How to make a self study plan to become a good chess player to play rated tournaments? I am a programmer and a chess player who knows the moves and the basic rules but never played professionally. I am a complete novice. I tried in FICS and failed to win a single match. I was playing regularly around 15 years back and want to start again.

I was searching here and there to make a plan to become a pro. I am interested more in self study. So the books these sites are referring are a little confusing for me. As some claiming book X to read first and have their reason while some claiming to read book X after other 5 books and showing there own reason.

I want to know how I can make a solid one-year self-study plan that can polish my skills to start playing well in any rated tournaments. How can I make a reading list for chess? Yes I want to improve my chess to a particular level before entitling myself for clubs or rated tournaments and want to do it myself.
Below are some of the questions that are coming in my mind, please let me know the points that I missed.

How to make a daily plan for opening, middle game and end games?
How to make a reading list that can be suitable for me.
How to select a chess engine?
What other things I need like a notebook to write my chess moves?
How to make a plan to practice tactics.
What else I need to do to train myself without a coach? (I can use internet and books instead of coach)

Thanks in advance.

1) How to make a daily plan for opening, middle game and end games?

Make the balance proportional. Many novice players come out of book opening before move 5, so don't go overboard on learning openings by rote. Picking up on this, analysing whole, annotated games is of benefit, as you see all phases of the game.

Potential sources:

Logical Chess: Move by Move: Every Move Explained by Irving Chernev
The World's Most Instructive Amateur Game Book by Dan Heisman
The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games by Graham Burgess and John Emms

2) How to make a reading list that can be suitable for me.

Throughout this answer, I give potential sources to look up. Remember that you only get out of chess what you put in, so get the resources that appeal to you the most and study them. This is what you should look for:

Plenty of diagrams
Not many variations, but ideas expressed in words mostly. If there are variations, they should be short (3 moves or less would be a good rule of thumb)
Written in a way that engages you. Read a preview and review online of the book before you buy

Remember that books are one thing, but YouTube videos are useful too. Check out the channels by Dereque Kelly for openings and the Chess.com channel.

3) How to select a chess engine?

Any software with lots of tutorials and player personalities of various strengths and temperaments will be fine. Don't move on from a tutorial section until you really understand it - moving onto the advance content too soon will only confuse you.

I would recommend Ubisoft's Chessmaster (as I always do, if you read any of my other answers)

4) What other things I need like a notebook to write my chess moves?

For tournament play you should take:

A pen
Back up notebook (they are usually provided)
Something to eat and drink between rounds. Chocolate is good - its the closest equivalent to steroids in chess
Suitable clothing. If you live in the UK like I do, a spare jumper is a must

For training with a book, I would recommend a:

Chessboard and pieces similar to the ones you will be playing with in the tournament, as moving the pieces helps recall and learning. Most tournament chessboards I've come across are vinyl with white and green squares. Chess pieces are Staunton style, King size at about 2.5 inches
A document stand, so that you don't need to use one hand to hold the book all the time
A piece of card to cover up answers with. As a general hint, whenever you are working with a book and you see a new diagram, try to work out the best move for the player, then compare your answer to what was played
Notepad and pen. Learn to play the move, then write the move down, as chess etiquette is highly ritualised and is written in the rule book. You don't want a picky opponent to cause trouble this way
I would advise getting a chess clock unless you know what type is being used, as it will not be used much if you are studying mostly solo. But some people advocate getting one to get used to the controls and the background ticking

5) How to make a plan to practice tactics.

Get any beginner tactic book and solve the problems in dead time (on the train, whilst you are waiting dinner to cook, during your lunch break etc.) and solve the problems. Resource suggestions are:

Back to Basics: Tactics by Dan Heisman
Winning Chess Tactics by Yasser Seirawan
Chess Tactics for Kids by Murray Chandler (don't be put off by the title! In general, chess books written for a younger audience are written in a more engaging way than they are for adults, and with just as good content too)
ChessTempo.com

6) What else I need to do to train myself without a coach? (I can use internet and books instead of coach)

Nothing else, but conduct a post-mortem after the tournament game if your opponent is willing. this is where you discuss the game and understand which moves made your opponent uncomfortable and where you erred. Also, you can post the game on Chess.SE and ask for feedback.

This answer is also based on what I've learnt from Studying Chess Made Easy by Andy Soltis. At the end of the day, you will only take the material in if it is fun and relevant. There is nothing more frustrating than learning a lot of chess material at the end of a hard day's work, then getting beaten in tournament play over and over again. If this happens, try entering tournaments that are more at your level, or joining a friendly chess club.


Why is engine's speed slow at the start? I noticed that the nps (nodes per seconds) of different chess engines is very low at the start of the analysis and only after several seconds reaches is peak value. Does anybody have an explanation of this strange phenomenon?

Right after starting the analysis of a position the engine has to prepare the hash table in the memory or check it if there is one allready. You can verify this by giving your engine a low ammount of RAM (e.g. 32 MB). You will notice that the nps accelleration will go up. However, this heavyly will decrease the strength of the engine.


"How are the scores decided in Chess?" - Correct? Recent question:

  How are the scores decided in Chess?

It has been argued that PV scores for Stockfish (the engine being used by chess.com) can be interpreted as something like:

  +1.0 is a pawn advantage for White. -0.5 is a half-pawn advantage for Black.

Is that correct? The weights and parameters in Stockfish are either manually calibrated or tuned by something like the SPSA optimiser. We only care if the optimization can give the engine gradients to a local optimum solution.

The objective function is to maximise the playing strength. Maximising playing strength has nothing to do with making sure "+1.0 is a pawn advantage for White". In fact, we should be able to scale all all the PV scores by a constant. As long as the engine makes the same move, the magnitude of the scores shouldn't matter.

This is consistent to the minimax algorithm, where both players only care how to minimize/maximise the evaluation. Again, there are no efforts to make the PV scores human-interpretable.

To me, the PV scores are only important relatively, not absolutely. For instance, we should be able to say "+2.0 is about two-times advantage for White than a position with +1.0 for White.", but that shouldn't have anything to do with pawns. Similarly, if I modify the source code and scale the outputs by a factor of 10. I can still say: "+20.0 is about two-times advantage for White than a position with +10.0 for White". We shouldn't be able to connect the scores to pawns, knights, bishops etc.

I haven't seen anybody in the Stockfish development team spent any efforts to make the outputs interpretable. To me, the scores have no direct interpretation to chess.

Should I call all answers in the question technically incorrect?

EDIT

This is in response to @D_M. How would you scale the outputs to make it human interpretable? What's the algorithm? How would you define the loss function? How to test for the changes? I don't see it's a trivial problem.

In fact, we should be able to scale all all the PV scores by a constant. As long as the engine makes the same move, the magnitude of the scores shouldn't matter.

True. We can even add a constant to all scores (e.g. an equal position would have a score of +1) without any effect on the engine's decisions.

However, it's useful to keep the well-known score definitions:

  +1.0 is a pawn advantage for White

for 'backwards compatibility', just like we still have a 'meter bar' in Paris while the meter is currently defined with Krypton 86, so the 'meter bar' is technically slightly longer or shorter than a meter.


What are the new FIDE regulations for arbiters? Last year I asked if FIDE were going to extend the rules around inactivity for new players, players and arbiters. They did so for players but not arbiters. Now they have made radical changes to the rules for arbiters. What are they?
It's probably worth giving a quick summary of the types of arbiters and the previous rules.
National Arbiter (NA)
This is the lowest level of arbiter. Think of them as trainees. The only FIDE requirement is that their national federation registers them with FIDE and pays a 20 euro fee. Some federations have additional requirements. Mine, for instance, required me to attend the FIDE arbiters seminar and pass the associated exam and then qualify as a federation national arbiter first.
NAs can be chief arbiters in the lowest level of FIDE rated tournaments.
NAs never become inactive.
FIDE Arbiter (FA)
This is the lowest level of qualified FIDE arbiter. They are required to attend the arbiters' seminar, pass the exam and achieve 3 arbiter norms at the FA level. These are spelt out in article 3 of B.06.1 – FIDE Regulations for the Titles of Arbiters on the FIDE website. Additionally there is a 80 euro registration fee.
FAs can be chief arbiters in tournaments up to norm event level. They can be deputy chief arbiters in strong international events and ordinary arbiters in all events.
Pre-covid FAs became inactive after 2 years of inactivity (not being any kind of arbiter in any FIDE rated event). To become active again all that was necessary was for the arbiter's federation to tell FIDE and pay the registration fee again.
International Arbiter (IA)
This is the main level of qualified FIDE arbiter. They are required to first qualify as FAs and then achieve an additional 3 arbiter norms at a higher level than FAs. Whereas FAs can achieve a norm in any FIDE rated event norms for the IA title must be in events where title norms are available. These are spelt out in the same document as for FAs.
The pre-covid rules for inactivity are the same as for FAs, just that the re-registration fees are higher.

There are two significant changes.

There is a re-registration requirement, although without having to also pay again. If you look through lists of inactive arbiters and check their arbiting records you find that many inactive arbiters have been inactive for not just years but for decades. In Europe there have also been new data protection laws for the past few years which FIDE has probably not been in full compliance with. I know that when I first became an NA FIDE published my home address and phone number without telling me. Now all FAs and IAs are required to visit the FIDE Database enhancement page on the the FIDE website, complete the form and submit before 31st October 2021 to maintain their active status.
All FAs and IAs are required, once every four years, to attend a Refresher Course to maintain their active status. The purpose of this is to ensure that arbiters kept uptodate with the latest FIDE laws. These laws are normally updated once every four years.

Notes on re-registration
The form includes a link to what you are agreeing to when you click on "Submit" and you should definitely first click on the link. The full title of the link is "INFORMATION AND CONSENT UNDER 2016/679/EU – GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION – ART. 13 AND FOLLOWING AND FIDE DATA PROTECTION POLICY". It's probably worth noting that FIDE gives itself more powers than it currently exercises (at least in my case). In particular:

By giving your consent, you agree that:
• FIDE collects your Name, Surname, Birthday, Federation, Gender (M or F), email address, physical addresses, place and date of birth, nationality, phone numbers and bank details and local taxes details.
• FRS may host a picture of yours.
• Your data will be stored electronically and in paper.
...
• Your data will be visible to any visitor of FIDE website who may see: Name, Surname, Year of birth, Federation, Gender (M or F), rating, title and inactivity flag. [so, thank goodness, they are not going to publish our address, phone number and bank details]

Notes on "inactivity"
Details are spelt out in article 2 of B.06.3 – FIDE Regulations for the Classification of Arbiters. The effect of the changes, so I was told, is to bring FAs and IAs more into line with NAs. For NAs there is no penalty for becoming inactive. For FAs and IAs the implication is that they are not fully aware of the latest laws and so may officiate in low level FIDE rated competitions, like NAs, but not in higher ones in any position of great responsibility. This can be repaired by taking the refresher course with no additional re-registration fee although the course is not going to be free.
Significant points are:

2.1 An IA or FA is considered to be “Inactive” if in a period of four (4) years they have not successfully attended a Refresher Course organized by the FIDE Arbiters’ Commission. When an arbiter reaches his “end of activity” date, his status is changed to “Inactive”.
2.1.1 An inactive arbiter may not officiate as the Chief Arbiter in any FIDE rated tournaments, except in those where no possibilities of norms for players exist.
2.1.2 An inactive arbiter may not be selected to officiate in any official FIDE or Continental events.

Basically inactive FAs and IAs can't be the Chief Arbiter in a norm event.
Since currently no arbiters have done this course there are transition rules regarding the date you have to take it by as follows:

2.6 Transition 2021 – for a smooth implementation of the new regulations. The initial end of activity date will be calculated as follow, as the new regulations come into force:
2.6.1 Active arbiters with a last tournament in 2016 or before: 31/12/2020, status set to inactive.
2.6.2 Active arbiters with a last tournament in 2017: IA 31/12/2021 – FA 31/12/2022
2.6.3 Active arbiters with a last tournament in 2018: 31/12/2022
2.6.4 Active arbiters with a last tournament in 2019: 31/12/2023
2.6.5 Active arbiters with a last tournament in 2020: 31/12/2024


Thoughts on the Robatsch (Modern) Defense? I heard from IM Andrew Martin that if you are unsure what to play as Black, you should play the following moves no matter what White plays (not sure I agree with him saying no matter what White plays though).  Those moves are g6, Bg7, and c5 with the idea of opening up the c file and bringing your Queen out to a5 or b6.  Has anyone had any success with this approach?  He specifically didn't mention the Robatsch (Modern) defense, but that is initially what this appears to be.

