# Question
Title: Struggling to improve past intermediate level
I have been playing a lot of chess recently after not having played much in the last few years. My rating (sorry, I don't know which rating systems) on most chess websites and so on tends to sit comfortably in the 1400-1500 range, but I can't seem to break that. On various tactics trainers, I seem to able to reach a tactics rating of around 2000 or sometimes higher. Again, I don't know how useful these numbers really are, but if I take them at face value then it would seem that tactics are not my problem. I also think my grasp of strategy is not too bad, I am quite aware of outposts, open files, weak pawn structures and so on and they tend to drive my moves in my games, more so than tactics I would say.

I have a couple of questions to ask regarding improvement here. Firstly, I play a lot against computers, since I can just play a game on my phone without worrying about internet connection. Is this a bad idea if I am trying to improve? The computer I play against seems to be totally brain dead below a rating of about 1300, then suddenly above that rating seems to make almost no blunders. It makes plenty of strategic errors, (advancing way too many pawns early on and stuff like that) but it just seems to be able to plug every hole so quickly, even though it creates a lot for itself. My question is: is it a mistake to practice against computers, given their somewhat erratic way of playing?

I think my game is okay in most areas, and I feel like it could be one or two crucial weaknesses that are holding me back. My opening and end game skills I think are adequate for the level I am playing at, but my middle game seems to be remarkably uninteresting. I can notice where the most important squares are and tend to avoid any big blunders, but against computers the games tend to seize up in the middle...they are just really dry in terms of attacking opportunities because the computer has got it all covered, and I can't create strong threats as quickly as it can defuse them.

I think this may be the big gap in my game. I can solve tactical puzzles quite easily, but I cannot consistently create those sorts of positions that appear in the puzzles in my own games. So my second question is: is this a common pitfall in players around my level and, if so, how do players usually break through this?

Thanks for any input, and sorry for the life story. :)

# Answer
**Unfortunately playing against computers is a mistake amateur players often make.**

There is not much to learn from computers as they are just that, computers. You will lose the psychological aspect which dominates a significant part of human chess. Computer's "plans" are based on brute calculation and not a "feeling" for the position, as human players do. You cannot calculate to the level of a computer, nobody can, but you can obtain a "feel" for the position, and this can only be learnt by playing with strong human players.

**That is the key, to play against strong human players**, be it on the internet or in real life, preferably in real life. I myself never played against computers, and instead concentrated on playing on internet chess websites. But the greatest aspect of my improvement was my experienced gained from playing strong human players, in real over-the-board games. This helped me to absorb their ideas, their plans and to become an overall better player.

Keep solving tactical puzzles, your doing good, don't stop! Tactics is a crucial part of chess and can help in transforming advantages from one form to another and to decide the game in your favor. **Tactical Awareness** can also stop you from making blunders and seeing your opponents threats before he executes them...

```
 "My opening and end game skills I think are adequate for the level I am playing at"

```

**The endgame is a crucially important part of chess which amateurs always disregard**. I cannot stress enough the importance of it. The legend himself Capablanca stressed the importance of the endgame. Improvement in the endgame will guarantee improvement of your entire game. Do not just neglect study of it because your endgame skills are `"adequate for the level"` you are playing at (1400-1500). Move forward. You neglect study of the endgame, and you wonder why you are not improving, well...

For openings its not as serious at your level. You just have to know the basic principles (control the center, develop pieces, castle quickly). Restrict your opening choice as well to make study of it easier. For example, don't play all `1.e4` `1.d4` `1.Nf3`. Don't respond to `1.e4` with all `1...c5` `1...e6` `1...c6`. Play just one opening! This will make it easier to absorb the ideas of that opening and will leave you more time to improve other aspects of your game.

**Jeremy Silman's Complete Endgame Course** is the perfect book for the improvement of the endgame at your level. I recommend reading up and practicing until the 2000 level. Do not be intimidated by the rating, it's just a number. Some of the material is challenging but I'm sure with repeated practice you will absorb it easily.

OK I know I'm a Jeremy Silman fanatic but **How to Reassess Your Chess** is truly a great book which helped me to improve. Not trying to sell anything here, but it really is fantastic material.

To answer your question about creating positions that arise from puzzles

```
"is this a common pitfall in players around my level"

```

Well this just shows that you are at that level. Common pitfalls of players at your level is missing tactical combinations, implementing the wrong plan (bad judgement of the position) and ignorance of the endgame.

