All Questions

I'm wondering about the move order 2. d4 cxd4 3. Nf3 in Sicilian. If black does not try to protect the pawn and plays some normal move like 3... d6, 3... e6 or 3... Nc6, then 4. Nxd4 transposes into ...

After 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 e5 why is 5. Nb5 the best move? The game usually continues 5. Nb5 d6 6. N1c3 a6 7. Na3 and it looks to me like whites knight on a3 is misplaced. What makes ...

Most players use these services to keep up to date on the latest chess results, but how do these services source their databases? It would seem like a prohibitive amount of work to scrape results from ...

I am teaching chess to beginners and am looking for recommended games to be discussed/analyzed together. So the games should be relatively simple, short and ideally focus on one main theme (e.g. ...

In the following sequence of moves, what are the main ideas of the fashionable 6. Qf3 in the Scotch? Can White hope for a real advantage by letting Black trade Queens so early and worsening (at least ...

After decades away from tournament play, I decided to play in an open tourney my child entered. Trying to gauge how my game might have changed during my time away, I found an online rating estimator ...

[FEN ""] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5 d5 5. exd5 Nxd5 6. Nxf7 Kxf7 7. Qf3+ Ke6 8. Nc3 Ncb4 White can play 9. Qe4 (Old variation protecting c2 square from ... Nxc2+ forking King and Rook and ...

In Christian Hesse's book The Joy of Chess one reads about a mate-in-3 problem composed by Pál Benkö that stumped Bobby Fischer. Hesse gives the following diagram: [FEN "8/8/8/4k3/8/8/8/2BQKB2 w - - ...

When a chess engine sees a position p repeated once (i.e. position p occurred twice) it immediately assigns the second occurrence of position p a draw score. This makes sense because position p doesn'...

I can reach a draw with White in the below position. The Stockfish 9, however, gives 28.1 points for black after Kf3,Ba1,Ke4,Bb2,Kd3. [FEN "8/p7/kpP5/qrp1b3/rpP2b2/pP4b1/P3K3/8 w - - 0 1"] 1. Kf3 ...

Played a decent amount of bughouse but only started with crazyhouse a month or less ago. Although on the surface very similar games, I would say they are fundamentally different because there is no ...

I think chess is a very complex game that no normal person can figure out how to play perfectly no matter how their opponent plays but am not sure whether it's a theoretical impossibility for a human ...

In the Sicilian Taimanov, after the opening moves [FEN ""] [StartPly "12"] 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Be3 a6 7.Qf3 has become popular recently. I find it still a bit strange ...

According to the chess.com DB, 3.e4 is the third most popular reply in the Queen's Gambit Accepted - but why isn't it the most popular by a long shot? Isn't the entire point to remove black's central ...

How to play vs 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 Nxd4? Assuming that we want to recapture, is it better to take the d4 Knight or the e5 Pawn?

When a blindfold expert plays several players simultaneously, there is a tacit assumption that the players will not collude. But suppose that the players are allowed to collude, and their goal is to ...

I am a fairly low skill player and am wanting to improve my game, but I feel as though I need to gain at least a bit more speed in my decision making to make better progress. I am a fairly analytical ...

Capturing a piece or moving a pawn irreversibly changes the state of the game and thus resets the counter for 50 Moves Rule. Since castling and first rook move irreversible changes state of the game ...

I'am looking for openings with white and black against strong junior players, which are mostly tactical beasts but not good at endgame.

If I touch a piece with my forearm by accident, can my opponent call touch-move? If the answer is "no", what if after my opponent calls touch-move, I believe him and move the touch piece before ...

How can I win this match? I am white and black moves now. I need to win the match.

How many openings does a typical (national/international level) tournament player usually know and play? For instance: in a tournament, can I expect that a player will either open 1.d4 or 1.e4 ...

I play chess regularly, about 1600 rated. Sometimes I want to play chess on my phone (Android). The chess app I use, Chess free, is strong enough. However, it does not play regular openings, so when I ...

I am doing tactics 30 minutes a day, practicing end games for about 90 minutes and analyzing 1 GM annotated game a day. I can understand the logic behind why the move is played, but I can't apply it ...

for my A-level computing project I was going to do an investigation into a type of engine design which incorporates Neural Networks that I haven't seen elsewhere; as part of this project I need to ...

