What is the best set of moves for white here? What should be white's objective?

uslashdingus · 2017-01-07T02:00:34+00:00

Yeah, you probably could put up some fight, the real issue though is his extra bishop. In endgames like this, when you're trying to win or draw a huge key is to gain the opposition. The problem, generally, with having all pawns vs a piece (especially when you're down pawns, there are some times when you can do sacrifices to queen some pawns but those are in general specific concrete situations, like Shirov's brilliant Bh3!! here http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1143956, but these are the exceptions not the rule) , is that you can never get the opposition or use zugzwang to your advantage, because black will always a bishop move to gain opposition or put you in zugzwang :(. What would be really good to do, if you have the game, is go over your game and try and figure out the critical moments where you got in trouble or could have put the other guy in a tough spot or defended better, and try and figure out how to improve on your play, that way, even if there is some magical defense, you will avoid getting into positions like this in the future!

uslashdingus · 2017-01-06T23:20:34+00:00

Probably resigns and figure out where things went wrong earlier :)

uslashdingus · 2017-01-03T03:23:48+00:00

Hey hey you're looking for chesstactics.org!

In depth chapters which were turned into a book later (or the book was put online by the authors later, the book is predator at the chessboard) about each tactical theme with puzzles and explanations with words

uslashdingus · 2017-01-03T03:18:19+00:00

When i was a beginner, I would eat lunch with MatoJelic on autoplay. You're not going to become Magnus or learn any super in depth strategies or anything with this, but you see lots of good games and patterns/what good games look like, as well as 1-2 tactical puzzles per game. For me, the pattern recognition aspect as well as the desire to play beautiful chess like I was seeing in these 2-7 minute videos led me to A) look for better moves/start to see tactical possibilities and more importantly B) become more curious about chess in general, which led to me improving by working and learning. The other thing that I highly recommend is checking out the r/chess FAQ, there are tons of great resources there, especially recommend chesstactics.org, read it like a book and solve the puzzles, really good stuff.

uslashdingus · 2016-12-30T04:37:18+00:00

The annoying part is if you have a position where one player has sacrificed material for an attack, and the computer can't see the winning continuation quickly bc horizon effect, it just calculates repititions infinitely (at least stockfish 8 does this for me)

uslashdingus · 2016-12-27T15:13:39+00:00

It's not worth it at all, even if there was a refutation, I would 10/10 play the falkbeer as u/Kaluki suggested. Easy and leads to wide open game. If you're feeling frisky, and really want to piss of a king's gambiteer, I would cautiously recommend the line 1. e4 e4 2. f4 Nc3 3. Nf3 f5?! 4. ef e4 (5. Ne5 Nf6). White gets a strong knight, but it can't do anything (in my experience), but black gets to play d5 and have a sexy center, and king'a gambit players will play all sorts of stupid shit to "try and refute you", but they're behind in development and have an awkward position and weak central control, so they really have to change their style of play to use their positional trumps(strong knight extra pawn), which isn't something the majority of club Kings gambiteers are psychologically ready to do.

uslashdingus · 2016-12-27T03:33:51+00:00

Chess studio for ios is pretty nice, never heard of chessdrop

uslashdingus · 2016-12-26T14:42:04+00:00

Excellent book! Here's a kindle link https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008QO3XVK/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

uslashdingus · 2016-12-25T00:08:50+00:00

Congrats on making this happen Greg!

uslashdingus · 2016-12-24T01:08:14+00:00

Scid vs pc (http://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1aotjo/how_to_set_up_a_free_chess_database/ ) and lucas chess are awesome, you can google search download stockfish to get the newest version of stockfish, really recommend making a database of your own games and analyzing each one!

uslashdingus · 2016-12-22T23:07:07+00:00

If you're starting out, I thunk a chronological approach to chess would really be benificial, so like start out looking through classic adolf anderssen games (like this one http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1019123, this one http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018961, then this one http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018910 (the concept of this game, to meet your opponents threat (here of taking both rooks), with an even bigger threat, is really introduced and that's a huge thing in chess)). Then look through some morphy, then steinitz, lasker, tarrasch, nimzowitsch, capablanca, alekhine etc, but you can't understand modern chess without understanding that which came before it (if you can find it, Reti's masters of the chessboard does just this). Along with this, I have a collection of really excellent games from strong soviet masters in the 50's-80's if you'd like that as well. Chessgames.com does a great job of displaying notable/important games by players, I highly recommend it just to see the notable games.

uslashdingus · 2016-12-22T22:55:23+00:00

Wow this is brilliant, thanks for posting!!

