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"PhishMaster's Complete Guide To Improvement": What to study, and how.
Every player has times where they "plateau", and have trouble moving on, but they usually get past it eventually if they are continuing to study. Sometimes, it is a matter of patience.
Here is a set of comprehensive answers to questions I previously gave in various chunks, that are now ...
27
How could you cheat? This is what the Lichess terms of service say about it:
Cheating. We define this as using any external assistance to
strengthen your knowledge and, or, calculation ability to gain an
unfair advantage over your opponent. Some examples would include
computer engine assistance, opening books (except for correspondence
games), ...
25
Like I find it easier to beat a 1900 player on lichess than a 1800 on chesscom which is insane!
Why is that insane? According to one site, an 1800 blitz rating on chess.com is about equivalent to a 1915 rating on lichess (based on people who answered their survey and have ratings on both sites.) So, your experience of the 1900 lichess player being easier to ...
23
It's really hard to tell what a brilliancy is. For example, you might try to say that a brilliancy is a move that's much better than any other move on the board. Well, if you offer me a queen exchange and I play queen takes queen, you taking back my queen is probably a much better move than any alternative, but it's definitely not a brilliancy. So maybe a ...
20
Here's why computer analysis (on any platform) can not find brilliant moves.
They don't exist.
Now, I recognize that this seems very counter-intuitive, but bear with me. This has to do with the difference between how we (intuitively) view a chess game and how a computer (correctly) views a chess game.
When we look at a chess position, we subconsciously ...
17
Elo does not signify how strong of a player someone is.
Elo signifies how strong a player is in comparison to some community.
Assigning a numeric score to rank how strong someone is in chess would be very difficult to do. The way Elo works (and even the way it is designed) is simply to keep track of players in some group and make predictions about which ...
15
You can't. You can disable takebacks though. If you don't play games long enough with enough time to read what is being asked, perhaps you should accept mouseslips as part of the game.
14
You are being compared to perfection
Your every move is being evaluated by a chess engine with super-human playing-strength. The default is to compare your performance to its own super-human performance. Since the engine always makes the move it itself has identified as the highest-valued, perforce it always makes the best move by definition. Hence you can ...
14
[FEN "r4rk1/2p1qppp/1p3n2/p7/2B4B/4P3/PPQN1Pbb/2KRR3 w - - 0 1"]
1. f3 {traps the bishop} Rad8 2. Re2 Bxf3 (2...Bd6 Rxg2 Kh8 Rh1 {the Black king is not safe at all}) 3. Bxf6 Qxf6 (3...gxf6 Rxh2 {checkmate on h7 will follow}) 4. Rxh2 {threatening mate on h7} h6
5. Rf1 {the bishop is now pinned against the queen and will be won shortly} b5 6. Be2
...
12
I wouldn't say it was a "sacrifice", it was more like an exchange of bishops.
My lichess engine was actually giving me ...Bd6 as the first move.
I don't understand why it wants me to move my bishop to b4 in the first place
Me neither. I doubt anyone here will have an idea. Stockfish doesn't tell us why. If I have to make a guess, I would say the ...
12
Lichess has an API which can also be used to download games. For example:
https://lichess.org/api/games/user/{username}?max=3&color=white
This will download 3 most recent games played by {username} with the white pieces.
You can find the docs for this operation (and others) here:
https://lichess.org/api#operation/apiGamesUser
The introduction page lists ...
11
Leela works by performing an exceptionally sophisticated positional evaluation at a relatively shallow search depth, whereas most chess engines work by performing a simple evaluation at as deep a search as possible. In theory this should produce a more positional style of play, and it does seem to be an effective strategy versus today's best conventional ...
11
I'd like to start with this comment of yours:
"I fear that without this abusive online playing my abilities OTB will be damaged."
I know where you are coming from, because I've been there, too. I used to be ridiculously addicted to chess - and I wasn't even very good lol. Now it's a hobby, which is much more healthy.
I also know that fear you ...
11
Average centipawn loss is the difference of your move to the best computer move averaged over all moves.
Inaccuracies/Mistakes/blunders as defined per lichess are moves that are at least 0.5=50 centipawns / 1=100 centipawns / 3=300 centipawns worse than the suggested computer move.
This rule is not strictly enforced in situations where you have a clear ...
10
How do you define realistic for chess ratings? Actually, they are all realistic. Ratings should be considered inside their own population because your rating in server X is your performance relative to other players in the same server. As it depends the population you shouldn't compare one rating to another rating in another server. But if you really want to ...
