title: Understanding vs. Memorization

text:
# Question
Title: Understanding vs. Memorization
Is memorization necessary in modern chess? Whenever I play chess, I always run out of time because I move slowly in the opening; unlike others who move fast in the opening because they have memorized it, and slowly in the middle game to execute their plans.

**Should I should memorize opening theory to save time in the middle game?**

# Answer
> 20 votes
Who better to answer this question than the legendary former World Champion and master of opening preparation Garry Kasparov himself? I quote

> In June 2005 in New York I gave a special training session to a group of the leading young players in the United States. I had asked them each to bring two of their games for us to review, one win and one loss. A talented twelve-year-old raced through the opening moves of his loss, eager to get to the point where he thought he'd gone wrong. I stopped him and asked **why he had played a certain pawn push** in the sharp opening variation. His answer didn't surprise me: **"That's what Vallejo played!"** Of course I also knew that the Spanish Grandmaster had employed this move in a recent game, but I also knew that if this youngster didn't understand the motive behind the move, **he was already headed for trouble**.
>
> This boy's response took me back to my own sessions with Botvinnik thirty years earlier. On more than one occasion he chided me for committing this same **sin of blind emulation**. The great teacher insisted that his students recognize the rationale behind every move. As a result, all of us learned to **become great skeptics, even of the moves of the best players**. We would discover a powerful idea behind each Grandmaster move, but we also found improvements. We studied, we questioned, we grappled with the idea behind a series of moves, and eventually we could build our understanding and create more and better strategies.
>
> For players who depend on memorization, the opening ends when their memory runs out of moves and they have to start thinking for themselves. A rote opening might carry you to move five, or even move thirty, but **this practice always inhibits your development as a player**. It is one thing for a world-class player to rely on memorization; he already knows all of the whys behind the moves. For your own development it's far more important to think for yourself from the very start.
>
> --- Garry Kasparov, How Life Imitates Chess (emphasis mine)

Following Garry Kasparov's advice, I myself do not recommend memorization of opening moves. If you really want to improve your game, you must **understand** (rather than memorize) why a certain move is played and only then play it.

> Should I do memorizing to saved time in middle game?

No! Instead, you should ***study*** the openings more and understand why certain moves are played. When you understand these moves, the result is that you often automatically remember them because you have found the rationale behind them. The focus should be on understanding and not on memorization.

Great players have fallen prey to blind memorization, including legends like Viswanathan Anand himself. Consider the game where he lost in just 6 moves (!!!) because he blindly memorized a line played earlier by a grandmaster.

```
     [FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]
     [Event "Blind memorization makes Anand lose in 6 moves"]
     [White "Zapata"]
     [Black "Anand"]

     1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. Nc3 Bf5?? 6. Qe2! 1-0

```

Or consider his loss in the first game in his World Championship match with Topalov where he "forgot" his preparation and blundered and lost the game.

```
     [FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]
     [Event "Anand forgets his preparation and blunders"]
     [White "Topalov"]
     [Black "Anand"]
     [Result "1-0"]

     1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. e4 Nxc3 6. bxc3 Bg7 7. Bc4 c5 8.
     Ne2 Nc6 9. Be3 O-O 10. O-O Na5 11. Bd3 b6 12. Qd2 e5 13. Bh6 cxd4 14. Bxg7 Kxg7
     15. cxd4 exd4 16. Rac1 Qd6 17. f4 f6 18. f5 Qe5 19. Nf4 g5 20. Nh5+ Kg8 21. h4
     h6 22. hxg5 hxg5 23. Rf3 Kf7?? ({not thinking objectively and trying to repeat moves from memory}) 24. Nxf6 Kxf6 25. Rh3 Rg8 26. Rh6+ Kf7 27. Rh7+
     Ke8 28. Rcc7 Kd8 29. Bb5 Qxe4 30. Rxc8+ 1-0

```

Now to redeem Anand a bit, I must mention his smashing win against Bologan, where Bologan blindly copied a line that had been played by other grandmasters before and got smashed by Anand's stunning novelty.

```
    [FEN ""]
    [Event "Bologan merely copies known opening moves and Anand punishes him"]
    [White "Anand"]
    [Black "Bologan"]
    [Result "1-0"]

    1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nd7 5. Ng5 Ngf6 6. Bd3 e6 7. N1f3 Bd6 8.
    Qe2 h6 9. Ne4 Nxe4 10. Qxe4 Qc7 11. O-O b6 12. Qg4 g5 13. Qh3 Rg8 14. Re1!! Bf8
    15. Qf5 Bg7 16. h4 Kf8 17. Qh3 Rh8 18. hxg5 hxg5 19. Qg4 c5 20. Bxg5 cxd4 21.
    Rad1 Bb7 22. Rxe6 fxe6 23. Be7+ Kxe7 24. Qxg7+ Kd6 25. Nxd4 Qc5 26. Bf5 Qe5 27.
    Nf3+ Qd5 28. Qg3+ Ke7 29. Rxd5 Bxd5 30. Qg5+ Kd6 31. Qf4+ Ke7 32. Be4 Rh5 33.
    Nh4 Rg8 34. Ng6+ Kd8 35. Qf7 Re8 36. Bd3 1-0

```

Even after this game, I checked a database and found that many strong players unaware of this novelty also lost their games in this variation in the same manner.

**Moral of the story** \- do not merely copy the moves of grandmasters or just memorize them. Analyze them and understand them and see if they can be improved.

# Answer
> 4 votes
> Is memorization necessary in modern chess?

Depends **highly** from the opening you play.

> **Should I do memorizing to saved time in middle game**?

Yes you should, *but not in the way you assume it.*

If you play an opening that has **volumes and volumes of lines** to go through then you must memorize the lines.

If the opening is playable **only by playing "only moves" or forcing lines** then yes, you need to memorize it.

Why?

Well, if the opening is too broad than it means that it is **popular on the high level** which means that it is very well explored. You can rely on the **best players in the world** and trust that they did find the best moves and that **they are sound.** This will save you time, and honestly you and I both know that us "normal players" can hardly come up with something better. So if it is popular and broad you would do well to memorize it. Grab a partner and play blitz games until it "enters your fingers" as I would like to say.

A good example is the main line of the Ruy Lopez.

If the opening is playable only by playing "only moves" or if the lines are forcing then there is no choice. You **must** memorize it or else you will lose the game.

Some examples include Botvinnik line or Marshall gambit in the Semi-slav defense, some lines of the Sicilian Najdorf and so on. Again, you will need a partner and a lot of blitz games.

Still, there are openings that are relatively quiet ( Caro-Kann/French defense... ) and you do not need to memorize them. These openings rely on solidity and positional play. Knowing general opening principles and **thoroughly learning typical plans for these openings** allows you to find a good move **on your own** without relying on memorization.

**If you have trouble memorizing sharp openings than the quiet ones might be what you are looking for.** They also allow you to move fast in the opening.

## SUMMARY:

You should **know how to play your opening** regardless it being sharp or positional. You must understand which skills it requires from you to successfully play it, and know all the relevant lines **for you** in order not to lose.

If you play sharp openings **or they have lots of deviations** then you will do better to memorize them since, generally speaking, those openings do not rely on understanding of typical plans but rather on your tactical sharpness. Playing a lot will help you in your memorization.

If you play quiet openings do not memorize lines, but **learn typical plans**. Quiet openings are simple and "logical" and **you can find most moves by yourself** if you understand opening's idea and you know the general plans that crop up in the middlegame.

If you have further questions leave a comment. Hopefully this answer helps.

Best regards.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Memorization *is* important in chess. You need to memorize lots of *concepts*, and in some cases, memorizing *move sequences* will save time, especially in the opening.

I have to disagree with others who make the blanket statement that memorization in the opening is a bad idea. But it should not be the primary method for learning an opening. As others have said (viz. the Kasparov quote in another response), you should understand the ideas behind the moves *first*.

But your memory is a frail and fickle thing. You *need* to reinforce the learning with repetition. It's the *repetition* that commits to memory what you already understand.

So, think of it as a finishing touch, or like *polishing*; it isn't the main technique, but it's an essential to the longevity of your knowledge.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Check the books of the "Read and Play" method written by Ponzetto and Bellin. It was the most impactful book in my chess learning. Totally focused on learning the ideas rather than variations memorization.

# Answer
> 0 votes
It is better to understand and play even the openings but you can learn some of the openings from stockfish 7 which itself analyses but here even it thinks something deep so it is recommended for only bit beginners.

---
Tags: opening, analysis, time-management
---


# Question
Title: How does a chess engine mimic an Elo rating
I am a fairly new chess player (say 1400) and I would like to play against Stockfish and win some of the time. If I change the strength to 1400 then what does the algorithm actually do ? Does it make random blunders or does it simply reduce its depth and thereby only see the easiest tactical combinations of moves. If so, what would the depth be for a 1400 rating ?

# Answer
In strength reduction mode, Stockfish starts a multi-pv where the engine searches for more than one best move. When the engine needs to make a move, it looks for all the possibilities in the multi-pv moves and choose a move with the following algorithm:

1. Filter out a move if it's a gross blunder. It does that by comparing its score with another multi-pv score.
2. Generate a small random number and applied it to a multi-pv score
3. Pick the move if the transformed score is the best

It might sound complicated but it isn't, let's do an example.

Say, I exchanged my queen with yours. You could take my queen with your bishop or pawn. If you did it with your bishop, the position would have been equal. If you did with your pawn, your pawn position would have been ruined and lead to a slightly inferior position. If you did anything else, I would be a queen ahead.

A possible scoring would be:

* BxQ -\> 0.00
* PxQ -\> -0.34
* Kh8 -\> -9.99

Not taking back the queen is a gross blunder and should be avoided whenever possible. When applied to the algorithm:

**Calculation**

* 1. Engine considers BxQ

The best score is 0.00. Since this is the first move, there is nothing to do.

* 2. Engine considers PxQ

Notice that without giving the move PxQ a small random boost, it'd never would be chosen because the best score (0.00) is greater than the score for PxQ (-0.34).

Stockfish generates a small positive number and add it to PxQ. Now, there're two possibilities. If the random number is too small, say, 0.10, the added score (-0.34 + 0.10 = -0.24) is still too small compared to the best score (0.00), and it'd been discarded. If the generated random number is sufficient to push the PxQ score above the best score, for instance, 0.40. The new score for PxQ would have been 0.06 and it's greater than 0.00. Therefore, Stockfish would pick the PxQ.

* 3. Engine considers Kh8

Not taking back the queen is a gross blunder. The difference between it with the previous move is too big (-9.99 - -0.34). Stockfish wouldn't consider it, and discard it immediately.

