this question the meaning can be taken as defined above.

EDIT 2: The reason I am asking this question is I am actually curious if a chess engine really does find all the possible tactics in a given position, or if it just manages to find many more tactics than a human being would find.

The quality and depth of an engine's calculation depends on the

Performance of the machine the engine is running on
Quality of its algorithms in terms of calculation and performance
Time span allowed for calculating the position

It is generally considered that tactics (i.e. combinations that lead to winning material or delivering checkmate) are the engines' speciality. There is a double difficulty of calculating variations. First, to find the best sequence of moves for both sides. Second, to evaluate the final positions after the combination is completed. Todays state of the art engines are excellent at both. I would say that

  Todays best engines will not miss a single tactic.

Most probably, there are "tactical benchmark data sets" of positions that engines constantly are tested against. I don't recall any cases where engines missed tactics. But by going through the game databases, especially from engine versus engine tournaments, there should be examples of one engine calculating better than its opponent engine.


Is the Dutch positional or tactical I have had mixed opinions on if it is tactical or positional, so I'm asking it here as an tiebreaker.

The Dutch has definitely a sound positional base, that is, with f5 you take under control the center (e4), prepare to develop your knight behind a pawn (which is usually good as the squares diagonally to the pawn are now defended twice. This is the reason you play c4 in the Queens Gambit and only after Nc3 btw) and aim for fast counterplay or a solid setup.

If you want a solid setup and play in a position where it's all about maneuvering, the Stonewall is the setup you desire. It is sound positionally speaking, though you have to take care of the hole you leave in e5. In order to equalize, black has to find a concrete plan and good implementation, as these lines always give a slim but almost perpetual advantage for white. If you want to go for dynamic positions, choose the Leningrad setup, but bear in mind that you are taking some risk because of the early weakening of the kignside. The counterplay many times arise from fianchettoing the dark squared bishop and looking for an attack on the kingside, which you have to be precise when making it as it leaves your king somewhat open and sometimes weaker than the opponents.

There are very powerful upsides to playing the Dutch, one of them being that the most challenging attack for white involves a kingside fianchetto, so the opening preparation becomes somewhat easier in the main lines. The downside is that with f5 so early on in the game, there are multiple gambit opportunities for white that, if accepted, lure black into positions where he must be able to defend precisely and for a long time before cashing in is material advantage (of course, there is always the option of declining the gambit, but some of them are as provocative as 2.g4).

Conclusion:

The Dutch is a sound positional opening. Wehther you want to play positional chess or tactical chess depends almost entirely on your (black) side: go for a Classical (half positional-half tactical), a Stonewall (highly positional) or a Leningrad (highly tactical). However, the player must know a fair amount of theory to be safe.

Edit: You may also look the Dutch as a flipped Sicilian, as the pawn structure is similar. This is also in favor of the Dutch being positionally sound. However, don't look further, as the plans and maneuvers in the openings are in general completely different.


What is a good chess engine to play against on an android phone? I have an android phone, and I have the Chess Free app. It is nice in that you can set the computer difficulty level and record games, and even play against another human, but it severely lacks analysis features. I've been having problems finding a good chess analysis program with analysis features on android. Does anyone have any good suggestions?

Droidfish app on Android is what you need. It has professional level GUI(with sophisticated analysis functions) with Stockfish engine pre-installed.


Why is the Ruy Lopez such a common opening? The Ruy Lopez opening is characterized by the moves:

[fen ""]

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Bb5

Why is this opening so popular? It does not appear to be particularly special/unique for white or black, so why is it a popular opening?

The Ruy Lopez is pretty much the epitome of opening principles.  White opens with the king pawn to claim the center, and black counters in the same way.  Then white develops a knight (knights before bishops!) to attack black's pawn.  Black defends the pawn with a knight.  Finally, white develops a bishop to b5 where it works in harmony with the knight to attack e5.  White prepares to castle at the same time.

So looking at the Ruy Lopez from that perspective, any other moves would violate some opening principle.  Obviously there are plenty of openings that are played, but the Spanish Game is one of the oldest and one of the best.


What is the longest possible sequence of double checks? The record for the most mutual checks in a legal position is known. But what is the record for double checks? There is one rule-threefold repetition applies. Four criteria exist-promoted pieces allowed and not along with forced, Black defends, and unforced, Black helps. Below is my research.

[Title "No Promoted Pieces, Unforced-6"]
[FEN "4K3/8/8/3p4/k1p1N3/1p4N1/P5BB/RRQ5 w - - 0 1"]

1. axb3+ Kb5 2. bxc4+ Kc6 3. cxd5+ Kxd5 4. Nc3+ Kd6 5. Nf5+ Kc5 6. Na4#

[Title "No Promoted Pieces, Forced-5"]
[FEN "kb1r4/P1p5/1P2P3/6NB/7B/8/8/RRQ4K w - - 0 1"]

1. axb8=Q+ Kxb8 2. bxc7+ Kc8 3. cxd8=Q+ Kxd8 4. Nf7+ Ke8 5. Nd6+ Kf8

[Title "Promoted Pieces, Unforced-9"]
[FEN "K5b1/5p2/4p3/3pR3/k1p1N1N1/1pQ5/P1B5/RR1R1RRR w - - 0 1"]

1. axb3+ Kb5 2. bxc4+ Kc6 3. cxd5+ Kd7 4. dxe6+ Ke8 5. exf7+ Kf8 6. fxg8=Q+ Kxg8 7. Nh6+ Kh7 8. Nf6+ Kh8 9. Nf7#

[Title "Promoted Pieces, Forced-8"]
[FEN "K4Bb1/5p2/4p3/3p4/k1p3N1/1pR5/P1B5/RQ1RRRRR w - - 0 1"]

1. axb3+ Kb5 2. bxc4+ Kc6 3. cxd5+ Kd7 4. dxe6+ Ke8 5. exf7+ Kxf8 6. fxg8=Q+ Kxg8 7. Nh6+ Kh8 8. Nf7#

Addendum: @Hauke Reddmann commented a known double checking mechanism, but no origin is given. The likely origin of it is a century old problem as @Evargalo proposed a comment.
[Title "Alain Campbell White, Pittsburgh Gazette Times 4/1916, Mate In 12"]
[FEN "2q5/2pp4/3pr3/4pb2/K1p2pn1/2bn1kp1/3pr1R1/6BB w - - 0 1"]

1. Rf2+! Ke3 2. Rf3+ Ke4 3. Re3+ Kd4 4. Re4+ Kd55. Rd4+ Kc5 6. Rd5+ Kc6 7. Rc5+ Kb6 8. Rc6+ Kb7 9. Rb6+ Ka7 10. Rb7+ Ka8 11. Ra7+ Kb8 12. Ra8#

The record for the longest sequence in a checkmate problem is 13, but it cannot contend for the record since Black’s king can walk out of the double checking sequence.
[Title "Dragan Stojnic & Milomir Babic, The Problemist 2004-05, Mate In 13"]
[FEN "3q1nKB/R1P1kPRB/N3p3/1p1n2p1/2r2p2/1p2b3/P2pb2N/3r4 w - - 0 1"]

1. c8=N+! Kf6 2. Rg6+ Kf5 3. Rf6+ Ke5 4. Rf5+ Ke45. Re5+ Kd4 6. Re4+ Kd3 7. Rd4+ Kc3 8. Rd3+ Kc2 9. Rc3+ Kb2 10. Rc2+ Kb1 11. Rb2+ Ka1 12. Rb1+ Kxa2 13. Nb4#

I am pretty sure I could make this last longer, but here is already a sequence with 26 unforced consecutive double-checks without promoted pieces.

