The World Open is starting, I'm not playing this year, and that makes me a sad panda.

how is the sicilian wing gambit so terrible? it seems like a long lost cousin of the benko, but it's terrible while the benko is at least reasonable. I guess it's because in the benko the center is typically closed whereas in the wing gambit it often opens up pretty quickly.

random interesting chess news: Obama to meet with Russian opposition groups as Russia is starting to be spelled Russr. One of these groups includes is the one being led by Kasparov.

Grischuk is doing well at the WSOP and will be shipping the main event soon.

most of the positions give White some play in return for a pawn, it's just that there are one or two specific refutations that make it look really bad.

That would be freaking awesome. He basically ditches chess for poker, then he comes back for a while and ships Linares, all the while looking like it's not really work for him.

Pardubice is getting closer and closer, WHO'S GOING?!?!?!

To all of you U.S chess players who probably don't know what it is - you are missing out

But so are we, as we miss World Open and etc. At least I played in the Miami Open last September, it was supposed to be pretty epic but it really wasn't that big

probably, haven't found anyone to go with yet but I might just book it anyway

OK I booked Pardubice, see you there

Which tournament are you going to play?

Also, have you ever been there? There are a couple of casino's there in case you wanna play some poker, action is pretty juice during the tournament

playing the B tournament. I played once, 2005 I think, certainly before the poker boom.

I hardly ever play live poker any more but might take a look.

I'll probably go for the Vienna open Ajezz mentioned somewhere, just a bit more convenient for me and they have a poker room too Also it's an open so i will probably play at least one IM unless i do terribly, capped at 2200 just doesn't do it for me because i neither have a shot at playing really strong guys nor really at winning that thing.

Anybody know if the small Saitek computers are worth a squat to noob players? I like the idea of having something small I can take to work and use at lunch.

Seems pretty expensive. If you have a pda, I'd probably go with mobile chess software on that. Let me look around and find what I've used.

Yeah this, saitek mephisto used to have a decent range of playing strengths available and certainly built good standalone chess computers, but in today's world this is just too expensive.

Do you have a nintendo ds? There's one mega offbrand chess game on there that I use a 'backup copy' of (I've actually never seen it at retail!) and it's quite strong. If interested, I'll go find the name of it. If you're not too strong, even chessmaster on the DS is okay. It's probably about 1500-1700 USCF at max strength. A major problem with chessmaster on the DS is that its opening book is terrible and it plays very poorly in the opening without a book.

I do have a DS and I suck at chess. I will look into Chessmaster. Thanks.

asdfsdfs why does everyone play 1.e4 c5 2.nf3 e6 3.c3 diedie alapin
edit: it's like "ok let's go for the open sicilian" then 3.c3 alapin teabag on your face (or occasionally 3.d3 which also sucks but still is boring and ghey)

Yeah, while I was playing 2 .. e6 I saw a hell of a lot of 3. c3. I started to wonder if all those 3. Bb5 players decided this was the way to go vs 2 ... e6.

relying on 3. Bb5 definitely gives you a problem when you run into ...e6

Rublevsky is the main proponent of Bb5 at the top level, he plays 3. c3 and 3. c4 here.

lmao @ "teabag on your face"

Yes as the people above me have stated, when people have a Bb5 repertoire they often choose 3. c3 vs the 2.. e6 Sicilian.

Also some people specifically play 3. c3 vs. the 2.. e6 Sicilian while they may just play Open Sicilian vs. the other Sicilian variations. Having already played 2.. e6 limits Black's options in the c3 Sicilian and I guess some people like playing against the resulting variations.

I have no idea about a proper line against the Alapin after e6/c3 stuff. I saw some GM play something in blitz that looked fun so I've just playing that: the basic idea is to just play Nf6 e5 Nd5 and then the the incredibly slow looking d6/Bd7/Bc6 with a quite nice position. It seems like this should be too slow, but the alapin itself is a pretty passive opening from white and I typically get excellent positions with this idea. I actually don't recall ever getting anything short of a good position so I still know zero theory on the alapin. A nice thing is that c3 often ends up doing nothing but getting in the way of white's queenside knight.

And obviously d5 stuff is also fine too, but I think Nf6/etc is much more active and challenging for white to face.

yeah surviving the opening is no problem, but it's like the london system of sicilian. the line you saw was probably 1.e4 c5 2.c3 nf6 3.e5 nd5 4.d4 cxd 5.nf3 e6 6.cxd d6 7.a3 bd7, which is indeed supposed to be nice for black

As a longtime 2.c3 player, I have never had this line wth Bd7-c6 played against me. Imo, it looks like nothing special for Black. It is very slow, it takes away c6 from the knight, and White can win space with b4 (forcing a6) and just develop his pieces to the best squares.

I think Black's best option is to play 2..d5 and then the Bg4 line, because in the resulting isolani position White's pieces are not optimally placed which should be good for Black. Kasparov almost always used this line in his later years which also indicates it might be best.

And c3 should just never get into the way of White's knight because under most circumstances, Black should take on d4 to stop c4-d5 ideas (with tempo) or even dxc5.

I also like that you Sicilian guys hate c3 which makes me love it even more. It has become one of my favourite openings; I almost always get good positions and more importantly, positions I like to play.

the point is that this isn't an option here, we are talking about the move order 1. e4 c5 2. nf3 e6 3. c3

What do you do as black facing 1. Nc3, and what are you hoping for?

a) e5
b) Nf6
c) Nc6
d) d5
e) something else