**Implication**

* The engine will not play random chess
* The possibility of making an inferior move depends on the random generator. The generator usefulness also depends on the strength level. The weaker you ask Stockfish be, the more likely the generator will generate a bigger number.
* Stupid blunders are avoided
* The move Stockfish plays is unpredictable, simulating human's unpredictable behavior.
* Stockfish doesn't mimic Elo rating. It only gives you 20 strength levels.

**Edited**

The poster was concern about a link to the Stockfish for iOS in the comments. Please note that the statement in the link *"Set the strength of the engine on a 0 to 2500 scale. This scale roughly corresponds with the human ELO scale. 0 is absolutely terrible play, while 2500 is maximum strength."* is misleading and simply wrong. To see why, the page wasn't written by a Stockfish engine developer. The writer misinterpreted the scaling reported in the app. In reality, if you give the app, say Elo 2000, the app maps it to one of the 20 strength levels. Whatever Elo rating that you see in the app means absolutely nothing, it's just an easy way for an end-user to adjust the levels. There is no direct relationship between a strength level to a Elo rating. Think like this, if I modify the source code and expand the range from 0,20 to 0,40. Now when you choose strength 30, what's the rating? I could tell you it's Elo 2400, or Elo 2500, or Elo 3500.

At the end of the day, Stockfish doesn't mimic Elo strength. The Elo labels that you see in the app are simply just beautiful labels that pretend there is a relationship.
> 7 votes

# Answer
If you want a "friendly" computer opponent, some of the available packages offer the ability to "spar", in which they will evaluate *your* moves, and generate a rating for you that way. Then, they will adjust their play to be (roughly) at your level.

Fritz, for example, has a variety of such "hobbling" methods, including

* "*Friend*" mode (which behaves as I described),
* "*Sparring*" mode, in which the program occasionally makes tactical mistakes, with 3 levels of play, including an optional "alert" feature to encourage you to look for such a mistake
* "*Handicap and fun mode*", in which you adjust variables that affect play, such as playing strength (they say in ELO pts, but see above), piece biases, king safety, tendency to attack, etc.

Note that my comments on Fritz are for version 9, and they're at 15 now, so it's probably a bit different.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: engines, elo, stockfish
---


# Question
Title: Novice Kid Play and Declaring Winners when Recess is Over
Children at my school have become very interested in playing chess during morning break and in before/after care. However, they only have a limited amount of time to play and must clean up...so, they cannot leave pieces on the board. In this situation, what is the best way to declare a winner?

Is it fair to use point count for the pieces captured?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Point count is a fair way to *start* evaluating a chess position; even the strongest computer engines do so. I see two potential problems:

1. One player might have less material but an initiative, e.g. a strong kingside attack. On this level, it is not usual to sacrifice material for an initiative, so this might not be a big problem for you.
2. What constitutes a decisive advantage? One pawn is -usually- not enough to win an endgame, but it might be, when combined with other advantages.

# Answer
> 2 votes
In my workplace when someone needs to go to a meeting and can't finish a game, we adjourn it.

*If* camera phones are allowed in your school, take a photo of the position with an agreed indication of who is to move (e.g. you can put a white pawn on h1 if it is white to move).

Of course, if your school doesn't allow camera phones, then it may be that the position is recorded on paper in FEN notation. But this is something else to digest for students with a lot to learn and is not as easy to implement as taking a picture.

---
Tags: learning, point-value
---


# Question
Title: What are good chess tournaments that are FIDE rated in China for foreigners?
What are good FIDE rated tournaments in China? I'm currently a FIDE class B and would like to play up. What would be some tournament recommendations and how would I register?

# Answer
> 1 votes
FIDE's worldwide calendar of tournament events normally lists tournaments around the world, but for some reason no tournaments located in China appear. The Chinese Chess Federation has this website, which carries notices of future tournaments.

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Tags: tournament
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title: Pawn giving checkmate

text:
# Question
Title: Pawn giving checkmate
My computer checkmated me with a pawn move.

I could have taken that pawn en passant but I wasn't given a chance to do that.

Was that a fault of my computer, or is there a rule stating that a pawn giving checkmate cannot be taken en passant?

# Answer
> 12 votes
I would love to see the position; please add it to your question somehow (we can always edit it to look nice). However, there is no such rule. Either your computer doesn't implement captures en passant (improbable these days) or the capture was not valid for some other reason.

# Answer
> 11 votes
Maybe your pawn happened to be pinned?

```
 8/8/7r/5K1k/7p/8/6P1/7R w - - 0 1

 1. g4+# hxg3?? 2. Rxh5

```

# Answer
> 0 votes
As I understand your question, the *computer checkmated you* with a pawn move from the 2nd to the 4th rank. (Such a move is the only situation that invokes the en passant rule.)

Checkmate ends the game. That is why you were not permitted to capture; the game is already over.

---
Tags: rules, pawns, checkmate, kings, en-passant
---


title: Can any opening get outdated?

text:
# Question
Title: Can any opening get outdated?
Chess getting played since long years with evolutionary advancements. In this process few openings or variations may get outdated. Can it happen so?

# Answer
> 16 votes
The game of chess depends upon outwitting your opponent. Part of the toolbox used by the top players is *changing* the openings so that their opponents find themselves surprised and unprepared for the new position. This also results in opening variations that are discarded because a flaw has been found.

Openings also go in and out of fashion, for the same reason. The Scotch Opening, for example, first became popular when it was played in a major correspondence chess match between the London and Edinburgh Chess Clubs from 1824-1828, at the recommendation of the Scottish player, John Cochrane.\*

Here's a summary of how often it was used in the years that followed, as a percentage of all Double King Pawn games (1.e4 e5) that were played in that period:

```
Period   Period  Scotch
Begin    End     Opening %
1824     1900,    7.5%
1900     1950     3.3%
1950     1989     5.4%
1990     2000    10.4%

```

The jump in the last period has been attributed to Garry Kasparov's surprising Anatoly Karpov with it during their match in the 35th World Championship in 1990. In addition, for the 16 years after that, from 1990 through 2005, Garry Kasparov had a score of 17-8-0 with it (17 wins, 8 draws, no losses). This drew attention to the opening again. It has maintained its popularity in the years since that match.

However, the King's Gambit has not gone through the same increase in popularity:

```
1824     1900,   16.5%
1900     1950     9.4%
1950     1989     5.4%
1990     2000     2.9%

```

From this data, you might think that the reason the King's Gambit is unpopular is because the results that White achieves with this opening are disappointing.

But that hypothesis can be disproven: In that last period, 1990-2000, White scored 56% with this opening, with only 18% draws. This is a substantially higher rate of wins than in many other openings.

However, at the highest levels of play (players over 2400 ELO), White scores only *51%* with this opening! This is very poor performance, when compared with a *55%* win rate in all Double KP openings. So, because they don't get good enough results with it, it's unpopular at the highest level of play. Only 2.2% of all double KP games involve the King's Gambit at 2400+ ELO.

This suggests that players at lower levels are following *fashion set by the highest level players*, not the actual results they can achieve in practice at their own level.

**The Scotch Game Explained*, Gary Lane, Batsford Chess 2005, p.5

# Answer
> 6 votes
Yes, openings can fall out of favor. At the higher levels, it often has to do with how well an opening performs, but it can also be due to a matter of popular style.

Typically a refutation of a particular line makes it unpopular, for example, the Dragon Sicilian fell out of favor in the 60's when Bobby Fischer, among others, found lines that led to overwhelming victories by white, including upsets of much higher rated players.

The Cambridge Springs Defense is an example of a line that used to be a popular, and rather successful, variation for black in the Queen's Gambit Declined. To avoid it, players of the white pieces started to play the Exchange Variation of the QGD. When black started to equalize against that, the leading players had moved on to other lines in the QGD.

Sometimes it's a matter of style or movement. The Philidor Defense is and example of an opening that lost popularity because it leads to cramped positions, that are difficult to defend.

In the early to mid 20th century, the romantic style was fading, and the hyper-modern movement was on the rise, so there were a lot fewer King's and Evans' gambits, and more Reti-English systems and Indian defenses to the Queen's Gambit being played.

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Tags: opening
---


# Question
Title: Tournament strategy to gain maximum points
My question may seem a little odd. But, nevertheless:

Planning to play in the tournament. 15 + 0 Swiss system. There will be players from beginner to CM. What do you consider best openings to confuse players, set up traps against beginners and chess masters?

And can you suggest best strategy to play in this kind of tournament?

My rating is something like 1600-1700.

# Answer
I find dfan's answer the best posted, but I want to add a few things that I think should be considered:

* Against players signifigantly weaker than you - PLAY SOLID CHESS! These players will unwittingly outplay themselves if you let them. You have to be patient, and not give them any chances to actually get anything sharp going. Just hoist them up gently after they've tied the noose around their neck.
* Against players roughly at the same level as you (1600-1700), offbeat openings may actually give you an edge, if you're familiar with them. But don't try to play something unsound just to confuse your opponent. Remember that you cannot expect the game to be over just because you got out of the opening with an advantage. And focus on playing well - the game will most likely be decided by who was more tactically alert.
* Against strong players, you should only be happy after you've won the game, and not because you won a pawn/piece in the opening. These players are greedy (and strong) enough to rip off your arm if you lend them a finger, so do not relax, even if you have a great position. Also, try to decide the game before the endgame if possible. A CM will most likely outplay you in an equal endgame, so go for "high-risk-high-reward" openings, since anybody can make fatal mistakes in sharp positions. Avoid slow, positional setups. Be prepared that these players will do to you what you should do against the weaker players. They will not be as easy to fool with uncommon setups as the others, and even if they are fooled, it may not be enough.
> 6 votes

# Answer
The best strategy is simply to play as well as possible. There are no effective shortcuts like trick openings.
> 5 votes

# Answer
In these fast games, you're going for a knockout. You don't have time for a long, drawn-out game... unless you're able to move fast and your opponent isn't.

So find a sharp offbeat opening for each color and learn the barbs. Then capitalize on the confusion. This can lead to bad moves or slow moves on the part of the opponent.

If you play a Ruy Lopez, Queen's Gambit, etc, you're going to play into peoples' books.
> 3 votes

# Answer
My rating is much lower, so it might not be as helpful for you as it is for me, but I really enjoy playing the English. Most people spend their time studying the more popular openings, but when I start with c4 it throws a lot of their prep out the window and evens the playing field a bit.
> 0 votes

# Answer
I support Tony Ennis' answer - you want the clock as your ally, not your enemy. That means you want to get your opponent out of book before he does it to you, so he burns more time on the clock. If you can play an opening he's not likely to be familiar with, but which is still playable, you're going to gain lots of time on the clock if he tries to play well.

