Actually yes, 5. ... Na5 is the preferred move here. 5. .... Nxd5? is the second most common response, but it's inferior because if white plays 6. d4! then his position is just super strong and black's in a world of trouble. Also available to white is the "Fried Liver Attack" of 6. Nxf7!? Kxf7 7. Qf3+ Kd6 8. Nc3 which leads to awesome crazy games and is super fun to analyze, but shouldn't really be played because it requires both players to voluntarily play a weak move to get there.

The main line continuation would be 5. ... Na5 6. Bb5+ c6 7. dxc6 bxc6 8. Be2, and black has a development advantage and nice piece activity as compensation for the sacrificed pawn. Don't bother trying to memorize that yet (or the countless branching of playable alternate moves during that sequence, or the many options that follow). It is the main line though. I play the two-knights defense as my primary defense against 1. e4/3. Bc4 when I have black, so I'm pretty familiar with it. It's a very theory-heavy opening though (which is to say that it's almost impossible to play well purely on principle - rather it requires lots of memorization of specific lines).

You should stop thinking about playing moves like ...f6. That pawn is very important for your king safety, and moving it is just asking for trouble. Sure, there are many times where it's correct to play ...f6, but if you are considering it as a move, you're probably better off playing whatever other move you are considering instead.

Don't be so angry at yourself, Nxd5 is definitely not stupid.

You don't like ...Na5 since it moves the knight again, but you can't be too rigid with that rule. The knight is being attacked, so you have to do something to not lose the material as material is actually very important. You are certainly justified in moving a piece again to save material.

Plus, are you really losing time with 5...Na5? White then has to move the bishop since you are attacking it, so he's moving the piece again too.

Here is a lucky Resignation win over a guy my superior. He had me in a really bad spot but was unable to capitalize.

3. f6. No idea how to respond if he pushes his d-pawn forward. I'm a lunkhead.

4. Nge7. Trying to protect d5. Though I clog my DSB. DSB doesn't really have an active diagonal anyway.

5. Nb4. He's brought his LSB out to protect d5 so I figure I'll move out of the way and also add protection. I end up in a world of pain soon and he tells me 5.Nb4 was "a really bad move".

8. exd6, en passant. Ugg. After he played this I typed "nice." Then sat there for a couple minutes kicking myself.

10.Ng5. I groan here and sit for a couple minutes and tell him "I'm ****ed." He says he'll give me a rematch. I literally have no idea where I can go from here. Prediction: Pain. (For me).

The next several moves are me jostling my King around, trying to figure out the least-terrible square for my pieces, and trying to not get major pieces forked in the arse.

16.Bxe6. I hate to trade here, but I can't have this Knight forking me left and right so I eradicate him from his galloping life. This also gets his LSB away from my Knight for the moment and leaves it on a pretty inactive square.

17. Na6. I struggled here to know if I should be more aggressive with some other piece or try to save my Knight. Ultimately I decide to save my Knight.

18. Be3 appears super pointless waste of tempo for him. Good for me. Let's hope he keeps being inefficient.

18. Rhe8. Not sure what to do here but I figure if I can move my Queen to the side of his Bishop I can discover an attack on it. He retreats to a dormant square. Hey, more good for me. At this point I feel like I'm not totally dead anymore. I should note that my clock was down in the 3 minute mark already as I sat a long time on some moves. He was at like 8 minutes but at this point my moves started occurring quicker than his.

19. Qh4. At this point I figure let's trade Queens. Not sure if this is good for me or not but I think my Knight ends up on a decent square when it's done. It can possibly get to f3 and fork his King and Rook, it can move to f5 and threaten his Bishop, etc. So I play this. I'm shocked by the fact that he retreats his Queen here and basically buries it - though he takes decent control of b5 square.

20. I sit here for a while not wanting to mess this up and my first inclination is to play Ref8 and see what I can do offensively. Then the ah-ha moment, the simple, the beautiful... e4.

21. a4. A blunder of epic proportions. What the hell is this? How did he not look at my pawn push and have sirens go off and think about what was up my sleeve? I respond, of course, with Qxh2+ and he Resigns. Wouldn't even give me the satisfaction of getting checkmate after I bounced back. lol.

Anyway, got lucky. Played bad, especially in the beginning. Players at this level don't typically miss this like he did. Especially with such a wasteful a4 move there at the end.

I'm officially on board with the "Please, never play f6 in the opening again" campaign. If you want to defend the e-pawn with a pawn, please try d6 instead. There's a lot of openings where d6 is a perfectly reasonable (though usually somewhat passive) move. There's almost none where f6 is a good idea (unless you're already 100% sure you'll be castling queenside - or better yet you've already done so - and even then if you do push the f-pawn f5 will probably be better most of the time).