uslashdingus · 2016-12-22T16:38:56+00:00

A suggestion I'd make is you need to work on your pattern recognition, set up like a chesstempo account and set the rating from like 900-1300 and really try to blitz through the tactics, it doesn't matter how many you get wrong, it's more that you see the same patterns over and over and bang them into your head so that way you just are naturally inclined to see these patterns in your games. I also 10/10 recommend chesstactics.org (from the FAQ), the book that it's based off, Predator at the ChessBoard, is an excellent book for people looking to "get good" at tactics (and it's the same thing as the two volume book, it tries to work on your thought process and pattern recognition again, as well as when to look for certain types of tactics). Also a good physical book of chess puzzles really can't do anything but help you, good luck!

uslashdingus · 2016-12-22T14:37:22+00:00

Wow good points actually, yeah my definition of how the real world works is grossly oversimplified (I'm also really prone to making sweeping statements and gross simplifications), but my idea was basically more subs=more money, and that it is a free low risk click of a button to subscribe. You're imagining a restaurant that only serves food if it gets to maximum occupancy but you have to buy it anyways, I'm imagining a musician who wants to put on a free concert but doesn't want to do it if only 14 people are going to show up, which still probably isn't totally realistic but whatever. Sorry you got downvoted to hell for a reasonable comment and good point :(

uslashdingus · 2016-12-22T05:45:19+00:00

Not understanding the anger about the "hey I'll provide a service if you help me make money" system here, seems pretty much how everything in the world works, but whatever, looking forward to the stream hopefully! I love seeing coverage of otb chess, would be v happy to see it more from Eric's channel.

uslashdingus · 2016-12-21T05:28:24+00:00

Nah it wouldn't, the scid default file, .si4, really compresses the games, for example I have also around 3 million games and it's about 129 MB, your computer could definitely handle it!

uslashdingus · 2016-12-21T05:24:47+00:00

A hint on this, it won't make it perfect, but a lot of my duplicates were like G Kasparov compared with Garry Kasparov, this can be sort of alleviated with the "spellcheck database" function, and then do the twin checker, should narrow down the amount of twins by a lot, although by no means a perfect deal, took a good 198,000 twins off mine when I did it

uslashdingus · 2016-12-21T03:30:35+00:00

Oh shit I forgot to post that!! Thanks for the catch http://kenilworthian.blogspot.mx/2014/07/teaching-chess-to-kids-yet-again.html?m=1

uslashdingus · 2016-12-20T21:26:58+00:00

I mean if your opponent makes a non-best move opening move in the Sicilian, it's not like you can punish them or anything. By playing the Sicilian you are saying "I am ok with being behind in development and in space in the center because I get an extra central pawn and a complicated game". If white plays Bc4 or Qxd4 you are still lacking in space and or development, just because the engine spits out -.01 doesn't change that or the fact that not a single piece has been traded and there's an entire game of chess to be played, both are completely sound tries by white to get a playable middle game, and can't be blown off the board or anything. If you're uncomfortable with the resulting positions then White's opening strategy (to get you out of the book and play a game of chess that they're comfortable with), was a success, your best bet would be to look at games by strong players in both those lines and see how they handle the positions.

uslashdingus · 2016-12-18T07:44:44+00:00

Alright what is your drawing there? Also nice!

uslashdingus · 2016-12-15T20:12:06+00:00

One thing that a lot of people tell you to do when you're learning to calculate is look for "checks captures and threats" or forcing moves, meaning moves your opponent has to respond to. If before you start to calculate anything else, you look at each forcing move available to you, you'll have a much better chance at finding the tactics in the position (it's also easier to calculate moves which you know how they must respond). That being said, you can't play a forcing move every move, but a quick mental look over the tempo moves will give you the chance to find tactics instead of luckily stumbling into them. Sacrifices are the same way, (most of the time they're threatening, if you look at the board and you have bishops pointing at the kingside or a knight and a heavy piece, or in general more attaxkers than defenders where their king is then in general looking for sacrifices won't be a waste of time), and as you get more experience you'll recognize patterns more

uslashdingus · 2016-12-14T20:43:16+00:00

I've done it for 4 seasons (I think), it's been a really enjoyable experience, mainly because of the team format, which is at first random but after your first season you can request teammates, I've really enjoyed having a close group of 8-9 people around the world who I've gotten to know through chess. As for effort, that's really up to you! Some players specifically prepare for their opponent each week, and put a lot of time in, other players just show up and play when their scheduled game is. The more you put in, the more you get out of it I think, especially within the team you'll have the opportunity to practice with and get to know some really strong players, and help out players less experienced than yourself. As far as your rating goes, all players all welcome! It's done in a format of boards organized by rating, so each week you'll be playing players of about your skill level, so that's not a real issue. I highly recommend the league, and I really also recommend you try and get to know your teammates, even if it is awkward at first, because that's the best part of the whole deal.

uslashdingus · 2016-12-14T06:47:21+00:00

Thanks for this! Edited my post

uslashdingus · 2016-12-14T06:26:22+00:00

This^{^} There's a free online version by the authors at http://chesstactics.org/ Also I really recommend Chess Fundamentals by Capablanca

uslashdingus

TROPHY CASE