Once he eventually decides that he doesn't have time for long thinks and just starts to improvise, you may be able to lure him into a trap or two.

Then, once you have an advantage, back off on the tactics and just grind out the win by picking up extra material or squeezing him positionally.

Expect a sacrifice/breakout if he's got a positional disadvantage, try to figure out where it's likely to happen, and have an equal or stronger threat ready, if not a refutation.

Finally, since it's a Swiss and not a Round-Robin, you will play the strongest players if you win every game. The overall winner in your section (if winning is your goal) may not need to have a perfect score at the end, so if you have a game that looks drawish, don't be afraid to offer a draw, instead of risking trying to win a drawn game. It'll probably improve your winning chances in the next few games due to the pairing rules anyway. However, you should know that if you end up on this track and at the end of the tournament, you tie on game points with another player, it's likely (if there isn't a playoff) that the tiebreak will be based on the scores of your opposition. So, if you played weaker opponents than he did, it's likely his tiebreak score will be higher due to his opponents' having fewer losses and draws than yours.

I don't go to win the section so much as to play, so for me that's not a concern.

As for openings, you might consider:

# For Black

1. Budapest Gambit
2. Colorado Gambit
3. Icelandic Gambit
4. Schliemann Defense (to the Ruy Lopez)
5. Bird's Defence (to the Ruy Lopez)
6. 3...a6!? (to the Italian Game/Giuoco Piano)
7. Pick a line you're comfortable with against the English (1...a6 and 2...b5 has been tried), and
8. Pick a line you're comfortable with against the Reti (1.Nf3)
9. Expect a few London/Colle/Zukertorts, which attempt to avoid an early confrontation, so have a one-size fits all system for them
    10. Have a line against the King's Indian Attack (1.e4, 2.d3) that you like, if you don't play 1...e5.

Also, have at least one line prepared for the Grob Attack and for the Sokolsky Opening.

# For White

1. Vienna Gambit vs. 1...e5, or Göring Gambit vs 1...e5
2. King's Indian Attack (KIA) vs French (1. e4 e6 2.d3 d5 3.Qe2!?)
3. KIA vs Sicilian:
    1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d3 Nc6 4. g3 g6 5. Bg2 Bg7 6. O-O Nge7 7. c3 O-O 8. d4 cxd4 9. cxd4 d5 10. e5 Nf5 11. Nc3 f6 12. Re1 Kh8 13. g4 Nh4 14. Nxh4 fxe5 15. Nxg6+ hxg6 16. dxe5 Nxe5 *
4. Alekhine's Defense line (I recommend 1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. Nf3 Bg4 5. Be2 e6 6. O-O Be7 7. c4 Nb6 8. Nc3 O-O 9. Be3 d5 10. c5 )
5. Scandinavian Defense line (take your pick)
> 0 votes

# Answer
To add to what the others have said, it also depends on how much preparation time you have for the tournament. If the tournament starts next week, you don't really have time to learn a new opening. Even if you do manage to throw your opponents off guard, you won't be any more familiar with the resulting positions than they will.
> 0 votes

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Tags: opening, strategy, tournament
---


# Question
Title: Chess Clock App that does not pause when put in the background?
I am looking to track how much time I spent "working" and "not working". I would like to use a chess clock for this. When I go away from my desk, I hit the player 1's timer, and when I get back to work, I hit the player 2's timer.

I think I found some **Android** apps that could work nicely, but if I need to switch apps or lock the screen, they all pause. Is there any such app that runs in the background? I use Android.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I use pomello.

This isn't a timetracker really. It's more for those who practice the pomodoro technique. It tracks the number of pomodoros you can achieve while allowing you to also tag disruptions and keep you focused until your break. I picked this particular one because it's integrated with trello. The integration allows it to tag your work items with the number of pomodoros you've done on that work item.

---
Tags: chess-clocks, android
---


title: Scid PGN analysis using Stockfish

text:
# Question
Title: Scid PGN analysis using Stockfish
Scid outputs this analysis of a PGN file using the Stockfish engine:

What does the `D` mean? And where (e.g. a web page) is this actually explained?

# Answer
> 3 votes
This is a special mark meaning `diagram`. When you export the game into a PDF/LaTeX file positions after moves marked with `D` are rendered in the document.

The only documentation I've found is https://sourceforge.net/p/scid/wiki/HowToExportGames/. Scid vs PC documentation maybe is clearer http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/doc/Export.htm. But documentation is actually poor, I discovered this feature just testing the `Export to LaTeX` feature.

---
Tags: pgn, scid
---


# Question
Title: Why are there separate tournaments for men and women?
Why are there separate tournaments for men and women?

It is obvious that in physical sports men have a huge advantage, but what is the reason why in chess we differentiate by gender?

# Answer
Chess as an activity is not appealing to many women. Because there are so few women in open tournaments, it can be quite intimidating for a girl or woman to start playing the game. Imagine being one of the 1-3% of female players at a large open tournament. They receive constant attention and stares (it is much worse if they are conventionally attractive). Some women like this or are not horribly pushed away by it. Many are.

Thus, girls-only tournaments were born. In the US, there is a National Girls Championship every year near Chicago which attracts 200+ participants. This is a place for them to play without having the pressure of being basically a foreign entity at most open tournaments. I think that scholastic tournaments for girls are a very positive part of the chess world.

On the other end of the spectrum, and what I don't like, is the structure of the Women's World Championship, Women's Olympiad and various national women's championships.

My basic issue with these events is that they essentially encourage top women to get to a certain point (about 2500 Elo) and then stop improving. Take the history of Olga Girya (http://ratings.fide.com/hist.phtml?event=4195752) for example. I count 23 events that she has played since Novemeber 2012-the last time that she played in an open tournament. In many of those 23 she played not a single woman that was higher rated than herself. She has been making plenty of money, but her growth as a player has been stunted by playing in such a closed pool.

Irina Krush, in the US, recently made GM. She has been playing in US Women's Championships since she was 14 and has been one of the top two or three seeds for maybe the last 10 years. How much better would she have been if she had instead been competing against the best players in the country in the Open championship? I think it is almost unquestionable that playing against inferior opponents so often been a detriment to her improvement.
> 19 votes

# Answer
The late Doreen Kimura, a world expert on sex differences, says in her book, ‘Sex and Cognition’, that men outperform women by half a standard error in maths/problem solving. If true and it probably is, there will be 3.6 times as many men as women in the top 2.5% of ability in that vector and six times as many men as women at or above the 0.1% level, supposing my statistics is adequate.

Additionally men are more likely to commit absolutely, as is required at the top level. Hence, although we may, one day, have a female world chess champ, only a few will compete at the top level.
> 10 votes

# Answer
Excellent question. There's no good reason for it. Gender differentiation probably has a negative effect on female achievement in chess. Notably Judit Polgar (until recently the highest rated woman ever to play the game) never played in female only events.

It might have been thought that a woman could never win a Fields medal in mathematics, and this happened recently, so there's no reason to believe there wouldn't be a female world chess champion one day.
> 5 votes

# Answer
This is probably the only frequently recurring question in chess that is ideological in nature, rather than chess-related. By this I do not mean that it is a bad question, but only that it is a question likely to elicit bad answers, and moreover to elicit bad answers with great heat.

If you believe that men and women should not differ by sex in any significant way that is relevant to chess, then you are likely to suppose, and look for, and even imagine, bad faith as an explanation. On the other hand, if you believe that men and women differ by sex in lots of ways, several of which are probably relevant to chess, even if we are not aware of all these ways, then there is no mystery, is there?

I have little doubt that the typical female chess master finds tends to find male-dominated tournament conditions somewhat uncomfortable. I have little doubt that these conditions discourage some women from seriously pursuing chess. I have much doubt however that the problem could or should be solved. Indeed, I have much doubt that the problem is actually a problem.

One should not automatically assume that a woman is at a social disadvantage in chess, incidentally. She may be (and so what?), but one should not automatically assume it. Will I get hate mail if I notice the significant proportion of female chess masters who have *married* their top opponents? Probably.

Typically, obviously, for whatever reason, though of course with exceptions, women are much, much less interested in chess than men are. We don't really know whether women, as women, are inherently less capable of top-level chess than men are (women might be *more* capable, for all I know, though I somewhat doubt it); but, if you judge by the evidence on the face of it, well, the evidence does seem to suggest that men were on average at least a little better at chess. (I have four sons and two daughters, and in my family the top chess talent so far is a seven-year-old daughter, who probably outplays her two elder brothers at the same age, and who has recently started giving me a lot of trouble with Alekhine's defense; but I am aware that this is not typical. Nor would it surprise or dismay me if the daughter in question lost interest in chess as she matured. Nor will I condone imaginary, question-begging nonsense about women being unequal at chess because fathers like me supposedly hadn't encouraged them enough. I encourage *none* of my children enough to make them likely future chess masters—chess just is not that important—but if I did indeed encourage my daughter less, this would be no one's business but hers and mine.) The inherent equality of men and women as chess players was not specifically asked, but I mention it because it is usually on the mind of people who discuss such questions.

I admit that I do not see the problem as a problem. Since tournaments are already open to women, and since reasonable steps have already been taken to make the male-dominated atmosphere as nonthreatening as it can be under the circumstance, the circumstance is what it is. If some women then prefer to play in strictly female tournaments, well, I have no idea (or interest) as to why they would prefer this, but it doesn't bother me. Strictly female tournaments are fine.

Strictly male tournaments would be fine, too, in theory, I suppose, except that no one (including me) seems to be interested in organizing or participating in those.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Just like in other sports women are less likely to be motivated by society to pursue greatness or a high skill level. It's the "you throw like a girl" concept. In this patriarchy women are taught that they should not be the ones performing in those tournaments. The separation between women and men in chess is just remnant of roots of the chess society, which is undoubtly patriarchaic. I don't think women will get less stares in an women-only tournament, and the setting itself won't be different too. Also if women where to be able to compete in such levels it would also give them the chance to improve by playing against those high-level players. It's just lazy to assume, those rulings are being made to protect women from this unfriendly competitive enviroment. It's also not a biological difference, that causes women to be less competetive and therefore not reach the level of top class chess players. The olympic games for example show us that women are just as competetive as men and can compete in the same enviroment as them. The seperation there is needed because women and men have a different physiology than women and can therefore show a higher physical capacity.

english isn't my motherlanguage, so I want to apologize for some of my mistakes and bad expressions.
> 2 votes

# Answer
It may simply be that the population of advanced (i.e professional) chess players that are also women is very small (as has been pointed out).