[FEN "8/8/8/Rp2p3/3Pk1N1/6pB/1Q2N2B/K3R3 w - - 0 1"]

1. Nc3+ Kxd4 2. Ne2+ Ke4 3. Nc3+ Kd4 4. Ne2+ Ke4 5. Nc3+ Kd4 6. Nxb5+ Kd5 7. Nc3+ Kd4 8. Nb5+ Kd5 9. Nc3+ Kd4 10. Ne2+ Ke4 11. Nxg3+ Kf4 12. Ne2+ Ke4 13. Nc3+ Kd4 14. Nb5+ Kd5 15. Nc3+ Kd4 16. Ne2+ Ke4 17. Ng3+ Kf4 18. Ne2+ Kf5 19. Nh6+ Ke4 20. Ng3+ Kf4 21. Ne2+ Ke4 22. Nc3+ Kd4 23. Nb5+ Kd5 24. Nc3+ Kd4 25. Nb5+ Kd5 26.Nc7+

12 forced double-checks, based on the scheme given by Hauke Reddmann in a comment:

[FEN "1RN5/5p2/7p/3P3p/2P3p1/QPk4N/1R1p1K2/BB6 w - - 0 1"]

1. Rc2 Kd3 2. Rc3 Kd4 3. Rd3 Ke4 4. Rd4 Ke5 5. Re4 Kf5 6. Re5 Kf6 7. Rf5 Kg6 8. Rf6 Kg7 9. Rg6 Kh7 10. Rg7 Kh8 11. Rh7 {11. Rg8} Kg8 12.Ne7


Longest non-cooperative game of chess Typical arguments for the longest possible game of chess take a form something like this.

1) Each player moves their knights back of forth 49 times
2) Each player moves one pawn forward one square and repeats the knight shuffling.
3) Once all pawns are on the 4th and 5th ranks, ....
and so on.

I,we found estimates around 9000. I'm interested in the longest possible game of chess, with the restriction that the players are actually trying to win, and not cooperating to make the longest possible game allowable by the rules. We might call this the longest realistic game of chess.

Since the above argument totally breaks down, what are some new considerations that might allow us to lower the upper bound on the longest realistic game of chess?

The longest game I've ever found in tournament play is Nikolic - Arsovic, played in Belgrade in 1989. You can watch it here. It ended in a draw after 269 moves in a rook+bishop-vs-rook endgame


Would certain checkmates be possible if the king could move into check? Similar to a previous question of mine, let's suppose there's a piece that moves like the king, but isn't restricted from moving into check.

While a normal king and two knights can't force checkmate, can this "king" and two knights force it by themselves? What about a "king" and a single knight or bishop?

You could force a checkmate with two knights and a "king". Because the "king" does not fear being taken, it can move directly in front of the opponent's king, if it is protected by a knight.  All it has to do is do this when the opponent's king is on the side of the board and thus cannot retreat - and it is known that two knights and a normal king can force the opponent's king to the side of the board.

Based on trying it out, I believe a "king" and single knight could also force checkmate. The knight supports the "king" very well, cutting off squares and proving good places for the "king" to advance. And when the knight retreats, the "king" is usually ready to go into that same square if necessary, cutting off the king and forcing it backwards.

With a bishop and a "king", I think the question is whether the king can be forced into a corner which is the same color as the bishop. The following position, with either side to move, results in a quick checkmate, because Black must go into the corner:

[FEN "1k6/8/1K2B3/8/8/8/8/8 b - - 0 1"]

I believe this can't be done from many positions, though.  From most positions, the king escapes into the wrong corner. Although it can be driven from that corner, it can then flee to the wrong corner on the opposite side of the board.


How do I get a well-rounded understanding of chess openings? So, it was inevitable. I am making progress in the middle-game. I understand positions better and my tactics continue to improve. My end games are still solid/superior for my skill level so I generally get better as the game goes on.

However, now my opening play is suffering. I just get trounced on many openings. Many of the gambit openings just blow me away, particularly the King's Gambit, but others as well.

If I can survive the first 10 moves, I usually win, but there are so many traps in those first 10 moves. I have a good understanding (went through all the chessmaster lessons) of opening principles. I also understand a lot of the basic tactics in the openings.

But it's time to buckle down and study the chess openings and understand them. However, I am not an expert/master by any means (class C/B player), so I just want a more broad understanding.

In addition to my tactics/endgame and positional studies, what should I be studying in the openings to get a good understanding?

Thank you!

To get some ideas of what I currently play:

As black, against new players I will play Petrov's Defence. This
is one I know well. I only like to play this for longer games, as for
blitz games the lines get too complicated to play well.
I enjoy the Ruy Lopez from both sides. Most of the standard lines work out well.
Against the King's Gambit, I always accept and then struggle mightily
to get my king to safety.
As white, I like to sometimes play the
London System and sometimes go for the Ruy Lopez lines myself.
I am not a big fan of the Indian openings, although they generally don't
cause me much trouble, they just aren't as fun. The fianchettoed bishops take too much of the action
I sometimes will play the Italian game instead of the Ruy Lopez, but it tends to lead to less exciting games.

In general, I like balanced games that can shift between open and closed, as being able to find the right plan is where it gets really exciting. I want to maintain as many options for as long as possible and not be locked down into any particular plan too early in the game.

Most of the time, my problem isn't when things follow normal theory; it's when some trick is played. Or even when the normal line goes wildly against intuition (I've seen some openings books where the standard line is random-looking pawn moves).

One book that I think you might find useful, both at your current playing strength and as you improve, is Mihail Marin's Beating the Open Games. It is a repertoire book for Black based on 1. e4 e5, and it covers all book openings White can use in reply except for the Ruy Lopez. (So for a complete repertoire, you would want to pair this with something on the Ruy Lopez. Not coincidentally, Marin has one of these as well.)

One particular from the book that touches on an opening you mention in your question: it recommends, as I did in an earlier comment, declining the King's Gambit with the fairly quiet 2. ... Bc5, ignoring the free pawn, calmly developing a minor piece, and not insignificantly covering the a7-g1 diagonal that White's first moves have opened up, potentially causing some development headaches for White. Thanks to the fact that Marin's book is based on his own playing repertoire, it offers a pretty consistent and coherent approach to facing the various non-Ruy Lopez openings - e.g. this 2. ... Bc5 response to the King's Gambit fits in well with his recommendation against a "deferred" King's Gambit via the Vienna Game, 1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. f4 Bc5 - and it is an approach that generally steers clear of the wild and crazy.

One nice feature of the book - and this is mainly why I think it could be of use to you at your current playing strength and as you develop - is that it very cleanly separates a discussion of typical strategic ideas and considerations for each opening from an MCO-style table of theory for each, the latter of which you can choose to use to whatever level of detail you like (or ignore almost entirely) for the nitty gritty study of opening lines. The more idea-centric prose section on each opening alone can give you plenty to chew on.

