Just realised this is bad because I should try to ensure my bishop doesn't become weak or trapped in the opening, and is only useful in some spots when my knight can get up to attack rooks. I get some problems in the more closed games where the pawns are locked and villain has more moves than me, think I'll post one next time...

noooo don't give material away unless it leads to a mate or foreseeable material gains

The '+' means 'check'
The '!' means great move
Also '??' is a blunder


Here's the line I'm talking about (7.dxe6 is the en passant capture):

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=50094


(Note: I put this into the computer to generate the PGN and the line is actually a little more involved than I realized----but the net result is winning a piece)

Sorry if I'm repeating some things, but it's hard to read this whole thread carefully while watching tennis.

1) Use lower-case letters when referring to the files. All the cool kids are doing it. Wait, the cool kids aren't playing chess...

2) Do you know the general value of material? The whole 1-3-3-5-9 thing? It's useful for seeing why sacrificing your bishop for a pawn or 2 is not worthwhile (and the times it is worthwhile is not worth learning at the moment, imo, as it will prove to be a hinderance to your long-term chess learning).

3) Playing your knights to a3/a6 or h3/h6 is generally not a good idea. The knights control more squares when they are closer to the center. Putting them on f3/f6 and c3/c6, then, makes them most useful. Yes, that opens them up to pins by Bg4/Bg5 and Bb4/Bb5, but sometimes you can leave this pin, sometimes you can support the knight with the other knight (like knights on f3 and d2), and sometimes you can break the pin with a bishop (like Be2 to protect Nf3).

4) Normally, you shouldn't move the pawns in front of your king, so if you've already advanced pawns on one side of the board, then yes, castling the other way is likely a good idea. In general. Pawns can't move backwards, so if they advance, they are permanently making it easier for your king's defense to be ripped open.

5) "Thought that it would win more me of the board in the long run, but I suppose it is bad, like having a vanguard to far in front of the army so its vulnerable... I thought the don't move any piece twice rule was just for non pawns"

You are partially correct. Moving pawns up past your half of the board early on makes them harder to defend later on. The reason you shouldn't, in general, move anything more than once in the opening is that every move you spend moving a piece twice is a move you didn't spend developing another piece off the back rank. Getting pieces into play is the way to win.

wtf is an en passant capture?!?! I have never seen anything like that in a game ever, I didn't even know it was legal?!

This, but a better way to think about it in terms of planning is to try to avoid moving pawns on the side where you plan to castle. Start with the idea that you WILL castle. This is something you should be trying to do in every single game, for now (as with everything, exceptions exist, but you want to understand the basics first, and castling in every game you play is one of the most important basics). So knowing that you WILL castle, figure out early which side you want to castle on, and then make sure to keep the pawns on that side unmoved, so that you have a solid fortress in front of your king when you do castle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_passant

I doubt any of us could explain it better than wiki, which comes complete with several diagrams and examples.

played some more games, seem to be on fire and understanding this game a bit better, about 30 games with only one silly loss because of an opening blunder

last one in a 5 minute game, (I tried pasting the history into chess replays but I'm at a loss... I thought I was pretty clever here as my opponent should have destroyed me. (from 9 I saw he was going for my weak pawn and I could defend my king long enough whilst his king was pretty trapped))

1.e4d5
2.exd5Qxd5
3.Nc3Qa5
4.Qf3Nf6
5.d4c6
6.Bd3Bg4
7.Qg3h5
8.h4Nbd7
9.Be3Qb6
10.f3Qxb2
11.Rb1Qxc3+
12.Bd2Qa3
13.Rxb7Be6
14.Qc7Nd5
15.Qxc6Qxa2
16.Rxd7Bxd7
17.Qxa8+Bc8
18.Qxc8#

No, but I know the rank and bishops=knights in general, I guess its like poker where value is relative however so it seems to be pretty pointless... I can't trade my bishop for hte pawn is like 'I can't fold queens preflop'?