Relating to your previous question

```
"how do players usually break through this?"

```

Break through the common pitfalls of players at your level?

Perfect question to finalize my post, as I mentioned before.

1.Play against strong(er) players (preferably in real life)

2.Study the endgame

3.Continue practicing tactics!

4.Read How to Reassess Your Chess Or take a look at **this**

**OK just going to recommend a bunch of websites to help you**

Chess Tempo

The Chess Website

Chess

Internet Chess Club

Chess Network

Chessgames
> 6 votes

# Answer
I don't play against computers because it's too depressing. Practicing is another matter entirely. If you make a move and the computer thinks it's a blunder, use the computer to find out *why* it's a blunder. So don't play a whole game and say, "Oh noes I lost" but instead use it to find out why you chose the wrong moves.

Regarding the ratings you mentioned... ratings from different sites cannot be compared. So a 2000 on one site is not the same as a 2000 on another.

If you want to improve, join your local chess club. The director will pair you against opponents of your skill level. You'll make friends and get to cut some heads :-D

If you're in the USA, you'll also get a USCF rating which carries some weight in the chess circles. It's mathematically sound and there are enough players to remove the noise.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Learning to plan is important, an idea as simple as to try to create two weaknesses in your opponents field is a starter, but for sure there are plenty of excellent readings around. If you are good at tactics but find hard to create tactical positions try this books:

Art of Attack - Vukovic

The Art of the Middle Game - Paul Keres, Alexander Kotov.

To that add that an important way to score a point is to learn how to turn a good middlegame, into a won endgame, and for that you need to master endgames.
> 1 votes

# Answer
I am an intermediate too. I have felt that playing against the computer for the WHOLE (entire) game does not help much! Even if I adjust the Elo rating of the engine to somewhat match my level, the resulting games are never the same as you get with a human opponent. I've tried various engines, free and commercial, tweaked them to be weaker etc., finally the result is the same- It plays a really weak move (like giving up an exchange for no compensation) and then plays invincibly.

I think playing against the computer will help in the following scenarios-

a) A position is known to be winning, but you need to develop the skill to convert the win. Then setting up the position against the engine with its full strength and beating it is very helpful.

b) Practicing known openings and endings.

c) You want to develop a routine or algorithm or steps to choose your candidate moves, then setting up a long time control against the engine is good time management practice.

So if you play 100 games, 95 with higher rated humans and 5 with equal rated engine is probably a good ratio.

Disclaimer: My Elo is ~1800 on ICC :)
> 0 votes

---
Tags: learning
---


# Question
Title: In the Delayed Open Catalan, after 1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. c4 e6 4. g3 Be7 5. Bg2 O-O 6. O-O dxc4 7. Ne5 c5 8. dxc5 Bxc5, which move should I play?
In the Delayed Open Catalan, after 1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. c4 e6 4. g3 Be7 5. Bg2 O-O 6. O-O dxc4 7. Ne5 c5 8. dxc5 Bxc5, we reach this position:

```
[Title "White to move"]
[fen "rnbq1rk1/pp3ppp/4pn3/2b1N3/2p5/6P1/PP2PPBP/RNBQ1RK1 w - - 0 1"]

```

I made 4 of the 5 strongest engines analyze the position for more than 30 minutes each. Here are the results:

It seems all the engines think that 9. Qxd8 (followed by 9... Rxd8 10. Nc3) is the strongest move. And they all also seem to think that 9. Nc3 is the second best move.

But on the book Wojo's Weapons Volume 1, the authors apparently recommend 9. Nc3, although they don't talk a lot about that move (Wojo actually never faced 7... c5, all his opponents answered 7... Nc6 instead).

So which move do you recommend me to play? What are all the advantages and disadvantages of 9. Nc3 and 9. Qxd8 ? Should I put my faith on the engines or on the authors of Wojo's Weapons?

# Answer
> 6 votes
It is a well deserved doubt that you have in this position. As a Catalan player, I like both continuations (i.e. Qxd8 or Nc3) for well defined reasons. First one important note on Catalan openings or similar positions:

**White's play evolves around the positional play of minor pieces.**

Meaning in any position resulting from a Catalan, you should reason by continuously evaluating your minor pieces development progress versus that of your opponent (less focus on pawn structure as the center is already simplified.). Added to which there's white extremely solid and flexible pawn structure, which means any early end-game transitions should be favored for white.