Bottom line, it's a very well-executed book that, from how you've described your chess self, might be right up your alley in terms of its 1. e4 e5 recommendations. If you search around a bit, you'll find that Marin's chess writings are quite highly thought-of, and I think that reputation is well-deserved. Since I know you're familiar with Silman, here's what he had to say about this book:

  Beating the Open Games, joined with A Spanish Repertoire for Black, is the greatest repertoire book(s) ever written for players 1800 right to grandmaster. Marin's legend as a serious chess writer seems to grow every time he puts his fingers on a keyboard.

Lest the mention of 1800 give you pause, given that you describe yourself as a C/B player, note that others just as easily give a lower floor for it, e.g. Carsten Hansen writes, "This book provides something for every level of player, from around 1500 to even strong grandmasters."


How can I improve my evaluation of exchange positions? I am a casual chess player and I have recently identified a weakness in my play when it comes to positions where there is some "tension" on the board. By tension I mean that a series of capture and recapture can arise from the given position.

I have gone through a fair bit of tactical training and it made my mid-game play decent enough to sometimes gain a significant advantage but too often, I tend to lose this advantage when exchanging material.

See the example below where (please refrain from laughing) I played an impulsive Nxd5...

[FEN "r4rk1/ppqb1p1p/5Pp1/1Bpp4/1n1P4/2N1P3/PP4QP/R1B1K2R w KQ - 0 15"]

I feel like I am missing some method to analyse this kind of "tensed" position and that it leaves to much space for my irrational-self to make decisions!

Is there any method/book/training that would teach me how to approach positions where a lot of captures/recaptures can occur?

A very good and old book is Think Like a Grandmaster by the Grandmaster Alexander Kotov. He was first to put forth the idea of candidate moves. Kotov recommended looking for several moves that seemed feasible – the so-called candidate moves – and then analyzing those moves one at a time.

Once you have found a good number of candidate moves, you may then begin to systematically analyze these moves. The idea behind candidate moves is to help structure one's analysis and prevent it from becoming jumbled.

Finding the correct candidate moves is obviously one of the most difficult aspects of becoming a better chess player. You may start first by screening all possible checks and exchanges (including Nxd5). Then, you will gain experience and will recognize important patterns.

One of such "patterns" is the safety of the enemy king. In the given position, with the pawn in f6, the king in g8 is very unsafe and a nice pattern would be to mat the black King wth Qg7! So, I would have selected 1.Qg5 as my first candidate move!

The only answer is then 1.Qg5 Kh8, to counter 2.Qh6 with 2...Rg8. However, in this position, I recognize a new pattern Qxh7 and mate in the h-file with a rook in h4 for instance. So, I analyse 1.Qg5 Kh8 2.0-0!! to bring the rook h1 into action and nothing serious can prevent the plan Rf4, Qh6, Qxh7 and Rh4.

Another very good book is The Critical Moment by the Grandmaster Iossif Dorfman. Chapter 2 is about The exchange of material answering a crucial question: For which exchange should I aim?


Chess Engines and Elo Ratings I don't know if this question has already been asked. Pardon me if it was.

What is the difference between a human player of approximately 1600 ELO rating and a competent chess engine like Stockfish 7 set to ELO 1600 (in Fritz you have such an option under Training > Rated Game)?

[Don't know if my second question is particularly connected to the first, but here it is:]

Is it possible to determine the ratings of players by the PGNs of their games? I'd rather play with a computer and wanted to know what my Elo is. Is it possible through Fritz or any software?

[This is more of a side question]

Is there any site that explains what is Elo in lucid terms?

What is the difference between a human player of approximately 1600
  ELO rating and a competent chess engine like Stockfish 7 set to ELO
  1600 ?

The main difference is in the way each chooses their moves.

The human player will predominantly use pattern recognition combined with some form of plan recall. So, I recognize that this position is winning for white and this is the winning plan. This might involve specific moves for a tactical plan and more general aims for a strategic one.

The computer will predominantly use brute force calculation with an element of pattern recognition for position evaluation

  Is it possible to determine the ratings of players with the pgns of their games?

In theory, yes. Both FIDE and certain online chess providers have looked at tools for detecting cheating which essentially do this although without producing a rating. They look at moves which are not opening book / standard theory moves and calculate the percentage of moves which are engine 1st, 2nd, 3rd choices etc. In principle this work could be extended to develop a way of rating pgns but it would be a lot of hard work.

  I'd play with the computer and wanted to know what is my ELO. Is it
  possible through Fritz or any software?

No. Too much work to develop such a system for too little reward.

  Is there any site that explains what is ELO in lucid terms?

Since you appear to know what ELO is (an internationally recognized rating system) presumably what you are really asking is whether there exist  explanations for the mathematics and statistics behind ELO.

The killer part of your question is "in lucid terms". Of course such explanations exist which are lucid for mathematical and statistical experts but just as clearly if you lack the expertise they will not be lucid for you.


What is a logical move? I'm not sure as to what constitutes as a logical move. Sometimes I hear that chess is a discussion using statements, arguments, questions and answers.

Can someone explain to me what a logical move would be given this context? A nice, practical example would also be of great help to me.

A move which is obviously not bad to play. It's a fuzzy word to describe and evaluate a move, so it's hard to explain (it's strongly opinion based). Maybe we can put a logical move in the middle of this list:

!!  an excellent move
!   a particularly good—and usually surprising—move
!?  an interesting move that may not be best
>>> Logical move is here and contains above <<<
?!  a dubious move – one which may turn out to be bad
?   a bad move
??  a blunder

Although, ideally speaking, the logical move is the best move, but It may not the case in your question.

Consider this position between Anand.V vs. Carlsen.M - the World Championship match. For an average rated player there're many logical moves such as 1.R4c3, 1.Rd1 and even 1.Kg2. By playing those moves his coach will not criticize him and he will say OK you made a logical move. But..

r3b3/1kp5/1pn1P1p1/pN6/2R3Pr/1P6/5N2/2R3K1 w - - 1 35

In the world championship between two giants, the only logical move is 1.Ne4! which is played also. (Even my chess engine find it hard)

A hint from Karpov, exact calculation in a game is much preferred rather than general guidelines. Guidelines do not find the best or logical move, they will be used to find logical candidate moves and then a exact move calculation will find the best move from the list. See the example again, a general guideline says try to protect your pieces but a comprehensive calculation says another thing. Ne4!. Which one is logical for GMs ?!


Is use of the gambit the main way for black to win? I always used to hate playing as black. But recently, I have used gambits more, and I feel it's so powerful, e.g. the 1... d5 response to 1. e4. Most of us know that white has a statistical advantage (about 10% more), so it seems that only through gambits can black have a chance.

But what is the best gambit to white starting with 1. d4?  A gambit by black here seems iffy.

You ask whether gambit play is the main way for black to play for a win, but instead of gambit play specifically, the issue is more generally one of unbalancing the position (and this is true regardless of which color one has). Sacrificing material for some other type of compensation is certainly one way to do this, but it is only one of many. Generally speaking, the more unbalanced a position is, the more easily either side can end up playing for a win.