10
If I understand correctly your x axis is the moves. Your script implied Anand and Prag were blundering every time they make a move,
Clearly you have a bug in your script. Stockfish engine always give you a score relative to the player making the move, NOT white. You need to multiply the score by minus one if it’s Black to move.
Please do this and you will ...
10
The king does not cross b1 (only the rook does). It also does not end up standing on b1 following the castling. Hence, the quoted rule is not violated.
10
Unless you explicitly hard-code these endgames, or provide the computer with endgame tablebases, they will apply what they've always done throughout the game: search lines and return the static eval (which is basically the evaluation function of the engine, evaluated on the final position). The static eval isn't smart enough to realize that this game is a ...
10
Once white has put pawns on the central white squares of d3, c4 and e4 his white squared bishop becomes very bad, because its mobility is drastically reduced, and his dark squared bishop becomes essential for protecting the dark squares that have become weak thanks to the pawn moves.
That means that 7.Bd2 is a blunder because it allows black to exchange the ...
9
First of all, lichess rarely bans players. What they usually do is flag their profile (usually for using chess computer assistance), remove their rating, and prevent them from p laying in tournaments and/or rating games. This is not a full ban.
To answer your question:
Lichess flags players for a variety of reasons, but (as mentioned above) they usually ...
9
It means how many half moves ahead stockfish looked from the current position. It doesn't mean it looked at all the moves possible to that extent thought, it trims what it analises, otherwise it would be unable to reach such depths, this means a mate in 10 for example may only be found when stockfish searches in greater depths. In general, greater depths ...
9
In a chess there's a 3-fold repetition rule, if the same position appears 3 times, a player can call a draw. Your opponent allowed a 3-fold repetition, hence, the game was drawn.
3k4/8/p1PK2p1/1p4P1/1P6/P7/8/8 w - - 11 57
Edit: clarifying in light of comments:
Note that the draw does not happen until claimed by a player, and since you didn't claim it, ...
9
There is a lot more to this, and this is really not a great tactics problem as much as it is a continuing the attack problem. The difference is that with a tactic problem, you can see the result all the way to the end. Other positions, you have just a feel for it, and you know that you are probably winning, but you have to play what you can calculate, you ...
8
No. After ...Bc8??, Ra8+ checks win for white.
8
I'm going to assume you meant ...Qc7 instead of ...Qc6, since the latter move blunders the queen.
After 1...gxf6 2.Qg4+, Black has three moves:
1) 2...Kf8 loses the queen to 3.Nd7+.
2) 2...Kh7 leads to mate after 3.Bd3+ f5 4.Bxf5+ exf5 5.Qxf5+ Kh8 (5...Kg7 6.Qxf7+
Kh8 7.Ng6#) 6.Qf6+ Kg8 7.Qxf7+ Kh8 8.Ng6#.
3) 2...Kh8 is Black's best move. After 3.Nxf7+ ...
8
You are quite right Nxe4 makes no sense. However Nxd5 does because then Qxd8 ends up losing 4 pieces for a queen:
[fen "1r1q1rk1/5pbp/3pbnp1/1p1Np1B1/1p1nP3/P1N2P2/2P1B1PP/R2Q1RK1 b - - 0 1"]
1...Nxd5 2. Bxd8 Nxc3 3. Qd2 Ncxe2+ 4. Kh1 Rfxd8
However if white doesn't take the queen and instead plays the next most obvious move, taking the knight ...
7
Lichess is definitely very good at avoiding false positivies and rectifying those false positives when they do occur.
Even though I don't have access to moderator tools on lichess, one can spot cheaters fairly easily. They usually have the following characteristics:
A "flat" time graph where all of their moves took about the same length of time - even ...
7
In case of 16.hxg3, Black plays 16...Qxg3+ when White has only two legal moves:
17.Kh1 Rf6 followed by 18...Rh6 is a quick checkmate.
17.Qg2 Qxe3+ and after the check is parried Black can already take back his piece with 18...Qxd3 (with already three extra pawns as a reward), or continue the attack with 18...Rf6. He's completely winning in both cases.
This ...
6
My Lichess blitz rating is very close to my FIDE classical rating. But is that correct?
The FIDE rating is based on slow (six hour), over the board games, in my case usually in team matches, one per match weekend, where I make sure I am well rested and then try to play to the best of my abilities. For instance, if I suspect a trade to a better endgame is ...
6
TL;DR: Unless your move was marked as "Mistake" or "Blunder" with the significant material loss, you should not worry much about that.
I don't mean you have to ignore everything that computer says, but there are different ways to play chess, and your way may be not as bad as computer thinks. Here are a few points you might want to keep in mind.
The ...
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