Statistically speaking (assuming that the skills and abilities required for chess playing are evenly distributed among the population without any bias for either sex) if there are an equal number of men and women in the professional chess world, and the chess world population is reasonably high, there should be an even distribution of skill across those players (meaning for every man of a certain skill, there is a women of about equal skill for every rating level).

Back to the original question, because the above conditions do not exist (as some one pointed out, the top 50 chess players do not include women), perhaps it is necessary to separate the populations of women chess players from men for some "idealized" fair competition. Still, even as I write this, I am not entirely convinced that in its origin, women's tournaments were not a matter of sexism in the chess community.

The simple solution would be to have more women in the professional chess world, which, besides creating skill equality, as mentioned above, would also create an equality in terms of voiced opinion.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: history, tournament
---


# Question
Title: Moral question about online chess & engine analysis
This isn't so much a 'hard' knowledge or analysis question, but more of a request for feedback on a moral issue.

I cheat in online chess, daily/correspondence that is. I use a strong engine not only for post game analysis, but during the game as well.

Why would you even want to do that?, you might ask. What's the point of 'empty' wins? The answer is: I don't use the engine before submitting my move, but only run it after I made my move, with the engine/GUI set to output scores only.

In other word, I'm performing an engine blunder check after I make my (unassisted) move. Not after every move, in every game, but most moves in most games.

Am I trying to argue whether that's maybe not really cheating? No, I absolutely know it is cheating.

The strongest effect, I believe, is that while I don't receive a move suggestion by the engine, being made aware of a blunder even after the fact means I'll probably pay more attention next move, which further means that my opponent, who might have been able to exploit my blunder some time later might not get a chance to do so anymore. And that *is* effectively a move suggestion/prediction coming from the engine.

What am I actually asking in here? Perhaps I should explain *why* I cheat the way I do.

One, it makes me extremely nervous not *knowing* whether I blundered or not. The check seems to give me peace of mind, no matter whether the move was a blunder or not. Just knowing whether it was or not seems to be enough.

Two, post game analysis in one big chunk is something I usually skip. The game's over anyway, why bother?, part of my brain thinks. The (cheating) post move blunder check seems to be the only analysis of my own games I can reliable motivate myself for. And it actually does motivate me to do so. If I see my score suddenly dropped, I will take a good look at what my blunder was, just the way I *should* do it *after* the game is over.

I mention these two reasons above not as justification, but because, aside from moral points that you might want to raise, maybe I'd also like to ask if you can think of ways to constructively address these two weaknesses above... ways to 'hack' myself out of them in a way that doesn't require cheating like I do now.

# Answer
"Chess is war over the board", Bobby Fischer once said.

But chess is also *work*. If you enjoy the thrill of playing chess, including the risk of blundering, but don't feel up to the task of the work involved to get better at it, don't worry: welcome to a fairly large club.

Engines are labor-saving devices, first and foremost. Unfortunately, the more labor you save, the more out-of-shape you get. Pretty soon you're like the robotically-attended cruise guests in the movie *Wall-E*, unable to get up out of their levitating deckchairs.

So, if you want to avoid that, you have to go on the hunt for a way to take advantage of what an engine can do for you without giving it all of the heavy lifting to do for you. That's what you're "check-the-engine-after-each-move" technique seems to be doing, *except* that you're not following up with *analyzing your games*. (And one other thing, too; more on that below...)

I would bet you can't find a chess coach anywhere who will tell you that you can get better at chess without putting in some time analyzing your games. They'll all tell you that you'll improve *more and faster* by getting knocked down for the count in about half of your games, and then studying your losses, because that's the most effective way to learn.

After all, that's what the rating system is supposed to do; it puts people *of roughly equal ability* in a *fair match*, where either one could win. That means (excluding draws) *either player could lose*. Therefore, half of the time, you *should* lose.

So, a) Unless your partner is doing what you're doing *and* you both know what's going on, you're tipping the scales and not disclosing it to your partner. Yes, that's unethical.

b) You are depriving yourself of being able to play better, by avoiding the work required to get there.

What kinds of work you need to do to improve:

1. Diagnose your strengths and weaknesses. To figure these out, you need to *analyze your games*. Do it alone, with a friend, or with a coach, but you'll find that you make the most progress if you do it alone *first*. There's lots of good guidance on how to analyze your games.

Wait to use an engine until *after you've done the first pass on your own*. Try to find the points in the game where one side improved, and the other side got worse. Try to figure out which move caused the problem, and why. *Take notes*. Only then, use the engine to discover what you missed in the analysis, and to confirm what you found.

2. Catalog the kinds of mistakes you make. What are your weaknesses? Which ones cost you the most games? Are they: Blunders? Strategic weaknesses? Poor development? Poor king safety? Unsound sacrifices? Lack of a sense of danger? Allowing counterplay? Poor defense? Lousy attacking? Floundering in the endgame? Not knowing what to do in the middlegame once the book moves are over in the opening? Messing up the opening itself?
3. Figure out where to start. It's usually either the most common problem, or the one that kills the game instantly when it appears. Then, devise a plan to correct the problem. You will probably need advice from better players or a coach to help with this. Here are some common problems and some possible solutions:

4a. If you *miss* tactical opportunities (a common weakness among players below about 1800), practice tactics problem sets, and *track your progress*.

4b. If you *allow* tactical opportunities, pick up a fresh tactics problem set, and for each one, *turn the board around*, remember that it's now the *other side to move*, and figure out what your opponent could do to you. Then try to figure out how you could *prevent* it, if it were *your* move. See the *New Art of Defence in Chess*, by Andrew Soltis, or Colin Crouch's *How to Defend in Chess*.

4c. If you have a tendency to blunder (miscalculate, overlook a simple capture or immediate tactic, etc), get a book on avoiding blunders; both Angus Dunnington and Lev Alburt have written one, and they're both good resources.

4d. Do you find yourself missing good candidate moves, or misjudging which move was the best, or missing a tactic that came up after the line you analyzed was played out? These are all *analysis* mistakes, and a disciplined method of analyzing at the board will help. Try Per Ostman's *Your Best Move*, or Soltis' *How to Choose A Chess Move*, to solidify your thinking technique.

Then, once you've fixed that problem, Rinse, and Repeat with Step 3.

4e. If you frequently get into time trouble, work on i) budgeting your time per move, ii) knowing when to have a long think and when not to, and iii) finding the best available move when short of time. Blitz games are *not* a remedy for this; the right approach is to develop a sense of what kinds of situations allow quick thinking, and which ones don't, and learning how to steer the game in the right direction. I can recommend "*What It Takes to Become a Chess Master*," by GM Andrew Soltis; it has several sections on finding moves quickly and when to apply the techniques.

Then, play slower games, but work on ending the game with a budgeted amount of time to spare. If you meet or beat the budget, you're improving. If not, you won't lose on time, but you'll know you have to improve. Once you can reliably meet your budget, play a slightly faster time control. Do this until you can play a 5 minute game with 10 second delay respectably well. You'll lose quite a few, but you'll be thinking faster and more efficiently. Note that this approach will work much better if you do 4d) first, to make sure you're using your thinking time as efficiently as you can.

During your game, keep track of the time you spend on moves. When you analyze the game, in addition to finding and cataloging the mistakes, try to figure out where you spent what turned out to be too much time, and why. Did you rehash the calculation of lines multiple times? Did you get anxious when faced with only poor choices, and just procrastinate? Did you get distracted?

You can't justify doing any of this work unless you are confident that it will help you improve, and that doing *this particular work* will be the most help to you now. Many players simply decide they need to work on openings because the lost a quick game. Or that they need to work on endgame theory because they missed a fork in a knight-and-pawns endgame. They *could* be right, or they *could* be wrong. If they're wrong, they'll end up spinning their wheels and wasting effort, and will continue to struggle to improve. This happens *all the time*.

To justify this work, you *need* that analysis of your games. Set aside time to do it, ideally soon after you play the game. If you wait, you'll forget key information that could provide insight into why you made a particular mistake. If you play multiple games before you get around to it, you might find the amount of work daunting and never get around to it. It's a simple choice: *Procrastinate*, or *Improve*. You can't have both.

Another potential issue you mention is that you get anxious not knowing whether you've made a mistake. I'm not a psychologist, and I certainly don't want to read too much in between the lines here, but *risk* is inherent in everything we do. Sure, it's nice to minimize it, but in the end, we need to get accustomed to accepting risk, and dealing with failure.

On top of the other things it is, chess is also a *game*. Unless you're trying to make a living at it, it might help to try to develop a greater tolerance for blundering, possibly not finding out that you've blundered until your opponent takes advantage of it, and losing. You should *want* to win, or you won't be motivated, but you will play better if you're not *afraid to lose*.

*Postscript on Fear of Failure:* In his article "*An Improvement Plan*" for ChessCafe.com back in 2006 which I recently rediscovered, Dan Heisman said: "...results will be strongly diminished if you can’t abandon your fears about losing and your rating. Any good improvement program will include enough practice that you will be faced with plenty of losses and the need to endure times when your rating goes down. That’s life; it happens – no one goes straight up. So if multiple setbacks cause discouragement and not determination, it’s going to be one long path…"

You will learn much more from your mistakes than from perfect play. *Make the mistakes*, and then *learn from them*. Play, *on your own*, and *study your games* afterwards.

You will improve fastest if you can persuade yourself to do those things. Good luck!
> 2 votes

---
Tags: online-chess, etiquette, cheating
---


title: Is there a "perfect" game?

text:
# Question
Title: Is there a "perfect" game?
Is there a historic example of a chess game that has, to date, resisted all computerized attempts to find a better sequence of moves? In other words, a "perfect" game?

**CLARIFICATION**

I should have made it clearer that I'm not looking for a perfect (without the quotes) game. That probably will never exist.

But is there a game that no computer has ever been able to improve as of this date?

# Answer
> 31 votes
In my opinion, it's almost impossible to say that a game is perfect *if you include the opening*. If you take the first few moves as a given (for example `1. e4 e5`), then it *is* possible to say that a series of moves is perfect.

One example of a so-called perfect game is the Immortal Draw. Carl Hamppe and Philipp Meitner played to a draw in 1872, and in the next century, no improvements have been found for the game. It has stood up to all sorts of computer analysis and GM analysis.