[FEN ""]
1. e4 g6 2. d4 Bg7 3. Nc3 c5

There is a whole book about this system, The Sniper: Play 1...g6, ...Bg7 and ...c5! by FM Charlie Storey, published by Everyman. It has gotten mixed reviews on Amazon and on the ChessPublishing forums.


No registration chess Are there any free, either email or possibly peer to peer turn based, chess pc apps that look decent?
I'm looking to play with a friend directly, not have to go through registration, and not in real time.

Not an app, but very nice if you don't need many bells and whistles is http://www.apronus.com/chess/wbeditor.php

I recently used it to play a correspondence game with a friend via messenger. You play on the right board and use the "link to share" button to create a link like: http://www.apronus.com/chess/wbeditor.php?m=e4_d5_exd5_Qxd5_Nf3
As you can see, that link contains the move history, so it's easy to play by sending back and forth the link created after your move. You can even export PGN and FEN files whenever you feel like it to import somewhere else.


Kraemer vs Bacrot, 2013. Is this same-color bishop endgame won for black? In the game GM Martin Kraemer vs GM Etienne Bacrot, 2013, we reach the following endgame with black to move:

8/3b1pkp/6p1/8/p7/7P/1P2BPPK/8 b - - 0 40
[White "Martin Kraemer"]
[Black "Etienne Bacrot"]
[Date "2013"]
[WhiteElo "2520"]
[BlackElo "2705"]

It looks almost balanced to me, which makes me think it should be a draw.  Nevertheless, black went on to win.  Crafty evaluates the position as -0.34 (35 ply).

Question:  Is this same-color bishop endgame actually won for black?

Is this same-color bishop endgame actually won for black?

Black has faster king, but he has permanent weakness in view of the a4 pawn.

His bishop is bad and kingside pawns are on the same color he is. Although kingside pawn formation can be changed to suit the bishop, he will still be unable to attack the opponent because White can also change his kingside pawn structure to favor his bishop.

Furthermore, White king is fast enough to cut off opposing king with joined cooperation of his bishop and pawns.

Since Black king is faster, Black will be able to exchange weak a4 pawn if this one becomes a problem, thus the position will result in a draw.

[Title "Kraemer-Bacrot,2013"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "8/3b1pkp/6p1/8/p7/7P/1P2BPPK/8 b - - 0 1"]

1...Kf6 ( 1...g5! 2.Kg1 Kf6 3.Bc4! Be6 4.Bb5! Bb3 5.Kf1 Ke5 6.Ke2 Kd4 7.Kd2 Bd5 8.g3 Bb3 9.h4 f6! 10.Bd3! h6 11.f4! gxf4 12.gxf4 Bd5!? 13.Bc2 Bb3 14.Bd3= ) 2.Bc4! Be6 3.Bb5! Bb3 4.Kg1 Ke5 5.Kf1 Kd4 ( 5...g5!? 6.Ke1 Bd5 7.g3 Bb3 8.Kd2 Ke4 9.Bc6+ ( 9.Bd3+ Kf3 10.Ke1 h6 ( 10...h5 11.Be2+ Kg2 12.Bxh5 Kxh3 ) 11.Be2+ Kg2 12.Bf1+ Kh2 13.h4 gxh4 14.gxh4 f6! 15.Kd2! Kg1 16.Ke1 Kh2= ) Kd4 10.h4= ) 6.Ke1 Kc5 7.Be8! Bd5 8.g3 Kb4 9.h4! Kb3 10.Kd2 f6 ( 10...Kxb2 11.Bxa4 ) 11.Kc1 Bf3 12.Bf7+ Kb4 13.Kd2 Bg4 14.f4 Bf3 15.Bg8 h6 16.Bf7 Be4 17.Kc1 Bd3 18. Kd2 Bf5 19.g4 Bxg4 20.Bxg6 Be6 21.Bd3 Bf7 22.Kc2 Bc4 23.Be4 Bb3+ 24.Kd2 Bg8 25.Bd3 Bd5 26.Kc2 Bb3+ 27.Kd2 Be6 28.Kc2 Bf7=

No matter what Black tries to complicate the game, thus creating winning chances, we see that White can simply decline the offer and keep things simple which results in a draw.

Hopefully this answers your question. If you have further questions leave a comment.

Best regards.


What is the best automatic chess playing app for a beginning level player? I play chess very infrequently. Whenever I restart, I take a bit of time to get up to speed. Which chess playing apps are best for a beginner? I would prefer apps that scale up in diifficulty according to a player's skill.

Shredder is an awesome Chess Program.  If you have an IPhone or Android Shredder is present and if you want for Computer along with Shredder you can use Fritz also.  I personally like both of them.


In what ways is it the best to use a computer in correspondence chess? I have only recently started correspondence chess and I have
read that engines are allowed in correspondence chess. I definitely do know that the world champions of correspondence chess have said that using engines to a 100% degree is a bad idea.  My question is this: What is the most efficient way to use engines in this format of chess? Any experiences would be helpful!

Obviously, as long as they are permitted within the rules of the organization, here is how I would use a computer.

First, realize that different programs are better at different things, and I will divide them into two categories. I heard GMs Peter Svidler and Jan Gustafsson discuss this during the Firouzja-Carlsen game just yesterday.

The first program is for opening play, and that is where Leela shines. I have not had much experience with this program, but Jan mentioned that it can, apparently, blunder at times. They both agreed that Stockfish is still the king of analyzing in the middlegame. I watch a lot of relays of top tournaments, and I follow along with Stockfish, and it is currently the best program out there for the middlegame, and the best part is that it is free.

The next thing is that in most circumstances, I only look at the top two lines (in ChessBase, you can click the little plus/minus sign in the engine box to add/remove the number of lines). I would probably increase this to the top 5 lines for correspondence since there may be a line that fits in better with what you are trying to do, so you can, at least, know to explore it.

Next, in the opening, it helps if you have a good understanding of the opening pawn structure, and the typical plans that are played. As you get into the opening, look at a bunch of GM games from a database to see what they have done before you decide on your moves. Have Stockfish going while looking at them...you never know what you might find if it pops up an unusual eval.

Lastly, and the stronger you are, the easier this is, and the better you will be at it, but you want to play "advanced chess". "Advanced chess" is term for using both the computer and your knowledge to pick the best move. In its infancy, Anand was considered the best at this, and there were a few tournaments where these top players were allowed to use a computer. Here is an article. As part of this cyborg play, and this is the key, you want to force in certain series of the computer's best moves or even some of your own human moves, so, in essence, the program only starts analyzing from that point.

For example, if you and I are playing and we are on move 28, and you just let your computer analyze from there, it may analyze out to move 38. Not bad, but if I am able to force in 7 likely moves based on my 40 years' of experience and the computer's evaluation along the way, and only then let it think uninterrupted, I start at move 35, and might get to move 45.

If you are evaluating a position based on the end result at move 38, but I am evaluating it based on move 45, 7 moves later; I am much more likely to be successful, and win the game.

That is how I would use one if I played correspondence chess. Frankly, I am too impatient so I was never into correspondence in the old days of postcards, but the advent of computers really turned it into more machine versus machine, so that really killed any chance I would get into this in the future; but to each his own.


Best pseudo-chess game for kids to learn the basic? My kids are 5 and 3 years old.  I would like to teach them chess by playing alternative mini-game.  Where can I find those mini-game instruction?

If your just looking for instructions, here is the wiki on mini chess.  Make sure you checkout the external links.

To take Andrew's comment a bit further, I will give my own experience with my 3.5 year old.  This is what he knows now with limited time.  He can name all the pieces and he can set the board up, but that is about it.  If I ask him to move the bishop, he will swipe it across the board, but that is OK.  He does not have the concept that it is a game for two people and I am black or white (every piece is his :) ) Your 5 year old probably will get a better grasp on mini chess, but 3 may be too young for it.


Why 8...Na6 was played in the immortal draw? From the other question: Is there a "perfect" game? , an interesting game came up:

[fen ""]
[title "Hamppe-Meitner, Vienna"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Bc5 3.Na4 Bxf2+ 4.Kxf2 Qh4+ 5.Ke3 Qf4+ 6.Kd3 d5 7.Kc3 Qxe4
8.Kb3 Na6 9.a3 Qxa4+ 10.Kxa4 Nc5+ 11.Kb4 a5+ 12.Kxc5 Ne7 13.Bb5+ Kd8 14.
Bc6 b6+ 15.Kb5 Nxc6 16.Kxc6 Bb7+ 17.Kb5 Ba6+ 18.Kc6 Bb7+ 1/2-1/2

My question is, why is 8...Na6 considered the best move? References to GM analysis would be great.

Stockfish says 8...Nc6 is better--in fact, 8...Na6 is not even on the top 10 recommended moves. And I can see even in the short term that the knight on c6 instead of a6 might be nice: consider ...Na5+.

I talked to National Master Dan Heisman about this game and according to him, the answer is really very simple:

At the time, black thought that 8...Na6 was the best move.  Black's intention was to control b4 and get to c5.  After that both sides played almost perfectly which resulted in a draw.

It is also possible that the game was actually made up, but this is hard to prove 140 years later.

Black probably would have played something else besides 8...Na6, but with no computer analysis at the time, it was thought to be best.


Queen's Gambit Accepted, how to continue after 3. e3 c6 I was playing Queen's Gambit Accepted. How should I continue after 3. e3 c6? I had no idea what to do after that.

[FEN ""]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.e3 c6

The simplest reply for white is Bxc4 which gives white exactly what he wants, a central pawn majority with tempo because he got his d4 pawn in the center plus his bishop on C4 while black basically doesn't have any pieces or pawns off their starting squares.

That said, a4 is probably also a good move as it makes b5 difficult for black.

Note that c6 isn't a great move for black because quite often in other lines he wants to move his c pawn straight to c5. If he ends up later playing c6-c5 then he has taken two moves instead of one to get there. Better for black would be e5, aggressively challenging white in the center or Nf6 fighting for the d5 and e4 squares.


CQL - Isolated Queen Pawn postions I'm looking for a CQL query that will return all positions with the below pawn structure for both White and Black
 [FEN "8/pp3ppp/4p3/8/3P4/8/PP3PPP/8 w - - 0 1"]

All right, so I found the following query for the pawn structure in the diagram above:
(match  ;query for IQP white
      (position
         :and (
            (position Pa2 Pb2 Pd4 Pf2 Pg2 Ph2 pa7 pb7 pe6 pf7 pg7 ph7)
            (position
            :piececount P[c2-7,e2-7] 0
            :piececount p[c2-7,d2-7] 0 )
         )
      )
)

For black though, I wanted to search for any IQP position, so I used this query:
    (match ;query for IQP black
      (position
        :and (
          (position pd5)
          (position
            :piececount P[a2-7] 1
            :piececount P[b2-7] 1
            :piececount P[c2-7] 0
            :piececount P[d2-7] 0
            :piececount P[e2-7] 1
            :piececount P[f2-7] 1
            :piececount P[g2-7] 1
            :piececount P[h2-7] 1

            :piececount p[a2-7] 1
            :piececount p[b2-7] 1
            :piececount p[c2-7] 0
            :piececount p[d2-7] 1
            :piececount p[e2-7] 0
            :piececount p[f2-7] 1
            :piececount p[g2-7] 1
            :piececount p[h2-7] 1
      )
     )
  )
)

Lame, but at least it works :)


Which chess position requires the most moves to reach? For each legal chess position there exist a shortest sequence of moves from the starting position to that position.

Which position requires the most moves to reach?