Now regarding your engine suggestions vs Wojo's version:

The engine of course looks for maximum edge in any position, in this particular one, the immediate endgame transition right after a queen exchange is favored for white, because of the slight edge in development, and there are no tempos to be gained by black, hence the slight + score you see in all evaluations after Qxd8. To showcase one of them:

```
[Title "Qxd8 example line"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbq1rk1/pp3ppp/4pn2/2b1N3/2p5/6P1/PP2PPBP/RNBQ1RK1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Qxd8 Rxd8 2.Nc3 Be7 3.Bf4 Nd5 4.Rad1 g5 5.Bc1

```

It goes without saying that white has the more comfortable position, with all pieces actively in play, better control on d-file, c4, g5 under pressure, and no pawn structure worries for white, whereas black needs to find the right tempos to activate the 3 remaining pieces and all the time cover the weaknesses.

```
[Title "Qxd8 2nd example"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbq1rk1/pp3ppp/4pn2/2b1N3/2p5/6P1/PP2PPBP/RNBQ1RK1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Qxd8 Rxd8 2.Nc3 Nbd7 3.Rd1 Be7 4.Nxc4

```

One example showing black can't just easily activate the pieces after the queen-exchange, after Nxc4, Bg5 coming, constant pressure on b7, better control on d-file...all shows how better (or just more comfortable white is).

Conclusion for Qxd8: If you're comfortable playing this type of middle-game endgame positions, you should definitely try playing the Qxd8 line, a good experience in these lines will greatly improve your minor pieces positional play (finding right squares, covering the right ones, keeping pressure, coordination, etc.). Note that these are not necessarily easy to play positions if you don't have experience in such positions. Often one gets confused where to place the pieces (knight on c4, or e5, or e3 etc... or maneuvers like Nb5 to Nd4 sometimes very handy, point being white can also easily mess up.)

Now regarding Wojo's suggestion: there's a simple reason behind: white intends to keep the queens on, and play for the slight activity edge, without forcing an endgame right off. After Nc3 there are many different lines that can be played, I will show two of them. In the calm ones, white's plan relies on black cramped white bishop, caged rook on a8, and the rather exposed queen of black after Qc7 or Qb6 etc. Here you have to be good at keeping your slight edge and slow by slow poking at black's weaknesses, and most importantly finding the right time to exchange and simplify the position to leverage the advantage in an endgame.

Before I show the lines, note that after Nc3 black cannot just exchange the queens, because the resulting position after Rxd1 is just a much better version of what white had after Qxd8, since the d-file is completely in white's hands.

```
[Title "Nc3 example line"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbq1rk1/pp3ppp/4pn2/2b1N3/2p5/6P1/PP2PPBP/RNBQ1RK1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Nc3 Qc7 2.Nxc4 Nc6 3.Bg5 Be7 4.Nb5 Qb8 5.Qc2

```

With Rfd1, Rac1 and Nd4 coming up, black is under great positional pressure and will have a very hard time to finish development for a while.

Now one fancy line, where probably white has a great attack with very positive chances (doesn't necessarily mean black is hopeless).

```
[Title "Nc3 fancy continuation"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbq1rk1/pp3ppp/4pn2/2b1N3/2p5/6P1/PP2PPBP/RNBQ1RK1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Nc3 Qc7 2.Nxc4 Bxf2+ 3.Rxf2 Qxc4 4.Rxf6 gxf6 5.Bh6 Nd7 6.Bxf8 Kxf8 7.Qd2

```

Where again white has the initiative with better chances, just look at the activity of each piece...(and the rook coming on f or d-file). This is a fancy and rather complicated line which you can avoid of course if you don't like.

So you see after both Qxd8 and Nc3, it's just a relatively equal game where white has the comfortable play, with easy to find squares for all his pieces, whereas black not necessarily lost, has to keep struggling to finish development without ending up with less pawns eventually. I personally like Nc3 because I usually play these lines with the queens on, and for you, you just have to see which type of lines you prefer to play (or better to say : more comfortable in), this should be your main reasoning when in doubts like "what opening variations to play".