Obviously the argument can be made that there is a "flaw" in the first 3 moves - maybe `1. e4` is not best, or `3. Na4` was an error, but if we ignore those 3 moves, every move starting with move 4 has held up as arguably the best move. For instance, `7. Qe1` is often given as an option for white, but black can once again sac his queen for a perpetual check.

While there are certainly other lines that draw, the game line is the most beautiful IMHO.

```
[FEN ""]
[Event "Vienna 1872"]
[White "Carl Hamppe"]
[Black "Philipp Meitner"]
[Site "Vienna"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[PlyCount "36"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Bc5 3. Na4 Bxf2+ 4. Kxf2 Qh4+ 5. Ke3 Qf4+ 6. Kd3 d5 7. Kc3 (7.
Qe1 Nf6 8. g3 Qg4 9. Bh3 dxe4+ 10. Kc3 Nd5+ 11. Kb3 Nc6 $1 12. Bxg4 Na5+ $11)
7... Qxe4 8. Kb3 Na6 9. a3 Qxa4+ 10. Kxa4 Nc5+ 11. Kb4 a5+ 12. Kxc5 Ne7 13.
Bb5+ Kd8 14. Bc6 (14. Nf3 $4 b6#) 14... b6+ 15. Kb5 Nxc6 16. Kxc6 (16. Ka4 Nd4
17. Qf1 Bd7+ 18. Qb5 Bxb5#) 16... Bb7+ 17. Kb5 (17. Kxb7 Kd7 18. Qg4+ Kd6 19.
Qe6+ fxe6 20. Nf3 Rhb8#) 17... Ba6+ 18. Kc6 Bb7+ 1/2-1/2

```

# Answer
> 9 votes
To know that a game is "perfect", you have to solve the entire chess game space.

What you're really asking is whether grandmasters have played a game where a computer would have played the same moves (for both sides)? Assumptions about computer and the analysis time for the computer need to be made. I think it's possible to find such a game, but as you let the computer think longer and longer the number of results will dwindle to 0. If you limit it to only one side, you might find more games.

# Answer
> 8 votes
IF we assume that chess is a theoretical draw, then any move that doesn't lose is "perfect" in the theoretical sense.

I think there have been many perfect games. Take game 2 of Anand-Carlsen:

```
[FEN ""]
[Event "Anand-Carlsen World Championship"]
[Site "Chennai IND"]
[Date "2013.11.10"]
[EventDate "2013.11.07"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Viswanathan Anand"]
[Black "Magnus Carlsen"]
[ECO "B18"]
[WhiteElo "2775"]
[BlackElo "2870"]
[PlyCount "50"]

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5 5.Ng3 Bg6 6.h4 h6 7.Nf3
e6 8.Ne5 Bh7 9.Bd3 Bxd3 10.Qxd3 Nd7 11.f4 Bb4+ 12.c3 Be7
13.Bd2 Ngf6 14.O-O-O O-O 15.Ne4 Nxe4 16.Qxe4 Nxe5 17.fxe5 Qd5
18.Qxd5 cxd5 19.h5 b5 20.Rh3 a5 21.Rf1 Rac8 22.Rg3 Kh7 23.Rgf3
Kg8 24.Rg3 Kh7 25.Rgf3 Kg8 1/2-1/2

```

I cannot believe that either player had a lost position at any moment, so no mistakes were made in the theoretical sense, so that was a perfect game.

It's similar to playing a drawn tablebase endgame position against an engine that uses the tablebase. It's usually incredibly easy to draw, because the engine doesn't care about making life hard for you. E.g., in a drawn R + pawn v R position, it will often just give away the pawn. That's not worse than other drawing moves, according to the tablebase. It's flawless chess.

# Answer
> 4 votes
You could define a game as perfect when the engine evaluation of the position stays within some boundary (e.g. between +0.3 and -0.3) the entire game. It should be possible to find at least one game that satisfies this condition.

EDIT:

The question has been updated since last time: But is there a game that no computer has ever been able to improve as of this date? To answer this question, someone needs to automate the process of evaluating a game in this manner and then run this script on e.g. all GM games from some freely available database. I guess such games should be few in number and the shorter the game the higher the chance that it meets the requirement!

# Answer
> 3 votes
I honestly don't think you will ever find a "perfect" game just due to the fact that we are all human and we make mistakes. Bobby Fischer was once asked to name his best game and said it was his game with Donald Byrne, but it wasn't perfect.

Hungarian Writer Tibor Karolyi said that Anatoly Karpov came close to playing a mistake-free game at the 1974 chess Olympiad, but a tiny error deprived him from a "perfect" game.

But in the end, there is no perfect game and probably never will be.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I think there have probably been games that were perfect in that no one could substantively improve upon them. This will surely be less and less common as computers get stronger.

# Answer
> 0 votes
To me, it is still unclear what one would call *perfect*, but in terms of wins, Anderssen struck twice with the most unbelievable wins in the history of chess, which I'm going to paste here, the Immortal Game.

```
[FEN ""]
[Event "First International Tournament"]
[Site "London UK"]
[Date "1851.06.21"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Adolf Anderssen"]
[Black "Lionel Kieseritzky"]
[ECO "C33"]
[WhiteElo ""]
[BlackElo ""]
[PlyCount "50"]

1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Bc4 Qh4 4. Kf1 b5 5. Bb5 Nf6 6. Nf3 Qh6 7. d3 Nh5 8. Nh4 Qg5 9. Nf5 c6 10. g4 Nf6 11. Rg1 cxb5 12. h4 Qg6 13. h5 Qg5 14. Qf3 Ng8 15. Bf4 Qf6 16. Nc3 Bc5 17. Nd5 Qb2 18. Bd6 Bg1 19. e5 Qa1 20. Ke2 Na6 21. Ng7 Kd8 22. Qf6 Nf6 23. Be7#

```

# Answer
> 0 votes
Here are the best moves according to Komodo 10:

```
[FEN ""]
1.  d4 Nf6
2.  c4  e6
3.  Nf3 b6
4.  g3  Ba6
5.  Qa4 Bb7
6.  Bg2 c5
7.  O-O cxd4
8.  Nxd4 Qc8
9.  Bf4 Bxg2
10. Kxg2 Be7
11. Nc3 a6
12. f3  O-O
13. Rfd1 Qb7
14. Qb3 d6
15. Nc2 Qc7
16. Qa3 Rd8
17. Rac1 Nc6
18. Nb4 Ne5
19. Bxe5 dxe5
20. Rxd8+ Rxd8
21. Nxa6 Bxa3
22. Nxc7 Bxb2
23. Rd1 Rxd1
24. Nxd1 Ba3
25. Nf2 Nd7
26. Nd3 Bd6
27. Nb5 Be7
28. Nc3 Kf8
29. Kf2 f6
30. Ke3 Ke8
31. Na4 Kd8
32. Nc3 Kc7
33. Nb5+    Kc6
34. h3  Nc5
35. Nb4+    Kd7
36. Nd3 Nb7
37. Kd2 Kc6
38. g4  g6
39. Kc3 Na5
40. e4  g5
41. Nb4+ Kd7
42. Na6 Kc6
43. Nb8+ Kb7
44. Nd7 Nc6
45. Kb3 Nd4+
46. Nxd4 exd4
47. e5 fxe5
48. Nxe5 Kc7
49. Nd3 Kd7
50. Ne5+ Kd6
51. Nf7+ Kc5
52. Ne5 Bd6
53. Nd7+ Kc6
54. Nf6 Bf8
55. Ne4 h6
56. a4  Be7
57. Nf2 Bd8
58. Nd3 Bc7
59. Nb4+ Kc5
60. Na6+ Kd6
61. Kc2 e5
62. Nb4 Kc5
63. Kb3 Bd6
64. Nd5 Bf8
65. Nf6 Bg7
66. Nh5 Bf8
67. Ng3 Be7
68. Ne4+ Kc6
69. Kc2 Bc5
70. Kd3 Bb4

```

---
Tags: history
---


title: Pawns In The Bishop Endgames

text:
# Question
Title: Pawns In The Bishop Endgames
Are there any general guidelines to choose the square colour for your own pawns in bishop endgames?

Especially in knight vs bishop endgames, would you put your pawns on same coloured squares as the opponent's bishop?

# Answer
*In general*, the pawns should be on the **opposite colour** of the bishop, especially if this forces the **opponent's pawns onto the same colour** as the bishop.

This prevents the bishop from being bad (locked in by it's own pawns) and gives the bishop targets.

In my answer to When and why should I trade minor pieces?, I gave this sample position of a bishop dominating the knight:

```
[FEN "8/8/1k3b2/1p3p1p/pPp2P2/P1P3P1/8/1N2K3 w - - 0 1"]
[Site ""]
[White "Onoprienko"]
[Black "Khasangatin"]

  1. Kd2            Kc6
  2. Ke2            Kd5
  3. Ke3            Bg7
  4. Kf3            Bh8
  5. Ke3            Bg7
  6. Kf3            Bf6
  7. Ke3            h4
  8. gxh4           Bxh4
  9. Kf3            Bf6
 10. Ke3            Ke6
 11. Kf3            Kf7
 12. Kg3            Kg6
 13. Kh3            Kh5
 14. Kg3            Be7
 15. Kh3            Bh4
 16. Nd2            Be1
 17. Nb1            Bf2
 18. Kg2            Be3
 19. Kf3            Bc1
 20. Kg3            Kg6
 0-1

```

This position is cited from *Understanding Chess Endgames* by John Nunn
> 1 votes

# Answer
The *normal pawn square color rule* says: **put your pawns on the opposite color**. But there's an exception.

So, the precise answer depends on two things:

1. Are you playing, or are you trying to transition to, an opposite-colored bishops endgame?
2. If so, and you are the attacker, you follow the *normal pawn square color rule*: put your pawns on the opposite color.
3. If so, and you are the defender, put your pawns on the ***same color as your bishop***, so they cannot be attacked by your opponent's bishop, and you can defend them with yours.
4. If not, then follow the *normal pawn square color rule* (see #2).

See my response to the question *When should I trade into opposite-colored bishops?* for more details.
> 1 votes

# Answer
I mostly agree with the other answers, but want to make one distinction.

Yes, for long-term *strategic* reasons it is generally correct to fix the opponent's pawns on the same colour as their bishop in order to restrict that bishop.

However, for short-term *tactical* reasons the opposite is often true. You may want to fix some of the opponent's pawns on the opposite colour of the bishop so that they cannot be defended by the bishop.

Example:

```
[Title "White to move"]
[FEN "8/pkp5/1p6/5bp1/8/1P4P1/PK1N4/8 w - - 0 1"]

 1. g4!