This was published about in the latest entry of Tim Krabbé's Chess Diary. Harry Goldsteen has put some research into this and came up with a position which is reachable only in 185 moves:

[FEN ""]
[StartPly "371"]

1.a4 g5 2.Ra3 g4 3.h3 g3 4.Rh2 gxh2 5.Nf3 h1=R 6.d3 d5 7.Kd2 e5 8.Nh2 a5 9.Ke3 d4+ 10.Kf3 e4+ 11.Kg3 e3 12.Qd2 exd2 13.Rb3 d1=B 14.Bf4 b5 15.Nd2 bxa4 16.Rb7 Be6 17.Ne4 Ba2 18.Nd6+ Kd7 19.Nc8 Kc6 20.Nb6 Kb5 21.Be5 Bb1 22.Bf4 a3 23.Be5 a2 24.Bf4 a1=B 25.Be5 { As in the 183- and 184-move games, White makes many waiting moves. Black ´leads´, as Goldsteen puts it - he must play optimally, although some changes in move-order are possible for him, too. } 25...Kb4 26.b3 Kc3 27.Nd5+ Kd2 28.Nb6 a4 29.Nc8 a3 30.Nb6 a2 31.Nc8 Bb2 32.Nb6 a1=B 33. Nc8 Bc1 34.Nb6 Bc3 35.Nc8 Bcb4 36.Nb6 c5 37.Na4 c4 38.Nb2 c3 39.Kf3 cxb2 40.c3 Bdc2 41.Ke4 Ne7 42.Bc7 Nd5 43.Be5 Ne3 44.Bc7 Nd1 45.e3 h5 46.Be2 Qh4+ 47.Kd5 Na6 48.Bg4 hxg4 49.Kc4 g3 50.Rb5 gxh2 51.Rb7 Re1 52.Rb5 h1=R 53.Rb7 Nc5 54.Bh2 Ne4 55.Rb5 Ng3 56.Rb7 Rhf1 57.Rb5 Nh1 58.g3 { Now White has created the smallest possible box in which Black´s promoted Rooks and Bishops manoeuver like tar through a sieve. } 58...Ke2 59.Rb7 Kf3 { The black King makes room for the white Rook so it can go to g2. In the next phase, the black Rooks must leave the box, otherwise the white Rook cannot pass. } 60.Rb5 Bfc5 61.Rb7 Re2 62.Rb5 Ba2 63.Rb7 Bcb1 64.Rb5 Rc2 65.Rb7 Re1 66.Rb5 Ree2 67.Rb7 Bd2 68.Rb5 Be1 69.Rb7 Rc1 70.Rb5 Bc2 71.Rb7 Ra1 72.Rb5 Bcb1 73. Rb7 Rc2 74.Rb5 Rc1 75.Rb7 Bc2 76.Rb5 Bab1 77.Rb7 R1a7 78.Rb5 Ba2 79.Kd5 Ra1 80.Kc4 Bab1 81.Kd5 R1a6 { Now the white Rook can enter via a5. } 82.Ra5 f5 83.Ra1 Ba2 84.Rc1 Bcb1 85.Rc2 Qh5 { Or Qg4; the Queen must be able to reach e2 in one move. } 86.Re2 Bd2 87.Re1 Bc2 88.Rg1 Bab1 89.Rg2 { The Rook has arrived. } 89...Ra1 90.Kc4 Ba2 91.Kb5 Rc1 92.Kc4 Bab1 93.Kb5 Ra1 94.Kc4 Ba2 95.Kb5 Be1 96.Kc4 Bcb1 97.Kb5 Rc2 98.Kc4 Re2 99.Kb5 Bc2 100.Kc4 Rc1 101.Kb5 Bab1 102.Kc4 Ra1 103.Kb5 Rha8 104.Kc6 Bd2 105.Kb5 Re1 106.Kc4 Rg1 107.Kb5 Ba2 108.Kc4 Bcb1 109.Kb5 Rc2 110.Kc4 Bc1 111.Kb5 Re2 112.Kc4 Ree1 113.Kb5 Ref1 114.Kc4 Bc2 115.Kb5 Bd2 116.Kc4 Rc1 117.Kb5 Bab1 118. Kc4 Ra1 119.Kb5 Ba2 120.Kc4 Be1 121.Kb5 Bcb1 122.Kc4 Rc2 123.Kb5 Ke2 { The black King must enter the box now; his first goal is a3. } 124.Kc4 Kd2 125.Kb5 Kc1 126.Kc4 Re2 127.Kb5 Kd2 128.Kc4 Bc2 129.Kb5 Rc1 130.Kc4 Bcb1 131.Kb5 Rc2 132.Kc4 f4 133.Kb5 Kc1 134.Kc4 Rcd2 135.Kb5 Bc2 136.Kc4 Kb1 137.Kb5 Ka1 138.Kc4 Bab1 139.Kb5 Ka2 140.Kc4 Ka3 141.Kb5 Ba2 142.Kc4 Bcb1 143.Kb5 Rc2 144.Kc4 Rc1 145.Kb5 Bc2 146.Kc4 Ra1 147.Kb5 Bcb1 148.Kc4 Rc2 149.Kb5 { Only now can the black Queen treacle into the box. } 149...Qe2 150.Kc6 Qd2 151.Kd5 Qc1 152.Kc6 Re2 153.Kd7 Qd2 154.Kc6 Bc2 155.Kb5 Rc1 156.Kc6 Bcb1 157.Kd7 Rc2 158.Kc6 Qc1 159.Kd7 Rcd2 160.Kc6 Bc2 161.Kd7 Qa1 162.Kc6 Bcb1 163.Kb5 Rc2 164.Kc6 Bd2 165.Kd7 Bc1 166.Kc6 Ree1 167.Kd7 Rce2 168.Kc6 Bd2 169.Kd7 Bc2 170.Kc6 Qc1 171.Kd7 Bab1 172.Kc6 Ka2 173.Kd7 Ka1 174.Kc6 Ba2 175.Kd7 Bcb1 176.Ke8 Qc2 177.Kd7 Bc1 178.Ke8 Rd2 179.Kd7 Ree2 180.Ke8 Rfe1 181.Kd7 Rgf1 182.Bg1 f3 183.Rh2 Ba3 184.Ke8 Bcb4 185.Kd8 Ba5+ { and the diagram has been reached. }

This is the current record, but

  Goldsteen does not have proof that 185 is unsurpassable - in fact, he thinks it is likely that it can be surpassed.


What is the longest sequence of consecutive captures in a FIDE rated game? What is the longest sequence of consecutive captures (including both pawn captures and piece captures) in a FIDE rated game?

According to Tim Krabbé, the record is 17 moves and it's tied between the following games:

Blodig - Wimmer, Germany 1988

[FEN ""]
[StartPly "23"]
[Site "Germany"]
[Date "1988"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Blodig"]
[Black "Wimmer"]

1.g3 e5 2.Bg2 d5 3.d3 Nf6 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.O-O h6 6.c3 Be6 7.Nbd2 Qd7 8.b4 a6 9.a4 Bd6 10.Bb2 O-O 11.b5 Na5 12.c4 dxc4 13.dxc4 Nxc4 14.Nxc4 Bxc4 15.Nxe5 Bxe5 16.Bxe5 Qxd1 17.Rfxd1 axb5 18.Bxb7 Rxa4 19.Rxa4 bxa4 20.Bxc7 Bxe2 21.Rd4 Re8 22.Bd6 Rd8 23.Be5 Rxd4 24.Bxd4 a3 25.f3 a2 26.Kf2 Bc4 27.Bc6 Nh7 28.h4 Nf8 29.Ba4 Ne6 30.Ba1 Nc5 31.Bc2 Bb3 32.Bf5 g6 33.Bh3 Be6 34.Bxe6 fxe6 35.Ke3 Nb3 0-1

Rudd - Roberson, British ch, Swansea 2006

[FEN ""]
[Event "British Championship"]
[Site "Swansea WLS"]
[Date "2006.08.11"]
[EventDate "2006.08.07"]
[Round "5"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Jack Rudd"]
[Black "Peter T Roberson"]
[ECO "A65"]
[WhiteElo "2328"]
[BlackElo "2122"]
[PlyCount "288"]
[StartPly "29"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 e6 4. Nc3 exd5 5. cxd5 d6 6. e4 g6
7. Nge2 Bg7 8. Ng3 O-O 9. Be2 Na6 10. O-O Nc7 11. Bg5 Re8
12. Qd2 a6 13. a4 Bd7 14. f4 b5 15. e5 dxe5 16. fxe5 Rxe5
17. axb5 Bxb5 18. Bxb5 Nxb5 19. Nxb5 axb5 20. Rxa8 Qxa8
21. Bxf6 Bxf6 22. Rxf6 Qxd5 23. Qxd5 Rxd5 24. Ne4 Re5 25. Nc3
b4 26. Na4 c4 27. Rb6 c3 28. bxc3 bxc3 29. Nxc3 Re7 30. Kf2
Kg7 31. Kf3 h5 32. Ne4 Ra7 33. Rb3 Re7 34. g3 Ra7 35. Nd6 Ra6
36. Ne8+ Kf8 37. Rb8 Ke7 38. Nc7 Ra5 39. Nb5 Ra2 40. h4 Ra1
41. Rb7+ Ke6 42. Nd4+ Kf6 43. Kg2 Ra2+ 44. Kh3 Rf2 45. Rb3 Kg7
46. Nf3 Ra2 47. Ng5 Ra7 48. Kg2 Re7 49. Kf3 Ra7 50. Rb4 Re7
51. Ne4 Ra7 52. Nd6 Ra6 53. Rd4 Ra1 54. Rf4 Ra3+ 55. Kg2 Ra2+
56. Rf2 Ra7 57. Rb2 Ra6 58. Ne4 Ra7 59. Kf3 Re7 60. Kf4 Kg8
61. Nd6 Re6 62. Rb8+ Kg7 63. Ne8+ Kh6 64. Rd8 Re7 65. Nd6 Kg7
66. Re8 Ra7 67. Rb8 Ra4+ 68. Ke5 Ra5+ 69. Rb5 Ra3 70. Rb7 Rf3
71. Ne4 Re3 72. Kd4 Re1 73. Ng5 Rf1 74. Ke5 Kf8 75. Kd6 Rd1+
76. Kc7 Rc1+ 77. Kd8 Rd1+ 78. Rd7 Rf1 79. Ne4 Ra1 80. Nd6 Rf1
81. Re7 Rf2 82. Re4 Rd2 83. Kd7 Ra2 84. g4 hxg4 85. Rxg4 Kg7
86. Rf4 Ra7+ 87. Kc6 Re7 88. Kd5 f5 89. Ra4 Kf6 90. Ra6 Kg7
91. h5 Re1 92. hxg6 Kxg6 93. Ne4+ Kg7 94. Ng3 Rb1 95. Nxf5+
Kf7 96. Ke5 Re1+ 97. Kf4 Rf1+ 98. Ke5 Re1+ 99. Kd5 Rd1+
100. Nd4 Ke7 101. Re6+ Kf7 102. Re2 Ra1 103. Kd6 Ra6+ 104. Nc6
Ra1 105. Ne5+ Kf6 106. Rf2+ Kg5 107. Ke6 Ra6+ 108. Kf7 Ra7+
109. Kg8 Ra8+ 110. Kg7 Ra7+ 111. Nf7+ Kg4 112. Rf6 Rb7
113. Kg6 Kg3 114. Nd6 Ra7 115. Kg5 Ra5+ 116. Nf5+ Kf3 117. Re6
Rb5 118. Re3+ Kf2 119. Ra3 Rb4 120. Ne3 Rb5+ 121. Kh4 Rb4+
122. Kh3 Rb8 123. Nf5 Rh8+ 124. Kg4 Rg8+ 125. Kf4 Ke2 126. Rc3
Kd2 127. Rc7 Kd3 128. Ke5 Re8+ 129. Kd5 Rd8+ 130. Nd6 Rh8
131. Nf7 Rh5+ 132. Ne5+ Ke3 133. Rc2 Rh8 134. Rc3+ Kd2
135. Rg3 Rd8+ 136. Ke4 Re8 137. Rd3+ Kc2 138. Rd5 Rh8 139. Nf3
Re8+ 140. Kd4 Rg8 141. Rc5+ Kb3 142. Kd3 Rg3 143. Rf5 Rh3
144. Rf4 Rg3 1/2-1/2


Why did Lilienthal resign after (37. Rc1) in Lilienthal vs Botvinnik (USSR Championship, 1945)? It seems like Lilienthal's 37. Rc1 prevents black from placing his Rook on Rb1 and give chessmate helped by the black Nc3

What is the obvious way to chessmate for black here?