Thx, but I think its pretty complicated... something about knights I've started thinking about is that alot of squares are much more natural and easy to get to, and some squares the knight has th emove around a bit, so What I'm gonna do sometime is look at this in detail, as it would be very useful to know where villain knights can get to in the least moves and set up the pawn structure thus, knights in the opening and early mid games seem to be the most useful,



ok, but at the same time it can waste oppertunity and also force villain to castle one side over the other, but yes this will likely put me at a huge long term disadvantage against better opponents..

just curious at what rating on chess.com do they become decent? And also I'm kind of worried about people using computers to decide their moves in bad spots or even playing bots...

1.e4e5
2.Nf3d6
3.c4b6
4.Nc3Bb7
5.d3Nc6
6.Be2Be7
7.Be3Bf6
8.Nd5Nge7
9.Nxf6+gxf6
10.Qd2Qd7
11.Bh6f5
12.exf5Qxf5
13.Be3O-O-O
14.h3Rdg8
15.g4Qe6
16.Ng5Qg6
17.f3f6
18.Ne4f5
19.Nf2f4
20.Bxb6axb6
21.a4h5
22.b4hxg4
23.fxg4Rh4
24.Rh2Rgh8
25.b5Nd4
26.Qd1d5
27.a5e4
28.axb6e3
29.Nh1Rxh3
30.Rxh3Rxh3
31.Bf3Nxf3+
32.Ke2Nd4+

last one to look at if you guys don't mind, was a tense game but managed to win because he made mistake then resigned, getting tougher now.

love chess, so addictive and interesting but back to the poker grind : (

also is there a name for my opening? I've never played that one before, moved 3 pawns before a knight

2. ... d6 is the Philidor Defense, but your opponent's third move is completely out of book, so there is no name for anything that follows, other than "beginner game"

What happens when you paste the moves here: http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game-uploader.php ?

It's too hard for us to play through the game otherwise. Oh, the problem is that you don't have spaces between the moves for white and black. How are you getting these moves to begin with? There should be spaces in there.

In general, pawns are worth 1, knights and bishops 3, rooks 5, queens 9, and kings are worth everything of course. For a long time, you should hold prettly strictly to this. Yes, it does not always hold, but knowing when to correctly break from this takes many many more games. There are more basic things to learn first that require that you just accept these values as law for now.

Sounds like a good exercise, so long as it doesn't lead to you to prefering Nh3 to Nf3...

Don't worry, no one at these levels is cheating, and if they are, they're doing it rather poorly.

Thanks for this thread. Working on learning Chess myself, though it has been an on and off process. This information has been great, though.

Thank you again for starting the thread.

Hey, I have managed to get the pgn thing to work, here is a game I just played, pertovs defence I think... was a cool game because I deviated my opening with the queen, I made one huge blunder near the end but somehow managed to win with 6 seconds left against my opponents 3 minutes... At the moment I really am messing around a bit and experimenting different thoughts and different strategies, more so with black as with white I always play E4 Nf3, and as black white does not always play E4 which I always respond to with E5

I know I made a few mistakes before I allowed the pawn fork, hopefully someone will look at my my play,

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=50389

My main query is, I was going to push my pawn to the d4 square, was my queen move ok?

About 'thought process'... I am starting to develop a good method, the question on every move should always be 'what is the best move' followed by 'what is my opponents best response' - This results in me playing better and making fewer mistakes than just playing 'naturally'

I wonder if any of the very experienced players here could share their general approach to thought process? With world class players, I could imagine they work backwards and ask what is the next best move^15 or something... I suppose ability is split into three things

-defining or knowing or seeing the best moves
-the amount of these moves, or the more future which can be imagined/analysed
-the speed

I just made a detailed reply, but lost it, so here's an abbreviated version...

4.Qc2 is a noob move. If you played 4.Be2, say, then you could have played 6.0-0 protecting your f-pawn, instead of dropping a pawn and wasting time with your queen getting kicked around. After the dust settles the queen blocks the development of the light squared bishop losing even more time.

14.Qf4 forgets to recapture the pawn. Can't just give away your pawns, make the obligatory recapture first (unless there's some immediate tactic that wins more material)

Both sides are hanging material everywhere. Your opponent offered you a knight and a queen and overlooked a mate in one 20...Qf2#. You offered up a pawn and a bishop, and an exchange.

This suggests that the best thing to be studying is tactics to improve your board vision. And, don't violate opening principles for no good reason.


Edit: forgot a couple other things.

