Little kids are the worst. Thankfully, I've only played 2 in my 18 rated OTB tournaments this year (+1-0=1) but one of them was spewing out lines of the Sicilian Schvenigan that I just had no idea existed and I was like "Dude, I was trying to play the Najdorf! I don't even know the Schveningan!" He'll be at least 1800+ by the time the year is up.

And I just played at a tournament where the top rated 8-year old played in the open. How do little kids even get to be rated 1900 at 8 years old?!?! (Brag: I beat the kid in Bughouse).

Anyone with any thoughts on defending against the BDG? It doesn't seem all that scary to me, but I'm sure it's worse if I'm underestimating it.

I looked at it a while ago and 1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3 exf3 5.Nxf3 g6 seemed to be pretty solid.

I think a good way to prepare for such openings is to just take the White side and play a dozen or so games against your computer to see how it defends against the different attacking ideas.

Or if you don't mind chickening out, I'm sure 4...e3 can't be bad for Black.

4...e3 is good for White.

4...Bf5 5. fxe4 Nxe4 6. Qf3 Nxc3 7. bxc3 e6 seems like the best way to chicken out. 5. g4 Bg6 6. g5 Nd5 7. Nxe4 is wacky but very good for Black.

If you want to play a novelty, 4...h6 is equal according to computers (I've played it in blitz).

I would consider transposing to the French with 2...e6, but that's probably not best since it doesn't try to take advantage of the BDG. Also, I just really like playing the French, which is something a 1. d4 player may not be as familiar with.

1. d4 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. f3 Nbd7!?

Idea is simply 5. fxe4 e5!

It's the same position as reached from 1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nbd7 4. f4 e5 5. f4xe5? dxe5. The nice thing about the BDG is that that line, which would normally rely on a blunder, is practically forced. White has no good way to retain the tension. Something like 5. Be3 can even be met with e5 again immediately relieving the tension. Normally it might not be such a good idea to keep trying to relieve the tension but I find basically every single BDG player's rating tend to drop about 300 points when the position isn't a standard throw everything at the kingside one so it's very effective even if on some sort of a metagame level.

Pretty wild game here, just saw this today for the first time. This game is between Jobava and Kamsky, played earlier this year. What an incredibly interesting middlegame and endgame.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1672600

One of my students kept putting her pieces on really terrible squares, so I decided to use a real life analogy to explain it to her:

Me: When you are hanging out with your friends, do you prefer them to be smiling and happy or sad and crying? (after an obvious response I intended to go "well, pieces are your friends so your job is to try to make them happy and make them smile etc."

Her: sad and crying.

hahahaha

hahah awesome.

another set of emo analogies needed

*wonders why YNW never used that kind of psychology with him. It might have improved results*

http://gameknot.com/annotation.pl/sh...n-com?gm=34823
http://gameknot.com/annotation.pl/sh...n-com?gm=34824
Silman's site has gone into suckmode but I managed to find this article elsewhere - I have posted it before and it has served me well for years against the BDG

I did find that article, and it helped greatly!

Too bad opponent didn't end up playing that

I actually tried to go to Silman's site for the first time in a while yesterday and was shocked at how awful it looks. I actually thought it was one of those advertisement websites when you misspell the address. It's awful. He used to have all sorts of fantastic material on there, and now it's nothing. Garbage. But that article you linked is GREAT, that's all I play against the BDG. It works particularly well since I'm a Caro player and c6 is already played. Really shuts down nearly all of white's attacking ideas.

Haha same here, I did a double and a triple take
edit: asked him about it in http://www.chess.com/article/view/th...identical-twin

Interesting reply from him. I understand not wanting to maintain it anymore, but why not re-post material you already have? Maybe it would be too cumbersome to transfer, I don't know. But did you check out his book review section? I might be remembering things incorrectly, but it doesn't seem to have nearly as many reviews as it used to. It seems to have about 25% of the old amount, I'd guess.

As far as him thinking the website looks better, I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But good grief what is wrong with his eyes? For those that aren't familiar with his website, here's the link.

http://www.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/home.asp

It really looks like a junior high HTML project on the solar system.

Okay, so I know that the computer analysis of games by chess.com is not really brilliant, but this analysis here gave me some headache:

1. e4 e6?! ( 1... e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Bd6 5. d3 O-O 6. Be3 a6 7. Bxc6 dxc6 8. Nc3 )
(0.64) INACCURACY - Perhaps better was 1... e5

So it seems the French is a mistake. That's sad, I was always very fond of it, but in my heart I suspected it might be dubious; so now I know for sure.

The big surprise is - of course - that the Berlin seems to be best because after the line given by the analysis (where undoubtely only the best moves are played) the verdict is "Black has a slight advantage". I guess this line calls the whole 1. e4 move into question.

I think the only part it got wrong there was giving e6?! instead of ??.

Last round of the British Chess Champs today! GM Stephen Gordon in front with GM Gawain Jones 1/2 a point behind. Live games link and commentary by IM Andrew Martin, starting in a few hours. http://britishchesschampionships.co.uk/live-games/

1. Nf3 ... ↘↘↘ 2. Nc3 ... ↘↘↘ 0-1

How I feel when I'm coaching:



How I feel when I am playing a game myself:

have taken a hiatus from the game but want to get back into it -- just normal, no wild variants. what's the best online server that provides the most service, like webcasts/tutorials/lesson services/simuls/titled player pool these days? still ICC or something else? price doesn't really matter, ICC is as expensive as it would get I imagine

g-bebe, with the points you mentioned I'd say ICC

Anyone enjoy and understand endgames? I just played this one in a 5+2 game online. The computer thinks it's equal (pretty much dead equal), but I think black might have winning chances by being able to win the white c-pawn. It's pretty easy to blockade at the least, but I don't know if that should be enough. I've found that sometimes I'm way off in my assessments in such cases, which is why I'm asking here. Here is the position after 29. Bxd6:



Here are the moves we actually played from there, but they are clearly not optimal (I'm blaming the clock for most of that): 29...Ne6 30. c5 Rc8 31. Rc1 Nd4 32. Rc4 Nc6 33. Ke2 Kf7 34. g3 Ke6 35. Ke3 Kd5 36. Rc1 Na5 37. Rd1+ Kc6 38. Be7 Nc4+ 39. Ke2 h6 40. Rc1 Ne5 41. Rd1 Nd3 42. Rd2 Nxc5 43. Rc2 Kd5 44. h4 Rc7 45. Bf6 gxh4 46. Bxh4 Ne6 47. Bf6 Rxc2+ 48. Ke3 Rxa2 49. Be7 Ng5 50. Bf6 a5 51. Kf4 Rxf2+ 52. Ke3 Rf3+ 53. Ke2 Rxg3 54. Bh8 f4 55. Bg7 a4 56. Bxh6 a3 0-1