All Questions

I am a total newbie in chess. I was playing with an ~intermidiate computer~ as White and made a pretty stupid mistake by playing Bc5. I waved the bishop goodbye, yet Black's rook did not capture it. ...

While similar questions have been asked before and many comments were given, I couldn't find a thread dealing with my particular experiences. So: Whenever I discuss openings with professional and even ...

Just played a game, against a player less than IM for sure. Looking at the final position I realize that we had 5 pawns on the same file. I doubled a pawn on the QB file in a Ruy. Later captures had ...

I know that some openings include fianchettoing the bishop. But sometimes, this isn't part of the opening, but I still need to decide whether to bring my bishop one rank forward (like Bg7) or to the ...

What is the root problem with stack exchanges that people with many points just decide to leave. Is it harassment from mods, or too many silly bureaucratic rules that add no value but are enforced by ...

Let suppose an unrated player plays a FIDE rated swiss tournament where its opponent's ratings are e.g. 1300,2000,2100,2200,2300 and wins all of them, then his initial rating will be 2100 according to ...

I just played my first few games of Crazyhouse, and I really don't understand it. At one point I had this position. [Title "White to move"] [FEN "r2q1rk1/pbb2pp1/n1p1p2p/1p1nP3/2pPN3/...

Are you allowed to read a book unrelated to chess during a FIDE rated classical tournament game? I myself have done this a few times whilst studying for exams, but was never sure if it was allowed or ...

International chess tournaments are played in many cities in the world. What are the criteria that differentiate a chess grandmaster from a chess international master? Dibyendu Barua of Calcutta [...

Today I found myself in the below position as black (me to play). My gut told me it should be a draw, but as my opponent and I are both fairly weak there was a significant chance one of us would ...

Countless chess variations of international innovations or old games{corollaries] played by chess grandmasters and since innumerable cities play chess, their achievements restricted only to their ...

Did Leela missed a draw in Game 94? Stockfish was ahead , but Leela could have reached the following position WHITE King in g2 Rook in h5 Bishop in f2 pawns in a5 h2 BLACK King in h7 Rook in a4 Bishop ...

My question is and I would like to know, Chess grandmasters Bobby Fischer[AMERICA}, Boris Spassky[RUSSIA], Anatoly Karpov[RUSSIA], and Garry Kasparov[Russia]played against one another in many ...

I'm curious to know what happens in the following scenario: I play a Swiss tournament and meet 3 rated players, I score at least half point but do badly overall. Then I play another Swiss tournament ...

From its starting square, a knight has 3 legal moves: The “standard” one (c3, f3, c6, f6), the “weird” one (a3, h3, a6, h6) and the “other” one (d2, e2, d7, e7). In my games, I almost always do the ...

I can come up with 8 positions where the knight would deliver checkmate to a rook and king. However, on endgame tablebases, there are only 5 positions where a King knight wins against King rook. Why?

Chess.com has a function called "premove". When pre-moves are enabled, while it’s the opponent’s turn you can make a move to automatically be played as soon as they make their move. The ...

I thought it was for the other person to take back a move like in Lichess. But it only seems to let me take back my move. I do not want to take back my move. Why would the other player be allowed to ...

I like to play correspondence thematic tournaments as a way to practice/learn new openings/variations. Since they are unrated, I sometimes try wild/unusual moves to see what happens. However, I was ...

I have access to a powerful computer at work so naturally I want to run a chess engine on it (stockfish for now and later leela). I am trying to use docker-compose to link a stockfish image and a ...

I found chaturanga playing online at chess.com, and I love playing it, but I would also like to play my games on a GUI and analyze it with an engine, there is some GUI out there for chaturanga (or at ...

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

Bobby Fischer's openings in the 1972 World Chess Championship are said to have taken Spassky completely by surprise: Fischer played always e4 as his opening move, in football terms he had a very ...

I watched a documentary on television last night about Kasparov's game versus that computer, Blue Fish or something. I barely made it through the doc, due to the insufferable, excessive admiration of ...

