Welcome! Like Tex said, the book thread has some good answers. I've heard good things about How to Beat Your Dad at Chess.

Honestly, I wouldn't bother with books at this stage. Play some games, ask some questions, read forums, start trying to do tactics problems online. Unless you just really enjoy books, they are necessary this early, imo.

Thanks to both of you, will definately try chess.com

Tex, Eric Molina was his name and yes I felt the same way. Not sure where he finished exactly but somewhere deep for sure. He was such a douche he made Jamie Gold look cool.

A few specific threads that you may find it particularly useful to look through:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/14...eview-1049519/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/14...vement-587559/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/14...-avoid-936004/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/14...thread-433964/
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/14...-level-697032/

There will be some content in them that is way over your head at this stage, and that's fine. Just read them, and absorb what you can while ignoring what you can't. Then go play a lot of chess, and play around with the ideas. Then come back and read some more, get excited about how certain ideas that sounded like gibberish before actually make sense now. Then go out and play a lot more chess, and play around with those new ideas. Also, post games here and you might get some more specific guidance. Once you start improving enough that you can identify specific areas of your game that you need to improve, then you can start thinking about books that will do it. I doubt you're there yet, though. Generally a raw beginner will learn far more by playing than reading, and if you do want to read, there's plenty of good material here.

And most importantly, have fun! Chess is awesome, so enjoy it

Eric Molina, that's it. That was going to bug me haha. Now off to watch some youtube clips of him and Jamie Gold going at it.

Thank you very much, appreciate the advice and the very helpfully links!

I think I've read all those threads before and still enjoyed going back over them again.

I decided to play correspondence games but without moving pieces so I can improve my chess, is this a good idea?

If you don't ever move a piece, it will be a really long game...

Personally, I like being able to move things around in a CC game. By doing so, it helps me better evaluate the current position and see closer to the true strengths and weaknesses in the position. I feel that this then lets me better evaluate other similar positions in the future without having to move pieces.

On the other hand, practice makes perfect, so...??

i also like analysing and pushing pieces around in cc, problem is: Since i started playing at chess.com, i miss this opportunity in otb chess

Whats the best free engine out there now? I remember there being discussion over Firebird, Houdini and others. Recently downloaded chessbase light which has Fritz 6 as its default engine, I take it thats not very good any more.

Houdini.

ty

Combine the two. First analyze the position to the best of your abilities without moving pieces. Then do it again with the ability and compare the results.

Been going over a lot of master games, specifically early Fischer, and picked up enough Ruy Lopez that I felt comfortable enough to break it out in club play tonight. It was a nice change of pace. I'm getting a little tired of playing Two Knights' against strong players.

well done. I am a lifelong sicilian aficionado and have been looking into meeting 1. e4 with 1. ...e5 recently. The Ruy seems just an awesome opening with so many possibilities. Unfortunately it shows me that i don't understand anything of long-term chess strategy.

Prepare to bang your head onto a lot of berlin walls though. IMO a solid amateur player who manages to pick up the main strategic ideas for black is bound to win game after game (or gain equality out of the opening a lot easier than he is supposed to if white avoids the Berlin endgame).

Could someone explain to me *exactly* how to set up Houdini, in Arena 3.0, to the highest contempt setting? Still haven't gotten it to work for endgame practice.

I thought this was an interesting game in my new Ruy Lopez experiments. I think it was an example of analysis errors causing me to enter positions that I thought were good for me but obviously not.

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=48693

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O b5
6. Bb3 Bc5 7. c3 d6 8. d4 Bb6 9. Bg5 Bb7 10. a4 h6
11. axb5 axb5 12. Rxa8 Bxa8 13. dxe5 hxg5 14. exf6 Qxf6 15. Re1 g4
16. e5 dxe5 17. Nd4 Ne7 18. Nxb5 Qxf2+ 19. Kh1 Rxh2+ 20. Kxh2 Qh4#
0-1

I dunno about 9. Bg5. Maybe the bishop was better placed on e3, which would make it easier to develop my knight without having to worry about d4.