```

White to move plays `1. g4!` and black has no way to defend the pawn on `g5`, with a draw as the likely result.
> 1 votes

# Answer
It depends on the stage of the game an the pieces on board. The principles I usually follow is 1. If there is a knight on the board, then it would be better to place some pawns on thesame color most of them on a different colour so that the bishop could quickly be attached to a pawn when it's threatened to prevent forks.

2. If there is an opposite colour bishop on the board then it would the piston of your pawn would not depend on your bishop but your opponent's bishop. The pawn should be placed on the same colour to prevent them from attack..
> 0 votes

---
Tags: endgame, bishop-endgame
---


# Question
Title: Threefold repetition: Am I getting it right?
I was wondering if this is the right way of how the threefold repetition works. Thanks. (The image is in gif format, it should play automatically.)

# Answer
> 1 votes
The confusion regarding the right to claim a draw when the position occurs 3 times results from the common misnomer for the situation: "*Three-Fold Repetition*". A correct term could be *Three-Fold* ***Occurrence***.

As a result, in your diagram, after there have been 2 repetitions (which shows in the animation as "Repitition (sic) 2", there have been 3 occurrences of the position, and a draw may be *claimed*. The game is not actually "drawn" until a claim is made and the Arbiter or Tournament Director approves the claim. This also has the result that if the player creating the 3rd occurrence of the position neglects to make the claim and proceeds to make a move, the right to claim a draw for this situation expires instantly, with his move.

Note that the protocol for making such a claim must be (to avoid causing his right to claim to expire) the following: The player announces his intention to make the move and cause the 3-fold occurrence, makes the claim to the TD before moving, and the claim is adjudicated. The rules do not describe whether the TD will require the player to make the move, but it would seem that he must, for the claim to be completed, or he will not have fulfilled his claim by causing the position to appear. If it is determined (after the move has been made, presumably) that the position is *not* in fact a third occurrence, presumably his move must stand, and a penalty for incorrect claim would be levied.

Note that ***all of the legal moves in all of the 3 occurrences must be identical***, including rights to castle as well as any possibility of en passant capture. It is *not sufficient* that the same pieces merely appear on the same squares.

---
Tags: rules, threefold-repetition
---


# Question
Title: Is there a computer program that generates quality chess problems?
Is there a chess engine that automatically generates quality chess problems. For example I will input 3 - it produces a mate in 3 problem. But the problem shouldn't be so obvious that one can solve in microseconds.

# Answer
ChessTempo uses a chess engine to analyze positions from a large database of master games. It looks for interesting positions that can be presented as chess problems. Specifically it looks for positions in which one side has a way to win material within a few moves, but where alternative moves do not. These positions are then offered to users of the site who try to find the computer's selected best move. The users can also comment on the problems, tag them and rate how they liked the problem. Each problem is also given an ELO-like rating based on which users solved or failed to solve the problem.

Many of the problems turn out to be uninteresting (e.g. simple captures with no strategy involved) or flawed in some way (due to the chess engine not seeing some detail of the position). The easy problems are quickly given a low difficulty rating and are not shown to high rated players. Flawed problems are identified in comments and are disabled by the site administrator.

The result is a large body of interesting chess problems found by a computer, moderated by humans, and arranged by difficult level.
> 6 votes

# Answer
I don't know if such an engine exists, but there probably might not be one yet and here's why-

It's hard to explain to engines what is "obvious". What might be obvious to you might not even be obvious to me. However, there is some recent research in the area of beauty in chess problems. Even if one takes such factors as "depth appeal", "visual appeal", etc. as outlined in this research, there still remains the fundamental problem of generating chess positions.

Considering the fact that there are at least 10^43 chess positions, it is not yet computationally feasible to generate positions and apply "beauty" analysis to them to see which ones are "quality" problems.

However, we do have endgame tablebases. It could be possible that one could use the already generated 6 piece tablebases and apply the algorithms of the research on them and generate quality problems. However, I do not know if anyone has done that yet.
> 5 votes

# Answer
Azlan Iqbal (PhD) has programmed a chess problem generator. The problems are completely synthesized from only some rough inputs, the way most problems are composed by composition masters.

In the ChessBase article announcing the work, he says:

"Chesthetica neither takes these constructs from actual games nor extrapolates them from endgame tablebases (which are currently limited to seven pieces, I believe). It is composing them by itself. It is not programmed or told what sort of compositions to create (beyond being of the #3 variety, at this point). There have been no detected repetitions of the compositions generated to date."

To the date of the article, Iqbal has only explored using the program, *Chesthetica*, to compose mates in 3. He also states:

"One might ask where does Chesthetica “get its ideas”? I do not know. How or why should a computer be able to compose chess problems like these at all? Can computers autonomously do this sort of thing? These are also good questions and I believe the answer lies with the DSNS\* technology. Again, why it works is still an open question but clearly, it does work."

If you're interested in knowing more about how the system was constructed, a brief recap of how DSNS functions is described in slides available *here*.

However, other than describing the algorithm and a few comments about the inputs he is using, Iqbal doesn't provide enough material for you to do this by yourself. The software isn't released, and no plans to release it have been announced. In addition, the method for choosing, capturing and inputting the inputs has not been divulged. You're welcome to search for more publications on the topic, available *here*.

\*DSNS: Digital Synaptic Neural Substrate.
> 3 votes

# Answer
This program has a generator chess problems but the quality of these tasks is low... http://chessexplorer.republika.pl/
> 2 votes

# Answer
I'm not sure if any exist but the problem shouldn't be too difficult using a decent engine. As long as time wasn't too big an issue they could be generated by having the engine play itself at different depth ply searches.

For example, if one of the engines only saw two moves ahead a position will eventually arise where the other engine (which can see further) can manoeuvre his opponent into a forced mate in three. This position could then be saved as a problem. The difficulty of the problem would be based on the strength of the two "players". Tweaking of player strength could be used to generate problems of varying difficulty.

I don't think time would even have to be too big a concern. Computers can generally make decent moves very quickly.
> 0 votes

# Answer
The Chess.com has a feature called the tactics trainer. It gives users a chess position and as for best move. Which i believe is what you are trying to create/ asking about.

They have a small FAQ about how they came up with these questions here: https://support.chess.com/customer/portal/articles/1444815

Basically, they look for blunders in real games, and have an engine to analyze the positions to make sure there is only one winning line (that's the way they set up tactics trainer, only 1 possible good move, for easier implementation of the trainer. In most problems, it is possible to have multiple equally good best moves)

They however, they also have humans to go through the problems before they post it.
> 0 votes

# Answer
yes! check out this chessbase article http://en.chessbase.com/post/computer-generated-chess-problems-for-everyone
> -1 votes

---
Tags: engines, software, problems
---


# Question
Title: Could you explain me this part of GM Larry Kaufman's article on "The Evaluation of Material Imbalances"?
This is a stupid question that has more to do with English than with chess, so if other people also think it's stupid I can delete it after I get the answer.

Since English is not my mother's tongue I am not totally sure I understand correctly this part of GM Larry Kaufman's article on "The Evaluation of Material Imbalances".

There are many things I don't understand everywhere, but this thing is particularly important to me so I really want to be sure that I understand it correctly.

> TO SUMMARIZE
>
> To summarize the findings of my research, the basic table of values would be:
>
> * Pawn= 1
> * Knight = 3.25
> * Bishop = 3.25
> * Rook = 5
> * Queen = 9.75
> * Bishop pair= +0.5
>
> This table agrees with the statistics (within about 1/8 pawn accuracy) in nearly every case tested.
>
> A further refinement would be to raise the knight's value by 1/16 and lower the rook's value by 1/8 for each pawn above five of the side being valued, with the opposite adjustment for each pawn short of five.

If I understood the part "raise the knight's value by 1/16 and lower the rook's value by 1/8 for each pawn above five of the side being valued" then these are the average values of our Knights and Rooks according to our number of Pawns:

* If you have 5 Pawns your Knights are worth 3.25 and your Rooks are worth 5
* If you have 6 Pawns your Knights are worth 3.3125 and your Rooks are worth 4.875
* If you have 7 Pawns your Knights are worth 3.375 and your Rooks are worth 4.75
* If you have 8 Pawns your Knights are worth 3.4375 and your Rooks are worth 4.625

Is this correct?

But what I'm really not sure of understanding is the part where he says "with the opposite adjustment for each pawn short of five."

Firstly, does "short of five" mean this?:

* 1 pawn short of five = 4 pawns
* 2 pawns short of five = 3 pawns
* 3 pawns short of five = 2 pawns
* 4 pawns short five = 1 pawn
* 5 pawns short of five = 0 pawn

And therefore, does "with the opposite adjustment for each pawn short of five" mean:

* this: *Lower the knight's value by 1/16 and raise the rook's value by 1/8 for each pawn short of five of the side being valued.* ?
* or this: *Lower the knight's value by 1/8 and raise the rook's value by 1/16 for each pawn short of five of the side being valued.* ?

PS: No need to tell me that implementing this in practical play is perfectly useless.

# Answer
In math, the "opposite" of "add 5" to A (A+5), then multiply B by 6 (Bx6) is "subtract 5" from A (A-5), then divide B by 6 (B/6).

In math, there is no possibility of "opposite" meaning "switch the variables".

So, I am completely certain that GM Kaufman is recommending that for each pawn fewer than 5, you should *subtract* 1/16 from the knight's standard value.

Similarly, for each pawn fewer than 5, you should *subtract* 1/8 from the rook's value.

There is *no reason* to believe that he meant the factor of 1/16 for the *knight* should now apply to the *rook*.

The logic of this intuitive; rooks need semi-open or open files to be effective, so the fewer friendly pawns there are, the more powerful they become.

Conversely, the knight is *stronger* in closed positions, so the more friendly pawns there are, the stronger the knight becomes *relative to the other pieces, which need open lines*. It is reasonable to assume that, unless there is some evidence that says otherwise, the factors are mostly *linear*, i.e. A *bit more* of an input results in *an increment* of the output. *Another bit more* of the same input results in *a similar additional increment* of the output.

Of course, this is simplistic;

1. The question of value is affected by whether pawns are *doubled*, which would provide a semi-open file *without* reducing the number of pawns, as well as how the pawns are positioned relative to their counterparts; two interlocking chains of 8 pawns each provide no toeholds or even targets to attack for the knights (and hence *reduce* their value somewhat), whereas if some of these pawns are doubled and a base pawn can be reached from a square that is safe for the knight, their value should be *greater*.
2. It's likely that the increment to the value of the rook for removing *the last pawn* would be nearly nothing; it already has 7 open files; why would it need *an 8th?*.
3. It's possible that the change in the value of the knight for adding the 8th pawn would be *negative*. This is because the knight needs squares for mobility, and if all 8 pawns are on the board, there may be openings it can use to jump over its own pawns, or there may not be. There might instead be a *complete coverage* of all such potential squares by the *opposing 8 pawns*. The knight would seem to be more likely to find open squares in a 7-vs-7 situation. But then, I'm not a GM.

