All Questions

I was looking at an analysis which shows this position ( from Bacrot - McShane 2018). At this point Black just played ...Qa5+, and the only moves that are analyzed for white are Kf2, c3 and Qd2. This ...

People have been discussing about the value of a pair of two bishops. I am wondering if two bishops are of the same colour, are they generally worth less than a pair of bishops of different colours? ...

I tried to represents all the main lines of the Pirc Defense to play at a 2000 ELO level. Am I right with the following tree? What I mean by right is I wonder if I do not miss any popular line or ...

I am having trouble understanding when Black should move c5 in The Advanced Variation of the Caro-Kann. I have posted two games of mine below: In this first game, after the seventh move of White, ...

I have a problem that when I start to play I cannot stop, and I am looking for some good online chess web site that have limited number of rated games per day for, lets say non premium user, or ...

I am confused with the Morozevich variant. I've seen quite a few funny games where they played ...g5, which gives very interesting moves, but I'm surprissed at not having seen any game in which white ...

1r6/5pk1/2q1p1pp/3p4/r2P4/2P4P/PPQ2PP1/R3R1K1 w - - 0 1 White to move. White is 2 passed pawns up, but black is very active. I'm sure objectively white is winning, but how? Black will attack and ...

I tested some tools which allow analysis EPD files but they not work like I want: I can use Arena but it will not annotate back EPD - it create protocol file. I can use SCID vs PC but it will not ...

I'm currently following the rapid game Caruana-Nakamura in the London Chess Classic, and I have a basic question about the opening moves. Why play 7... Nxd5 instead of 7... exd5? Is the idea to trade ...

Many videos on YouTube channel "Kingscrusher" which discuss the play of new neural-net engines like Leela Chess Zero focus considerable attention upon the development of "thorn pawns" which are pawns ...

For example, if a player realises that his opponent has two bishops of the same colour after a certain legal move (and assuming that it is clearly not caused by any pawn promotion), which implies that ...

This game starts with f4 e5 g4 IMO, black has a winning position here. How did it end with a draw?

I was thinking and thought of the following scenario. What is one way to get 16 passes pawns, BUT, on the last move, the 16th pawn becomes past AT THE SAME TIME that checkmate occurs. It may be a bit ...

I want to know what the quickest way to an en passant mate is for either side, after all other possible en passant moves by both sides have been made. This is a very complicated question, so it is ...

I have previously asked how many passed pawns can be gotten. So this time I am asking how many en passant moves can be done overall by both sides .theoretically. I also want to know what is the ...

Background: I wrote and use a custom macro in the NoteTab Pro text editor to convert PGN position analysis to XML. The resulting XML is used on my website to display chess puzzles. I need to check ...

AlphaZero lost 6 games to Stockfish in a 1000-game match from the starting position, at least one of which was with the white pieces: A game A0 lost with white. For some reason, these games haven't ...

I looked at the "Description of the universal chess interface (UCI)" dated April 2006, and did not find a command or option that seemed to address how a GUI might enable MultiPV (I assume that PV ...

Here is the problem : when I have the time, i usually find the right move. Meaning, in a longer time frame games (more than 10min) I'm doing better. I feel like struggling with 5 min. games and I don'...

AlphaZero searches for moves using Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). As I understand MCTS, it takes the root position, goes to a child node, and then plays random moves until one side wins. Since the ...

Installed SCID vs PC. Can this give a count or frequency distribution of the ECO codes of the games ? So far unable to do this. Under the Tools tab there is a selection "Opening Report". This gives a ...

Since time immemorial, some people have suggested that stalemate be declared a loss for the player who is unable to move. This proposal is sometimes called "abolishing the stalemate rule" although I ...

My impression of the word "gambit" is the sacrifice of a pawn or several pawns at the opening stage of a chess game. However, based on the definition on Wikipedia, a gambit (from ancient Italian ...

Is this position a draw? [fen ""] 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. Ng1 Ng8 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Ng1 Ng8 I don't mean to ask the age-old question "is Chess a draw?"; four moves have been played here, returning to the starting ...

Alpha Zero defeated Stockfish after only 9 hours of self-play. On the other hand, Lc0, has been training for several months and while attaining impressive strength (to say the least...) it's still not ...

Am wondering if it is possible for a move to be considered "good" by engines but is rejected by professional human players. One possible reason that I can think of is that the in order for this move ...