Consider the following two somewhat extreme positions. Position A arises in the Exchange Variation of the Slav Defense after the following moves:

[FEN ""]

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. cxd5 cxd5 4. Nf3 Nf6 5. Nc3 Nc6 6. Bf4 Bf5 7. e3 e6 8. Bd3 Bxd3 9. Qxd3 Bd6 10. Bxd6 Qxd6 11. O-O O-O

Position B arises in the Sicilian Dragon:

[FEN ""]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be3 Bg7 7. Qd2 Nc6 8. f3 O-O 9. O-O-O

Note that material is entirely level in both positions, yet Position A is much more drawish than is Position B. In my database, 1264 out of the 1285 games which reached position A ended in a draw, or 98.4% of them! At the same time, only 2829 out of 10788 games reaching Position B ended in a draw, a mere 26.2%.

The reason is that in Position A everything is level: equal material, identical pawn structures and piece development, same-side castling, etc. In Position B, despite the material equality, the position is more unbalanced, in particular via the opposite-side castling, the differing pawn structures, and the fact that each side will need to develop pieces for defensive purposes near its own king and offensive purposes on the other side of the board.

In sum, I think it's a mistake to think that gambits are necessary in order to play for a win with black, any more than it's necessary with white, and instead one should strive to unbalance the position in order to create greater winning chances. But as with gambits, while unbalancing the position can decrease the likelihood of drawing, this is usually by increasing both of the individual likelihoods of your winning or your losing. So by upping your chance of winning the full point, you are also taking on greater risk yourself.

With that in mind, one should always take one's particular opposition into account. For instance, if one player is significantly stronger than another, he or she might even aim for something like Position A (maybe not quite that, but something like it) with every intention of playing for a win, and counting simply on greater skill and the opponent's inevitable mistakes in order to have very high winning chances without taking on any of the the risk of Position B, wherein the stronger player could have a bad day and make a mistake that, in that position, could be serious enough that even the significantly weaker player could then carry the day from the point when the mistake was made.

Even more to the point: despite what I wrote above, it's important to be aware that at the amateur level, absolutely any result can come out of absolutely any opening, no matter how crazy or how lifeless it may seem (or even objectively be). Almost every game at lower levels will involve swings back-and-forth throughout the game, in terms of where the objective advantage lies, as both players make mistakes. So whatever the outcome of the opening phase may be, the game is still there to be had in the middlegame, and then again in the endgame if it gets to there. Thus what is most useful in opening play at the amateur level is aiming for positions that you understand, and that you are comfortable with, as this makes it more likely that you will do better in the middlegame.


How can I make chess interesting and fun for beginners and doubters? I love playing chess, but I find that it is difficult to find people who are willing to commit time to play games with me. I'm not a great player (I've never memorized moves or openings) but I have played enough to know my way around. I invite people over to my apartment every week or so, and I provide drinks and snacks, but it seems that there are some common reasons people don't want to play:

They aren't good at chess, or think it's too complicated to learn.

Sometimes, this answer is just a defensive comment so that when they do play they don't feel humiliated. But sometimes it is just an excuse not to play, and it doesn't matter how good I or any other opponents are. How can I convince people that they don't need to be "good" to enjoy playing a game?

"It's too big of a time commitment."

This is sort of the same reason that nobody will play Risk or Settlers of Catan with me. Especially since we've all heard of games that last whole weekends--and in chess games can last years! But the reality is that they aren't willing to dedicate just an hour or two to the game, while they are willing to sit in front of a TV for that same time period and don't see it as a problem. How can I convince people that it's worth their time?

"I'm a girl."

I think women tend to think a group of people playing chess will be a bunch of nerdy guys talking about and doing stuff they're uninterested in. How can this perception be changed?

"Chess is boring."

I get this, because it looks kind of boring when you're watching, but once you get into it and you have a basic grasp of tactics and strategy, it's not boring at all. How can I help people see how fun chess really can be?

Other reasons?

What are some other reasons people avoid playing chess? What are some strategies to help get people in the door for the first time, and what are some strategies to help people have a fun time on their first visit so that they'll want to come back again?

You need to show them how to win! Letting them win, or going easy on them, I don't think is the answer. Communicating a few simple chess concepts can go a long way.

Here's how I would approach it (once they understand the rules):

play a few games (noting the moves)
show them a few simple concepts such as the pin and the fork, the three opening principles, knights in pawn holes and good/bad bishops, the concept of the king net, and some simple patterns such as the back-rank mate, KRRvK mate and the rook-roll, or KRvK mate.
go over the previously played games and spot these concepts appearing.
go on and play some more games and note their improvement.

The problem is, most people have the mistaken impression that chess skill is directly related to intelligence. Because it's common for people to underestimate their intelligence, they don't believe they will be any good at the game and will most likely lose, while at the same time being perceived to be unintelligent because they failed at chess — no fun at all.

The key is to show them how to win via the communication of a few simple chess principles, which has the added benefits of improving their self-esteem, while at the same time giving them a glimpse into the underlying, invisible-to-the-non-chess-player beauty of chess.


Attacking the accelerated dragon What are the best moves for white after the following moves

[FEN ""]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nc3 g6

One aggressive choice here is 4. h4.

which can potentially damage the pawn structure or harass the bishop if he is deployed to g7. Is this a fairly good move? What are other alternatives in this position?

The two sources I'd depend upon to answer this question are actual games played by GM's (best), and engine analysis, carried to a depth of at least 24 ply (12 moves by each side).

Here's what I get:

Actual Games

Move     Games  Win %  Latest  Players
4 d4      2947  57.3    2016   Carlsen, Kasparov, Karjakin, Anand
4 Bb5      513  57.8    2016   Grischuk, Karjakin, Morozevich, Adams
4 Bc4      229  47.2    2016   Vallejo Pons, Movsesian, Lu SHanglei, Zhigalko
4 g3       153  48.4    2010   Mamedyarov, Romanishin, Galego, Biyiasas
4 h4        38  43.4    2012   Hamdouchi, Pilavov, Minasian, Pridorozhni

So, the move is pretty unpopular at the highest levels (about 1% of games), and since Black outscores White by 57%-43% in this line, it's no wonder.

Engine Analysis

Engine parameters: Stockfish 7, QuadCore AMD CPU using 4 Cores, Depth=25/39
Line Move    Eval
 a.  4 Bb5   0.17
 b.  4 d4    0.13
 c.  4 h3    0.13
 d.  4 Rb1   0.11
 e.  4 a4    0.10
 f.  4 Bc4   0.09
 g.  4 a3    0.03
 h.  4 Be2   0.01
 i.  4 d3    0.00

That's 9 lines that are better than 4 h4, and the 9th has an evaluation of dead equal, implying that the move 4 h4 must have a lower evaluation. Note that 4 h4 starts at among the top four moves until the engine reaches a depth of about 15-17 ply, and then falls off the map.  So the blowback seems to occur somewhere between move 11 and move 13.


Second Troitzky line, where knight and pawn could be located? I am trying to understand where the pieces should be located for the second Troitzky line (checkmate 2 knights vs a pawn in 50 moves limit) and fail to get it. So from wikipedia:

  Black's pawn is blocked by a white knight on or behind one of the
  dots, White can force a win within fifty moves. If the pawn can be
  blocked on or behind one of the Xs, White can force a win within fifty
  moves more than 99 percent of the time.