White's queenside knight is still sitting on its original square after 27 moves! It almost always should be moved in the first 8 or 10 moves or so.

12.Kf2?? You can play Nbd2 (as soon as you tend to the hanging d-pawn) and then castle long for example, solving all your problems and white is a healthy piece ahead.

Thankyou very much phaedrus, this was not a good game by me I know, I am in the process of experimenting my main e5 Nf3 line and I would usually take that move, I always get tempted to move my queen with this new 'what is the best move' thought process as it is such a powerful piece, but I udnerstand now from reading this that I am being far to shortsighted and moves can wait. I did have a tactical plan but it got lost because I moved a piece wrong and then I wasted a tonne of time and so half the game was actually played with only 10% or 1 minute of my time...

wow I'm bad. In my defence I was ridic short on time. I won't move the queen too early again and also I will find a better game where I had more time, my biggest problem seems to be in slower and closed games, one second everything seems ok then I just get congested and torn apart

I will do this after my next grind.

Try to spend at least a few minutes every day on tactics. For building up pattern recognition, a few minutes a day is better than an hour once a week.

So I found a pretty good tactics site called chesstempo and spent about an hour on there, and then went to play. My game has changed drastically, I exchanged a bishop for pawn in order to get a rook (and mess up castle plans) with a king check after checking a queen 3 moves later in the first game, which is something I would have never had done previously

Tactical thinking in the opening... is a bit weird because everything can change so easily, its more complicated, yet doing so still generally builds up a stronger opening. Although its easy to build up tactical formations in the wrong area and leave another area tactically weak. Am starting to understand why the middle is so important.

I'm going to divide my time half into tactics and half into live games.

So, I'm steadily improving thanks to this forum...

here is my latest game, I won on time by a few seconds but I deserved the win I think... The guy was 200 points higher than me and the highest rating I've beaten so far(1412 lolz)

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=50419

1)I didn't castle btw is this a problem? I probably don't castle in about 20% of games

2)Should I have exchanged queens near the start? Or just took with my queen to offer the exchange?

I am black in this game, I remember being confused around 14... and that time got down to a minute for me and 3 for him around the 23 mark. IS there any way to watch the game as black? I specified I was black but there's no board flip option

Why the fianchetto early in the game? It's normally odd to fianchetto your bishop so that it points right at your center pawn (basically, you are only allowing it to influence a couple of squares because the pawn blocks it in). It was unnecessary there because the dark bishop had some nice squares on the traditional diagonal. It would have been just fine on d7 or c5.

You should probably start castling every game. Better players will start to take advantage of you if you don't, and you might as well start the good habits now rather than try to change your habits later.

I could be wrong, but I think taking with the queen is better there. Look at it in terms of development. After you take with the queen, you've got two pieces out to his one. If he trades queens, it's 1 to 0. If you take with the bishop, it's 1 to 1. So you get a development advantage by taking with the queen.

I liked the way you used your pawns to control the center of the board early, and then were able to create some tactical pressure when he let his king get too exposed.

Definitely seeing improvement from when you first started posting. That was your best game yet.

Fish,

fwiw, there were two moves in that game that really jump out at me. They don't lose material but they expose a couple holes in your game that could probably easily be plugged.


10...g5?

-- blocks your dark squared bishop
-- creates a hole on f5 that can be (and is) occupied by a white knight
-- doesn't develop anything
-- doesn't advance the attack on the queenside

Why not Bg7, or 0-0, or b5, say?


25...Ke7?

-- the queens are still on the board so generally the king has no business heading out into the middle

Why not Kg7 and then Rh8 etc, say? (ok, Kg7 may need to be prepared a bit first, but looking back if black had just developed normally and castled he wouldn't even have to worry about any of this)

hmmmm thanks kyle and phaedrus very good info for me

1)yeah g5 was a bad move, time is a problem for me, I remember thinking that I just wanted to stop his G and H pawns with a Rhg1 and Qe4 threatening the f6 square, and I was thinking my bishop is not going to be using the g5 g4 squares, I just wanted to block him or something. Also his knight on f5 didn't occur ot me as ever being a problem. I am liking the Bg7 idea the best

2)I definitely should have taken the opportunity to castle, but yeah that knight was for some reason putting me off it.

