The Indians seem unreal though. They all play infinite chess. Same with Iranians. Keymer lives the good life, going to school, hanging out with Leko talking about chess instead of playing it.

Yeah, I'm obviously not serious. In all likelihood he's going to get roflstomped, but it will be a great learning experience for him.

Here's a silly question that I spent some time thinking about the other day. Let's say you have two equal strength GMs playing a game, but white's first move must be h3. Who is the favorite in this game?

What happens if we change it to two 1600 players?

What happens if we say the first white move must be a3 instead of h3?

Mr. Pimp Lotion has backhanded the world .

I'm not a highly rated player but I'll guess a) draw b) draw c) draw d) draw

Not highly rated either.

a3/h3 can be useful or a weakness. A GM might be able to stir the opening where it is the former. Between two 1600 players it won't matter much I guess.
Either way black should be slightly favored now as that player is making the actual opening move.

Both of these are equivalent to "What if black's h7(a7) pawn started on h6(a6)?"

I prefer to look at it this way, since we are so used to white starting with an advantage in practical play, it's easy to be biased.

I think the pawn on a6 improves black's chances, since it's such a common move in many defenses, and to be given that as a free tempo has to help. Someone once said the Ruy Lopez is so strong black should start with a pawn on a6. But does it swing the advantage to black? I doubt it.

Starting with a pawn on h6 might be worse than having on h7, since many defenses rely on kingside castling, and white may be able to steer into lines where this is a serious weakness.

Hopefully enough has elapsed to make this post without ruining the question.

Master games Database says a3 is very close. Black worst move is e5 and his best move is Nf6.
d5 and g6 are moves that give both side equal chances.
The sample size is not conclusive.

h3 is better for black. Both e5 and d5 are strong replies which give black an advantage and they are by far the most played replies.

On the lichess database with games from every level a3 is slightly better for white and h3 is slightly worse.

So let me get this straight regarding playing as white vs the sicilian defense:

sometimes when you win on the king side, you can lose on the queen side. sometimes when you lose on the king side, you can win on the queen side. sometimes when you lose on both sides, you can actually win the game, and sometimes when you win on both sides, you can actually lose the game.

ok ty gg.

Isn't it great?

Got here over the course of a few days vs the said sicilian. (chess with friends gives 4 or 5 days between moves). I don't like my chances vs good play, but players at my level make some bad moves, so all hope is not lost.

Carlsen's dominance over these two last tournaments is quite insane - he is currently at 13.5 out of 17 (!!!!) for a +26,2 ELO gain and a live ELO of 2871,2.

Like, what?

I feel like other guys are suddenly scared of him again and that makes all the difference for Magnus. He has re-established his aura and is in their head. 2900 incoming this year?

I told a friend yesterday that 2900 is gonna happen.

Magnus AKA Mr. Pimp Lotion !!!!

Didn't this all basically start after the rest day where he read Game Changer?

Stupid question: does anyone like Maurice Ashley as a commentator? I find him insufferable and don't understand (well I do...) why he gets all the mainstream commentary slots.

I like him. And I could ask the same question about Shahade. I find her insufferable.

I think Ashley is underused as reader of engine lines. He could give good insight if St. Louis would just ditch the engine altogether. I mean, everybody can run their own engine at home if they so wish. It runs in a browser nowadays. What's the point of wasting a GM reading engine lines?

Agreed. Maurice seems likeable enough, but it seems like he starts off every other sentence with "The engines are saying..."

It's just so much more interesting to listen to Svidler on Chess24 for example, who never uses any machine assistance, just sharing the real time thought process of a super GM.

Yeah, it makes no sense whatsoever to include engines in broadcasts.

1. Ambitious players have software that can run engines at home (or at least know where to run one in a browser)
2. For casuals who don't know how to do that, it makes no difference whether a strong GM tells them what they're thinking or whether they're reading engine lines. Both are way, way, way beyond their chess understanding anyway.

So all that having an engine in your broadcast really accomplishes is it makes it impossible for ambitious amateurs to follow a live event without engine BUT with strong player commentary. That means that using an engine in your broadcast is really the worst of all possible worlds.

St. Louis have incredible production value.
They have Yasser ****ing Seirawan.
Yet to me their stuff is nigh unwatchable, sadly.

Yeah I'm trying to find the best way to watch what's going on - I catch agadmator for some of the recaps and whenever Yasser or Gustafsson are doing live analysis I try to watch them but otherwise I don't really like anyone. I completely agree about Shahade (the US championship with her was cringey) but she's not nearly as prolific as Maurice.

Maybe I'm just salty.

Gustafsson and Svidler are the nuts for commentary

This feels like a silly question but I'm gonna ask it anyway.

We have a giant chessboard downtown that city staff have started setting up regularly. Unfortunately they don't consistently set it up right. Specifically they consistently have a black square in the bottom right corner, with the kings on the d-file and queens on the e-file (since they *do* apparently know that "the queen goes on her own color").

Given that, as I said, it's a giant chess set, resetting *everything* correctly is rather cumbersome. So I'm thinking I'll just live with it and play some games with the existing setup, if I get the chance.

My question is: does my opening repertoire hold up if I just mirror everything horizontally? Does d4 d5 Nc3 Nf6 Bg5 play like a Ruy Lopez? Or are there other complications I'm not recognizing...?

Everything is the same, just mirrored horizontally as you expected. Only complication is that your brain might not recognize the patterns as efficiently!

Yeah I think everything is basically the same but reversed.

It would tilt me no end though.

Could you label the starting spaces with a letter (R/K/B/K/Q) so that they set up the pieces correctly?

Think of it as good graffiti.