[FEN "8/4k2p/p1b1p1pP/Pp1p2K1/1PpP1P2/2P1R3/8/8 b - - 0 1"] Houdini6.02 eval flatlines at 1.37, but I reached d= 54 , and , although the eval continued to flatline, the main line indicated ...

Problem I am creating a chess engine in Python using Minimax algorithm (with alpha/beta pruning) but I have some issues with performance. Currently the thinking time looks something like this for a ...

I want to analyse chess games with xboard and stockfish. Locally this is no problem. But my PC is slow, so I have rented a faster linux server, and I want let stockfish run on it. How can I use xboard ...

This is how I am playing nowadays. I can beat ~1500 player 50% of the time (the rest is due to tactical errors): Play the opening (upto 12 moves) Don't blunder At the point where my pawns and pieces ...

In the famous Blitz semifinal armageddon in 1994, Anand spends 1:43 minutes (from his 5 minutes available) on move 4, and ends up winning the game. What exactly was he thinking? Are there any ...

I was recently reading a post on this forum which said that there must be 15 captured pieces in order for there to be 6 pawns on the a-file or h-file. That got me thinking how complicated that would ...

In a Game of SuFi 19 , a Czech Benoni, Stockfish 11 as White could have forced , on move 28 , a line that forced an eight piece endgame on move 59. White would have had Queen , Knight and two advanced ...

I just hate when my opponent has the knights because most of my blunders happen due to them. I generally like endgames where my opponent doesn't have the knight. I also hate when the Knight enters my ...

[fen ""] 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. cxd5 cxd5 5. Bf4 Nc6 6. e3 a6 I do not see the point of this move. At first I thought it is aimed to prevent Bb5 and thus maintain the knight on c6, ...

Going by rules strictly about the board state, how long can a player theoretically hold off a draw by the 50-move rule? White will play as long as possible, and not want to lose. Black will claim a ...

Black and white both have one queen and the king. Is this game a draw?

I am learning how to use SCID vs PC on my Linux machine and I find the program very useful and well-written. I am reading through Lasker's book Manual of Chess and I would like to create my own "...

I am currently under the impression that White players are allowing the Nimzo-Indian more and more, whereas before they were dodging it via 3. Nf3. I wanted to check if that is true, but usually ...

when I play as a casual user the typical rating change seems to be around 25-20 points. when I play as an official user that logs in then the ratings seem to change more in the neighborhood of 75-80 ...

The following position has only eight pieces on the board with Black to move, but it is very tricky. I started trials with my modest means (Houdini 6.02) and White won 3/3 times, but after very ...

I recently played 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Qc2 d5, and it was coded as the Noa variation There was a Josef Noa of Hungary, who lived from, 1856-1903, but his recorded games do not include a ...

Frst, some chess background about myself - which is VERY limited - I am 50 years old, a bachelor, whom recently retired from the financial sector. Which basically translates to A LOT of free time! ...

[FEN ""] 1. d4 e5 I have been playing this gambit for over 8 months with extensive analysis and have come to the conclusion that it is a very playable opening and, in many cases, black can ...

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

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

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 ...

The Black Lion is a line that can be transposed from a Philidor or Pirc defense. I play with White this line. [FEN ""] 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Nf6 4.Nc3 Nbd7 5.Bc4 Be7 6.O-O c6 7.a4 Qc7 8.Re1 ...

In a legal position, how many times can the king and its surrounding squares be attacked? There is a total of 9 possible squares to be attacked-the square the king is on and the eight squares ...

I'm ~2170 rated but having avoided d4 d5 type setups my entire chess career, as some things are quite mysterious to me. In positions where white has pawns on d4 and c4 and black has one on d5 (...

So I am still learning chess and I have a lot of trouble in these situations. Please help me with what to do in the next few turns.

When reviewing my games on Lichess, I very often find the Lichess engine recommending to me to sacrifice the bishop early on after checking the enemy king. I have created a sample game where you can ...