Game:
Andre Lilienthal vs Mikhail Botvinnik 0-1
USSR Championship (1945), Moscow URS, rd 12, Jun-20

Link:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1032107

White resigned simply because the c3 knight is poison due to a mate in 3 starting with Re1.

Therefore black can just play hxg4 hxg4 then undermine the e5 knight with g5. Notice that the e5 knight gets trapped. There is no way out of both these mating conundrums and these knight trap schenanigans (schevenigen lol!)

Here is the diagram if we give White a free move. That's right, Black had the move in this game and he will smash with hxg4 followed by trapping the knight on e5 (after g5), but even if White moves first, Black is still smashing!!!

[FEN "8/ppk3p1/1r6/3pN2p/2p2PP1/2n1r2P/P2R4/K1R5 w - - 0 0"]

1.Rxc3 (1.Rdc2 (1.gxh5 Re2 2.Rxe2 Nxe2 3.Rc2 Nxf4 4.h4 Kd6) 1...Ne2 2.Rf1 (2.Re1? Nd4) h4
3.g5 Re4) 1...Re1+ 2.Rd1 Rxd1+ 3.Rc1 Rxc1#

By the way, I checked this position with a computer (Stockfish 8, depth 28) just to make sure I was right, and the initial position here before Rxc3 scores as -5.4 (if Black moves as in the game) and -3.2 if White moves here. Now here is the position if it is Black to move, as in the game.

[FEN "8/ppk3p1/1r6/3pN2p/2p2PP1/2n1r2P/P2R4/K1R5 b - - 0 0"]

1...hxg4 2.Nxg4 (2.hxg4 g5 3.Nf7 (3.Nxc4 dxc4 4.Rdc2 gxf4 5.Rxc3 Rxc3 6.Rxc3 Kd6
7.Rxc4 Ke5 8.Ra4 f3) 3...gxf4 4.Ng5 Rg6) 2...Re2 3.Rxe2 Nxe2 4.Re1 Nxf4 5.Rh1
(5.Rf1 Nxh3) 5...c3 6.a3 d4

If White doesn't play right, then Black just immediately wins material or mates. If White plays right, then Black gets a winning rook endgame because of his massive advantage in pawns.

At the end of the day, he probably resigned 20 or so minutes after making that move just based off the endgame. Remember, Mikhail Botvinnik was like the most heavy duty Russian chess dude out there.

Chess was serious business to him and the Russians trained in endgames more than other people did. Botvinnik actually tackled a line of the Semi-Slav (a line of the Semi-Slav Botvinnik I think??) for 100 hours worth of preparation! These top players gave Chess their 110%.


play against a computer, then analyze it software. this is a simple question, thanks in advance for your answers!

I am looking for a free software which allows me to

1) play chess against a computer

2) analyze the game I had (did i screw up at any point, did i miss something obvious)

3) is free!

Thank you

I use Playchess, Stock Fish and Chessbase.
However, I would recommend analyzing manually yourself before letting the computer analyze the game. That way you can improve so much!


Automatically annotating the beginning of my games I play chess online and use an engine to review the game afterwards. This works well when I get out of the opening, but under my current configuration (Raptor GUI running StockFish) I don't get great insight into the beginning of my games. Instead of using the automatic annotation I end up stepping through the first couple moves using a free online openings guide. There are two drawbacks to my current system:

Manually reentering my moves through a the web interface is a little painful
I could use a larger opening book and more detailed comments

Is there a tool (free or commercial) that will provide this? Bonus points if it runs under OS X.

I've looked at the offerings from another question on annotation, one that's not focused on the opening. It looks to me like Tarrasch will tell me what the book moves are, but not tell me much about them, and Arena does something with opening books, but I can't tell what. These are PC applications so I'm basing my comments only on the websites.

As far as I know, all the tools available today offer an opening book (tree) that has to be traversed manually by clicking yourself forwards and backwards in the book. To evaluate the position at every point of the opening, you can have an engine running and combine this with the statistics that are included in the opening book for white win / draw / black win. Relatively recently, Chessbase Online entered the stage. Let's not forget about Chess dot com and Chess 365 who also offer online books. So instead of having a software installed on your computer, you can use these online services to check and evaluate your openings.

Additionally, you could consider posting opening related questions here on Chess SE and get some valuable insights...!


In sicilian defence, why would white always exchange the c5 pawn. What harm would it do otherwise? In 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4, why does white play and exchange the c5 pawn?
If white does not do so, how can I take advantage of this?

As an example:
1.e4 c5
2.Bc4 e6
3.Bb3 Nc6
4.Nf3

what is the best response from black?

White doesn't always play d4.

Apart from the line you mention, there is also the King's Indian Attack and the Closed Sicilian, where white plays g3 and Bg2, the Grand Prix Attack, where white plays f4 and the Rossolimo, where white plays Bb5 (after Nc6 or d6).

In all those lines d3 is usually played instead of d4.

But 3.d4 is the most common line: It removes the influence of blacks c5-pawn on the centre and installs a knight on a very central square. This leads to a space advantage for white, which can often result in quick attacking victories. Black on the other hand has longterm trumps in his two central pawns and open c-file. This setup leads to strategically and tactically very rich positions, which explains part of the popularity.

Not playing 3.d4 doesn't lead to a worse position for white. It only arguably makes it easier for black to reach an equal position. Even the line you give, which really is unusual, doesn't guaranty black an advantage. He will probably just continue to develop with Nf6, Be7, 0-0 and maybe at one point expand on the queenside or play d5.


Is there an opening where both knights get behind c4 and f4 pawns? I like to get my knight behind c4 and I don't mind exchanging that pawn, I just don't like it to get stuck behind my knight, therefore I often play the English opening.

Is there an established opening where both knights get behind c4 and f4 pawns? Even if that means exchanging those pawns with the d or e pawns? I mean, is there an opening where it goes like:

c4 Nc6, "or something", f4 and then later on Nf3 followed by Nc3

if so, then how well does that opening score?

There is the Four-Pawn-Attack against the King's Indian.
I'm not sure how well it scores, but it has fallen out of fashion for some reason.

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f4 O-O 6.Nf3

In general it is hard to reach this setup because black usually stakes a claim in the center as well.

Conceivably you would also get this setup in a Stonewall-Attack, if your opponent doesn't play c5, or maybe in a kind of Meran, where you suddenly throw in f4 instead of Nf3. But this is rather un-theoretical and presumably too slow to be good.

And of course after 1.c4 c5 you could go 2.f4.
This has been played by a handful of players and there seems to be no immediate refutation.


Anti-cheating: should there be a limit to a number of toilet breaks per game per player? With the advent of smart phones, cheating in chess tournaments has become rife to the extent that if unguarded it will kill the spirit of competitiveness. There has been several such cases, accussations and allegations including the infamous Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov toiletgate. In some cases a player can make perpetual toilet visits; move-after-move which might seem suspicious. This is partly due to unlimited "freedom of movement" during the game.

For instance in other sports like soccer - even though there's no computer cheating - halftime breaks are timed and controlled. Should chess adopt a limit to a number of toilet breaks per game per player, say in a standard game, a player can only go to the bathroom after making a certain number of moves 10, 20, 40?

What would be the advantages or setbacks to this limited breaks?

No, there shouldn't and if you live to be 80 you will probably understand why.

A few years ago in a tournament where I was one of the arbiters a 16 year old boy was playing an old guy in his 80's in round 2, both of them were rated about 1950. There had recently been the case of the Bulgarian phone cheat who had consulted a phone hidden behind one of the toilets.

The 16 year old came up to me and said "Can I have a word with you outside?" It sounded very serious so I agreed. He then explained that his opponent was getting up regularly to go to the toilet even once doing it when it was his turn to move. The boy was worried his opponent was a phone cheat.

Had I been the boy's coach and not the arbiter I would have been able to explain the reasons. The old guy had just recently come out of hospital where he had had prostate surgery. The truth was he should really have been at home recovering with his feet up not playing chess but who is going to tell an 80 year-old how to live his life? In the previous round he had blundered his queen against a player rated about 1750. I would have told the boy to just keep playing good moves and the old guy was sure to blunder sooner or later. That is what happened in the game, by the way.

Of course as the arbiter I couldn't give him helpful information like that. Instead I told him I would check the toilets for mobile phones and keep an eye on the old guy for the rest of the round, which I did.

Note that the toilets are generally in the bounds of the playing venue but not in the playing area so going to the toilet when it is your turn is not allowed unless you get the permission of the arbiter. If you have a medical condition which makes this likely then you can speak to the arbiter before play to explain to the arbiter and get this permission.

If you are a woman then you can't have prostate problems but if you have children you may experience similar problems with needing to make regular visits to the toilet for some time after giving birth.

In short imposing limits on toilet breaks would be inhumane.


Does engine score correlate with winning chances? I was wondering if there is a statistical or probabilistic (at least approximate) way of looking at a score of a chess position of a certain fixed engine, say "crafty version 5" for example.

i.e. maybe +2 could be interpreted as "if the engine keeps on playing, 60% wins white, 30% black and 10% draw. I know this isn't the purpose of the score, but maybe it can be translated to approximate probabilities, maybe someone has done a statistical test with hundreds of games to see the correlation. And the amount of draw maybe depends on the "sharpness" of the position.

On the website of Houdini, one of the best chess engines (see for instance CCRL or CEGT), the author writes

  Houdini 4 uses calibrated evaluations in which engine scores correlate directly with the win expectancy in the position. A +1.00 pawn advantage gives a 80% chance of winning the game against an equal opponent at blitz time control. At +2.00 the engine will win 95% of the time, and at +3.00 about 99% of the time. If the advantage is +0.50, expect to win nearly 50% of the time.

The Chess Programming Wiki mentions a study where data from more than 400 000 computer games have been used to find a relation between pawn advantage (P) and winning percentage (W).

  W = 1 / (1+10^(-P/4))


Tactical challenge #2 - Attacking the kingside The previous challenge was solved very quickly so here I am with a new one. Still a very easy one but hopefully a bit more challenging that the previous one. Black has just played Qb6 and it is White's turn. What move should White do to win the game?

[FEN "r3brk1/pp3pp1/1qn4p/3B4/8/P1R2N2/1PQ2PPP/3R2K1 w - - 0 1"]

I saw this puzzle from Chess24 Tactics Trainer and I liked it, so I decided to post it here.

1. Ng5 threatening Qh7#
 1... hxg5 2.Rh3
 1... g6 2. Qxg6


Unusual Caro-Kann Variation I'm looking for information about the unusual Caro-Kann variation that appears to be a sort of Pirc. I recently ran across this line and I'm struggling to understand why you would deviate from 2... d5.

[FEN ""]

1. e4 c6
2. d4 d6

I can't seem to locate any information on this unusual line. Book suggestions would be helpful.

Its likely a transposition to the Pribyl defense.  1. e4 d6 2. d4 nf6 3. nc3 c6 where black plays e5 at some point.

Its covered in a few books about 1 .. d6 lines where black does not play g6. Also it can transpose to the Old-Indian defense when white plays c4.


Why isn't there a big advantage in this position for black? I was browsing some interesting games, and found this one "Jerzy Lewi vs Jan Adamski" (1969):

[fen "r1b2r1k/1pq3bp/8/3Qp2n/1P1n1pp1/2NP2P1/3BPPBP/1R2NRK1 b - - 0 0"]

1... Qxc3 2. Bxc3 Nxe2+ 3. Kh1 Nxc3 4. Qb3 Nxb1 5. Qxb1 f3 *

(note: the game continued, but I want to focus in this position)

From this position, the white bishop is inevitably going to be taken, so we can say with certainty that the captured material difference is R+B+B vs Q+(possibly a pawn).

To my perspective, black's advantage is notably greater, however chess engines says that white is behind only by about -0.70.

