All Questions

I am developing a program that analyzes games sequentially, i.e. one game after another. Below are the parameters. Engine: Stockfish 10 Threads: 2 Hash Table: 4000 Depth: 30 My question is about ...

Why isn't 1.d4 Nf6 2.d5 a good move? It gains space in the center. As beginners we are told that after 1.d4, 1...d5 directly opposes White's ambitions in the center, stopping d4-d5 (similarly, in some ...

I played this game and was wondering, is this a checkmate pattern with a name?

I came across the following game and was surprised to find that it was played between players with 2200+ ratings: How do players of level 2200+ lack the very basics of opening principles to play a ...

I am using Anki to study chess. I use Chesstempo's viewer. My question is: How can I make arrows and squares with color on the board?

Did Bobby Fischer actually write his bestseller primer “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess” (1966, 978-0553130539), or was it written by a ghost writer? I often ask myself this question because it seems ...

Why is the Sicilian line with 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 b6 almost never played at any level, nor considered in books and similar? It seems logical to me, and after the usual 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Bb7, the Bishop is ...

I would like to receive some feedback on my mistakes of the below Lichess game, if possible from someone above 2000. I an unsure about the reason of the mistakes I did in the game. When I finished ...

Why are the laws of chess still being overseen by the same political-governing body called FIDE and not by an independent autonomous body like in other major sporting codes such as football where IFAB ...

Recently I played a chess game that started with the moves: 1. e4 e6 2. d4 a6 and then I played 3. c4 which according to Stockfish is inaccurate. What is the reason for that? How is this situation ...

I found myself in this position as Black. I played Kb6, but the engine on chess.com suggested that the move Kb7 is a missed win, and the continuation below would have been winning for me. It gave no ...

I have seen some of the games that were published in the match between AlphaZero and Stockfish. In many games, as when it beats Stockfish as black playing the Berlin Defense, AlphaZero appears to ...

I was watching a YouTube video in which Magnus Carlsen plays on an online blitz game. Why does Carlsen blink a lot during the game?

Assume such a situation: Both players (Black and White) only have two pieces, that is a King and a Pawn. They have the liberty of placing them according to their wishes on the first row of their side ...

Was just thinking about this. It's easy to have two pieces checking the king via a discovered double check, but three is where it gets interesting. Finegold said in a video he was TDing for a game and ...

Surely it has happened, that a famous chess problem turned out to be incorrect because some move was overlooked. Maybe a chess engine found out that a classic problem was bad! Is there a collection of ...

In several openings white or black trades a bishop for a knight (Ruy Lopes exhange, Sicilian Rossomilo, Nimzo Indian etc). I have learned the bishop pair is worth a half pawn, and I have difficult to ...

I am wanting to write a chess engine (see here: Creating chess engine, machine learning vs. traditional engine?). The first step I am doing is taking a position in as an FEN and converting this ...

I'm interested in collections of chess problems where we are not told beforehand what is happening in the positions presented, but we have to decide by ourselves, whether something clear exists (a ...

I want to solve a problem with Thomas Maeder's excellent Popeye engine, and to specify that a possible en passant in the diagram is ok. How can I do this please? The documentation seems opaque. Thanks ...

Please tell me how to avoid termination of Stockfish-10-arm64-pgo, where as the other 2 are working on my phone. I have arm64-v8a instructions set and achitecture arm 64.

Which are some top players known to be strongly in favor of 1.e4 in the opening? In this respect I find interesting a comment by Fischer on Alekhine: "there is nothing light or breezy in his style". ...

I recently went to a USCF tournament. Although it was quick/blitz rated, regular ratings were used for the purposes of pairings and prizes. This led me to wonder: are regular ratings actually better ...

[FEN "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. Nf3 O-O 6. Be2 e5 7. O-O Nc6 8. d5 Ne7 9. Ne1 Nd7 10. Be3 f5 11. f3 f4 12. Bf2 g5 13. b4 Nf6 ...

Does pawn's initial double square move have a special name? Something like en passant?

