yeah I decided to go with that.

It seems that a huge amount of people have a c by their name which according to the FAQ means they are (or may be) using a computer :/

I just played a game then used that built in computer to look it over afterwards. Can people just click that built in computer window during games? :/

That kind of sucks.. ok it's good that users can be "warned" that they might be playing a computer but still...

The engine, Crafty, isn't an option during the game. You can't click on it until examination mode.

The (C) are in-house computers designed to give you a game at any play level at all hours of the day. I think that's different from users marked with a cheater's mark, but I don't recall.

Yeah, those are computers only. The easiest way to get a game against another person is to click the (1) (3) (5) (15) (45) (960) at the top. Those are separate pools that don't show up on the seek ads graph.

The pools are fun because (in theory) they mimic a swiss tournament. It tries to pair you with someone on a similar winning or losing streak as you. It's better than trying to pick through seeks.

The 45 45 pool is a little disappointing because if (like me) you play at odd hours server time, it can be a few minutes to find a game. 15 minute and below are usually instant or close to it.

Ahh ok that explains it with the C

Any way to see my (or anybdoy elses) match history like on fics?

edit: found my own. Maybe I should just play around instead of cluttering the thread

type "fi username" withotu quotes obv

I type up a whole analysis of your game and you can't even type out All-inMcLovin!? What's up with that!?

Just kidding.. AiMc seems like a cool abbr.

It's important to be disciplined with your thinking in chess. Don't get wishy-washy with your ideas when you know you should be getting down to business.

Discipline is hard. I just keep trying to build it up game by game, reinforcing good habits slowly until they become second nature. I think it's working, but it's a very slow process. I can't seem to just decide I want to play a certain way and then sit down at the board and always do it.

Question for the strong players (which seems to be everyone but me on this forum, the concentration of high-level players is ridiculous): Did you find that discipline something that came naturally or did you have to work on it working your way up?

I went with "AiMc" because it does sound cool, and also because I didn't want to have to type out your entire name and title, All-inMcLovin, The Guy Who Started The Popular Thread 'Ask Me About Being A Chess Master' That Led To The Creation Of This Board.

lmao, be careful.. you might get infraction points from a Mod for speaking my whole title.
That being said, I admire your braveness to speak it in entirety!

Discipline starts with adopting a state of mind.

You approach the chessboard with the appropriate mindset and do your best to maintain it throughout the game.

Discipline in an endeavor of course becomes easier after more practice/experience. So don't beat yourself up for not being as disciplined as you think you should be. Some things just take time, but be aware of how you are slacking and aim to not slack in the same way in the future.

I suspect that there are a number of low-level players who do read the forum somewhat frequently but don't post that often or at all.

I encourage everyone to post in this forum, regardless of their chess strength.

I lurk very sporadically and I don't think I have ever posted mostly because I am well below the forum average and have really never had anything to say... the signal/noise ratio here is about the highest of any subforum and I didn't want to lower that...but thanks for the invite

Anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a pretty serious chess player (around 2200) and he hadn't heard of a famous result** about random algorithms, chess and zero knowledge proofs that you guys might find interesting


** I posted the original paper as a link, but I think you might have to buy it if you aren't at a university. The blog post sums it up better anyway, link below if anybody wants to look at it

http://crypto.cs.mcgill.ca/~crepeau/...-IP=PSPACE.pdf

I feel incredibly dumb, as I have absolutely no idea about what is going on in both the blog post and especially the PDF. I read the blog entry, I was able to comprehend words, but I don't understand the point behind it at all.

So, please answer a simple man's question - what is the point behind that blog post? I would be glad if you used simple words too.

I really don't understand it either , YKW, but I'll take a closer look later and see what I can piece together...

Cliffs would be awesome

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=40853

Adventures in e4 continue. I think this game was pretty straightforward, but my pact with myself says I have to post it online if I'm counting it toward my New Year's Resolution of 50 long games. White (me) plays passively instead of starting his own attack, and misses some tactical wins (20 Qa5, 29 Qxa7).

Question about chess books: When you buy them, do you just read them or do you play through the examples?

I imagine that you don't really get much out of a book unless you play through it, but that takes *forever*. I mean, really slow going. I've been working on "Amateur's Mind" since the beginning of the year and I'm through page 123. I just did a 6-page chunk that took about an hour. I can't imagine how people have had libraries of dozens of chess books do it.

Well, it is not supposed to be a fast process. You are right, for a vast majority of the chess books out there, you really don't get much out of them if you don't play through it.

Your goal shouldn't be to get through as many books as possible, but rather to take as much as you can from every single book. Therefore, at least in my opinion, playing through one single book and getting everything you can out of it >>> just reading 10 chess books without playing through it.

Just making sure I'm not doing it wrong.

Kyle, AJ Goldsby is a senior master and wrote about how to study chess books http://www.ajschess.com/lifemasteraj/training.html It's under the heading "The [only] CORRECT WAY to study a chess book!" around 1/4 of the way down the page.

sometimes i don't really study a book to get the maximum out of it in terms of improvement but i just enjoy a well-written book about chess. This is true with Rowson's books and also those of Danish GM LB Hansen that i got recently (especially "learning from the champions" in which he discusses the chess eras and their influence). There i'm now working through the games, but in the first run i just skimmed them and read the text.

OTOH, i tried to work through the famous "Zurich 1953", analysing the games on my own on a wooden chessboard without a computer, but failed. That's just too much work for an amateur like me...

The goldsby site seemed quite interesting.

Iäm finding the videos on icc very hard to find/organise by topic which is frustrating.

The issue is essentially the question "What would somebody who claimed to play perfect chess have to do to convince you?" It isn't really possible to actually play him over and over again to convince yourself. You can be convinced that he will always beat you, always beat the top 5 players in the world working together etc... but you really don't know if some theoretical being exists that can beat him.

It turns out that there is a much easier way to figure out if he has solved chess than actually playing him. You can ask him a series of math questions (randomized based on his answers) that on the surface have nothing to do with chess that if he gets correct you can be 99.9% sure or higher in a few minutes that he is unbeatable. One the the important concepts is zero knowledge proofs (The abstract example part of that is a nice intro to the concept imo)

This result is actually not specific to chess either. You can replace chess with a ton of other games or even pure math problems, like somebody claiming to have a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. Even if we are all too dumb to understand it, or if the proof has too many symbols for a human to read in a lifetime, we can still be sure somebody actually has the proof if they can answer the questions we ask correctly. This is a hugely nontrivial result, just discovered in the last 20 years or so, so don't worry if it isn't perfectly clear, I don't fully get all the details of the proofs involved myself.

I guess I'll take this invite and make my first post. Been lurking for a long time, but haven't felt I had anything to add.


Just to make sure I'm not missing something, this position is a win for black, correct? I was white, and as far as I can tell, I can't stop black from getting his king past my pawns.

Easy Black win. He sacrifices his e-pawn, takes your g5-pawn, and you can't stop the king from reaching the key square h4 after which the g6-pawn queens.

For example 1. Kg4 e3 2. Kf3 Kf5 3. Kxe3 Kxg5 4. Kf3 Kh4 -+

Nothing at all you can do.

Perfect, thanks for the quick reply. I thought it was an easy win for black, but I was offered a draw and thought maybe there was something I didn't see.

Thanks for posting Chaos81.

Even if you don't feel you have anything to "add", feel free to ask any chess related questions you may have.