If you want to start spamming d6 for a little while I won't even complain about how it blocks in a bishop; just please stop playing f6

I agree f6 is simply asking for trouble, but why shouldn't A-Rod just play exd4 instead of d6 or f6? I don\t know anything about the scotch, and was getting killed, but have found that after Nxd4 Bc5 always gives me a playable game. It usually continues with Nxc6 dxc6 and then either he trades queens or I trade queens and I like it a lot more when I am the one who trades.

I know nothing about this opening and have only ever played it in lightning games or blitz games as the black side though so take all of the above with a grain of salt.

I don't think anyone is saying to always protect the e pawn with d3/d6 instead of doing anything else. Just that if he's going to protect the e pawn with a neighboring pawn, use the d pawn instead of the f pawn. Nobody is saying trading off the pawn isn't going to be the better option sometimes, or protecting it with another piece, or pushing it forward, etc. This is strictly an anti-f3 / anti-f6 movement.

I can get behind that movement... no more f3 / f6 shenanigans... You will gain rating points by not moving the f pawn too early for sure.

Yep, if ur guna move the f-pawn early, make it f4or f5

I read everyone's posts and they're very helpful. These 2 comments I do want to touch on for sure, though.

WRT move 16. In general I struggle with which Rook to move when I have options. My thought level leaves me wanting to keep a rook in front of my King but maybe it doesn't matter.

WRT move 17. I love this post (and others noticed it too). This is the kind of stuff I can't "see" just yet. When I play these games I'm looking for an edge and it's hard to imagine there are people rated 1600, 2000, 2800 in the world. I sit there and think where are they finding so many edges? But then you point this maneuver out and it's a very "a-ha" moment for me. This helps because it gives me hope that if I get better at tactical recognition, I can get better at chess. I had a decent idea in mind to discover an attack on his unprotected Queen but then I did Phase II wrong. That is a gigantic edge that I missed entirely. I could have had his Bishop for free, which is pretty incredible. I will look forward to looking for these types of instances in future games. (And trying to avoid them on the defensive side.)

As far as which rook to move, try to imagine which two files you would want the rooks on in the future (include both rooks). Which two files would make your rooks most active.

In the position above, you could conceivably answer e and f files, but if you give that answer, you must have some idea involving pushing your pawn. There is no natural lever (pawn break) involving the pawn, so it is doubtful that a plan involving your f pawn would make sense. To me, the d and e files would make more sense. If you choose the d and e files, then it would make more sense to move the f rook to the e file so that you can move the a rook to the d file.

Gorgonian's response is spot-on.

If you aren't already investing 15+ minutes a day in tactical exercises, you should definitely start.

Tactical acumen has a few basic building blocks: (1) motif recognition; (2) calculation speed/accuracy and the ability to visualize sequences of moves; (3) heuristics for move finding and board-state evaluation.

(Lots of practice will train all three areas.)

Let's turn our attention to those blocks' relevance to move 17 of ChessKing9577–chazchaz.

#1: Your recognition of the possible discovered attack.

#2: The particular line you spotted wasn't calculationally demanding, but you correctly identified that it would win you a pawn.

#3: This was the leak. The first heuristic I'd use is a "check/capture/threat search" (in that order). We'd start with our opponent first, but let's just skip to our own CCTs. Qxg7+ punts the queen for nothing. So does Qxc4. Bxc4 wins at least a pawn, so we'd keep that move in mind. On to threats now. Mental highlights should have flickered on around a few key squares/files:



These are unprotected or potentially vulnerable once-protected squares, and of course, our pretty little discovery. With g7 I'd use what I like to call my "wishful thinking" heuristic--I wish my rook were on g3. But it can't get there quickly and moves like Bg6 and g7-g6 destroy any hope of an attack there, so we can quickly discard that. Qc3, Qd2, and a4 don't turn up anything promising. Rc1 loses a piece. But what about our discovery, Be1 or Be3, attacking both the queen and the undefended bishop?

Note that both moves require yet another CCT search; 17. Be3 Qxe1 might have been hard to spot otherwise.

If that seems complicated, (1) it kind of is, but it'll become second nature after enough practice; (2) all of this (on this particular move) can be done in ~45 seconds or less--visualization can be much faster than verbalization; (3) you don't have to look for every single check, capture, and threat on every single move, and in a 15+10 you won't have time to. If time is an issue, you should direct your attention to recent changes in the board state, meaning search for new checks, captures, and threats (i.e., ones made possible in the last ~2 moves or so).

