New answers tagged learning
2
I'll approach it from a more fundamental way.
Steinitz said "One Does Not Simply Walk into Mordor". OK, that was Boromir, but it amounts to the same: One does not simply attack the king. In an equal fight, the defense is bound to win. And note the defense even has 1 king more, and that dude, lest we forget it, has the fighting power of a rook.
...
3
"Opening theory" should be seen as the constant, somewhat-like-scientific search for a way to force an advantage for white in the opening. People interested in theory write opening books and opening articles that don't just repeat what was already published before, but that try to improve on the already known theory -- new tries for an advantage ...
2
At 1400 on chess.com, openings aren't your main issue. Five moves of theory should be fine. Your opponent will throw in a Rb8 when you're attacking his king anyways so you won't be in theory for long. At your level, chess is 99% tactics.
However, the concepts behind said 5 moves are still important to know and understand. Like in the Caro-Kann, Nd7 stops ...
3
A simple way to think about this: castling to the opposite side of your opponent means that your opponent is also to the opposite side of you.
In many positions, you try and keep some compact pawn structure wherever your king is, so both castling kingside means that using the pawns on g, f, or h exposes your king more to risk. However, Kingside vs. Queenside ...
1
Lichess generates puzzles from your games automatically.
17
In chess, "opening theory" or just "theory" means "established opening lines": usually lines that have been studied and judged to lead to more or less equal positions, and appear in books.
It's unfortunate terminology since it matches neither the day-to-day meaning of the word (something that's contrasted to practice) nor the ...
5
At this point, I believe white is completely lost, and it seems that the engine agrees. I think the basic idea is that the material deficit is too much and the black king isn't in any real danger as the bishop on c4 can come into g7 and block any checks/mating ideas. While the white king is in the open with active black pieces around it.
Firstly if you take ...
1
White should resign. There is no way to avoid losing.
(Also, if I understand the board diagram correctly and Black's last move was to move the queen from f2 to f7, then Black missed the move Qb2 which is immediate checkmate.)
(Edit: We actually don't know the second part for sure, as black could have been in check with a rook on f7 for example, but of ...
2
Naturally, the heft of opening theory must pay more attention to lines which generate imbalances. Quiet, balanced openings present less immediate concern (and fewer opportunities for opening theoreticians -- who depend upon asymmetric threats to narrow their path of study).
To illustrate with a simple example, consider the exchange variation of the Ruy Lopez ...
3
Openings with a lot of theory are those with extremely long book lines, especially if there are lots of viable moves at each point in the game. Here's an example of such a line. Ten moves into the game, White plays a subtle move order to provoke a non-obvious pawn move by Black, in order to get a slightly stronger initiative. If you didn't know anything ...
1
I was a very self-serious kid, who really wanted to learn the game. My elementary school had an after-school program where I got to play with my peers and learn from "Older kids" (probably teenagers). I was eager to study and learn and figure out what the pieces meant, but other kids my age were less engaged.
Case in-point, in one of our casual ...
6
It doesn't matter if you spend more time than your opponent in a game. What matters is that you're spending the time effectively. The more complex the position the longer it's going to take to find the right move.
Where are your spending time time? And why? What is it you are thinking about? Are you double-checking, or triple checking your analysis? Or are ...
4
I found this reddit post which has two comments which answer this question.
link
https://tactics.bitcrafter.net/
This is essentially exactly what I was looking for and bonus points in that I think I found their github that has their code which seems shockingly simple
link
I made something like that, both open source
http://chesstacticsgenerator.vitomd.com/
...
7
Lichess has the "learn from your mistakes" feature, which can be used to play your significantly bad moves in a game as a puzzle.
From your profile, select a variant/time control on the left, then click "view the games" in the top right. Click on a game, go to the analysis board, and at the bottom, in the "computer analysis" ...
10
I don't know of a single program that does all that. I do it myself with following steps. I save most of my games in a pgn file. The interesting ones, esp. my losses, are analyzed by Stockfish. The "blunder threshold" is your choice, typically 3 - 5 pawns or more. With Notepad++ text editor I enter the FEN of the position in a pgn file, of course ...
7
How? Yourself :-)
This should not discourage you from getting the help of an engine - afterwards §. Also, to me it seems critical to what end you are analyzing master games. There are many answers to this question, almost as many as masters. You analyze a Morphy game? Great choice, learn how opening sins (especially underdevelopment) are punished mercylessly....