I would also expect that the bishops' and knights' values are inversely affected by this factor; clearly, closed positions favor the knight more than the *rook*, but they also favor the knight more than the *bishop*. I assume Kaufman treats this topic separately, and your question only related to the knights and rooks. But if you're going to do this with knights and rooks, it seems only reasonable to to something with bishops.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Your interpretation of "for each pawn above/short of five" is correct. Unfortunately, "the opposite adjustment" is vague and could mean either of the two things you suggest.

I would guess that it means the first one, so that the value of a knight decreases by 1/16 every time a pawn is captured and the value of a rook increases by 1/8. If that is true, a simpler way of expressing the values would be that a knight is worth 2 15/16 plus pawns/16 and rook is worth 5 5/8 minus pawns/8. (Which, as you say, isn't very useful in practice.)
> 2 votes

---
Tags: statistics, knights, evaluation, rooks, point-value
---


# Question
Title: Strong chess program for GNU/Linux with a command line interface?
I'm looking for a **strong** chess program for GNU/Linux with a command line interface, or one that I can alter to make it suit my needs

After a quick search, I found the question Chess program for Linux/Unix console, which gives some programs that are either too slow or too weak (with no command line though, it was on terminal, but that is easily manageable).

# Answer
I wrote about **Stockfish** in the link you had. I don't see there is any engine better than that.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: engines, software
---


title: What is perpetual check?

text:
# Question
Title: What is perpetual check?
I know that there is 6 types of draws including mutual agreement, stalemate, insufficient material, 3 move repetition and the fifty move rule, but I do not know what is perpetual check.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Perpetual check isn't a thing any more. But the idea is that one side demonstrates that they can keep putting the opponent's king in check, regardless of what the response is. Sooner or later it will turn into a threefold repetition or run afoul of the fifty move rule.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Well... Yes, it is still a thing, many top level games end in threefold repetition, but that is due to the perpetual check. So in a way, you can't draw a game by perpetual 'per se' but perpetual check can implicate threefold repetition occurring.

# Answer
> 2 votes
FIDE Laws of Chess do not recognize "perpetual check." They only recognize a case where the same position appears 3 times on the board. If it does, the player about to make the move that will cause it to appear for the 3rd time may claim a draw, but must do so *before* he makes his move. Once he makes his move, he no longer has any rights to claim a draw, because this can only be done while the player is still "on move". Once he moves, his opponent is "on move".

The term "Threefold Repetition" is widely used, but misleading. Many players take it to mean what it seems to say, that a *repetition* has occurred 3 times, i.e. the position occurred once (no repetition), then again (1st repetition), then once again (2nd repetition; draw claim already available), and then *one more time* (3rd *repetition*, but *4th occurrence of the position*; draw claim still available). It's quite possible that 2 repetitions may occur, but the opponent may then vary *to avoid a draw claim*, in which case the 3rd repetition would *not*. If this came about, the player who wanted to claim a draw *missed his chance*, and he won't get another.

It pays to understand the rules, not just know what people call them.

---
Tags: draw, check, perpetual
---


# Question
Title: What should I do when my opponent and I are "chasing" each other around?
I think this is a very noob mistake, but bear with me.

Sometimes I run into a situation where my opponent and I "chase" each other around, repeatedly checking the king and escaping the check by moving the king.

Let's say I'm the one getting checked. My opponent checks me, I then move my king to escape the check, my opponent checks me again, I move my king, etc.

The only way to get out of this repetitive cycle is for my opponent to choose not to check my king, but that's probably not going to happen.

What should I do in such a situation?

# Answer
It's not entirely clear what you mean by "chase each other around", since in the scenario you describe, only one player is doing the chasing, and the other is being chased.

There are a few options normally available, depending on the position and what you believe to be the goal of the other player.

If you are about to win, and he is "nuisance checking" you to avoid giving you the time you need to make progress, then you can:

1. Shelter your king. Ways to do this include taking refuge behind a line piece like a bishop or rook, and waiting for him to swing the piece he's checking with (assume it's a queen) onto that piece's line type. So, if you have a rook as the defender, he can't use a file or a rank to attack you, or you'll interpose. You could also try to make sure you have a couple of pawns in a short chain near the edge of the board as you transition into an endgame if the queens are still on the board; if you can reach them, you can often hide behind them, so he has few or no checks available.
2. Set up a barricade. Find a square that two of your pieces control, and put that square between your king and his queen. When he checks you on a line through that square, put one of your pieces on it to *interpose*, as long as that piece won't be threatened by more of his pieces immediately. You can sometimes use another tempo to get the king off that line, so the piece is no longer pinned.

If you think he's actually trying to trap your king, make a mental note of a position that you think you can recreate by returning to it after one "loop" of the chase. If so, make a note of the 2nd time you return to that position. If all of the pieces are in the same positions (plus, the same castling moves are still possible), then you have a draw claim, due to 3 occurrences of the same position.

When you choose squares on this "loop", try to stay away from squares that would allow him to move a pawn to check your king. That would immediately reset the loop "counter". But once it happens, just calculate a new/updated loop, and keep trying.

Even if your king will have to wander far and wide for this loop to be completed, it's still worth doing, because if he genuinely doesn't have a win, it will end the game in a draw, rather than a loss.

Just for fun, here's the tail end of a game I played when I was rated 1264, and my opponent was rated 1841. I had to hold on for dear life for 76 moves but eventually swindled a draw, to the amazement of the entire club which was looking on while they waited for us to finish the last game of the round. The game was mentioned in the state chess newsletter, since although it was only a draw, I was the underdog by nearly *800 points*, which made the odds of a draw practically microscopic.

I present the game here precisely because I *was chasing the other guy around, and though he was up a piece, he couldn't find shelter*. A perfectly legitimate ~~ruse~~ strategy to draw, I think.

```
[FEN "8/8/7p/6p1/1k1p2P1/3Bb3/2K5/8 b - - 0 58"]
[Event "WCC Quick"]
[Date "2004.03.19"]
[White "jaxter"]
[Black "Goldowsky, H."]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "E60"]
[WhiteElo "1264"]
[BlackElo "1841"]

1... h5 (1... Bf2 $142 $5 $17) 2. gxh5 $11 g4 3. Be2 (3. Bf1 $142 $5 $11 {should not be overlooked}) 3... g3 $17 4. Bf3 Kc4 5. Be2+ Kd5 6. Bf3+ {setting a trap} Ke5 7. Kd3 $5 Kf4 $4 {into which Black falls} (7... Kf6 $142 $5 $17) 8. h6 $1 $11 {This secures the draw} Kxf3 9. h7 g2 10. h8=Q {Attacking the isolated pawn on d4} g1=Q 11. Qa8+ Kf2 12. Qa2+ Kg3 13. Qg8+ Kh2 14. Qh8+ Kg2 15. Qa8+ $8 Kf1 16. Qa1+ Kf2 17. Qa2+ $8 {The queen has to navigate around the black pawn on d4, but because of the awkward placement of Black's other pieces, perpetual is inevitable.} Kf3 18. Qa8+ Kf2 (18... Kf4 19. Qf8+ Kg5 20. Qg7+ Kf5 21. Qf7+ Ke5 22. Qe7+ Kd5 23. Qd7+ Kc5 24. Qc7+ Kb4 25. Qb6+ Ka4 26. Qa6+ Kb3 27. Qb5+ Ka3 28. Qa6+ Kb2 29. Qb6+ Kc1 30. Qc6+ {and because of the position of the white king, black cannot enter the escape tunnel because of the threat of immediate mate.} Kb1 (30... Kd1 $4 31. Qc2+ Ke1 32. Qe2#) 31. Qb6+ Ka1 32. Qa7+ Kb1 33. Qb6+ Ka2 34. Qa6+ Kb2 35. Qb6+ Kc1 36. Qc6+ Kb1 37. Qb6+=) 19. Qa2+= 1/2-1/2

```
> 6 votes

# Answer
> What should I do in such a situation?

Shake hands and agree a draw.

If it is a serious game where you are writing down the moves and your opponent doesn't agree to a draw then mark the move on your scoresheet where the last time a pawn was moved or a capture was made, mark the move 50 moves on from that and when you reach that move make a draw claim under the "50 move rule".
> 9 votes

---
Tags: check, perpetual
---


title: How do I learn a new opening?

text:
# Question
Title: How do I learn a new opening?
Often times, when I find myself going through the lines of a new opening, one that I would like to start using in my games I hit the concrete wall after a couple of days of studying it.

Due to the fact that this is new to me, I simply don't understand every strategic line behind it, and since I've never played it I don't know what to expect in a real game. So my question is:

During the first stage of leaning a new opening, just memorize the different possible variations?

Or

Deep dive in the theory behind each move until you acquire a thorough comprehension of the tactical and strategical motifs?

# Answer
> 15 votes
The following suggestions will work for players in the 1600-2000 elo range. If you are above 2000, you probably already have better techniques than these. And if you are 1600 or below, **tactics** is arguably a lot more useful to learn.

Here's an assortment of things I used to try when I wanted to learn a opening. Note: I had access to Fritz and Chessbase and that helped.

1. Get a book (or a chess video) on the major ideas in the opening or variation that you are interested in. This is fundamental. Watch it, or read it multiple times to absorb the themes.
2. Get hold of a bunch of games with your opening of interest. (Chessbase or Fritz makes this really easy). Sort them in different ways into smaller databases for your own reference.
3. Play through the games in various speeds. Click the steps fast, every few seconds, or very slow to absorb what's going on. (Ideally, you want to focus on the games where your color of choice wins. That way you'll know the winning themes.)
4. I often learned by playing through games of players who were a 100-200 points above me, rather than from GM's. The reason was that my opponents would deviate from theory very early on, and I could see how players of strength comparable to me handled the positions.
5. Pay attention to the **minor pieces** and see which squares they usually occupy. Chessbase has a cool feature that plots the probability of a piece occupying each square in your opening of choice. I found that very useful.
6. Play through the games paying attention mainly to the **pawn structure**.
7. For me, it was usually enough to learn the first 10-12 moves and then the ideas. If you play the same opening enough, you can increase that to a few more moves.
8. I learned this technique from Silman's book. I'd print out a position (from the opening I was trying to get familiar with) and then stare at it and try to write down a **very detailed evaluation** of it. This was surprisingly difficult for me. I could come with a few basic points, and then I 'd go over someone's annotations and see that they could look much much deeper into the position. Doing this often can be quite beneficial.
9. I'd run my games through Fritz's analysis and watch in horror at the things both me and my opponent had missed. But I also learned not to miss those things the next time.
10. Keeping your own annotations is extremely useful. I'd write notes and keep adding to it as I learned more. Reading my own notes was often more helpful than reading the IM's and GM's who had much deeper knowledge.

