I enjoyed Blackmar-Diemer in my early scholastic days when they didn’t know how to play against it. But gave it up quickly as soon as I started playing people who knew how to pick it apart.
and I still haven’t given up 1.b4
I love me some 1.b4
I play it as Black, with Qa5. Against that try to play Qe2 as early as possible, if Black isn’t careful you can sometimes play d5 or sacrifice the bishop on e6. Aside from that just wait to see which side Black castles, castle opposite and throw pawns at them. Because White has more space the attack should be quicker than Black’s.
I play the BDG as White, but I hate it. I should probably just take but I have no idea what the lines are against Nf6.
Just checked out the world cup and saw that Ding drew some sub 2000 rated dude in the first round. Probably one of the rare situations in a competition where a guy may have actually been looking forward to his inevitable curbstomping. For someone rated that low, getting crushed by a super GM must be a rare treat.
Yeah dude got into the World Cup by winning the Oceania Open Zonal, which was held in Guam. The highest rated player present was rated 2101. You get $6,000 just for showing up to the World Cup. Six grand and the opportunity to play a super-GM is a pretty good deal.
I feel like round trip from Papua New Guinea to Siberia has got to cost at least 6K, so he would probably end up in the red. Nevertheless, still a great deal. I suppose there’s a good chance there is some sort of sponsorship available, so maybe he’s not on the hook for the travel expenses.
Alright, just signed up for standard account at Chess … I haven’t played seriously in a while but used to really enjoy studying. But damn, I’m not even sure how to use this site.
What is helpful? Been playing around with game analysis, that’s pretty sweet.
What’s the weird decimal #s on the right side of the board?
Got shown a cool puzzle by a friend the other day. This is from the game Short - Timman, 1991. Some of you may have seen it before. Worth taking a little time to try to solve it, it’s satisfying if you do.
White to play and win.
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I guess I’ll put a spoilered solution here now:
Always good, in addition to asking yourself “what is my plan in this position?” to ask “what is my opponent doing?”. If you ask that here, it quickly becomes clear that the answer is “nothing”. Black has no plan. f7 is under heavy fire and can’t be defended, so allowing Ng5 would be deadly. Currently Ng5 is prevented by the mate threat afforded by the queen and bishop battery, but this means that the queen and bishop are tied down to pinning the knight, while Black’s rooks are pretty useless.
Short therefore played Kh2, with the threat of simply walking the king up the board to h6 to assist the queen in delivering checkmate. Timman had no answer and shuffled pieces around until the king got to g5, whereupon he resigned.
Any queen or bishop move off the a8-h1 diagonal allows Ng5, which cannot be allowed. For example: 1. Kh2 Bc8 2. Ng5 Bxd7, the rook doesn’t matter and several moves win here, but the cleanest is 3. g4! threatening gxh5, followed by h6, or Qh6 and Qh7 mate if the pawn is captured. Black can delay things by playing Re7, a desperate attempt to defend h7, but a delay is all it is; Black is getting mated.
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As soon as I saw the position I thought it was that famous King walk game.
I play on chess24, mostly 5 minute games because I’m slow, but 3 minutes as well sometimes. I thought about getting back into competitive chess but I don’t think I have the time to study again.
I got Kh2 pretty quickly, didn’t see any way to stop it from getting to h6
I’m not sure if you’re referring to the computer’s evaluation? If you are, for any given legal position in chess, you can get a chess engine to evaluate it to say which side is winning and by how much. If white is winning, it’s a positive number, if black is winning it’s negative. +1.2 means white is winning by a pawn and a little bit, -3.5 means black is winning by a minor piece and about half a pawn. When mate is near, the engine will say M4 or M7, which is “mate in x” moves. Note, the computer evaluation does not have to match the actual material on the board: you could be in a position where white is up a rook but it’s -3.5 in favor of black because black has a way to win back the material and more if black finds the right moves. Often you’ll see evaluations for different moves, the computer can say if you play move 1, your evaluation is +2.5 if you play move 2 it’s +1.25 if you play move 3 it’s -0.25 etc…
Does anyone else experience this? … I used to really love playing chess. At some point, the fact that it was basically “solved,” and each move had a right or wrong answer, made me enjoy it less. It feels more like a math problem than a game, after learning that. Which … I dunno. Poker isn’t undifferent in some ways, but it is. … just wondering. I’ve been trying to get back into chess because I think the reasons I stopped playing don’t sound at all right or healthy and I enjoy it, even if I’ll never be particularly skilled.
I used to play in Dupont Circle in DC. Online back then I was rated maybe 1600, so that was like 1200 RL. Anyway, I almost never won in the park, but one day entered a beginners tournament at the nearby chess hall of fame and wound up playing a guy I recognized from the park. He blundered away a piece and resigned and I remember feeling confused and elated and proud … same event, someone tried to win on time when they were out of mating material and I had to call a ref. …
feels so silly, but at the same time I love competing.
observe the game with unbearable compassion
those are just your move times, white took 37.4 seconds to make the move 8. h3, black took 3.9 seconds to make the move 8. … Nxe3
I saw it soon after the game was played, and it’s Short’s most celebrated finish - quite an astonishing one too.
It’s not solved.
I think I’m afraid of dying.
Maybe the chess forum isn’t the spot to work out existential angst, but I type that and it feels like maybe it is.
There’s a very low ceiling on how good I can get at chess. Sometimes that stops me from playing. Other times it doesn’t. … Anyway, I’ve started playing again. I used to dream moves. It was wild.
It will also only ever be solved for computers. Industrial robots have “solved” weight lifting. That doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy competing as a human vs. other humans.
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