The problem is that I still can not understand where the pawn and a blocking knight could be located.

Just to resolve ambiguity: I do not need to know how should white force a mate, I just need to understand which positions are possible to win with 50 moves rule. For example, are these positions a theoretical win?

[FEN "8/8/2p1N2k/8/2N5/5K2/8/8 w - - 0 1"]

,

[FEN "8/8/8/1N2pk2/1N6/8/8/4K3 w - - 0 1"]

,

[FEN "8/N7/6k1/7p/8/8/8/1K5N w - - 0 1"]

This has been already solved by Helmut Conrady, his elegant 15-page solution is available here.
It is filled with diagrams and examples as you wanted.
Let me know if you have any questions regarding the diagrams or explanations given.
EDIT: In reply to the edited version of the question and the three positions added:
For the position to be winnable under 50 moves, there are two simple conditions:

Either the black pawn is blocked by the knight on the 5th ranked
Or the pawn is blocked on either b6/b7 squares or on g6/g7 squares.

This means:

First position Winning for white in 50 moves because the pawn on c6 isn't advanced enough and is already blockaded, so no hope for black.
Second position Draw because white cannot win it under the 50 moves limit, as no matter what he tries in the current position, the pawn will get the chance to go past the 5th rank. White isn't in time to block the pawn, two examples:

First:
[Title "pawn will advance to 4th"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[FEN "8/8/8/1N2pk2/1N6/8/8/4K3 w - - 0 1"]

1.Nd6+ Kf4 2.Nd5+ Kf3 3.Nf5 e4

Second:
[Title "pawn will advance to 4th"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[FEN "8/8/8/1N2pk2/1N6/8/8/4K3 w - - 0 1"]

1.Nd6+ Ke6 2.Ne4 Kf5 3.Ng3+ Kf4 4.Kf2 e4

Third position: Draw: easy enough to see that white can't stop the immediate advance of the pawn past the 5th, so white cannot win under 50 moves.

In order to conclude, although if one of the conditions is fulfilled white will have a theoretical win under 50 moves, but that is only possible if no tempo is lost usually, so techniques like triangulation are continuously applied, as shown in the examples of the link.


The London System: Can it be broken? I've faced the London System several times so far, and just don't know what strategy to adapt against it (I exclusively play Nf6 in response to 1.d4). I'm a highly tactical player, so I try following up with d5, c5, Qa5, Nc6, Rc8 etc. in order to break open the queen side when possible. But white just plays c3, e3 and curls up into an unbreakable shell. Then I end up getting outplayed positionally because I get frustrated and sac a pawn or two to get some activity.

So, is it possible to play both soundly and aggressively as black, with 1. ...Nf6 against the London System? Is there a way to entice white into doing something reckless? Or does white have complete control over keeping the game boring? What are the main strategic ideas for black (in general, with preference to aggressive options)? Also, I heard that the Colle system has the same reputation as the London system, and they are quite similar strategically as well. Is there a common way to deal with both of these systems?

The goal for Black in breaking the London System is to remove White's dark bishop from the game. This is present in almost every losing London System. Hikaru Nakamura plays the London, and makes it very clear he is not willing to trade his dark bishop - even going so far as to play h3 with the sole intention of hiding the bishop on h2.

To break the London, trap / trade the dark bishop.

Warning: This may contain multiple diagrams to display a progression of attacks and also possible positions

Your Example

With regards to your exact example,

[fen ""]
1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4 c5 4. e3 Qa5

Let me just stop you there. You are down a decent amount in this position, and are looking at dropping a pawn. I understand that you want to get into a game which is not closed, but that is still possible without being hyper aggressive.

My Suggestion

Lets get back to where you have a chance to start being aggressive and make a move which is subtly aggressive. I know it may not seem like it, but e6 here is very strong

[fen ""]
1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4 e6

e6, but whhyy

e6 allows you to begin to exert some control over the dark squares (which are White's weakness as their bishop cannot contest on them). It allows for a responsive aggression. Let us look at a few of the responses available.

...

4. c4

[fen ""]
1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4 e6 4. c4 Bb4+

Nice, White tried to play into the Queen side and you got in a check (potentially White will trade their dark bishop in defense, but don't count on it). More than this, you gained a tempo, and can castle before White can; all while White's kingside is all locked up.

4. e3

[fen ""]
1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4 e6 4. e3 c5

White was trying to keep a closed position but this actually results in a torn open one. Now if White defends with 5. c3 Black can begin to really open this up, and hopefully trade off White's dark bishop. 5. c3 Nc6 will open the board up and still be in Black's favor positionally.

Remove White's dark bishop

Consider this situation:

[fen ""]
1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4 e6 4. e3 c5 5. c3 Nc6 6. Nbd2 Be7 7. Be2 Nh5

White's dark bishop is toast, the game is open, and you have sacrificed neither material nor position. Game on!

Even if you do not choose to be so aggressive here, you have most certainly opened the board up and prevented a closed position.


Step-by-step guide to prepare yourself Let's say that I have got three years to prepare myself before my first tournament. Here's my status. I need to come up with a plan. Can you help me prepare one?

I am a chess enthusiast. I am unaware of my rating (FIDE/USCF). I play at about 1700 on FreeChess.org.
I have three years at hand to play my first serious tournament. In other words, I can refrain from playing online/real tournament for three years.
I have 30 minutes every day.
I have access to a Linux computer.
I am interested in knowing your thoughts on how I can best utilize the 450 hours (half an hour each day for 300 days a year in 3 years) over the next three years to prepare myself well for chess.
My biggest concern is wasting the (scarce) time I have got in playing mindless games on the Internet. I have realized that the time can be used more productively while getting better at chess.
My modest expectation is an increased understanding of the game and feel for its positions.

Questions such as approach to using engines on Linux computer, analyzing games, preparing theory and lines haunt me. I have heard that tournament play helps, but I have also read that since chess is rich in theory, preparing the theory also helps.

What are the various approaches to coming up with an optimal plan for the 450 hours (over 3 years) that I have got?

1.I am a chess enthusiast. I am unaware of my rating (FIDE/USCF). I play at about 1700 on FreeChess.org.

Enthusiasm and strong discipline are the only thing required-forget FIDE ELO.

  2.I have three years at hand to play my first serious tournament. In other words, I can refrain from playing online/real tournament for three years.

Online play can be very useful-do not discard it. Use it to quickly test new things you learn. Blitz games can help you a lot in this if you find an opponent of equal strength.

  3.I have 30 minutes every day.

Half an hour a day is way too little, but if you seek to increase your strength to a noticeable level, I think that this can be done. You will need iron discipline and good resources-they must be short, crystal clear examples.

  4.I have access to a Linux computer.

Good. Internet + decent chess engine can help a lot.

  5.I am interested in knowing your thoughts on how I can best utilize the 450 hours (half an hour each day for 300 days a year in 3 years) over the next three years to prepare myself well for chess.

Keep reading, I will explain everything in great detail-so pay attention!

  6.My biggest concern is wasting the (scarce) time I have got in playing mindless games on the Internet. I have realized that the time can be used more productively while getting better at chess.

See the answer to second question.