How is that this apparently crushing advantage turns out to be just a small advantage? What am I missing here?

Here's a variation from Stockfish.  What we see is that after the smoke clears, Black's advantage actually is pretty small.  Here's why:

If we just 'added up points', which is not a bad way to get an immediate feel for a position, we'd see White is down a single pawn, 13 vs 14.
We also notice White has two pawn islands of two pawns each.  Black has two pawn islands but one of his pawns is isolated.  This is a slight advantage for White. Further, if Black connects his two-pawn island, his King will be completely exposed.  In reality, all of Black's pawns are isolated and will have to be defended by pieces.
Black's King is exposed; with White's Queen on the board any mistake could lead to a perpetual check.
Black's Bishops obviously can't protect each other.  Given the exposed Black King, any of Black's pieces could be picked off by a Queen fork.  Black will have to be very careful to ensure he doesn't lose material to the rampaging Queen.

Items 3 and 4 will make it hard for Black to go on the offensive.

[fen "r1b2r1k/1pq3bp/8/3Qp2n/1P1n1pp1/2NP2P1/3BPPBP/1R2NRK1 b - - 0 0"]

1... Qxc3 2. Bxc3 Nxe2+ 3. Kh1 Nxc3 4. Qb3 Nxb1 5. Qxb1 f3 6.Qc1 fxg2+ 7.Nxg2 Bf5 8.Rd1 Be6 9.Kg1 Nf6 10.Qc7 Nd5 11.Qxb7 Rab8 12.Qa6 Rb6 13.Qa5 Rxb4 14.Ne3 Nxe3 15.fxe3 Rfb8 16.Qc7 Rb1 17.Rxb1 Rxb1+ 18.Kf2 *


A disagreement between me and my chess engines In a recent blitz game, I was playing as White and faced the Lasker-Pelikan variation of the Sicilian.
Things were not really going according to plan, I was down a Knight and facing obliteration. In the position below, Black has just played Qxe5 :
[FEN "2r2rk1/5ppp/1p6/p3q3/1n5R/1P1P2RP/1P1Q2P1/7K w - - 0 25"]

In this position, both the Stockfish engine that I have on my phone and the engine from lichess.org give Rxg7+ as the best move for White. Not only that, but they do not even consider the move I played, which is Qh6. The reason why the engine does not think that Qh6 is a good move is that, apparently, Black can respond with Qe1+. However, I cannot see what the problem is for Black in such a case.
To conclude, I think that Black is doomed after Qh6 but the engines do not even recommend it as a correct move. Is there something I am missing here?

I think that Black is doomed after Qh6 but the engines do not even recommend it as a correct move. Is there something I am missing here?

Yes. The only reason black can't take your queen on h6 is because the g7 pawn is pinned by your rook on g3. If black could take that (even losing the queen to do so) with tempo (i.e. so you don't have time to play Qxh7#) then your queen is lost and with it
the game.
Here's how:
[FEN "2r2rk1/5ppp/1p6/p3q3/1n5R/1P1P2RP/1P1Q2P1/7K w - - 0 1"]

1. Qh6 Qe1+ 2. Kh2 Qxg3+ 3. Kxg3 gxh6

and you are a rook and a knight down and completely lost.


Which chess opening to learn? I decided to start learning some opening theory, so far I have only played online and studied a couple of end games. Seems that a correct approach might be to chose one opening for white and two for black (answers to e4 and d4), and stick to those three openings for a while, since that is a fairly low number so you can keep up with the variations with some work, and also large enough so you can use your preparation in a good amount of games.

So the question would be, what do you think is easier to start with, as a first timer learning any theory, e4 or d4? (I usually prefer d4 for no particular reason). And which defenses would you start with against those two moves as black.

For a beginner, the goal of the opening is simply to avoid losing material and blundering; don't stress playing a perfect opening just yet. However, here are some general (and not at all exhaustive) distinctions between the openings:

e4

Often leads to open games
Bishops are slightly more valuable, as they have more space on the board to play
Through the midgame towards the endgame, entire files may be left open - because of this, Rook positioning is key and often can be make or break
Openings to study: Ruy Lopez, Sicilian (although I'd avoid playing the Sicilian as a beginner)

d4

Often leads to more closed games
Bishops and Rooks are relatively immobile throughout the midgames, and serve passive (but still important!) roles
Knights form the basis for strong attacks and exerting control in the center of the board
Openings to study: Queen's Gambit, Indian Defenses (fianchettoed bishop)

Ultimately, you should decide which you prefer better. However, I personally find 1. e4 to be a simpler opening to play, with less chances for blundering. Hope this helps!


Can there be two bishops on white tiles? If not, can my queen be capture and then promoted so I can win the game? .
Can there be two bishops on White squares? If not, can my queen be captured and then be promoted so I can win the game?
I reallly. don't know what to do because I think you cannot that have two bishops on White squares when the bishop is the only captured piece.

Your only problem here is logistical. You can promote your pawn to any piece except the King, even if that means you have two bishops on the same colour squares, or two (or more) queens on the board; but according to the official rules, you must replace it physically with a piece of the correct shape and colour. What to do if no such piece is to hand?

In a tournament, the organisers will make sure to have spare pieces available for such contingencies; but in a home game, improvisation is the norm. For instance, if one of your Rooks has been captured, you can turn it upside down and call it a Queen. In this case, you can just say "that pawn is now a Queen", which ends the game immediately with checkmate.


In the Ruy Lopez, does White play on the queenside or King side? I always play on the kingside, but I recently heard from Expert class that White plays on the queenside. I also seen another Expert class play on the queenside. If this is true, then why does White play on the queenside? Also, when does White play on the Kingside?

In most variations of the Ruy Lopez, White, with the Bishop on b3, has better chances playing on the kingside.  In the Marshall gambit, White counterattacks on the Queenside.  In the Exchange variation, White normally has better chances in the kingside in the endgame.

Fischer-Spassky
Ninth Match Game
Sveti Stefan 1992

[fen ""]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 dxc6 5. O-O f6 6. d4 exd4 7. Nd4 c5 8. Nb3 Qd1 9. Rd1 Bg4 10. f3 Be6 11. Nc3 Bd6 12. Be3 b6 13. a4 O-O-O 14. a5 Kb7 15. e5 Be7 16. Rd8 Bd8 17. Ne4 Kc6 18. axb6 cxb6 19. Nbc5 Bc8 20. Na6 fxe5 21. Nb4

In this famous game, White did attack on the queenside.  The reason for the exception is the placement of the King.  Opposite side castling throws most chess rules out the window and the only thing that matters is an attack.


Automated annotation of good moves It is easy enough to use a chess engine to "annotate" a game to the extent of pointing out mistakes and blunders: when the evaluation function drops by greater than a certain amount, the move is deemed bad enough to merit a "?" or a "??".

Has anyone tried to develop a program to add exclamation marks to good/brilliant moves? In the eyes of a chess engine, those moves would usually be the best move for the position, but just being the best move does not make a move brilliant, because the best move may be obvious. Exclamation marks are added to moves that are hard to find by humans, which is somewhat subjective. But I imagine one could come up with some rules or heuristics, at least for things such as recognizing sound sacrifices. Or maybe there is a way to train the system using a library of annotated games.

I wouldn't expect such a tool to be better than a good human annotator, but I find the question interesting from an artificial intelligence perspective.

It is not an answer, but an extended comment.

A great question, and a very interesting functionality proposal.

I don't know if such a tool exists - however if I were to implement it I'd consider analysing the same position using different strength settings. For example, if the move is only found by the top strength, it is a good candidate for !!. It is more or less easy to implement, but may require some effort tuning up.


Old Indian defense variation: 1. d4 d6 2. c4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6 : how should White respond? I had the following game which transposed to an Old Indian defense position:

1. d4 d6 2. c4 Nf6 3. Nc3

But then Black did not follow with the main line: 3 ... e5 (see wikipedia article) but rather with: 3... Nc6.

[FEN ""]
1. d4 d6 2. c4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6 (3... e5)

I couldn't find this variation discussed anywhere which leads me to think it is likely an inferior line for Black. If so, how should White continue to gain advantage? 4. e4 perhaps ?

The best reply for white and most usual in that position is Nf3, just finishing development and trying to castle kingside.

A normal continuation could be :

 [FEN ""]
  1. d4 d6 2. c4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. Nf3 e5 5. e3 Bg4 6. Be2 Be7 7. O-O O-O *

Black should play e5 sooner or later or he will not gain control of the center and space for his pieces


Game analysis - Understanding the potential of this queenside expansion From the game Samuel Reshevsky vs Henrique Mecking in the Sousse Interzonal (1967).

[fen "r2qnr2/1pnb1pbk/3p2pp/p1pPp3/2P1P2N/PPN1B1PP/3Q1P2/1R2RBK1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Na4 Na6 2. Rec1 Rb8 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Qb2 Rg8 5.Qc2 Re8 6. Nb5 Bf8 (6... Bxb5 7.cxb5 Nc7 8.b4 axb4 9. axb4) 7. Bd2 b6

According to Reshevsky in his book "Art of Positional Play" black wants white to abandon his calm queenside expansion, so black forces white to play on the kingside. I suppose the queenside expansion was seriously dangerous as black decided to risk so much by playing ... f7-f5.

In the case of white passivity on the kingside, what sequence of moves could best represent the queenside expansion as winning the game for white? Using the computer help I imagined something like this: 21.Na4 Na6 22. Rec1 Rb8 23.Nc3 Nf6 24.Qb2 Rg8 25.Qc2 Re8 26. Nb5 26...Bf8 27. Bd2 b6. And here I believe that white fixed the queenside to his advantage. And if 26...Bxb5 27.cxb5 Nc7 28.b4 axb4 29. axb4 it is easier to see the rooks getting into action.

Are there better lines?

I am not trying to be hard on you, but to be blunt, this is one of the dangers of analyzing with a computer, and not having any understanding of the position. That line of analysis you give with 20...Nac7 and then shuffling around the pieces, frankly, did not make any sense at all plan-wise (and even my Stockfish 11 does not agree with your computer's line). I will discuss that in my notes to the game.

I opened my copy of that book, and what Reshevsky, correctly, said was that white has move space on the queenside, and that black needs to look for play on the kingside with f5. White's play, in theory, is generally  better, but what Reshevsky also said is that if white blindly pursues his own play on the queenside without any regards to his own king, he can easily lose to a direct attack. That is a common theme in the KID, especially the Classical variation. I have seen many games where white has a Na8, and is up a rook, but is helpless against the mating attack all the way on the other side of the board.

Here are Reshevsky's own words:

Reshevsky chose to play a line that he was well-prepared for f5, and then actually chipped away at f5, weakening e4, which led to the black king. In the vast majority of KID games, that is not the typical line of play, and white does not often get to be that active on the kingside. In most, white owns the queenside, and black owns the kingside, and each side tries to open their dominate side of the board. In most cases, going passive on your better side, and trying to just defend the other side where your opponent is better, is a recipe for a loss.