I was reading A Bust to the King's Gambit by Bobby Fischer. The game starts with 1 P-K4 P-K4 2 P-KB4 PxP 3 N-KB3 [FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/8/8/4Pp2/5N2/PPPP2PP/RNBQKB1R b KQkq - 0 3"] Bobby ...

Am wondering if there is a definition of a countergambit. My understanding is, a countergambit happens when one side plays a gambit, instead of capturing the pawn, the other side also sacrifices a ...

This is one variation from Bird's Opening: f4 e5 2. e4 exf4 3. Nf3 d6 4. d4 g5 5. h4 g4 [FEN "rnbqkbnr/ppp2p1p/3p4/8/3PPppP/5N2/PPP3P1/RNBQKB1R w KQkq - 0 6"] The most popular move is Ng1 ...

Ok, here's a game that I won. I was playing vs someone on chess.com, and playing as black. My PGN is as follows (with comments from the analysis engine): [fen ""] 1. d4 e5 2. Nf3 {MISTAKE (-0.26) The ...

I recently played a chess game whose link is: https://lichess.org/pCFw1h2w/black#5 After running a computer analysis, I found that in this position: I know that even though Stockfish does not tell ...

I play the Two Knighs Defense as Black vs. 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4, in the spirit of counterattack. What would you suggest I play as Black vs. the Ruy Lopez?

Ok, I'm looking at his game to try to improve my own. I'm "mediocre" at best, but I enjoy a good game of chess. At the end of the 9th move by both players, Kasparov has his queen on Qh6. Now, I'm ...

I think that classic chess and rapid chess are two quite different kinds of sport. The classic chess title was undecided this year 2018. Why not use the armageddon rule, that black wins if tied in ...

By looking at the uci option file of Stockfish 10 I found this line: o["nodestime"] << Option(0, 0, 10000); How exactly does one use nodestime?

I have a PC, an AMD RYZEN 7 2700 with minimal graphic card and 8 GB RAM. It has 8 cores and 16 threads. If a chess engine is programmed well will it be able to calculate to a depth of 125 in 15 ...

A LiChess.org puzzle ends at this position with white to move. Apparently, black has a win here, but running through moves with LiChess's Stockfish, I can't seem to figure out how to end the checks. ...

For example in the first turn there are 20 possible legal moves (16 pawn moves and 4 knights moves). This number increases in the middlegame and then decreases in the Endgame. Are there some ...

I am looking for a Python chess engine package. It must be fully contained in Python, I don't want to download separate files for the engine itself and link them up somehow. All I want it to be able ...

I wonder if the Bishop and Knight that start out on the same color square as the opponent's King, is worth more than it's twin on the other flank. And if that is of significance when making choices ...

Since Python is extremely slow, chess engines are almost never written using it. I've been building a Python engine to avoid this issue (through JIT compilation), and want to compare my engine ...

According to Wikipedia, Timur Gareyev played 48 opponents with a mask before his eyes and sitting on an exercise bike, resulting in 35 wins, 7 draws, and 6 losses. On the other hand, the record for ...

When I ask for the best move for this FEN: 1rbq1rk1/b4p2/p2p3p/3Bp3/P3P3/2P4P/R2Q1PP1/4K2R w -- - 0 30 [FEN "1rbq1rk1/b4p2/p2p3p/3Bp3/P3P3/2P4P/R2Q1PP1/4K2R w - - 0 30"] Stockfish (via Python) ...

I was watching recently the excellent ChessNetwork commentary of the 5th game of the WCC 2018 between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. The end position looked like this and players shook hands ...

I am making modifications to a chess engine. I want to get quick feedback on whether the modified version seems stronger than an unmodified version or not, by fighting the older version multiple ...

I'm looking for an open source engine (doesn't have to be very strong) that can be loaded with python chess uci module and can play at very fast time controls (few seconds plus tens of milliseconds of ...

When I updated my system Arena wouldn't start, saying it needed the Adwaita theme. Now after installing updates when I open Arena in console, Arena doesn't show errors but the window doesn't open.

When and where is the next world championship? Also, when is the candidates? Where can I find the important chess tournaments online?

The objective of chess is to put the opponent's king in a position where it cannot evade capture. Why not go all the way? Short of tremendous blunders of moving into check, chess would be completely ...

I was wondering why Chess isn't played with flat pieces, like Shogi is, or like how Chess itself is represented online (where people mostly play with flat 2d pieces even though most sites also have a ...