**By no means** an eval of +0.50 or +0.20 by the engine means winning for white, no one is able to keep such slight edge from the opening, not even the engines, you see these evaluations because they suggest who has the easier play, the initiative and the quicker development, but chess is way too dynamic to allow for such slight edges to suffice in winning a position. I certainly recommend the Catalan opening, and you should try all these lines for yourself at least a couple of times, so that all the ideas discussed above become clear to you.

Let me know if you have any further questions, and if you want to discuss a specific line.

**EDIT:** I would certainly recommend studying some of the games of Kramnik, Ivanchuk and Carlsen, all playing the white side of this opening. They will be very resourceful to you.

# Answer
> 4 votes
First of all, `7... Nc6` is a good move and is the reason why `7. Ne5` isn't played so often anymore.

If black plays `7... c5`, the books recommend `8. dxc5 Bxc5 9. Nc3 Qc7 10. Nxc4 Bxf2 11. Rxf2 Qxc4 12. Rxf6! gxf6 13. Bh6` (which I have also tried myself).

```
[FEN ""]

1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. c4 e6 4. g3 Be7 5. Bg2 O-O 6. O-O dxc4 7. Ne5 c5 (7... Nc6) 8. dxc5 Bxc5 9. Nc3 Qc7 10. Nxc4 Bxf2 11. Rxf2 Qxc4 12. Rxf6! gxf6 13. Bh6

```

This is difficult for black. If black plays `13... Re8`, then white answers `14. Ne4` and two forks are threatened. The best defence is `13... Nd7` after which white can keep the pressure with `14. Ne4`. Then `14... Rd8 15. Nxf6+ Kh8 16. e3! e5 17. Qh5 Nxf6 18. Qg5` loses for black. The best defence is `14... Qb4!` after which *The Catalan* by Raetsky and Chetverik recommends `15. Rc1 f5 16. Bxf8 Nxf8 17. Nf6 Kg7 18. Qd8 Qb6+ 19. Qxb6 axb6 20. Nxe8+ Kg6 21. Nd6 Bd7 22. a3`.

```
 [FEN ""]

1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. c4 e6 4. g3 Be7 5. Bg2 O-O 6. O-O dxc4 7. Ne5 c5 8. dxc5 Bxc5 9. Nc3 Qc7 10. Nxc4 Bxf2 11. Rxf2 Qxc4 12. Rxf6! gxf6 13. Bh6 Nd7 14. Ne4 Qb4 (14... Rd8 15. Nxf6+ Kh8 16. e3! e5 17. Qh5 Nxf6 18. Qg5) 15. Rc1 f5 16. Bxf8 Nxf8 17. Nf6 Kg7 18. Qd8 Qb6+ 19. Qxb6 axb6 20. Nxe8+ Kg6 21. Nd6 Bd7 22. a3

```

---
Tags: opening, analysis, theory, 1.d4, catalan
---


# Question
Title: Would I do okay in a Chess tournament with 1500 chess.com rating?
Here is the background story before I get into my actual question. There is a chess tournament in a city near mine, starting at 28th of August. The thing is, my parents won't allow me to go there. Not because they don't want to. We end our vacations in 29, so we spend one day less. I say, can I go alone there(I am with some friends and my FM trainer), they say no because they don't know them really well. When I say that dad or the entire family can come, they say no because of the vacations. I live in a country with not so many tournaments, and this is both cheap, and near, for it. Now that you understand my predicament, I want to know if all the trouble of convincing my parents is worth it; the tournament is open and I have a 1500 chess.com rating, so I was wondering if the chess tournament would be a good fit for my score?

On a side note can you guys think of any ways on how to convince them to let me go? Let me know how you convinced your parents to let you go somewhere, and what is the best score to go to a tournament if 1500 is not okay. Thank you very much!

# Answer
Let them know how much this tournament means to you and how much you will save by going to this tournament rather than one back home. Convincing parents isn't exactly the easiest and I am well aware of this but if you are able to make them consider the facts about this tournament you should be fine. Ex:

1. Letting them know that the tournament ends that day at a specific time, this will allow them to assess their schedule and see whether or not your tournament interferes with their plans.
2. Discuss with them that the cost is fairly cheap and as such it would be almost a crime not to attend!
3. Relate the tournament with the vacation, perhaps this annual tournament has lots of history and is a huge attraction during this time of the year.