 [Event "Interzonal-07"]
 [Site "Sousse"]
 [Date "1967.11.02"]
 [Round "14"]
 [White "Reshevsky, Samuel Herman"]
 [Black "Mecking, Henrique"]
 [Result "1-0"]
 [ECO "E96"]
 [PlyCount "141"]
 [EventDate "1967.10.16"]
 [EventType "tourn"]
 [EventRounds "23"]
 [EventCountry "TUN"]
 [FEN ""]

 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 d6 3. Nc3 g6 4. e4 Bg7 5. Be2 O-O 6. Nf3 e5 7. O-O Nbd7 8. Re1 a5 9. Bf1 c6 10. Rb1 Re8 11. d5 Nc5 12. b3 Na6 13. a3 c5 14. Bd2 Rf8 15. g3 Bg4 16. h3 Bd7 17. Bg5 h6 18. Be3 Ne8 19. Qd2 Kh7 20. Nh4 f5 (20... Nac7 {This gives up on slowing down white's play with b4, and from c7, the knight has no where to go. b5 might be an idea in some positions with the Ra8 on b8, but here b5 just loses a pawn.} 21. Na4 {The knight does nothing here, unless black cooperates and takes it. It also makes it harder to play b4, opening the queenside.} (21. b4 {This is not the best move per the computer, but it is the most natural, and leads to a solid static positional advantage immediately.} axb4 22. axb4 {+.75 depth 30, and the computer wants to pitch a pawn here with Na6.} Na6 23. bxc5 Nxc5 24. Bxc5 dxc5 25. Rxb7 Nd6 26. Rb3 $16) 21... Na6 {And it comes back.} (21... Bxa4 $2 22. bxa4 $16 {Doubled pawns, or not, white has huge pressure down the b-file.}) 22. Rec1 {Not an useless move, but how do you get in b4, opening the position?} Rb8 23. Nc3 Nf6 $2 {Blocking the move f5 cannot be right. Black will need that soon enough, but to be honest, I am not sure how to get it in anymore. If f5 is ruled out, then this knight probably belongs on c7, aiming for b5.} 24. Qb2 $2 {There is no point here since it cannot help with b4, or help stop b5 by black, and putting the queen on the same diagonal as the Bg7 unless there is a super reason, it probably also not a good idea.} Rg8 $2 {Again, no the right square to help any eventual f5 move. This is just a move that the computer things does not upset any balance, but it is not right.} 25. Qc2 {And back for no particular reason.} (25. Kh2 {This excellent waiting move could have been played at any number of moments.}) 25... Re8 {Still not the right square.} 26. Nb5 (26. Kh2 Nc7 27. Nf3 b5 $6 (27... b6) 28. b4 $1 $16) 26... Bf8 (26... Bxb5 $2 27. cxb5 Nc7 28. b4 axb4 29. axb4 $16) 27. Bd2 b6 {White does not want the queenside "fixed"...he wants it opened so the major (heavy) pieces can penetrate, and do damage.}) (20... Rb8 {If black is determined to be totally passive and only play on WHITE'S queenside (white is stronger there), this is the way preparing b5.} 21. Kh2 Nec7 {The Na6 stops b4, while the Rb8, Nc7, and Bd7 prepare b5, an action against b3 eventually. This is not destined to work, in my opinion.}) 21. exf5 gxf5 22. f4 e4 23. Bf2 Nf6 24. Nd1 Ng8 25. Ne3 Qf6 26. Bg2 Rae8 27. Qe2 Ne7 28. g4 Kg8 29. Bg3 fxg4 30. hxg4 Ng6 31. Nhf5 Bh8 32. Nxh6+ Kh7 33. Nhf5 Kg8 34. Nh6+ Kh7 35. Rf1 Qc3 36. Nef5 Bg7 37. Rbc1 Qxb3 38. Rb1 Qxa3 39. Rxb7 Nb8 40. Nxg7 Qxg3 41. Nxe8 Nxf4 42. Rxf4 Qxf4 43. Nxd6 Kxh6 44. Nxe4 Bxg4 45. Rb6+ Kh5 46. Qe1 Nd7 47. Ng3+ Kh4 48. Qe7+ Rf6 49. Qh7+ Kg5 50. Ne4+ Qxe4 51. Qxe4 Rxb6 52. Qe3+ Kg6 53. Bh3 Bxh3 54. Qxh3 Ne5 55. Qe3 Kf5 56. Qxc5 Rb1+ 57. Kg2 Rb2+ 58. Kf1 a4 59. d6 Rd2 60. Ke1 Rd4 61. Ke2 Ke4 62. Qa3 Rd3 63. Qb4 a3 64. c5+ Kf5 65. Qa4 Ke6 66. Qa8 Rb3 67. Qg8+ Nf7 68. Qg6+ Ke5 69. Qxf7 a2 70. Qa7 Rh3 71. d7 1-0


Playing the Queen's Indian. Which kind of players? In general, the Queen's Indian is not much seen at top levels when arising from the ECO move order:

    [FEN ""]
    1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 b6

However, many games transpose from the Nimzo-Indian defense:

    [FEN ""]
    1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4

When at some point black plays b6 in order to fianchetto his light squared bishop. Now, these two openings have different basic plans and different kinds of players are adept at them: the Nimzo-Indian is known to be a reliable weapon against 1.d4 and the Queen's Indian is thought to be a little too passive.

The doubts I have are:

Which kind of players like switching between those two defences?
What is the goal of said transposition? (e.g. why not follow the main line?)
Why are such different conceptual openings usually transposed, when in certain lines not even the plans or pawn structure is the same?

Many Nimzo players already have the Queen's Indian Defense on their repertoire to deal with 3. Nf3. Such players may transpose between the two defenses whenever they have the opportunity and feel like switching.

To be more precise, it is after 4. Nf3 that black has the option to enter a QID/Nimzo hybrid with 4... b6.

    [StartPly "8"]

    [FEN ""]
    1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Nf3 b6

Nimzo-indian set-ups with a black b6 without a white Nf3 are still classified as Nimzo-Indians.

A reason to play b6 in a purely  Nimzo-Indian position is that it usually leads to slower games where you can outmaneuver your opponent in the long run. A famous example is Garry Kasparov vs Vladimir Kramnik (2001), where black had to win to level the match.

      [FEN ""]
      [Event "Botvinnik Mem Rapid Match"]
      [Site "Moscow RUS"]
      [Date "2001.12.08"]
      [EventDate "2001.12.08"]
      [Round "6"]
      [Result "0-1"]
      [White "Garry Kasparov"]
      [Black "Vladimir Kramnik"]
      [ECO "E44"]
      [WhiteElo "2838"]
      [BlackElo "2809"]
      [PlyCount "104"]

      1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e3 b6 5. Nge2 Bb7 6. a3 Be7
      7. d5 O-O 8. Ng3 Re8 9. Be2 Bf8 10. e4 d6 11. O-O Nbd7 12. Be3
      c6 13. Qd2 Rc8 14. dxe6 fxe6 15. f4 Qe7 16. Rad1 Rcd8 17. Kh1
      Qf7 18. Qc2 Kh8 19. b4 e5 20. Nf5 d5 21. exd5 cxd5 22. Nb5 Qg6
      23. Bf3 Rc8 24. Qb1 e4 25. Nh4 Qf7 26. Be2 a6 27. Nc3 dxc4
      28. Qb2 b5 29. Nf5 Nd5 30. Nxd5 Qxf5 31. Nc3 Nf6 32. h3 Rcd8
      33. Rxd8 Rxd8 34. Rd1 Rxd1+ 35. Bxd1 Qd7 36. Be2 Bc6 37. Qc1
      g6 38. Qg1 Bg7 39. Bd4 Kg8 40. Be5 Nd5 41. Bxg7 Qxg7 42. Nxd5
      Bxd5 43. Qc5 Qa1+ 44. Kh2 Bf7 45. Bg4 Kg7 46. Qc7 Qf6 47. Bd1
      h5 48. a4 Qd4 49. Bc2 e3 50. f5 e2 51. fxg6 e1=Q 52. Qxf7+ Kh6
      0-1

Vladimir Kraminik in New in Chess(2002/1), comment after 4... b6:

  At the board I decided to play the strange set-up that follows in order to keep all the pieces on the board and keep the pawn-structure flexible. Garry said after the game that he had a much better position. Well, it is clear that if you want to win against Garry Kasparov with black you have to make some concessions and play a worse position.


Knights necessary to mate king on large finite board How many knights would be necessary to mate opponent's king on large finite boards like billion times billion squares?

Are they fast enough to surround opponent's king in very limited constant count for various finite board sizes, or would you need some f(board size) of them, let's say millions for our board? Would there be a difference if attacking side could use it's king too?

It's not clear how geometry works here but it looks like that when king starts running, it's pretty fast and only two knights are fast enough to followhim. On the other hand, knights can build setups giving additional time for some distant colleague to join slowly. We start with king in the center and knights in one corner and 50 moves rule doesn't apply...

Not rigerous, however:

In lateral movement two knights move as fast as one king.
We know from end-game theory that two knights are not able to force the king into positions.

.. thus I'd say it's very unlikely that unlimited knights+king would be able to mate a king that has a free direction to run in (unlimited board). If it's possible to corner it however (limited board and unlimited moves), unlimited knights are certainly enough, as they could simply divide up the board and slowly decrease the available space.


Larsen Ideas in the semi-slav Once when I was reading a book from Kasparov he quoted that most of the modern ideas in the semi-Slav came from Larsen games. Does anyone know good novelties that Larsen brings in this opening?

Kasparov in My Great Predecessors, Part 4:

  Generally speaking, Larsen's contribution to the development of opening theory is not very great, since usually he aimed to lure his opponents into little-studied variations and mainly relied on his skill in the middlegame. Nevertheless, he played a key role in the development of what is currently one of the most popular lines in the Semi-Slav Defence, the so-called improved Meran Variation: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc4 e6 5 e3 Nbd7 6. Bd3 Bb7!?

One of Larsen's ideas was to allow a check on b5 and give up castling rights. In return he got a strong knight on d5. He first used this idea in the Candidate match Ivkov-Larsen 1965, see game below. Read more about it here.

Sample games:

  [FEN ""]
  [Event "Larsen-Ivkov Candidates Quarterfinal Match"]
  [Site "Bled YUG"]
  [Date "1965.07.05"]
  [EventDate "1965.06.27"]
  [Round "6"]
  [Result "1/2-1/2"]
  [White "Borislav Ivkov"]
  [Black "Bent Larsen"]

  1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.d4 c6 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4
  b5 8.Bd3 Bb7 9.e4 b4 10.Na4 c5 11.e5 Nd5 12.Nxc5 Bxc5 13.dxc5
  Nxc5 14.Bb5+ Kf8 15.Qd4 Qb6 16.Be2 h6 17.O-O g6 18.Bd2 Kg7
  19.Rac1 Rac8 20.Qh4 g5 21.Qg4 Ne4 22.Rxc8 Rxc8 23.Qxe4 Nf4
  24.Qe3 Qxe3 25.fxe3 Nxe2+ 26.Kf2 g4 27.Ng1 Nxg1 28.Rc1 Rxc1
  29.Bxc1 Bxg2 30.Kxg1 Bd5 31.Bd2 Bxa2 32.Bxb4 Kg6 33.Kf2 Kf5
  34.Bc3 h5 35.Kg3 Kg5 36.h4+ Kf5 37.Bd4 a5 38.Bc3 a4 39.Bd4 Ke4
  40.Kf2 1/2-1/2

.

  [FEN ""]
  [Event "1/4"]
  [Site "Cm  Las Palmas (06)"]
  [Date "1971.??.??"]
  [Round "6"]
  [Result "0-1"]
  [White "Wolfgang Uhlmann"]
  [Black "Bent Larsen"]
  [ECO "D47"]

  1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.d4 c6 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4
  b5 8.Bd3 Bb7 9.e4 b4 10.Na4 c5 11.e5 Nd5 12.Nxc5 Nxc5 13.dxc5
  Bxc5 14.Bb5+ Ke7 15.O-O Qb6 16.Bd3 h6 17.Qe2 Rhd8 18.Bd2 Kf8
  19.Rac1 Rac8 20.Rc2 a5 21.Rfc1 Kg8 22.h3 Ne7 23.Ne1 Bd4
  24.Rxc8 Rxc8 25.Rxc8+ Nxc8 26.b3 Ne7 27.Nf3 Bc5 28.Be1 Nf5
  29.Kf1 Qc6 30.Bb5 Qc7 31.Bd3 Nd4 32.Nxd4 Bxd4 33.f4 Qc1 34.Qd2
  Qa1 35.Qc2 Bc3 36.Qb1 Ba6 0-1


Why do miniature games happen at the grandmaster level? It is often said that grandmasters calculate many moves in advance before moving a piece.
If this is so, why do miniature game (games less than less than 25 moves long) happen?

Your statement, Grandmasters think of next many moves ... is a bit misleading for your question.

Grandmaster are able to calculate many moves ahead, but this is not something they do at each and every move. Basically, as for the start of the game, the first 10 or 20 moves are played from memory (known opening repertoire + home preparation) and not found over the board.

