Gotta be careful there since you're entering the territory that stops many players from ever advancing in chess.

Just because somebody plays an uncommon move doesn't mean it's bad. White could open 1. a4 and at the end of the day the better player is still going to win the game. Openings just don't mean much. It's easy to fall into a trap where you lose quickly in an unfamiliar line and blame it on openings but just about every time it's more likely that the real root of the problem there was tactics. Learning about the ideas in various openings is a great idea, but learning specific lines is mostly just a waste of time and something that could indeed even hurt your improvement as you try to inappropriately apply moves from lines in an ostensibly similar position but one where some nuance makes said move entirely inappropriate.

So there's a balance. You don't want to be lazy in the opening but you also don't want to go crazy trying to 'refute' your opponent's play when he plays a logical but uncommon line. If he plays a bad move then try to find the best move for yourself now, if it's logical then try to find the best move for yourself now!

Besides "just play chess," it would help if you understood why you were making the opening moves you were making (what your pieces are aiming for and what the general themes of your plan is) because then you will be better able to adapt to unfamiliar moves. In other words, you can easily get in trouble if you're just playing opening moves blindly based on rote memorization.

A really good example of thinking around a problem does occur in the French so I'll quote it here:

1e4 e6; 2.d4 d5; 3.e5 c5; 4.Be3!??

Now the point is that "normally" White would play c3 to maintain the pawn centre and Black would continue to try to undermine it either at the d4 point or by a later f6.

Of course there are other deviations such as 4.Nf3 or even 4.f4!? which allow Black to take on d4 but look to gain space on the K side.

But what purpose does 4.Be3 have? Well it still defends the d4 point and there is even an arguement that after 4.....cd 5.Bxd4 Nc6; that White is only getting rid of his bad Bishop for a Knight. In addition we know that some of our counterplay down the Q side can come from Qb6 which is obviously impossible until we get rid of the B on d4.

So the simple answer is - we continue to do what we would try to do normally and see what the difference is. If we intended continuing our development with Ne7 to f5 then we can still do this, although now Nh6 looks better since White would be wasting a tempo taking it. We could still play Qb6 just without taking on d4 first so that comes into consideration.

So without any recourse to any opening books we have already established that Be3 can be met in a variety of ways depending on how we would normally play against the advance variation. It's not so much a way of trying to transpose into a line we know as much as trying to continue with our plan without allowing anything bad to happen to our position.

Hey everybody. I'm doing a wordpress blog (laugh away) where I write articles about my interests. One of them is chess, specifically blitz.

Anyway, I installed a WP plugin made to flip through PGN files, but can't get it to flip perspective to black. Anyone know of a way to embed a PGN into a site where you can flip the board? Bonus points for comments.

Thanks!

edit: current WP plugin is "Embed Chessboard"

BTW, my post was about my love of the Two Knights Defense, Ulvestad Variation. I murder blitz in that...and I'm terrible.

Yea the Ulvestad is a killer against weak opponents

What do you consider the best move for white after the standard first 8 moves?

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 b5 6.Bxb5 Qxd5 7.Bxc6+ Qxc6 8.O-O Bb7


I get 9. f3 a lot, but that just allows black to develop with tempo with 9. ...bc5+. The only other responses I really know are Qf3 and Nf3.

In most cases, I just go o-o-o + king-side pawn storm. So much fun and effective in blitz.

6.Bf1! is the best move for white, then Black follows with 6.-Nd4 (Fritz variation?) or 6.-h6 (which I think is actually the Ulvestad). Probably 6.-Nd4 is objectively better but 6.-h6 is fun on occasion, especially if White doesn't play the best line with 7.Nxf7 Kxf7 8.dxc6 Bc5 9.Be2

Oh yeah that's right! I actually did see that in a youtube video tutorial I watched. Of course...no one does that in a blitz game.

I've got a question about a position if y'all don't mind. I played a game last night (I was playing black) and came to the position in the diagram.



Without much thought, I played 4...Bg4, with my idea being to get the bishop outside the pawn chain before playing e6. Nothing too deep there. But later I was analyzing the game in Chessbase and filtered the database to where both players were 2500+. In this position, 17 played 4...e6 and just 1 played 4...Bg4. What is their idea? Whenever I close in the bishop in these types of positions, I have a hard time activating it.

Well, I started to look at Bb5+ lines (assuming Black intends to block with the knight) and there are some awkward tactics, e.g.:

5.Bb5+ Nbd7 6.h3 Bh5? 7.g4 Bg6 8.g5 Ne4 9.Ne5 Bf5 10.Qf3 Nd6 11.Qxd5 is all forced from move 7.

(5...Nc6 looks correct.)

A completely different idea is Bxf6, which doesn't look ridiculous, intending a later d4.

That's not really an answer to your question, though I'm not sure the c8 bishop is in that much trouble. Isn't the idea of e6 a later e5, anyway?

Yeah, I think that's the general idea. Depending on how the game develops, it can sometimes be tough to get e5 in. Particularly if white plays d4, and Nbd2 (not blocking the b2 bishop), he controls e5 pretty well. But that probably is the idea, just a longer, slower building to e5.

Yeah. Perhaps there's something more to it, though, that Bg4 is just not getting anything done and looking at QID lines would be illuminating...I'm not really well-versed enough to say.

White should probably meet Bg4 with 5.h3 Bh5 6.Bb5+. Maybe being a tempo down in a reversed QID/Nimzo hybrid () is no big deal after 6.-Nc6 7.g4 Bg6 8.Ne5 Qc7 but it would be uncomfortable to play without a good grasp on the position (even as White the position is pretty hard to play with the extra tempo). You could play 4.-a6 with a reversed a3 QID if you want to get the bishop out in a more safe manner

Y'all are right, tactically it does look a little bit tough to play. White scores best with the line that wlrs showed above, and it seems uncomfortable for black.

Thanks to both of y'all for the help, really appreciated.

White's set up is quite strong if Black castles K side too quickly - a friend of mine plays the Bird's which can transpose into similar positions after Ne5 - f4.

Usually a well timed d4 for Black is the antidote.

Why not Bxf3 after h3?

Nothing much wrong with Bxf3 I suppose. White could go Qxf3 + g3 + Bg2 with good outplaying potential, which counts for a good outcome for a nimzo-larsen

Well, unless they are a Two Knights player! I see Fritz alot from both sides.

http://buttersafe.com/2013/03/28/chess/

What abilities separate 2750+ players from those who plateau in the 2650-2700 range? What do they do better?

I expect answers like "a little bit of everything" and "score points," but I'd appreciate a bit of in-depth insight, even if a lot of it is baseless speculation.

The first two moves of an annotated game from the solved-chess era:

1. e4! [Mate in 24,382] e5?? [Mate in 8,482 (white)]

could be tons of things, opening preparation, nerves, ending game precision etc

The usual answer is defensive skill, for instance Kramnik in his route to top chessbase DVD talks about this. He mentions how he was impressed by Karpov just refusing to lose a lost position in huge time trouble and eventually saving the draw vs Vlad himself

Am I missing something easy here? In this game, Alekhine plays 23.c6 to which black responds 23...Bc8. Was there something wrong with 23...Bxc6? I've been looking at 24.Nc7 Qd7 25.Nxe6 fxe6 26.Nd4 Bd5 when I don't see anything immediately crushing for white. I think this looks better for black than what happened in the game, but I'm probably overlooking something. What do y'all think?

Also, was 23.c6 necessary? Why not just 23.Nc7 right away?

Alekhine-Schapiro 1924, 1-0