Here's another example:



Quick board-state check: White's last move left d1, f3, and c4 unprotected. He has a weak back rank, and our knight can hop to f3 and threaten both the queen and squares close to the king.

...Rd1+ probably jumps out at us first. The reply 2. Kg2 is practically forced. (Forcing moves are typically deserving of at least brief appraisal.) The follow-up 2...Qb7+ forces 3. Nd5, after which we can threaten mate with 3...Qf7, but then after 4. Nf4 we're just repeating ourselves. The follow-up 2...Qb7+ forces 3. Nd5, after which we can threaten mate with 3...Qf7, but then after 4. Nf4 we're just repeating ourselves.

What about the other check, 2...Rg1+? It's a stupid-looking move, but this is a CCT search after all. 3. Kxg1 is forced, and then, aha, we have 3...Nf3+ forking the king/queen. After the king moves and we take the queen, White doesn't have any sneaky saving grace CCTs, so woo-hoo.

We could stop there, but let's use our "wishful thinking" heuristic. I wish my knight was on f3 and my queen could somehow attack h2. But oh well, this doesn't seem feasible, and mate doesn't seem possible, so let's swap our rook for a queen.

Players much stronger than you are missing this one, so even at the 1800+ level, tactical edges are there to be found:

Just played a couple games against some people in the 1100s. First game was a quick loss in 22 moves. The second match I lost due to endgame stupidity. I now realize what my huge mistake was. I pulled out the chess board and set up the pieces from move 47 and found a win, no matter what his moves were. That's endgame stupidity that I likely don't let happen again because I'll remember.

From move 47 I should have played...

47.Kb3 followed by Kb2, then push my c-pawn forward.

Even if he pushes his G-pawn forward, he won't get Queened before me, and he cannot capture my Queen upon queening b/c my King would be protecting. From there it's an easy win even for me. Sigh. Never beat an 1100 yet. Can't believe I couldn't even draw this one. I offered him a draw when we got into move 40-something, but then once he played 45.Kd4 I thought I had the edge and was clearly going to win. I was surprised he was chasing my pawns with my King over there, instead of capturing my f-pawn then pushing his g-pawn forward.

Sigh. Experience. I've got more tonight than I did before tonight. :/

If he played 34.Kh3 accidentally, it's an easy win for me, as I capture his Rook for nothing. I didn't like trading Rooks here and turning it into a pawn war but I didn't know what else to do at that point and his King was buried at least.

When you're down a pawn, King and pawn endings are almost always lost - here your opponent horribly misplayed it, but with correct play the position was hopeless for you. Keeping rooks on usually gives the best chance of getting away with a draw. On move 35 you could have played Rb5 to start attacking his pawns. If he plays b4, you can reply with a5 or c5.

You might have just read Rei Ayanami's post and thought it was too complicated for you or that you did not understand a lot of the content. Let me assure you, that post is a gold mine. If you don't understand it or have time to tackle it right now, clip it somehow and save it for later. You won't find many more valuable posts in this thread or any other.

Rei's post is good. I don't always do a hardfast cct check so I need to be more proactive about that.

One thing that stands out in that post to me is the use of "glowy" highlights to emphasize loose pieces and important ideas. One of my teachers taught me to see unprotected pieces on the board as "glowing." Of course, they don't really glow, but the idea is to make them jump out at your eye. I took his idea to heart and I did tons of training exercises where you just click on unprotected pieces as quickly as you can. As I was doing them, I thought of them as literally glowing in my mind's eye. Now, when I look at a position or play a game, I try to see them automatically as glowing. It helps so much in looking for tactics.

I like it so much that I use it with not only my chess students, but I teach my music students to see notes that are affected by a key signature as "glowing" when they are first learning about key signatures. They like it because I tell them to use their superhero vision.

I'm officially the dumbest human you'll meet this month.

This was a blitz game against a "scrub". Play these once in a while to try to be quicker on my feet. I'm a god damn mouthbreather.

Move 12 is massive stupidity and it gets worse from there. A drunk monkey could have closed this game out like 20 times, yet my last 30 moves each add -3.3% win probability.

Well obviously that was horrible all around but it shows that it's still a challenge for you to find decent moves in a 10 minute game. So keep playing them and get better. Two points beyond the obvious blunders. 1: En passant capture on move 3. The guy probably would have been baffled. 2: Against a player at this level I don't think you should have resigned when you did. It's not even mate in 1 and you have material if he somehow neglects to keep up the checks, so give him a chance to make the last blunder.

My advice would be different: don't play blitz. You don't build up the mental habits by which you see good moves quickly by bad blitz games.

Several people have advised that you spent some time with tactics problems. I would recommend chesstempo.com, since it's free if all you want is basic tactics training. (Chess.com charges for full access to their tactics trainer.)