Even when the home preparation ends, players usually do not start calculating  like crazy all possible moves to depth 20. They would rather (also see here):

evaluate/analyze the position based on general principles and experience
depending on this analysis develop a general plan (Should I improve piece activity? Should I play against an opponent's weakness?....)
come up with concrete (candidate) moves
calculate the consequences of the candidate moves: Depending on the position at hand this can be many moves ahead (e.g. in tactical or forced lines) or it can just be a single move, basically just checking whether you don't blunder something (e.g. in less tactical, more positional games where it is just practically impossible to calculate all possible lines)

So how can grandmasters lose in less than 25 moves?

They are humans so not perfect and might make mistakes. In this case they can go wrong at basically each part of the thought process:

They might mix up memorized opening theory, confusing lines and thereby making a bad move. Occasionally they might run into a strong opening novelty prepared by the opponent in which case even playing the commonly accepted opening line can bring them into trouble. Also there is the funny story around the Zapata-Anand miniature where Anand apparently blindly followed published opening theory (informator) of a Miles-Christiansen game which was a prearranged draw but in fact included a huge blunder.
They might evaluate the position wrongly, e.g. underestimate a threat.
They might come up with a plan that is impossible to push through or pick the wrong plan out of a choice of plans.
They might miss a possible candidate move
They might  make a mistake in calculation.

In addition any combination of the above is possible.


Why using the queen is not a good idea in this case? I am a new [and a late] comer to chess. I started practicing on chessacademy.com where I got this exercise:

r1bqk1nr/ppp2pp1/4p2p/8/1bPnN3/5N2/PP1B1PPP/R2QKB1R w KQkq - 1 13

According to the site, the best move is ♗b4 and then it asks the following:

  [Why not accomplish the same thing by Qa4+...Qxb4?]

I can't see why not? Any hints?

You are missing the knight fork on c2. After 1.Qa4+ Bd7 2.Qxb4 Nc2+ 3.Kd1 Nxb4 you would lose the queen...


Accidental moves in online chess If your opponent makes an accidental move, e.g. by slipping the mouse, and it is obvious that is was accidental, how should you continue? Should you just play the best move as if your opponent's last move was intentional? Some of my opponents have suggested that I should accept a draw in such situations. Others have asked me to make a dummy move, so that they could undo their last move by moving the piece back to the square where it was before.

FICS has a "takeback" option; other sites may have something similar.

The link gives full details but the idea is that you type takeback n to request undoing n half-moves. Either player can do this so, if you make a mouse-slip, you can just type takeback to ask your opponent to undo that move (n=1 is assumed if you don't specify); if your opponent makes a mouseslip, you can still type takeback to allow them the chance to undo. In the second case, you don't have to wait for your opponent to reply while your clock ticks away: if you make your move, the takeback is modified to takeback 2 so your opponent has the offer of undoing both his mistake and your reply to it. When offered a takeback, you can either accept or decline; making a move automatically declines. Accepting a takeback also resets the clocks to what they were at the moment when the mouse-slip was made.

On sites where this is not available, I'd recommend not making a dummy move, unless you were already in a losing position. You don't know that your opponent will behave honourably. They might exploit your generosity. I also wouldn't offer a draw unless, perhaps, a draw would have been a reasonable outcome before the mouse-slip. If your opponent was already losing, why should they gain half a point just by making a mouse-slip?


Number of distinct checkmate positions What is the number of distinct checkmate positions in each of the following categories given the following conditions?

We are not interested in whether the position can be forced or not or even what sequences of moves can produce the positions. Similarly, these positions are irrespective of player color.

Promotion is only allowed if it will produce a set of pieces not possible from the initial set like 3 knights.

Redundant pieces like duplicate attackers and other pieces not contributing to the mate are not present.

Then how many exist in each of these categories?

A checkmate can exist on a corner, edge or the center, that is to say with 3 adjacent squares, 5, or 8.

Let n denote the number of pieces on the board excluding kings. Consider the number of partitions in 2 parts of n. Except for the single case of giving all of the pieces to one player this is the number of ways to divide the pieces between black and white. Of course this doesn't account for what the pieces are, but the question is only about the total number not what the positions actually are.

Then what is the number of checkmates for each relevant partition of each n subdivided by corner, edge, or center? Individual solutions for n=1 up to n=30 as much as possible (not that any positions with 32 pieces would satisfy condition #3. It is probably satisfied only for much smaller n). Although it is obvious I should also mention that for n>15 the real number of relevant partitions is smaller because neither player can have >16 pieces.

Again it doesn't matter whether the solution is constructive or not. I suppose a full solution at all is unlikely and a constructive solution would a wonderful bonus.

I haven’t come across this question before. I don’t have the time to execute it, but hope these remarks and suggested approach are helpful.
First let’s clarify:
(1) without loss of generality, white is mating black
(2) position must be legal - in particularly white king must be on the board even if it doesn’t otherwise contribute to the mate.
(3) legitimately promoted non-standard material is fine.
(4) position must be minimal in that no subset of pieces can be removed to allow a position which still satisfies 1,2&3 above.
An algorithm could involve putting bK and the checking unit(s). Then consider all the flights, and the different ways they might be blocked. If a black unit might also interfere with check, then that interference needs to be covered. Then can find all the positions for wK if it’s not already placed. This gives a long list of positions which can be checked briefly for legality.
Mostly the positions will be left/right symmetric but there are a very few involving castling.
There are also some quite subtle positions where the position is only mate if we cannot prove that en passant is legal defence. Even some involving dead position rule.


Is calculation the most important aspect of playing chess? In many of my games, I've come across opponents who can calculate really well and deeply. Generally I feel that I lose if I can't calculate as well as my opponents. So my question was really if calculation was the most important aspect of playing chess. Would the person who calculates better normally win?

Would the person who calculates better normally win?

If everything else is equal then the answer is obviously "Yes".
However, everything else is rarely equal. Fixating on calculation is very common in chess players. Here is another question about calculation which clearly demonstrates this fixation.  The fixation is so clear that the best answer easily pinpoints this in the first two paragraphs. BlindKungFooMaster then goes on to make the key point which is -

In my experience ratings first and foremost reflect positional
understanding. Calculation skills make a much smaller difference, at
least above a certain threshold.

This fixation with calculation is, when considered rationally, obviously wrong. The strongest chess is not pure computer chess, chess based on pure calculation, it is correspondence chess where a human being moderates pure calculation with their positional understanding.
This was certainly the case before AlphaZero. AlphaZero's recent success is down to an attempt to incorporate positional understanding into computer chess which has worked better than more simplistic ideas like adjusting scores according to ideas like doubled pawns, central knights versus dim knights on the rim, king safety in the middlegame, centralised king in the endgame, etc. It would be very interesting to see correspondence players being able to use AlphaZero-like computers in their competitions.


How can I know if the chief arbiter has "cheated" in the pairings and possibly report it? Few years ago, I participated in a local, FIDE-rated tournament. In its first round, the chief arbiter paired the players 4 times (yes, I saw the 4 different pairings and changed four opponents before I started the game!).

This was only the start; in the next years, arbiters from this club (even those who had an FA title!) started doing more "cheats", like manual pairing players, clearly in favour of their club's ones. How do I know? - I've made a script in Perl to calculate the pairings for the first round in a Swiss-system, but the output is different from the reality (e.g. pairing the first with the second, the third with the last, etc.).

I find this annoying and unfair, since I get paired with unbeatable opponents each time. I think that if I ask them for explanations, they'll deny everything and they will say that I have not got proof. The tournament is on Chess-Results, where everyone can download the Swiss-Manager file.

Is it possible to know if they "cheated" from the .TUNX Swiss-Manager file and possibly report this case to the national chess federation? If not, how can I approach this situation

I participated in a local, FIDE-rated tournament. In its first round,
  the chief arbiter paired the players 4 times

This has happened to me too, although not as many as 3 repairings that I am aware. As an arbiter I've also done repairing in the first round although only ever in small local events. I would try very, very hard indeed to avoid doing this in a norm event. Normal procedure for the first round in a norm event to avoid this happening is to require the players to register their presence before a certain time and do the pairings when this time is reached. Any player who doesn't register in time is excluded from the first round.

There is a unique problem in the first round of a tournament in that usually it is possible as a player to ask for and be granted a half point bye and players will often choose to miss the first round. This information goes to the organiser who should pass it on to the arbiter but often some of this information "goes astray". With luck this is discovered before the round starts. In that case the correct procedure is to redo the pairings taking into account the updated bye information.

Sometimes this information isn't discovered until the round has started. In this case some players will have sat there with no opponent because the opponent requested a bye but that information got lost. They will be awarded the full point. When you look at the pairings the next day you will see that these players are shown not having an opponent in round one (even though when the round was played they did) but each getting one full point instead of the half point they would get for a bye. Any time you see more than one player get a full point bye you know this is what happened.

The organiser and arbiter can try and be strict and say byes must be agreed the day before but then half an hour before the first round is due to start a player rings up to say that there has been an accident on the motorway, he is going to be delayed and won't arrive in time to play his game, can he have a half point bye?

When this happens, again, the arbiter should repair using the new information. This can be annoying but it is real life.

Now modify the scenario slightly. This time the round has started but it is still before the default time and again a player phones up. He is giving a lift to another player and again they will miss the round because of an accident. They are not paired against each other so two players are sitting at their boards without opponents. As the arbiter, what is the best thing to do? As long as the organiser wrote in the tournament conditions that in this situation the players can be repaired then the correct thing is to repair the two players without opponents. The only way to do this is manually. If the two players without opponents are seeded 2 and 3 then the pairings will be changed so that 2 plays 3 and the two missing players who may be 56 and 57 each end up getting a half point bye.

  How do I know? - I've made a script in Perl to calculate the pairings
  for the first round in a Swiss-system, but the output is different
  from the reality

I'm an FA so I don't need to write a Perl script to check the pairings but as a player I have several times looked at the results from the previous round and calculated who I should be playing in the next round because the pairings are slow coming out. On one occasion the published pairings agreed with my calculations but were changed the next morning when I came to play and on several others they did not correspond. I ended up paired against somebody completely different! It has also happened to me in large, prestigious events where I do not expect such things to happen. How could this be?

Well, it is actually very simple. Take a very large tournament in a very small place with few local players like Iceland or Isle of Man. Most of the local players will be entered. This is their big chance to play new people without having to travel. With all these other players from distant and often exotic locations they really don't want to miss out and play their clubmate who they play several times a year, if not month.

If it is not a high level tournament like a norm event then it is reasonable to approach the arbiter (ideally before the event starts) and say "I don't want to play other islanders. Please don't pair me against them". This is reasonable and understandable and in every case where the pairings don't match my calculations I have found that such a thing explains the difference.

In the case where the pairings were changed on me I suspect that an initial error was made and a "forbidden pairing" which had been requested hadn't been entered correctly and players who had requested not to be paired against each other had this happen, noticed and then asked the arbiter to correct this.

  Is it possible to know if they "cheated" from the .TUNX Swiss-Manager
  file and possibly report this case to the national chess federation?

In the case of a norm event then, yes, it should be possible and was done for the big Gibraltar tournament a few years ago when Hou Yifan complained that she was paired against too many women. (Spoiler alert: she was wrong) However for smaller tournaments this is not really possible unless you have all the information including bye requests, late bye requests, missed bye requests and requested forbidden pairings.

As an aside I did play in a tournament a few years ago where they openly cheated on the pairings and the prizes! They even announced before the first round that they were going to do this. It wasn't FIDE rated and it wasn't nationally graded and all I could do was complain to them loudly and vow never to play in one of their tournaments again.


What is the time control for FIDE chess tournaments? According to the FIDE Handbook (Time Control), the time control is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional 30 seconds per move.

I heard from somebody working at the Annex chess club that there the time control there is 90 minutes base time and 30 second increments for both players.

Can you clearly explain to me what "90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional 30 seconds per move" means?

Does it mean each player starts at 90 minutes with no increments until both players have made 20 moves, then after black's 20th move, each player gets 30 minutes with 30 second increments; or does it mean that each player gets 90 minutes with no increments and then after their side of the clock goes down to zero, instead of forfeiting the match, they get 30 minutes with 30 second increments?

Also, in what situations is that time control followed and in what situations is the other time control followed? Is that time control for competitions that only people above a certain rating can join?