3)
thx

4) 25.. my time was running under a minute and the knight was stopping me from going Bc4
a- I am thinking Rd8 or Be7? actually I am loving Be7 now
b- I like the K and R idea and I was looking at that, but I was worried about him having two moves, I could see him doing things that I didn't like or something :s

this is way better than your previous games. The other ones honestly looked like you barely knew how to move the pieces and that there might be no hope for you if you had already played 600 games without getting better than that. This one you definitely seem to be able to use the pieces together, co-ordinate them, make some simple threats and tactics, and not drop any pieces to one-move tricks. That's a huge start.

I think you should definitely play longer games. If the last third of the game is just franticly moving pieces trying not to lose on time, you won't learn very much chess.

You should also read other threads here, or other resources on chess. Even if you can't follow what's going on or if it's over your head, it will at least help you think like a chess player. There is something called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis which suggests that you can't properly master anything until you have the right language to talk about it (that's the dumbed down version: the wikipedia page is only worth reading if you have an interest in it). Your posts make you sound like a chess beginner, which is fine because you are one, but I believe that you will sound more "fluent" as you learn more about chess.

Yeah, but like I said I was experimenting different thought processes, I usually play pretty solid or I am capable of doing so. I did a similar thing in my poker career, I played about 800 games with no goals of winning, just trying different thought processes. I am of the belief thast in every game, it is the approach to thought process and solving which determines potential. Take pool, there are many ways to play, you can imagine lines, you can imagine auras, you can just feel, its very weird how many ways the mind has of calculating things.... In chess I still have not figured out which is the best way to utilise imagination, it is very difficult for me to visualise the whole board and all the pieces simultaneously and If I want to play decent I need to look at each piece individually. In all the games I have posted I posted them because they were using different thought process, the one where I moved my queen first, I was just thinking about getting the control of the peices centralised, In some games I think about attacking and sometimes I think about trying to build formations. There is a big picture somewhere I am missing, or its somewhere I can't see it because I cannot position my focal point or stance in an area where I can see.

I am still at a loss with regards to thought process, but the quote 'chess is 99% tactics' has shed alot of light for me. It appears there is one long tactic, made up of a huge amount of smaller tactics, just like the chess board is one big square made up of lots of smaller squares made up of smaller squares,

What I've heard in here is that patterns will build through experience, but I questoin why some people improve better than others, and it has to do with thought process, like in all games.

I will play some longer games and think abit harder aboutt eh tactics, but I'm looking for that 'chess philosophy' which will jump my learning curve quicker than the trial and error.

I need to:

-Read more chess articles
-Centralise my focus on the tactics
-Find a way of seeing tactics more efficiently
-Stop 'being white' somehow be the person who controls or sees both the black and the white
-Practice mroe tactics
-Improve my approach to move selection, or find a basic philosophy I can use as a base for every decision.

The main goal of chess is to get the K, but there's all these other goals (or smaller squares) I need to be able to see first.

I read that entire post in this guy's voice in my head:

I think it doesn't exist, unfortunately.

Have we suggested or have you seen Dan Heisman (this looks incorrectly spelled to me for some reason) yet?

who's that the waterboy?

I think it does, within the seeing of the game. I don't know where to look, I don't know why I'm looking here or there... I'm always looking at small tactics, 'I can take this piece' 'I can win a pawn after doing this and this if he does that and that' - I know this is naturally building, but it is too slow. Its so annoying I can analyse 18 plo tables pretty well, but seeing the game of chess I am so slow at thinking.

I want to know whats going on in a GMs head. Is it a voice? Is it purely visualise? What is the catalytic thought process? How do I see the point, one before the conclusion, in a game where there are so many possibilities?

Is it, 'move there, move there, move there, move there, wrong'

Or do you see it as a whole web or a tree? It is so difficult to focus on the whole board, on every piece, and then you have to think 3 moves ahead, you have to think where that piece is 10 moves in the future, there's so many villain responses. Do I look at his responses? Do I look at my formation? Do I just play solid and wait to see an opening?

In these tactics puzzles, to get to that point where it is in view and the possibility becomes apparent, there was one huge tactic leading to that.

This game does my head in, I've just lost my last 4 games, because I can only focus on a very limited % of the board.

Is chess nothing but a game of trial and error and memory?