What if there's a touch move rule and my horse or bishop is blocking my king and I touch it is that a checkmate if so what is it called

I am relatively new to chess, and wonder, what is a fast (and hopefully easy) way to learn chess board coordinates, so when I am watching a video where the commentator says 'Knight F 6' ,i know to ...

I am a 1100 rated player.In rapid and blitz games I beated 1600 players this proves that my intution is good but at classical matches I can't even handle a 1300 player.I am a positional player as I ...

Given a player with an ELO rating of 1200, and another with an ELO rating of 2100, how would you calculate an appropriate handicap? I know this can vary a lot depending on styles of play. I'm not ...

Q a king is in check can the opponents king take said king if it puts him in check? Boyfriend is having none of and thinks he wins ... surely you can’t put yourself in check even if the opponents ...

Being an Italian, I am following my team at the Batumi Olympiad, and I was disappointed in seeing that GM Godena had just lost to a mere Candidate Master rated 500 ELO lower (Italy - Nepal). Then I ...

My tutor and I are exploring ways of doing lessons over the internet, and to our surprise, there isn't an immediately obvious way to do this on lichess or chess.com. What we were looking for is an ...

In the circumstances of two perfect AI's playing each other, will white have an inherent advantage? Or can black always play for a stalemate by countering every white strategy?

I am trying to program a chess game as a challenge to myself, however, I am unsure if I have all the moves correct to play a legal game (not any advanced moves, that would be a challenge for another ...

I just wondered: can K + 2 nightriders force a mate against bare K? (A nightrider can make an unlimited number of knight moves in any direction - it cannot change direction partway through its move.)

Doesn't it create bias for the country? Disclaimer: I realize that benefits of having more teams from the same country far outweigh possible drawbacks, just trying to reason how possibly "unfair" can ...

From FIDE Laws of Chess: FIDE Laws of Chess cover over-the-board play. So, which rules cover Internet chess play?

My sources of opening theory are mostly focuses on things to do in it, and some ideas about why. What are good sources about things to avoid, and ideas that can't be developed in an opening?

Negi suggests 18.Kh1!N but it seems Black can continue to push his pawns. [FEN ""] [White ""] [Black ""] [Event ""] [Site ""] [Result "*"] [ECO "B33"] [Date "????.??.??"] 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 ...

Is there any database of every position ever played in a recorded game? I don't ask of every possible position in chess, or "solving" chess. Only the positions that were played in a recorded game. ...

Does anyone know of a (free) program which could be used to organize a bughouse chess tournament? Where in each round the partner you have would change. (With the basic idea to put a good and 'less ...

In Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, he describes the key squares for a king in pawn endgames. Was he the first to describe it? Who first came up with this idea?

In chess, there are some dead positions (FIDE Laws of Chess). Arbiter or players will terminate the game OTB, but is it possible to do computer solution for dead position detection? If it is, then how?...

What is the minimum age to play chess in senior category? A senior chess tournament for selection of nationals is happening in our state. I would like to play. What age do I have to be to play in the ...

How is number of threads to use written on Android versions of Stockfish? Whole communication works but somehow I still can't change number of threads. I even have working code for PC version of ...

Who is better in this position? White or black? Hard one!

There is a photo of Reshevsky playing at a very young age (like 8) against many adult players but there were no ratings in those days. I assume that a modern GM who got the title at 12 must have been ...

Why is it necessary for black to defend the e5 pawn after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3? What do you think of 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 a6 3. Nxe5 d6? Now white should move his knight to c4, d3 or f3 and black can develop ...

I was seeing this match on chess.com. [FEN ""] [StartPly "18"] 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 h6 4. O-O d6 5. d3 Bg4 6. c3 a6 7. Nbd2 Nf6 8. Qb3 Qe7 9. Qxb7 Nd8 10. Qb3 Be6 11. Qa4+ Bd7 12. Qc2 g6 13. ...

I have read other posts (e.g. this) with descriptions of the thought process when playing long time controls, but I'm wondering what kind of information a GM processes during games with very short ...