OK, so I suck at making diagrams.

you also forgot to take off the g1 knight

In the most recent leg of the Chinese Chess League, Wei Yi scored 3/4, losing to Ding Liren (2707), but defeating players rated 2494, 2482, and 2291. His last published rating was 2580, and by my calculations these four games should bring his liverating up to ~2586.

As far as I know, the youngest player to ever have a published rating over 2600 was Wesley So, in the rating list that came out one month prior to his fifteenth birthday. Wei Yi doesn't turn 15 for nine more months, so he's got seven months to pick up 14 more rating points and break that record (unless there is someone outside of my data set who did it younger than Wesley).

There it is. It's not the worst of Black systems at all (especially the 7.-Qf6 line) so you can't expect an edge if you play sloppily. Do some homework, learn where to put your pieces as White, enjoy your advantage.

I was kind of hoping someone would do all that work for me and then pass it on in like one or two sentences. :/

Experts vs the sicilian had some good and simple lines, get a hold of those

a) This is busted for black, right?

b) After ... Kf7, what's white's best move?

Zugswang, then pass pawn imo

a) Yes

b) I would start with 1.b4, locking the queenside. Then 1...Ng7 looks forced. 2.Bxg7 Kxg7 3.h4 Kf7 4.h5 gxh5 5.Kxh5 and the black f-pawn will fall soon.

Not that it really matters because everything is winning, but you could even play 5. Kxf5 in your line above, then scoop up the h-pawn shortly after.

Completely agree with you that b4 looks like the way to start.

GL GL to RoundTower in the European Chess Club Cup, starting this weekend!

SmilingBill, are you playing?

nah we are a low budget locals-only team (I'm playing board 2 so there you go), more focused on avoiding relegation than eurocup

and here's a link http://euro2013.chessdom.com/. Looks like the top 6 teams will duke it out for the medals (SOCAR being the favorite ofc).

What is a good, free, piece of software that will let you set up positions and play against the computer? I am thinking about simple things like practicing the two bishop mate, bishop + knight, rook endings, etc. Also, in one of the books I have it has a few really strange positions to set up that it says are instructive. An example of this is white has a full army against only black's king and white should be able to mate in less than 10 moves. Another is white has his full army and black has only pawns and a king.

I have Arena and I thought it would be good for this, but after setting up positions I can never tell if the computer is going to take over or if it wants me to manipulate both sides and just evaluate the result. Maybe I'm simply using it wrong. I also have LucasChess but I couldn't find a way to set up a position.

I'm using Winboard and it's pretty user-friendly for the tasks you need. A slight downside is that manual engine installation there is tedious so Google e.g. 'winboard houdini 1.5a' to find an installer with engines included.

You can do it pretty easily with Lucas Chess. Also has tons of training positions built-in to it. Highly recommended software.

Thanks Gorgonian. I couldn't find it in Lucas, but your comment prodded me to search further and I found the feature I wanted. I really like the clean design of Lucas. I should look into the training positions that it has.

Some big boys @ top pairing in the Eurocup (Caruana-Nakamura board 1.1), games start about now

Thanks wlrs, didn't know this was going on.

Caruana has a protected passed pawn on e7, but the computer is giving a -1.02 eval in Naka's favor. Not too often you have a protected passer on e7 and are worse.

I love Nakamura so much. I can relate to that deep-seated belief that it's not drawn, even if I have to lose to prove it.

I saw that chart recently, but I think it would be much more interesting if adjusted per capital.

wow @ moro-laznicka game in the eurocup

Where are you watching these games at? I was trying to find some yesterday without much luck.

http://www.chessbomb.com