  7.My modest expectation is an increased understanding of the game and feel for its positions.

This can be done with proper resources, and I will try to recommend some bellow-see third answer.

  8.Questions such as approach to using engines on Linux computer, analyzing games, preparing theory and lines haunt me. I have heard that tournament play helps, but I have also read that since chess is rich in theory, preparing the theory also helps.What are the various approaches to coming up with an optimal plan for the 450 hours (over 3 years) that I have got?

First off, forget about theory learning-you just do not have enough time to learn openings to a such high level. So my goal is to recommend books that are small and describe openings that are solid and not so sharp. Semi-open openings can give you enough solidity to survive and enough counter-play to have a chance to win.

Against 1.e4 I would recommend French Defense, and against everything else King's Indian defense. The reason for this is that nobody can use transpositions to get you out of your opening. This is important-it will reduce your time required for learning the openings for Black. As White, play the King's Indian Attack, since this is the King's Indian defense played with reversed colors. Again, you save your time by practically learning to play only two openings. I recommend Starting Out series, since they explain these openings and their basic middle game very well.

Then, you will need to learn to play middle game well. You can use Andrew Soltis-Pawn Structure Chess(1995) for that, but read only these chapters:

The e5 chain so you can master the French defense-Advance variation
The King's Indian complex-useful for you because you play both King's Indian attack and defense.

With Starting Out series, and with these two chapters, you should be able to hold your own against any player/engine. Your only problem shall be theory, but with the chapters from Soltis' book you could find good moves on your own since you should be able to understand the middle game quite well.

OK, I have covered your opening repertoire and middle game plans, now is the time for tactics/positional play.

Again, for positional principles consult Soltis' book, as for tactics you should utilize Internet to solve puzzles-ChessTempo.com can help.

As for endgame, you will have to get a good book for the beginners, but I just can not recommend one now, if I find a good one I will edit the answer and inform you via comment.

Now, let us create a timetable for you, so you can use your scarce time the best you can:

Get and read books for the openings-you can not progress further if you get smashed in 20 moves. Start with French defense and then move on to Kings Indian defense. Leave Kings Indian Attack for the end.
Once you feel confident that you have learned one opening variation ask someone to play with you 3 blitz games ( five minutes both ) so you can memorize the opening variation-you will be surprised how effective this is. Five-minutes-each blitz game means that you can play 3 games per day. After 12 games of blitz, you should memorize the variation. To increase your learning efficiency play King's Indian Attack with White all the time, and shuffle between French defense and Kings Indian defense ( of course, tell your friend to play 1.e4 or 1.d4/c4..., based on which defense as Black you wish to train ). This way you will learn the openings-forget about the outcome of the game, for now we just want to focus on you not losing in first 20+ moves.
Read the 'Soltis' book now, since you can survive the opening. Those 2 chapters will help you to find a plan in the middle game with speed and easiness. Once you read them and feel confident in your knowledge, ask a friend to do the same as before-play a five-minute-each blitz game, only this time result does matter since you know how to play middle game. This is the good moment for you to also experiment with the games online since we want you to get as much experience in playing these openings and middle games as you can get.
At some point you will feel like you have your opening and middle game "together" but you lack tactical strength to win or save the game. This will be the time to rest from openings and just solve puzzles. You can do that online or by getting newspapers or something. Again, once you are confident in your tactical improvement ask a friend to play again, or play online.
For endgame try to find any beginners book on basic principles and basic endings. You will not need complex study of this, just some basic knowledge. Once you read the book and feel like you have learned something play again against a friend/online.
From that moment on, you just keep playing and refer to the books when you need to remember some variation or a plan.

Now, the tournament play strategy:

Tournament is consisted of players of various strength. Once you go there, forget about winning every game! Just forget it! You will need every ounce of mental strength to deal with other things ( unexpected defeat/unfair referee 's decision/rude behavior of the spectators or your opponent ). Also, by not forcing the win you will not squander drawn games trying to prove a win that does not exist. Half a point is truly BIG if you keep not losing. If you can win do it of course, but tend to play safe-drawing a game is OK. Remember, you are there to have fun since this is your first tournament, and if you win a game that is great, if you lose it is OK too, move on and do not grief-another game will bring new adventure/experience. If you reach around 50% of total points at the end of the tournament consider your result a great success.

To summarize:

This will be your first tournament-try to finish it with a positive result and good experiences to remember. To achieve that do not force a win but just play the game and enjoy it.

Prepare your opening repertoire so you can hold your own against anybody-you can do that by practicing the way described above.

Prepare your middle games, so you can save the time on your clock by finding moves/plans quickly.

Train tactics so you can save the time on your clock and increase your chances to win or save the game.

Learn basic endings so you do not ruin a good game you played previously.

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

Good luck on your first tournament!

Best regards.


How do chess websites relay the moves for tournaments? I know the DGT boards are used for this. But, do they all do so? Does every chess website connect their server to the DGT board and relay the moves? Or do they simply "steal" the moves from another site?

That depends on the tournament organisation. If the tournament organiser is happy, they provide an online PGN file which is updated everytime the player makes a move. A good digital board software can easily do that. Broadcast websites such as chess24.com simply has to poll that PGN file. Easily scaled to any number of chess boards.

Obviously, the last strategy requires cooperation. The 2018 world chess championship has no such facility. The broadcast websites has to hire someone constantly monitor the offical website (they have to pay for subscription), and relay the moves manually.

Generally, organisers especially open competition are more than happy to assist. It's a nice way for promoting their events. Chess moves don't make money.


Is there a list of hidden/deleted Stockfish commands? I have downloaded the latest version of Stockfish, and I am running it on the command line.

There is a hidden command 'd' which displays the current board.
Also, the "debug on" command is not implemented, even though it is part of the UCI protocol.

Is there a list somewhere of all commands, all "un-implemented" commands, and/or command line switches for Stockfish?

I have already downloaded and read the UCI protocol.

Before someone sugests it, I would like to write my own GUI, so downloading arena and just running it isn't an option.

Look at the source code:

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

   // Additional custom non-UCI commands, mainly for debugging
      else if (token == "flip")  pos.flip();
      else if (token == "bench") bench(pos, is, states);
      else if (token == "d")     sync_cout << pos << sync_endl;
      else if (token == "eval")  sync_cout << Eval::trace(pos) << sync_endl;

Your "d" command is there, and others.


Analyze game and explain why bad moves break theory Is there an automated way to analyze a game and explain in human language why a particular opening move breaks theory?

You might be looking for something like decodechess.com/:

The first AI chess tutor, DecodeChess explains the why  behind chess
moves in rich, intuitive language.

This screenshot  shows an example of a position of DecodeChess's natural-language explanation for why, for example, Qa1 is good:

Escapes the black queen's threat (Qf6(b6)-b2)
Supports the rook at a7
Threatens to play Bxd5
Supports the rook at d1

Although you ask for something to "explain in human language why a particular opening move breaks theory," in my limited exposure to DecodeChess it focuses on explaining why you should make a particular good move, rather than why you should not have made a bad move.
DecodeChess has a free trial available, which is pretty limited in capacity (two "decodes" per day), and monthly and annual subscriptions to get unlimited access.