Analysis mistake No. 1: I didn't think he'd want to play 13. ... hxg5 because eventually he's going to have to castle and that weakens his king. But apparently he didn't have to castle and he used that file to good effect.

On 15. Re1, I kept thinking there had to be something in the center for me with his king uncastled, so long as I could survive an attack on h2. But of course, there's another "focal point" (as Vukovic described them in Art of Attack) on f2, and I can't defend them both so I'm toast.

I think it's interesting to me that chess players seem to have wildly varying temperaments with their analysis. I tend to overestimate my positions and be very optimistic. I always think "This *has* to be good for me" even when objectively it isn't. There's a player at my club who is the biggest Eeyore I've ever seen. He is passive and fears monsters under the bed on every move. He's constantly convinced his opponents, even when they are down significant material and about to resign, are about to unleash some flurry of tactical dominance on him.

Without calculating anything about the complicated exchanges that occur afterward, my gut instinct about 13. dxe5 is that it must be good for black just because it rips the center open. Yes, his king is in the middle of the board, but he also has both bishops on long diagonals. I think his attacking prospects benefit more than yours from opening things up, in that situation. I play a variation of the line your opponent played when I find myself on the black side of a Ruy Lopez, and my biggest difficulty is figuring out how to clear the pawns out of the middle of the board and turn my bishops into monsters. In this game, you did it for him voluntarily.

Of course I usually castle earlier in that line. Maybe that's my problem? If I start leaving my king in the center perhaps I can bait my opponents into opening the middle up for me, just like you did? Yay! New bad habit accquired! Because I don't have enough of those already

10.Bd5 was probably a logical way to follow up 9.Bg5. I guess moves 13 and 15 were result of what Rowson calls "script-writing", ignoring calculating the actual situation in favor of daydreaming about what's going to happen

I'm attempting (for the xth time) to get back into chess, and have been doing a lot of tactics problems. It's funny how doing all these can make me over-complicate a position. I looked at this problem for over 2 minutes before finally moving and getting it wrong (I was attempting to find something on e7).

http://chesstempo.com/chess-problems/47649

Thanks guys for your thoughts on the last game! Some great perspectives, sort of in the same vein as what I was thinking, but in a better and more illuminating light.

Okay, now that I've sucked up enough (though I mean every word of it), how about this one:


1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7
6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 O-O 8. a4 Bb7 9. c3 Na5 10. Bc2 d6
11. d3 Qd7 12. h3 Nc6 13. Nbd2 Nd8 14. Nf1 Ne6 15. Ng3

Black to move. I got to this point and just flat ran out of ideas and moves.

What I was thinking in spoilers:



Thoughts on black's immediate move and long-term plans?

does anybody know good resources for rooks vs rook endgames? I really suck at those.

Rook Endgames, by KyleJRM82

Screw pawn counts, get your rook active. Then you win.

The end.



Re: My position posted above, I think I kind of answered my own question:

I think you're in for in for a tough ride in that position as it seems like your queenside play isn't going to amount to much in time. You fell behind with your Na5 c6 d8 e6 maneuver when you could have just got it there in two moves. The reason to play Na5 is to play an immediate c5, the queen can move along d8-a5, and you'll have a much better chance with queenside pawn pushes than in the game.

The closed Ruy is tough! Were you going to play the Marshal Attack if your opponent allowed it?

Yeah, that was definitely some wasted tempos. I was planning on playing the knight to c4, then I decided I didn't like him there and wanted him over on the kingside, and by time he got to the kingside I kinda wished he was back over on the queenside.

I don't know what that is, so ... maybe. My Ruy Lopez defense is mostly built through experience, trial and error, and watching master games, so I don't really know the names for stuff.

*looks it up* No, I don't really know any of that and wouldn't have played it. But now I want to.