Hope that helps.

# Answer
> 12 votes
The way I learned the few openings I now know is basically :

* **Playing them** a lot.
* In the (soon few) games where your natural play gives you a crappy position out of the opening, go ask theory™ where you screwed up.

Learning lines as you make mistakes in them helps *a lot* for remembering them, since you have to *confront* what you thought to be correct to what *actually* is.

I think the most important part of “learning openings”, far from being memory, is getting comfortable with the positions that are most likely to arise, and to know where you're going (i.e. have a *plan* to fall back onto when you're out of your book).

Eventually, you'll learn about the tricks and traps that lie around as you fall into them, or your opponent overplays and you fail to punish. But most importantly, **you'll learn the positions you get to play often first**.

Last but not least : always play the same openings you're trying to learn, and don't learn many at once (for obvious memory overflow reasons).

---

Note that I don't hold a very high opinion of opening theory, and tend to advise most people to *care a lot less about it*, and rather improve their actual thinking and play. If you get a decent enough position out of your opening, *then* the fun begins (and that's where it incredibly helps to understand what theory got you into, what you're playing for, and what you should keep an eye on, etc.)

# Answer
> 7 votes
Memorization by itself is not the most effective way to learn a new opening. Yes, you'll end up knowing every move and the corresponding (or possible) response to it, you'll memorize a set of positions that are commonly considered as the end of the opening or that have granted mobilization and development to your pieces but you will not know what to do next.

First, get a good book about the opening you want to learn, one that has clear explanations about the tactical positions you may reach and explains how to get through with your plan.

Play through annotated games in which the key elements of the opening are clearly identified. It doesn't matter if the game is 200 years old, it will provide you with a clear idea of what is the desired objective.

Don't try to learn every variation at once, start with the main line and implement it in your games, if during a game you do not know when exactly you moved away from the “book” analyze your game in an attempt to determine when did that happen and whether your move was good or bad according to “book” theory.

It is recommended that you learn the common traps of the opening as early as possible, to avoid unpleasant surprises and to take advantage of your newly acquired knowledge.

Once you have gained a better understanding of the “theory” you'll realize that you have actually memorized a lot of moves, and you are ready to further enhance your knowledge about the opening. This would be the time to go through the latest games played by GM's at tournaments and analyze those games searching for new discoveries. GM's are not known for sharing their secrets, so dig in.

# Answer
> 5 votes
I'd like to add that an "incremental learning" approach is key to not burning out on opening study.

It's astonishing so many players choose to drink from a fire hydrant rather than sip ... and then forget/confuse their move orders. Then get angry at their pet line and rationalize that as a perfect time to switch openings. Again ... and again.

I suffered from this "learn, forget, get mad and try something else " loop until a few years back.

* Step 1. Play tons of games the way you want to play it. Blitz works as well ...
* Step 2. If you've saved those games (I hope you did!), take those games one by one and ... review the opening moves with books/software.
* Step 3. If you deviated from book at say move N, learn what "move" **(just one move)** is considered best play. If given a style/fashionable choice, pick one move that the big boys consider to be sound. Make sure you understand why this move and not the one you played was better. If in doubt, seek help. You need to convince yourself why this move fits ... this is key.
* Step 4. Massage this "one new move I learned" experience into your brain ... I's suggest writing it down and reviewing it a few days later to confirm that it has transitioned from short-term to long-term memory.
* Step 5. Don't worry about what happens "next" in that opening line you looked up. You'll get to it when you deviate from it the **next** time.

The goal of this exercise is to "grow" your repertoire by **JUST ONE MOVE**. Rinse and repeat steps 1-5 over several of your games, each day. Over time, you will organically grow your repertoire and be able to play it accurately with much less fumbling than if you try to learn an entire tabiya in one sitting. What's more useful is that you'll be focusing on lines your current opposition (online opponents, club players, tournament regulars) thrives on ... in other words you are NOT wasting time studying lines that your frequent opposition HARDLY plays.

I'd like to add that this method requires patience and constant review. The good news is that for some opening systems that feel really comfortable for you, you may be playing "in book" for several moves just by good opening principles ... so your repertoire may grow faster than you think.

As I mentioned earlier, doing this with blitz helps as well as you get to grow a few more "leaves" to your opening tree per sitting than with 1-2 slow games per day.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Books, grandmaster games and using the opening in your games whenever you get the chance. One option is to look at games played by grandmasters. Try to notice positions that suit your style and scribble down what openings were used. Start learning one of those systems (e.g. Sicilian, French, Spanish, Caro-Kann, King's Indian, etc.). Pick a variation (e.g. Najdorf). Find games with this variation and learn the key ideas. Start using them in your games. For instance, in the Sicilian defense, a typical idea for black is to sacrifice the exchange with Rc8xNc3. The more ideas you collect, the more at home you will be in the system of your choice.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Several factors determine how you go about this.

1. Your style of play
2. Your available resources
3. How much time you are willing to invest

**1. Your Style of Play**

If you are more comfortable playing strategically/positionally than tactically, you will tend to prefer openings like the Colle System, London System, Queen's Indian Defense, French Defense and Hedgehog Defense. If you prefer tactical play, then the Sicilian, King's Gambit (or almost all gambits, for that matter), King's Indian Defense, Gruenfeld Defense, Scandinavian and Alekhine's Defense are good candidates.

Your choice of opening dictates whether or not you need to know a lot of theory. In the tactical openings, you need much more theory, because they abound with traps and frequently-occurring combinations that are known to theory (and therefore your opponents). This means that learning to play the Sicilian Defense, where theory goes nearly to move 30 in many of the lines, will be much more work and require more time practicing them.

**2. Your Available Resources**

If you can afford (or already have) both chess software and a ChessBase or Chess Assistant version of a database of games, that's a huge help (some would say indispensable). Then, you need a decent introductory book, preferably in digital format. I strongly recommend digital because it's an enormous time-saver when learning a line for the first time; you can review as many times as you want with no (board) setup effort, you can skip to hotspots easily, you can investigate quickly with a database search or an engine, etc.

The best methods involve *finding the ideas in the opening*. You can get this information a couple of ways, and I would recommend trying them in sequence:

1. Read an overview of the opening that explains the ideas.
2. Read and practice the lines in an introductory but more detailed theory book, such as one from the Everyman Publishing series "*Starting Out: ...*".
3. Pick out some games (30-50) from a database where the player of your color was rated about 2100-2300 ELO. Try to find games they won, where their opponent was rated at least 50 ELO *lower*. These games will show you how the opening is handled when the opposition doesn't handle it well. Play through them quickly, and try to find recurring ideas. Tag these, as well as any others you find interesting ideas in. Then, play through the tagged games more slowly, and see if you can understand each move by your color. When you don't, switch on an engine, and try some ideas for alternative moves to see what happens. That should reveal why the move was correct in most cases. Mark any that are still unclear to explore later. Take notes in the games themselves.
4. Once you understand the ideas, pick out more games, this time among players rated 2400+, and watch how the *opposite* color handles the problems faced by the weaker players in the first set of games.
5. Finally, settle on your repertoire for this opening. Run through the opening with an opening book, or by using a large database as a reference, and find the most common lines in each position for the lines you want to study. Record the lines that are most common (don't study any move that occurs less than 10% of the time in a given position), indicating your choice at each position where your color has multiple options. Pick only one move to learn; put the others aside. If you can determine the win rate (an opening book or reference db will show this) for each move, this may be easy, but sometimes it's a matter of preference for the kinds of positions that arise, or an exchange that is arranged or avoided, etc.
6. With your repertoire now both understood and recorded, figure out a way to *train* yourself in it. Many players use either Chess Position Trainer or Chess Openings Wizard. CPT accepts a PGN import of games in your repertoire, and will prompt you to find the repertoire move for each one of a set of positions that it presents you. It will schedule repetition of each exercise according to whether you recalled the move correctly or not; soon if not, after a few days if so. This makes training *much more efficient* than simply repeating all the moves in a line every time.

Also, CPT throws positions at you *without replaying lines*. Once you learn to respond to the position, you won't be surprised when your opponent transposes to a different line or even a completely different opening.

To learn to play the lines well, however, *nothing* can replace playing them in rated games. The closest you can come to it is moving the pieces for both sides on a board; *don't* try to jump straight from digital to a tournament game. The visualization and recall processes are not the same, and a familiar position on a screen often looks completely new on a board. So, learn it digitally, practice it on a board, then play it in games (online is convenient, but not a complete substitute for OTB play if that's your ultimate goal; do both).

**3. How Much Time You Are Willing to Invest**

If you can afford to study chess an hour a day, then you can afford about 2-3 hours a week on openings; you should spend the remaining time on other topics, including 1) playing, 2) tactics, 3) strategy, and 4) endgames. The average intermediate player (under 1850 or so) spends *way too much time on openings* for it to be beneficial to their rating/quality of play. I've played with a number of 2000+ players who don't know the names of some of the common variations, let alone how to play them. If they can get to 2000 without that kind of knowledge, then so can you.

If you can only spend 2-3 hours a week, then stick to some core openings: 1 for White, and 2 for Black (1.e4 and 1.d4). Choose a less tactical opening for each, for the reasons given above.

If you have a bit more time than that, I recommend *starting* to study a more tactical opening, but where the theory is fairly stable and not excessively deep. The Scotch Opening for White is a decent candidate, as is the Scandinavian for Black against 1.e4. Keep learning and practicing the new opening without playing it seriously until you're confident in your ability to follow all the main lines. Then, introduce it gradually. Many players use "extra openings time" to learn a different opening for blitz, or a surprise opening for opponents they expect to meet more than once in several tournaments.

If you have lots of time, by all means tackle one or more of the Big Ones, i.e. the Ruy Lopez, Sicilian, Two Knights Defense, Queen's Gambit, etc. You'll lose for awhile, but then you'll get enough experience to play them well. You should expect this to take at least 6 months against strong opposition, but it will pay dividends against weaker opponents.

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Tags: opening, learning, theory, best-practice
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