Castling vertically problem I've once saw a joke chess study about castling vertically. However, I have forgotten who has composed it. I remember that in the positions, all the pawns were locked, but not much else. Does anybody know who was the composer of this problem?

I believe this is the position with White to mate in 3:
[FEN "8/8/4P3/3p4/2p3p1/1pP1kPPp/1P5P/R3K2R w KQkq - 0 1"]

Tim Krabbé and Max Pam exploited a loophole in the rules when they composed this problem in 1972.
There are 3 variations depending on Black's responses with the third variation being vertical castling.

1.e7 Kd3 2.e8=R gxf3 3.0-0-0#.
1.e7 Kxf3 2.e8=R d4 3.0-0#.
1.e7 Kxf3 2.e8=R Kg2 3.0-0-0-0#!.


Timer expired suggestions I am developing a computer based game.  I am aware some of different official timer expiration rules.  But I want to make the following simple rule when the timer expired.

After player one has made a move.
Player two has 5 minutes (or whatever time agreed upon).
If player two has not made a move when time expired, player two lost turn.
It is now player one's turn to move, etc.

Does this sound playable?

Well that depends, if your talking about a game as in chess then no. If your opponent is in zugzwang he may deliberately allow his time to expire so that his opponent may move and likewise the opponent would let their time expire to put his opponent back in zugzwang. Basically the game would go on and on... With no one making any moves.
However if you are talking about another computer based game, you must make sure that zugzwang does not exist, then this system of time control would work.( zugzwang is when any move you make only worsens your position.


In the endgame KQ vs K, can you premove your way to checkmate? This is a question concerning online blitz chess.

I'm sure we all have experienced having a completely winning position, but only having a few seconds left on the clock. After one such game I started to wonder:
In the ending KQ vs K, is it possible to premove a sequence of moves such that no matter what moves the opponent makes, they will end up check mate?

If the enemy king is cut off at the edge of the board, it is possible to mate him using only premoves. For example:

[StartPly "1"]
[FEN "2k5/Q7/8/8/8/8/8/K7 w - - 0 1"]

      1.Ka2 Kd8 2.Ka3 Kc8 3.Ka4 Kd8 4.Ka5 Kc8 5.Ka6 Kd8 6.Qb7 Ke8 7.Kb6 Kd8 8.Qc7+ Ke8 9.Kc6 Kf8 10.Qd7 Kg8 11.Kd6 Kf8 12.Qe7+ Kg8 13.Ke6 Kh8 14.Kf6 (14.Qf7??=) Kg8 15.Qg7#

Just make sure you don't stalemate your opponent with 14.Qf7.
Note that there is of course a much quicker path to mate, the sequence of moves just shows it is possible to exclusively use premoves.

If the enemy king is not cut off at the edge of the board, I doubt if it is possible to premove the entire sequence. In order to mate him, the quadrant in which the enemy king is located has to be narrowed. And that is the problem: whenever the queen is moved, the king might escape the quadrant.


What chess books should a Class A player read to reach Expert Class? What are some book recommendations, tips, and ideas for a Class A to reach Expert Class? What knowledge do most Class A lack compare to Experts?

I'll start with a few tips and ideas.  None of them are original, but all of them have some value and bear repeating.

(1)  If you have the opportunity to play in tournaments where there are stronger players, this is the best way to improve.  The hard lessons you learn from your tournament games are ones you remember best. Moreover, every mistake you make in a tournament game is showing you a gap (a poker player might say a "leak") in your play. It is no coincidence that all really strong players played hundreds (if not thousands) of serious games before they got really good.

(2)  Learn to sit on your hands.  Not literally, of course, although you could try it if you are really impulsive.  Many players make mistakes they could avoid if they just slowed down a bit, sat on their hands, and thought a little instead of moving quickly.  When I started slowing down and making myself take a little time and think about every move, even the obvious ones, I made a big step forward.

(3)  Learn to fight hard through the entire game.  Don't relax until the game is over.  When you have a won position or an almost-won position, this is when your opponent is often at his most desperate and dangerous, and you should be very careful.  Chess is a game where you can spoil everything with a moment's inattention.  Learning to win won positions in an absolutely relentless fashion without giving your opponent the slightest chance is a very important skill.  Learning to create as many practical difficulties as possible for your opponent when you have a bad or lost position is also very important.  Never stop fighting until the game is over.

(4)  Do lots of puzzles.  Tactics puzzles, positional puzzles, endgame puzzles, it doesn't matter much which. They will develop your ability to solve problems over the board.  People often read through game collections, middlegame manuals, and the like on autopilot without doing a lot of thinking for themselves, and then expect to improve.  But abstract ideas are practically useless in chess. Knowing that the bishop pair is usually an advantage is nice, but does you no good at all unless you have some concrete idea about how to exploit this advantage, and can apply this idea in practice.  You need concrete understanding, and to get it you must be thinking and calculating for yourself all the time.  The more you think for yourself, the better you get at it.  Puzzles are one way of forcing you to think for yourself.  Solitaire chess is another.  I am a big fan of solitaire chess (any at least lightly annotated game collection will do), as it presents you with problems to solve which cover all aspects of the game.

(5)  My last idea is rather murky, but nonetheless very real.  The single characteristic shared by all strong chess players I have known is that they have a strong desire to win: they are highly invested psychologically in the outcome of every game.  They really hate to lose, and they really love to win.  As a result, when they sit down at the board they are highly motivated, they have a lot of fighting spirit, and they are hard to kill.  Anything you can do to increase your motivation (find a rival, set a serious goal, play on a chess team, etc.) is a plus.  In my experience, people who are not highly motivated usually don't get very strong, no matter how talented.

I am a little hesitant to recommend specific books: different people react well to different types of material, and honestly I am not sure what "Class A" means.  There is quite a big difference between an 1800 elo player and a 1999 elo player.

However, I would primarily recommend puzzle books for anyone below about 2100 elo.  Any one of the modern "1001 tactical problems" type books would be good (e.g., Zenon Franco's "The Giant Chess Puzzle Book," Richard Palliser's "The Complete Chess Workout," Igor Sukhin's "Chess Gems," etc.).  An endgame puzzle book rather than an endgame manual (e.g., John Hall's "Endgame Challenge," Bernd Rosen's "Chess Endgame Training," or the like).  Maybe a book with some positional/strategical puzzles as well (something like Johan Hellsten's "Mastering Chess Strategy" would be good, there are probably others).

Maybe add an annotated game collection from one of your favorite players (like Tal or Fischer or Karpov or Kasparov or Anand), or an instructive game collection (like John Nunn's "Understanding Chess Move by Move," or "The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games").  Actually, it doesn't matter so much which book you choose as how you use it.  If you really grapple with the material and try to master it, if you constantly set yourself problems and try to solve them, any decent book can take you a step forward.

I am not going to address openings, as most players below 2200 elo study openings way more than they should.  Just find some solid openings that you like and stick with them, so that you build up some experience in the lines that you play. If you have a problem with a particular line, look up the position in the database and find out what stronger players are playing in that position.

But mostly, a serious approach, motivating yourself to fight hard through the entire game, and a lot of tournament games are the main things.


