I've played 6...Na6 a couple of times. 7. e3 is the best move but does by no means lead to a winning position for White. Most of my online Blitz opponents played 7. g3?? so far (don't ask me why) and lost after Nb4.

I just think white is guaranteed a much better position than he could otherwise expect from 'normal' slavs.

It's kind of funny to me, playing the QGD exchange / Carlsbad structure, that weaker black players will invariably play c6 even when there's no reason at all to do so, and weaker white players will invariably play Qc2 even if there's no reason to do so and the queen would be better placed elsewhere.

People get so used to throwing out the same moves they don't really seem to notice what they're doing with those moves anymore.

lol. just read the Kasparov/Fischer thread after choosing to ignore it for a few days. I can't handle reading so many posts that are written in jumbled english with tons of white space. what a thread.

edit: omg just thread his uFR thread, too hilarious

I ran into hoyasaxa on FICS the other day and recognized him from reading his posts on here. He beat me in a 5 min game. My blitz rating is now 500 points lower than my standard rating, is that normal?

I want to learn K+Q vs K+R. Anyone know of good training material for this?

On ICC there is a bot named KQkr that you can play to practice the winning procedure. You can type 'help' to get the best next move. Not perfect, but it's how I learned K+N+B vs K. Actually, come to think of it that's how I learned K + 2B vs K also - although that one is pretty easy.

what on earth is be3spinning?

Be3 pinning. The b6 knight is then pinned to the a7 rook. The only way to defend the knight is then to play Kc7 and black's position becomes even more cramped.

note to self - if you want to play bughouse on fics, don't offer/accept partnerships of players rated below 1500 or you will go on worst monkey tilt ever after playing a couple games.

It just seems some people can't play a bughouse game without sacrificing on f7. One game went as follows (my partner is white)

1. Nf3 e6 2. Ne5 black drops a pawn on f6 3. Nxf7 Kxf7 4. White drops a bishop on g6+ hxg6. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Standard

Disclaimer: Bughouse is for entertainment purposes only.

What would happen in a 60 60 bughouse game? Serious question. I've never played the game, but know the rules - and have played crazyhouse. But it seems like bughouse is always played at 3 0 or 1 0, with the clock having an intentionally huge influence. I wonder what the game would be like at 60 60.

It would be pretty boring.

in my opinion bughouse with electronical clocks is boring anyways.

it would most likely result in a spot where one player was correct to just sit and let his partner play for a long time. At 3 0 or 1 0, no one is likely to get enough time advantage to be able to stall for more than a few moves. Being up on time is so important that at 60 60 strong players would probably still blitz out the opening moves in .3 of a second each.

lol I had this argument on fics the other day. a few teams were playing 3 0 and I think it's just pointless because as much as 2 0 becomes a mouserace at times (2 0 is now what seems to be the standard, used to be 3 0 ages ago), 3 0 just means an extra two minutes of sitting in comparison to 2 0. i really don't think the quality of the games between 2 0 and 3 0 is that big, which is what others were arguing, as well as it's less fun to flag than it is to mate.

as far as something like 60 60 goes... i would imagine time becomes even less of a factor, not more. getting down 60 seconds in 3 0 or 2 0 compared to being down 60 seconds in 60 60 is way way way way worse. no way to get that time back other than playing quickly. meanwhile the time deficit in 60 60 can be erased within a move or two. seems like it would be more about keeping the same pace on both boards in terms of number of moves.

though what I like so much about bug is that time is such a big factor, and it can be used to such a huge advantage. i think 60 60 reduces said possible advantage.

QFT

...but not if you play both boards.

tou che

bug-simul ftw

Agreed. I miss staring at the clocks trying to figure out who was going to flag first.

Was just playing 1-minute pool on ICC and flagged this WIM in a K+N against K+N+P (we got to that endgame with her having like 3 secs against my 15 and she never offered a draw..). I was pretty sure I will get a win, but the game was announced a draw because black has insufficient mating material. However, I am pretty sure that the rule says that there has to be a possible mate with the material on the board in order for me to get a win here - and the mate is certainly possible, she loses a knight, promotes to a bishop and gets mated in the corner. I am not sweating bout my 1minute pool rating but I just got curious, does ICC follow it's own rules instead of international or uscf ones?

FICS rules this as a draw. ICC was originally based on the same code, it's quite likely that none of the code for the actual rules of the game has changed. Also, it would be very difficult to implement in practice, for a computer to figure out in exactly what positions there is no possibliity of checkmating with legal moves.

Yes, it does. USCF rules would be insane, FIDE rules are a bit crazy to be literal (people would be trying to flag each other in KN vs. KN and stuff).

Basically, 1 minor piece is not enough mating material. 2 are. That's all you need to know.

(Disclosure, I have some sort of relationship with ICC)

i didnt want to just bust into this subforum and make a thread, so i figured id ask the question in here:

i know that the total # of combinations in the game of chess is larger than avogadro's number, which is a ton...

but if the number of total possible combinations is less than infinite, that makes chess a solvable game, correct? and with today's computing power, how come chess is not yet a solved game?