The Chess Thread

Yeah when you’re black you can frustrate your opponents with the Queen’s Gambit Declined (similar to King’s Gambit Declined):

I’ve noticed when I’ve played the computer anyway, it’ll make moves that put pieces in jeopardy as if it’s almost daring you to take them. Even some of the chess puzzles seem to work that way. Is that something a lot of players do or is it better to just play more conservatively?

Dropping pieces is generally a terrible idea, but trading it for a less tangible advantage (positioning, tempo, pawn structure) can be a good idea. So if you see someone drop a piece, always assume it’s a trap and check if they can blow you up for taking the piece. If you can’t see anything that will kill you though, grab the material.

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if youre playing blitz, the players you’re going to be matched up against are more than likely just dropping a piece. as you grind out and get better at tactical puzzles, yes a lot of them are set up so that an “obvious” move such as capturing a hanging piece will result in getting checkmated. but in low level games that will never come up. but for sure you want to grind out tactics puzzles on chess.com.

however, converting the tactics improvements to tangible skill increase is another matter altogether. there’s a point of diminishing returns at which point studying other stuff for a holistic approach will probably be best

https://www.chess.com/stats/puzzles/jieyangh

september 2017 i had tactics rating of 1100, i’ve slowly increased it to 2100 but my daily chess rating has remained stagnant at 1600 and bulldancer still reks me all day

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i dont like the qgd because my light squared bishop ends up being cramped usually with all the pawns on light squares

d4 d5
c4 c6

or

d4 d5
c4 e6

I’ll join a local chess club again. I think it’s good that fighting games aren’t my primary anymore, because so don’t have to risk anymore money, I can focus more of my time on chess again. I can’t go wrong with the free Chess Tactics app, Chess Ultra, and the upcoming Zen Chess Collection on the Nintendo Switch.

After all, chess is the original fighting game. It’s like Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat and real fighting like boxing, mma, karate, et cetera…

I’m finding now that I have a kid and have a business started I just don’t have the time to keep up with newer fighting games anymore. :frowning: So games like Chess and Tetris that I’ve already been playing for awhile is easier to learn and keep up with.

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Understandable. The new era doesn’t stand out to me. I can see if I was born much later, then maybe I could appreciate this era. I rather preserve old school fighters, chess, and other puzzles/RPGs.

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just had a kid like two weeks ago. planned

FUUUUUU

IM SO TIRED ALL TH ETIME. i just lost a game cause i missed a simple knight fork by opponent, and 3 moves prior i missed a knight fork i had available that would’ve won the game.

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It’s fucking ROUGH the first couple months. You’re better off splitting the night into two shifts if you can and going to bed early. It sucks, but it’s better than both of you waking up every time the kid cries, which will be a lot, and just generally feeling like death every day.

@Naeras checkmated tf outta me a day or two ago. Man, I didn’t even see that coming, and I instantly kicked myself for moving that rook. :sob:

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yeah a lot of people have recommended the shift approach. i started doing it. i was a night owl before ayway staying up late gaming, so i do 12 AM feeding and 4 AM feeding. then i move to the couch and sleep there so i have some small chance i can sleep through the next feeding. of course sometimes the baby wont cooperate and wont sleep after his feeding, even after diaper change, swaddle, burping, and etc.

how feasible is it to play video games with the baby strapped to you on those baby carrier things??? i’m thinking about doing that, since he seems to sleep better when he has physical contact with a body

That sort of stuff comes with experience. The more you play, the easier you’ll see patterns like that.

I should probably point out the three main opening principles in chess though:

  • develop your pieces
  • get your king to safety by castling
  • fight for control of the center of the board

In both of our games you’ve spent a lot of time moving side pawns, which really doesn’t accomplish either of those things.

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Sometimes the king gets trapped when you castle so then you can’t castle on either side (this usually happens in gambits)

Id recommend feeding her 1oz, then changing & burping her, then feeding her the rest of the bottle. Key is to get and keep them tired and food does that better than anything.

Yeah i was gonna ask you for some tips. Getting my rooks out on the board especially takes a lot of time, knights are easy and bishops/queen don’t take much. I guess im playing too defensively. :stuck_out_tongue:

This is gonna sound really weird, but you’re not actually playing defensively either. You’re doing really committal pawn moves far forward, which is quite aggressive.

What you’re doing is playing passively. You’re not getting your pieces into play and not controlling the board. Look at what I’m doing in contrast, I’m doing pretty much two early pawn moves (all of them right to the centre) then all my moves focus on getting pieces out on the board to control squares (unless you start attacking my pieces, then I usually respond). That’s what happens when you just follow basic opening principles and get your pieces active.

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Yeah, looking at some of my recent games, it seems like a lot of my pieces stay where they are for a long time. Does my moving the pawns up make it harder for you to do stuff like I imagine or do you think I’m just better off only moving them when I need to?

It makes it a bit harder to maneuver around the pawns. However, moving it up like that leaves you with more potential weak spots, both in the pawn structure itself, and when it comes to attacking your king, so the disadvantages of doing that many pawn moves early generally outweigh the advantages.

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What should I be looking to do with my pawns instead?