Is it hxg and Qe5? Or Qc3 or something? It's not completely obvious white is ahead...

I'd guess Qe5, not obvious at all to me either

My firebird 1.1 engine took less than one minute to give Qe5 as +1.8 for white, haven't checked the line but it's certainly quicker than me.

So it's an interesting position, but proves nothing with respect to engines and humans.

What's the winning idea after 1.Qe5 Qd5? Black has annoying counterplay against f3. Are we just playing Kh3 at some point after Qg7 (and maybe first capturing g6)?

+1.8 is also way off. Black is dead lost here, though maybe I should rephrase my original point here since I definitely did not realize that while playing.

I don't expect a human to have some 20 move tree of variations in his head with all variations concluding in mate or a decisive edge in material. I think humans of almost any strength can see black has no chances of winning here. White has a million different perpetuals at worst. So then it comes down to draw or white win. Well white is threatening: 1. mate on the dark squares. 2. create passer on in the kingside (Qe5/Qg7+/Qh8+/Qxh7+/etc) 3. to simply mop up the loose light bishop. And Kh3 defends very well against all of black's perpetual threats for at least two tempi.

Can black defend all those threats and somehow manage to eventually pull out the perpetual? Maybe but it seems extremely unlikely. At best black has to defend a million different threats and pray to find a draw. In all reality his position will be incredibly difficult to defend. As it turns out it will be impossible to defend but I don't think that is nearly as relevant as being able to accurately assess the approximate probability of results which clearly leads to this position being +-.

So I simply find it interesting here that the computer wants to assess it as a draw for quite a while, though it is a forced win. And most strong (I don't know, FM+?) humans would almost certainly very quickly assess it as winning for white with some remote chance of black managing a draw. In other words, a position where human intuition trumps computer calculation.

yeah, it gives 1. Qe5 Qd5 2. Qg7 Ke8 3. Kh3! (only move to keep the advantage). Still it's not totally clear and far from a forced win.

@do it right: It's probably all true what you say but my comp sees the same in less time than it took you to explain white's positional advantages. So where does human intuition trump computer calculation? Human intuition here is that white might win in an attack or not, but black's counterplay looks dangerous at first and there are those opposite-coloured bishops on the board.

And +1.8 is not way off, there are lines where black escapes into some lost ending 2 pawns down or so. +1.8 is just the computer's way of evaluing these positions.

Yes, it is a completely forced win.

In any case I suppose the whole point is moot. I took some things for granted which were not and should have initially qualified my statement to applying to a certain minimum level of FM+ or maybe a bit stronger. Most humans is certainly inaccurate!

yeah my intuition just says "White is doing fine, but Black probably has chances to escape with Qd5" and then when I looked for another few minutes I couldn't find anything concrete. Not FM+ though!

Hey guys,

I'm trying to find the (I believe) chessbase.com story about the (I think it was) playchess event where you could play an online chess tournament including the use of your computer and if memory serves me correctly a 1400 or 1500 rated won the tournament with the use of a computer, defeating grandmasters who used computers.

Can anyone send me the link to that story, I can't seem to find it? :-x

not doing your googling but "pal/css freestyle tournament" should be the magic search term

Thanks for not doing my googling.

I love googling! I can't get enough!

Also Thanks for the tourney name. Found it.

Beat #1: I played a few games yesterday morning before enough caffeine hit my bloodstream and was dropping pieces left and right. It was sad. Yes I'm rusty, but there was just no excuse for me to play that poorly!

Beat #2: Yahoo chess crashes and forces me to reset my router, so I can't play on that site at all.



By the way, ChantSpiral is my username on FICS if anyone ever wants to drop in and beat the bejeezus out of me once or twice, or however many times you find it amusing. That would definitely help me with the long process of getting back to where I was a decade ago, and then I can start working on getting better than I used to be.

CONGRATS TO CARLSEEEEEEN!!!!!!

Forgot the worst beat of all so far when it comes to my chess game: While I still remember bits and pieces of games I've played where a series of moves or the order of those moves seemed right, then turned out not to be, I usually can't remember why a particular line or structure didn't succeed. Not such a terrible beat really, when I think about it. I'll just have to play it all out again, and who knows, maybe I'll find something similar along the way that will work. And I'm hearing again the call of the Stonewall and its variations, just about the only one I remember the name of, because I was always trying to make variations of it work, for both white and black, against just about anything. It's just so beautiful when it does turn out right.

But what is with so many people on FICS and Yahoo opening with e4? I thought King's pawn was pretty much an outdated opening. Nevermind, I'm being lazy, I'll go look it up.

Nah brah, e4 is still perfectly playable. im still suprised tho or mildly annoyed by how often i see 1. e4 d5.

lol Carlsen, putting on his robe and wizard hat

[ ] wizard hat

[x] angry look, almost one of revenge

If not 1.e4 or 1.d4 then??

Grob imo

Indeed. Come up against it a lot and it makes me maaaad. Especially because I dont know how to play against it properly. lol.

1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. b4! Qxb4 5. Nb5!! Qa5 6. Lc4!!! c6 7. Bxf7+!!!! wins pretty much by force against the scandinavian.



If you want to thank me for this revelation, PM for my pokerstars account name.

Sure, if they play 6. ... c6?? that's great. Doesn't seem too forced though, Firebird is listing five different alternate sixth moves for black in that line that it evaluates (at low ply, at least) as a black edge.

What do you do, for example, against Nf6 or Nc6?

That's why it always annoys me. Most times I'm okay, but sometimes, I end up all boxed with at least one bishop trapped and doing pawn duty instead of roaming free.

Guess maybe I should learn to cope!

There are lots of levels in his post. For starters, 3...Qd6 is played much more often than 3...Qa5

at the risk of getting double leveled, no way 3.-qd6 is played more often