(insert joke about needing to take the next 162 games off here)

Yeah I can only do 3 tactics per day on chess.com. I'll check out Chesstempo if it means I can practice more.

That works here and I'd make the same joke if I thought of it. This game was my arm slap while running down the first base line. "Im out!? How the **** am I out?! How did this happen!?"

Been on a run of really bad play lately. I treat my 15/10 as my "for real" matches and have not played much lately. Played several blitz matches to try to get me thinking quicker and seeing the obvious at a faster pace. It's actually helped make me realize how bad I've been playing defensively, because I do much worse in the Blitz games and get forked and pinned much more often.

Anyway I played a couple 15/10 matches today and got 2 wins. This was over an 1131 as a 950, and is my new best win by almost 100 points. I needed this pick me up.

The opening is atypical for what I have seen, but I push my pawns forward pretty far and have my Queen out. Lately I've gotten in so much trouble pulling my Queen out to recapture that my policy is becoming "stop playing for the Queen recapture - it sucks" and if so, pulling her allllll the way back. But she is not threatened after 5 moves at all. So I choose to develop instead of retreat.

Next few moves I'm developing and protecting e5 pawn.

9. Ng5. He obviously wants to move his Knight and discover an attack on my Queen. I figure I'll see if I can get him to fall for the cheapo checkmate before moving the Queen. Doesn't work.

10. Nb5. I'm obviously hoping to fork his Rook and King.

11. Bc4. I'm trying to send another troop to attack the f7 square. Nd6 may have been better. I didn't see that during the match. He defends nicely by playing Nh6.

12. 0-0. I want to castle and he's not doing much offensively so I figure it's a good time. 0-0-0 may have been better, to get a Rook on the active Queen file.

12. Nxe5. Sigh. This annoyed me. With one move he eliminated a good pawn that was in his way and also is now threatening both my Bishop and Queen.

13. Sat here a long time then settled on Qd6. Threatening Qxb8+

15. Bxe5. I wasn't sure about this trade but I thought his Bishop was less dangerous to me than his Knight so I traded.

18. Nd5+. I can move my bishop but let's see if I can find an in-between move (hint: It backfires). Need to stop getting cute here. King can get way too close to the Knights and I end up with 2 pieces threatened. Next several moves is a bunch of "hey let's see what happens..."

22. Rad1. Sigh. Figured my Bishop was dead anyway. I get a Rook onto an active file and protect my Knight. I'm a donk.

24. Bf6. A big mistake by him, up material. I'm forced to move my Knight and see the easy fork and capture his Bishop for free. Would have been a good move by him had I not had backup.

After move 27, we're somewhat even-ish, though his pawns are active and mine are not. My king has no fire exit which is bad, but my Rooks are more active than his.

29. Rxb2. I was a bit surprised he didn't put me in check with his Knight and get him out of the fire. Though it may be better to use his Knight as a blocker here to keep me from getting to the 6th rank.

30. c3 seems GOAT

The checkmate from there is easy. I was surprised he didn't play Ka5 at the end. If he does I capture his Rook probably then am up material and we probably turn it into a pawn race. Haven't looked at it though. I told him in chat I thought he'd play Ka5 and he said "I blundered".

More on Black's opening. You overextend yourself with those pawn advances.

Set up a good engine/interface (Arena + Houdini) if you haven't already and go through the game from moves eight through fifteen or so. I was planning to comment on some of the tactical opportunities, but it's hectic out there, so I'd just be parroting what an engine would spit out (and less accurately). 8. Bf4 is too slow; at that point, the e5 pawn is already well guarded. 8. Bc4 and then either 9. Nb5 or 9. Ne4, threatening all sorts of knight intrusions as well as Bc1-Bg5, should lead to a quicker win.

4.d5 hung a pawn to Nxe5

Instead of 8.Bf4, 8.Nb5 looks completely crushing. Threatening mate with Nd6+ and Qxf7. On 8...Nh6 you have 9.Bxh6 and he can't recapture or he gets mated again. On 8...Qe7 9.Nc7+. On 8...Bf8 9.Bc4 and he has the same problems trying to defend f7.

Yeah I see all that now. I didn't during the game. I just knew my Knight was on a good safe square so I thought I'd keep developing while he was buried. I've played a few games lately where I think I'm in a good offensive spot and I launch an attack too soon then realize I don't have enough manpower.

I do have d5 protected, but he's got 2 pawns he can push forward and launch an attack. One of my defenders is the Queen so I'm not thrilled about that. That's why I sent the Bishop. And F4 looked like a safe square for a while anyway.