French defence vs Sicilian defence I'm beginner chess player who like aggressive play. I often counter e4 with e6(french defence) or c5 (sicilian defence). But I still don't know what's detail pros and cons with these openings. Can anyone explain me? Thank you very much for your answer. I appreciate that

The French and the Sicilian are almost as different openings as you could get as a response to 1. e4. The French (especially the Advance Variation, which is the most common among amateur play) tends to lead to closed positions, that is, positions clogged up with stable pawn chains where long-term maneuvering and strategy prevail. The Sicilian (as much as there is a "single" Sicilian, seeing as the multitudinous Sicilian systems can range from quiet and defensive [cf. the Sheveningen] to dangerous and aggressive [cf. the Dragon Variation, or the Sveshnikov]) tends to lead to open or semi-open positions, and the tide of play may shift within just a couple of moves owing to tactics.

There's really not much to be said in terms of meaningful, general, and objective "pros" and "cons" of the two opening systems. I would just study very briefly the theory behind the first few moves of each, play several games with them, and decide for yourself which you like to play. They're both super-solid in principle and played all the way up to the GM level.

(If you say you like aggressive play, I tend to think you'd like the Sicilian as such. The French is still among my favorites, however, because as Black you're constantly making White react to your threats of winning small but significant positional or material gains whilst in the opening. As a beginner I found games almost played themselves and if White wasn't keen on defense I would obtain the upper hand.)


Longest possible game of Horde Chess The longest possible normal game of chess has been calculated, but I want to know what the longest possible game of Horde Chess is. What makes this an interesting case is the crazy amount of pawn moves and captures there are that allow the game to be extended for a very long time.
For the sake of the question, as to avoid answers of "infinity," the 75-move will be in effect. Captures and pawn moves will be labeled as "marks" for simplicity.
As for calculating the longest possible game, White needs to promote a pawn to gain waiting moves. This takes 4 moves at the least.
[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/1PP2PP1/PPPPPPPP/PPPPPPPP/PPPPPPPP/PPPPPPPP w kq - 0 1"]

1. b6 a6 2. b5 Ra7 3. bxa7 Nc6 4. a8=Q

The promotion is our first mark. After this, White has 184 marks in pawn moves. All but one piece can be captured for 31 more marks. (184+31+1)*75 gives us 16200 moves for the White piece alone.
Each Black pawn should be able to get at least two moves given that White captures properly, so that's 16 marks from all Black pawns. Additionally, each Black piece (minus a rook from the opening) is a mark, minus the king. (14+16)*75=2250. After all of the marks are done, the Black king and the last White piece can duke it out for another 75 moves.
16200+2250+75=18525 moves, give or take a ply or two for parity switches, as a lower bound. I'm sure that there are ways to give Black more pawn moves.
Can anyone refine my starter pack calculations and find the longest possible Horde Chess Game?

EDIT: Final calculation matches actual proof game exactly.
That’s a nice new chess-math question, which deserves wider circulation.
Begin by promoting a White pawn as quickly as possible, because until that happens, White is just haemorrhaging pawn moves. Now can promote a second pawn more slowly. This promoted piece is captured by Black pawn to open a file, and the first file's promotions can happen.
Scheme: axb to let all wPs from the a-file promote, then bxa+bxa to let all remaining wPs from the b-file promote, then cxb to let all wPs from the c-file promote, and so on.
One player is the active one, moving pawns. This player can also capture spare officers with officers. But pawns can never be captured before they promote (hugely expensive) and there are only 2 captures by wPs and 9 captures by bPs.
There are in principle 188+36+48+15=287 marks (captures & pawn moves). However, we lose 9 for Black pawn captures, 2 for White pawn captures, and 5 for pawn moves leading to the first White promotion. So there are really just 271 marks. So if the count begins after 4. a8=?, we have a total length of 20328.5 moves minus 0.5 for each parity switch.
So how many parity switches must there be? White is the first active player, then need two switches to promote the pawns from any file. So that's 16 switches, and White has promoted all his h-file pawns. A 17th switch is required for Black to capture these.
What impact does dead position have? If it applies literally, then Black cannot win if he has lost all his units, because he can't capture the last White unit. So let's suppose that Black winning "counts" as checkmate for DP purposes. That gives a total of 20320.0 moves.
The final proposed total is hence: 20320.0 moves.
An actual animated proof game has been constructed which achieves this total: https://pdb.dieschwalbe.de/P1370701


Advice on how to draw with White I read opening books a lot and they are always focused on finding a way to draw for Black and finding a way for White to play for a win. This makes me wonder why people are not writing opening books on how to draw with White. Is there no market value for a White repertoire book focused on the most efficient way of making a draw?

From the scientific point of view it is would be highly advisable to first devise a drawing method for white and only then look for a draw for Black. Why is this not done this way? Is it about the buying tastes, or about the emotions related to winning? I sometimes read comments to the effect that playing for a draw should be below one's dignity. But from the scientific point of view and also from the practical point of view it is fascinating to investagte the art of making a draw. Any ideas?

Most opening books claim to maintain the advantage for White and equalize for Black.  This is slightly different than winning and drawing.

Most of the incentive to write this way is the psychology of selling.  Nobody wants to buy a book on how to draw against a lower rated player.  You higher rating should make this act trivial.  Winning is your objective, so that is a key word they try to put into titles.

Since White starts with the initiative, White can choose a line which end in a lot of draws.  These line normally have "exchange" in them:  QGD Exchange variation, Slav Exchange Variation, and French Exchange Variation.

"The turning point in my career came with the realization that Black should play to win instead of just steering for equality." Bobby Fischer.  This lesson should have encouraged editors to have put winning in both repertoire book titles.

There is some risk aversion psychology that could be used in selling books.  The Safest Sicilian by Delchev and Semkov is aimed at players who don't want to get into the hair-raising tactics of a normal Sicilian.  The Closed Sicilian has the same objective from White's point-of-view.  Petrosian and Giri have mastered this safety first approach.  (Capablanca may belong in this group.)

The general consensus is that below a rating of 2000, you should not study openings more than to reach a playable middlegame without falling into an opening trap.  My personal feeling is that these opening books forget to include the line which puts up the most resistance.  It would be better to get someone who knows the line to explain them to you or to play against a computer just to find all of the inferior moves.


Eligibity prediction I am from Pondicherry and I want to become a world class player. I have the following background:

Tech (electrical & electronics eng) graduate.
Have won in chess with friends but have not contested in any tournaments.
Good at maths

Do I need to go for coaching? What is the progression of a chess player from beginner to world champion? How long does it take? Where can I find more information about tournaments and how to enter them?

The current world champion Magnus Carlsen needed around 15 years to go from beginner to world champion. He was probably one of the fastest ever because he started to play quite late (at the age of eight) and was the second youngest classical world champion (if I remember correctly).

He received professional training from a strong GM almost from the beginning. He played tournaments almost constantly. His parents took a year off work, to accompany him to tournaments. Due to his tight tournament schedule he didn't finish school, although it was a special sports school, where he received more chess training.

So, if you are 8 years old or younger, and you can afford to concentrate on chess for the next 10 years, you do have a shot at being world class some day.

Otherwise, not so much …

Anyway, I would advise you to go to a local chess club. Google tells me that there are chess clubs in Pondicherry. There you will find out, whether playing tournament chess is actually enjoyable for you. I believe that was a necessary step for every chess world champion.