Suppose you win a game in a noncompetitive way, when you know your opponent cannot feel good about his play. Maybe he dropped his queen early, to a simple tactic that should have been evident for a ...

Teimour Radjabov has just won the World Cup. The first two FIDE World Cups, in 2000 and 2002 had 4 groups of 6 players with the 2 group winners going into an 8-player knockout. They were both won by ...

Please tell me of a free and easy to use website for organizing an online correspondence chess competition for kids. Thank you very much.

A standard chess engine will find the move it considers best assuming best play from both sides. But this move might lead to an insignificant advantage or a tricky line that can easily result in ...

In many positions, different moves are functionally the same, and an engine should return the same evaluation. For example, in a KR vs. KR endgame, (almost) every move that does not lose the rook ...

Why is coffee provided for free during big chess events like the Olympiad despite the fact that it contains caffeine, which is a banned substance according to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA)?

Does there exist any online public chess database that I can upload my own games to (so that others can look at them)? I know that sites where you can play online will store games (that you played on ...

By default, engines return the strongest variation(s) they calculate. I was wondering if there is a way to tweak an open source chess engine to show a move from their MultiPV which is slightly better ...

And if so, what interfaces can connect to them, and how do they do that? I want to analyze with Lc0, but I don't have a computer with a GPU; I could rent one for a short time period at various cloud ...

I am both an avid chess player and computer programmer. I would say that playing chess and programming are the two things I spend the most time doing. Naturally, I am wanting to create my own engine ...

Are there any chess engines out there that will allow me to add arbitrary amounts of time to their clocks as the game progresses? I am interested in experimenting with two engines playing each other ...

Threefold repetition requires that the same "potential for moves". For example, if a En Passant could be played in one position but not another, it does not count as the same position. With respect ...

Many chess openings get their name from a player who invented it and/or played it and/or documented it. Place names are also frequently used, denoting where an opening was first played or became ...

Chess 960 is a version of chess where the pieces are arranged behind the row of pawns. The same random arrangement (with the constraints of the king being between the rooks, and the bishops being on ...

I'm reading about KID in "The Complete Book of Chess Strategy" by Jeremy Silman, and I don't understand one of his points. He gives the following moves (which is the "Averbackh Variation"): 1.d4 Nf6 ...

First off I'm not looking for a gimmick / trap, but rather I'm looking for a new opening system for white / black that could enable more tactical options. For the last year or so I've been playing ...

I had no incurracies,blunders or mistakes then also my centipawn loss was 48. What is the problem here or I have misunderstood average centipawn loss. You can have a look at that game at lichess. ...

I played b4. According to computer, it is a "missed win" move by me. But what move did I miss? What move should I have played? (I am white. And played b4 but I got "missed win")

I am having trouble understanding why the push c4 here is incorrect for Black. After 9. Qc2 b5 10. a4 a6 11. axb5 axb5 12. Rxa8 can be recaptured with the Queen and the pawn chain is stable. What is ...

I have made a chess engine, and it seems from cProfile that my most expensive function is the one that calculates attack squares for both players. Here is the cProfile results for a perft function I ...

According to the chess app I am using, this is not a checkmate against black: [FEN "1rk4r/1p6/3p3q/Q1pPbRnP/p1P3B1/P6P/1P4R1/7K w - - 0 1"] 1. Rf7+ How is it not? I think the black king is ...

I recently played as Black in a 1+0 blitz game on Lichess in which the below postion was reached. [FEN ""] 1. e4 Nf6 2. Nc3 e6 3. d4 d5 4. e5g Nfd7 5. f4 Nb6 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Bb5 Bd7 8. O-O g6 9. Bxc6 ...

I am a coach at a small high school. We are starting a chess club. We have Epson BrightLink projectors with the interactive boards. Is there a way we can have a chess board displayed on the whiteboard ...

Can a minimax function with just alpha beta pruning really evaluate 1.8 billion chess positions (3 ply = 356) in just a second? My chess engine, which uses minimax with only alpha beta pruning, takes ...

There are lot of recommendations on what endgame books you should read and study. But reading is just passive learning, and not so efficient. If the book doesn't contain exercises, what is the best ...