6
You may be confusing the passive (but thoroughly enjoyable) pastime of playing through a game which has already been annotated (whether by a human or an engine) and the active one of doing the hard work of going through a game and trying to work out what is going on, what the best moves are.
There is an excellent YouTube video on the "Hanging Pawns"...
1
I am not a strong enough player to be sure, but if White takes the rook with 26. Qxd2 then Black has 26...Nxf3+ with a triple attack on White's king, queen, and rook.
Hug would have seen this immediately and thus knew the queen was already lost. I'm not sure why Nd3 is the best move but Stockfish agrees.
5
Why play 26. Nd3?
Is White avoiding the loss of tempo after (26. Qxd2 Qd8) or (26. Qxd2
Rad8)?
No, the idea behind Nd3 is to limit the losses. Black would respond to 26. Qxd2 with Nxf3+ forking the king and queen.
[fen "r5k1/1pq2ppb/4p2p/p1N1n3/P3P3/2P2BP1/1B1rQP1P/R3R1K1 w - - 0 1"]
1. Qxd2 (1. Nd3 Rxe2 2. Bxe2 Nxd3 3. Bxd3 {and white has ...
8
Look at the engine line! After your move, black voluntarily exchanges knights and plays ...f6, trapping your dark squared bishop. Now, white is still completely winning since you're up so much material and I don't see a direct way for black to try and win the bishop, but you're allowing black unnecessary ideas.
Instead, the suggested best line to play f4 ...
8
Strategy aside, Nxc4 also simply wins another (center!) pawn, while developing the light squared bishop to a nice square (assisting to continue to attack Black's kingside).
On top of limiting Black's options for counterplay, as the other two answers correctly state.
4
e4 is still winning but not necessary because you are giving away the f4 square to Black's knight, which gives them some counterplay. There is no good reason to give f4 to your opponent.
13
Despite the difference in evaluation, e4 is not really a mistake. White is a rook ahead and will win this game anyway, provided that they don't blunder. Perhaps Nxc4 leads to a victory a few moves faster, almost within the engine's search horizon; that's probably why the engine prefers it over e4.
However, even humans should prefer Nxc4. If you're this far ...
3
GM Alexandra Kosteniuk on a stream today mentioned how her father would encourage her to solve studies and puzzles by visualising the solutions and then say, setting it up on a board and then solving it blindfolded.
So if you're already at a stage where you can look at a puzzle on a screen and work out the solution without moving any pieces, the next step is ...
8
I think I need to first clear up a misconception you have:
Forcing a mate with only one rook is impossible so white has no choice BUT to promote to a queen.
I eventually took his pawn. The best case scenario is a draw for him now.
This is false. A king and rook can, in fact, force checkmate upon a lone king. You should learn the technique ASAP. (It may be ...
11
Very simple. Learn endgames.
If you knew much about endgames then you would know that in rook and pawn endgames your rook belongs behind your passed pawn. Knowing that on move 39 you wouldn't have played the pointless Kd5. Instead you would have played 39...a5 with the intention of following this with 40...a4 41...Ra5 and then just keep pushing the a pawn.
...
1
I'd recommend starting off with traditional puzzle solving. Once you get to whatever your target range is and have a good accuracy rate (80-100%) and you can finish each of the puzzles in 45 seconds or less, move on to puzzle rush. Of course, when you get to 100 - 200 points below your target, and are accurate and quick, you could gradually start moving on ...
1
The best age is probably any time she shows interest. As a child, if I was interested in something, I'd only be interested in it for a month max (if no one had formally introduced me to it) before I moved on. If your daughter shows interest, then feed that interest, otherwise she might move on (and have lost a great opportunity).
5
I can also answer this from AlphaGo's perspective because we know fairly precisely how it works. We can then reason by analogy for the human perspective.
From a bird's eye view AlphaGo has 2 components, a neural network that looks at a snapshot of the board, and a Monte Carlo search step that uses the neural network output to search faster. Both the neural ...
22
I will try to answer this in a different manner, the way I understand this topic.
Do we think on every signal, turn, fork when we drive?
Do we think every time we eat food or walk on the street?
The answer is yes, we do, but that thought process has moved to our reflexes to the extent that our brain does not let us know that it is doing a task (Thankfully!) ...
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