The clocks would start at 90 minutes, with 30 seconds added per move, starting at move one.  When move 40 (not 20 - we're counting full moves, not half moves) is completed, 30 minutes would be added (along with the 30 seconds that's added for every move.)

Events would ordinarily state what time control they are using.  If it's not on the list of major events (which is on the page you linked to) they don't have to use the time control specified for major events.


What sense does promotion to queen make? When a pawn finally reaches the eighth rank, then it can be promoted to rook, knight, bishop or queen. It is not hard to imagine that a soldier who has achieved a lot could be promoted to an officer. However, it is almost incredible that a meritorious fighter would eventually become a queen, even though the old queen is still alive.

So my questions are:

Is every pawn female?
Could a king marry more than one queen in ancient times?

In the original form of the game from which chess probably derived, chaturanga, there was no piece named "Queen".

The Queen of modern chess probably derived from a piece named "General": in the beginning this piece could move 1 square only diagonally, then its movenemt became more and more similar to the modern Queen. But there's more: in chaturanga there were pieces very similar to pawns, "Soldiers", that could become Generals after having reached opponent's King field.

When chess was imported in Europe, during Middle-Age and Reinassance, passing especially through Spain, pieces were renamed in order to give european players a more comfortable playing background. For example, the uncommon "Elephant" became "Bishop" (a very well known figure in catholic regions). And the General became the "Queen". But they only renamed pieces without changing the mechanic of the game. Thus, a "Soldier" could (and can) still be promoted.


Which online database is the best? I search an online chess games database which should be free and it would be nice if no
 registration would be required.

I want to be able to search for the basic criterions year and ELO.

It would be nice if the database contains only classical games. It is annoying if
 rapid, blitz, blind and friendly games are also in the database.

Does anyone know a database fulfilling my criterions ?

How about this website: http://database.chessbase.com/js/apps/database/

It's pretty good.


Is this blocked situation a draw? If not, how can I win as Black? I had a game on chess.com that ended in a draw by agreement. Is this a real draw? If not, what are my best moves as Black?

Computer analysis on chess.com suggested this continuation, “39. Qe2 Rf7 40. Nf3 Qc7 41. Ra2 Bf8 42. Qc2 Rd8,” saying that "Black has a moderate advantage".

[FEN ""]
[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2015.05.06"]
[White "fianwhatto"]
[Black "bigother"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "1432"]
[BlackElo "1400"]
[TimeControl "10|0"]
[Termination "Game drawn by agreement"]
[WhiteToggles "0%"]
[BlackToggles "0%"]
[startply "77"]

1.c4 d6 2.Nc3 e5 3.Nf3 g6 4.e3 Bg7 5.Be2 b6 6.O-O Bb7 7.d3 Nf6 8.e4 Nc6 9.h3 O-O 10.a3 Nd4
 11.Bg5 Qd7 12.Nxd4 exd4 13.Nb5 c5 14.a4 a6 15.Na3 h6 16.Bh4 g5 17.Bg3 Rfe8 18.f4 Nh7 19.f5 f6 20.Bh5 Re7
 21.Bf3 Bc6 22.b3 b5 23.a5 b4 24.Nb1 Qd8 25.Nd2 Qd7 26.Bg4 Qd8 27.Bh2 Qc7 28.g3 Nf8 29.h4 Nd7 30.h5 Ne5
 31.Be2 Qb7 32.g4 Rd7 33.Bxe5 dxe5 34.Bf3 Re7 35.Qe2 Qc7 36.Qf2 Qb7 37.Rfe1 Qc7 38.Bg2 Qb7 39.Qe2 1/2-1/2

This is a dead draw.

There are no sensible piece sacrifices for either side.

There is no plan that isn't easily parried (Black could gang up on the a5-pawn with Qd8 and Bc7, but white just doubles the rooks on a1 and a2. White could try to invade with the knight to b6 and d5, but black would just go Bxa4 when the knight turns up on a4.)

Black isn't better here and black isn't worse. There is just nothing any side can do.

Edit: I think I'll expand on this a bit, because for some reason the concept of a dead draw seems to be hard to grasp.

Positions are usually evaluated based on best play by both sides. That can be tricky because there are positions that should be equal or even favourable for one side, but in practice are more promising for the other side.

But in the given position the level of play needed to hold a draw against best play, is very, very low. To put it differently: A 1500 player would have no trouble holding this position with white against Magnus Carlsen. The fact that a computer engine gives a small plus for black doesn't mean black has any advantage whatsoever. It just means that engines aren't yet able to understand completely blocked positions and other kinds of fortresses very well.

Let's go back to our fictional 1500 player. The only thing he has to do is keep e4 and a5 well protected and there is nothing Magnus Carlsen will ever be able to do. Now e4 is already over-over-overprotected. Let's say Carlsen comes up with the cunning plan to attack a5 via Qd8 and Bc7 and our 1500 player isn't sharp enough to double the rooks quickly. Now the a5 pawn falls …

r2q2k1/r7/p1b2p1p/b1p1pPpP/1pPpP1P1/1P1P4/R2NB3/1R1Q2K1 w - - 0 1

1.Rba1 Bc7 2.Ra4 Bxa4 3.Rxa4

Black is a pawn and the exchange up. Possibly the computer will give a even better score for black, but the facts haven't changed: This is still A DEAD DRAW.


Ruy Lopez Open Variation [FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Nxe4

Why is 6. Re1 not played, prefer players 6. d4 only? Please answer with explanation and variations so that it could help all players.

After 6.Re1, black equalizes comfortably after 6....Nc5, as he wins the bishop pair. For example, 7.Bxc6 dxc6 8.Nxe5 Be7 9.d4 Ne6 10.c3 0-0.

Instead, 6.d4! is the main line, after which 6....b5 7.Bb3 d5 8.dxe5 Be6 is almost forced for black. The resulting position is the tabiya of the Open Spanish.

      [StartPly "10"]

      [FEN ""]
      1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Nxe4 6.Re1 (6.d4! b5 7.Bb3 d5 8.dxe5 Be6) Nc5 7.Bxc6 (7.Nxe5 Be7) dxc6 8.Nxe5 (8.d4 Ne6) Be7 9.d4 Ne6 10.c3 O-O


How should one continue development against an unorthodox move by an opponent? Let's say you have been practicing a certain opening such as the Ruy Lopez and you have all the main lines down and suddenly your opponent makes some unorthodox move that you did not encounter while studying the Ruy Lopez, so you think to yourself, "Does my opponent have something up their sleeve?" or "My opponent does not know what they are doing".  If you think the opponent has something up their sleeve like a trap, you might start to panic and blunder and make irrational moves yourself out of paranoia, but you might start to make irrational moves if you think your opponent doesn't know what they are doing when in fact they do.

So I guess the question boils down to this: How do you know when a move your opponent has made is a sound move (especially if you are a beginner) as opposed to a not so sound move? And once you have made the decision on whether the move was good or not, how do you proceed with development?

There are reasons why the main variations of an opening are "established," and why certain moves are seldom played. If a move is "unusual," there is probably something wrong with it.

So figure out why it is wrong. Maybe it gets the  other player behind in development, or exposes a queen, or weakens a pawn. Once you have figured out what is wrong with the move, it is relatively easy to play against it.

Example: In the Ruy Lopez, you (White) and your opponent might play 1. e4 e5. 2. Nf3 Nc6. 3. Bb5  So far so good. But now Black plays 3... Nd4, a "strange" move that moves a knight twice in succession. It forks your N and B so the e pawn isn't really en prise. But now you play 4 NxN, and when Black recaptures on d4, he's got doubled d pawns, and has wasted a move. You can castle, 5. O-O, and have a significant lead in development.


What's a good middlegame book like My System for Expert Class? I just finished reading My System. What's a good book to study afterwards for Expert Class?

I would recommend Mark Dvoretsky's book 'Strategic Play' Olms. ISBN 978-3-283-00418-7.
It's a part of famous 'School Of Chess Excellence' series. (it's easy to find it online). I personally bought all four of them:
Endgame Analysis,
Tactical Play,
Strategic Play,
Opening Developments.

Mark Dvoretsky is considered one of the best chess trainers of all time, he raised a number of leading international grandmasters.


I play better on the board than online. How can I play better online? I live in a small town. I only play a couple of tournaments a year and about two rapid games a week with my teamates. Therefore, playing online should be my primary source of practice, but I find it really hard to focus and calculate when playing online (rapid or even classical). As a result, I play way better on the board than online. Is there something I can do to play better online?

Have you tried setting up a chessboard by the computer and playing the online moves on the board before transmitting them?  This may be more difficult with rapid than classical games, but if you find seeing the pieces in 3 dimensions more desirable, it seems like a practical altenative to looking at them in 2 dimensions on the computer screen.  When I work on online problems, I set them up on a board before solving them for that reason.


Sicilian defense answer to Bc4 and Qf3 I am a very beginning player and something I see a lot in response to the Sicilian defense is Bc4, with white intending to play Qf3 next turn. I found that e6 is a good answer but I feel where I take it after that is pretty poor and I want to know a better answer. The following is how the game typically goes

[fen ""]
1. e4 c5 2. Bc4 e6 3. Qf3 a6 4. d3 b5 5. Bb3 d5 6. a3 c4 7. dxc4 dxc4 *

In your posted game you have done a decent job of harrassing and eventually marginalizing the White King bishop.  Yet, do you realize that each of your first seven moves is a pawn move?  Besides neglecting piece develpment, you leave your center rather unprotected, which partly defeats the purpose of using the Sicilian, and you expose yourself to the inconvenient discovered attack of e5.  For the moment, the Queen/Bishop attack is sufficiently neutralized by your 2...e6 and that is the time to begin development of your pieces.


Aggressive response to 1.d4? As black, against 1.d4, which aggressive response do I have?
I looked at queen's gambit accepted, queen's gambit declined, king's Indian defence and the Slav defence. But all of this options appear to me as passive, at least passive in the opening phase. Seems to me that in all this variations white still gets a better control of the center and a more active and developed setup, whit black that has no immediate treats or tricks. I am feeling like against 1.d4 I am doomed to play a more positional and passive opening phase. Is this the case?
I am a beginner, 1500, so is quite possibile that I am missing some aggressive potential in the mentioned openings. This comes from a guy that quite enjoys playing stuff like the fried liver, Stafford gambit, Evans gambit and the Danish gambit, so I hope you can get what I am searching here.

I have no experience of playing it, but the Albin countergambit 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e5 might be an option. It's relatively rare but doesn't seem to score too badly compared to the QGD/Slav, with significantly fewer draws than either (see stats here).


Is the World Chess Blitz Championship for Robots going to be broadcast over the Internet? Does anyone know if the World Chess Blitz Championship for Chess Robots in Moscow is going to be streamed over the web? Sounds really cool and I'd like to see it.

Appears unlikely given it does not even appear that there's a website for the event, just press releases that were posted to weblogs like the one you linked too. Here's archival video of "Vladimir Kramnik vs Robot" for anyone interested in viewing the game play; just in case you thought a robot play a person is boring, watch the robot "attack" Kramnik, he almost loses his hand.


A question on a puzzle on chess.com I am a beginner in chess. I am playing a puzzle on chess.com and the puzzle is like this:

White to move

[FEN "r4rk1/p4p2/1p2p2p/2p1P3/3p1q1n/1P1PR1N1/P3QP2/R4K2 w - - 0 2"]

1. Re4

Why is this the best move? Is it purely because this is the only way to save the rook, or this move can even gain some pieces?

Thank you in advance!

It is the best move because it wins the knight on h4.

Black has only two squares for its queen after 1.Re4:

2....Qf3 3. Rxh4 winst the knight
2....Qg5 3. Rg4 pins and wins the queen

Note that 1. Re4 is not the only move to save the rook. White could also play Nh5 attacking the queen first and if the queen moves save the rook (e.g. via Rg3).


Why is stockfish not accepting my move? I am trying to play with stockfish from terminal.
I entered the following commands:
position startpos e2e4
d

The output was:

Why is stockfish not accepting my move?

There is an issue with the syntax you are using. According to the UCI protocol you should use position startpos moves e2e4, i.e., the moves keyword is missing in your command.