These are just examples of what you can say to convince your parents. As for your chess rating I haven't done any real tournaments myself and I am not sure how your rating on chess.com will do against actual players in a live setting. Overall it doesn't sound bad at all, and you should use this experience to become a better player. I wish you good luck with these tasks.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: tournament
---


title: How to update Elo rating?

text:
# Question
Title: How to update Elo rating?
I'm building a chess app which will have a Elo rating system.

Would it be more appropriate to update player's rating based on their rating at the beginning of the game, or their rating at the end of the game?

For example, Player A (1600) plays against Player B (1700), and it took a week to complete the game (correspondence chess). During this week Player A won some other games and their rating become 1650. Player B lost some games, and their rating become 1680. Now, the game between Player A and Player B ends.

Should I update the ratings as if:

1. 1600 played against 1700, or
2. 1650 payed against 1680, or
3. something else

What would be more appropriate, and why?

# Answer
Remember what a rating is: it's an estimate of the relative strengths of the players. The more information you include in your rating calculation, the more accurate it will be and the faster it will converge. At the end of an OTB game, the only new information you have is the result of that game. However, on a correspondence site, you also have the information from both players' results while the game was in progress. Why would you not want to use that information?

To update the players' ratings based on their ratings at the start of the game is to say that you think their ratings at the start of the game are a better estimate of their relative strength than their ratings at the end of the game. In other words, it's saying that you believe the ratings are becoming *less* accurate with time. If that's what you believe, you shouldn't update them at all!
> 7 votes

# Answer
I would use option 2 for a variety of reasons. Maybe the most important one is the potential for abuse of option 1.

Two players start out at the same level in the USCF or FIDE system. They play a long match with one player scoring the vast majority of the points. Eventually the ratings will stabilize at about the loser being (start-400) and the winner being (start+400).

Under option 1, a 2000 player could start 100 games against a similarly-rated friend, win them all, and suddenly be the highest rated person on the site at 3000+. This will, among other things, make your site look bad. The player that lost will fall below 1000, but those points are easily gained back, particularly if he starts 100 games against 1200 players.

Option 2 is much more stable. It is used by all major correspondence sites that I know of (chess.com, redhotpawn etc.)

Edit: More scenarios. An 1800 player accepts the challenge of an 800. A month later, the former 800 is at 1700 and trouncing the 1800. When the 1800 resigns, he loses the maximum rather than what he would have lost against his opponent's true strength.

A 2000-strength player, through some black magic, acquires a rating of 1200. They start a bunch of games against 1400s and win close to all of them. The 1400s will be universally disenchanted at having to lose 20+ points to such a scoundrel.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Neither is "correct". You need to consider the effects of any strategy, and determine what's right *for your app*. Personally I think you should always plan for your app to be popular--and once it's popular, people *will* attempt to game whatever system you've put in place. So you need to consider the abuse cases in each scenario, as well as how the system serves both new and established users, and decide what factors of the system are most important to you.

Of course within each system, you've got a wide range of options for the actual implementation, which can help to enhance or mitigate the factors laid out below, but I'm going to skip all that since it's not what you asked about.

I think the question as it stands is a little too opinion-based to be answered definitively, so all I'm going to do here is lay out some of the major points of each system. Like I said, it's up to you to decide what's important to you and your user base.

---

## Calculating Using Starting Ratings

In this system, the main abuse case you need to look at is someone starting a hundred games at once against a dummy account (or several), to win them all and inflate their rating. This is fairly detectable and easy to engineer against (in fact the Elo system already contains some restrictions on such manipulation), but you do need to watch out for it.

The downside to this system is that new players will have very unstable ratings for a time, and take a while to reach their true rating. Most systems already deal with this by vastly increasing the K-factor for new players, so that their ratings change very quickly for their first 20-50 games or so.

On the other hand, say you have an established player with a high rating (say 1900), up against a new player with a lower, provisional rating (say 1200). If the new player's true strength is actually 2000+, the established player may lose many more points for a loss (1900 vs 1200) than he would have if the score was calculated using the most recent scores. Of course, if the new player is only playing against high-rated players, *someone* is going to have to foot the bill no matter what system you're using.

* Easy to spot potential abuse
* Slow rating convergence

---

## Calculating Using Current Ratings

In the most-recent-ratings system, the main abuse case is likely to be people dragging out games or prematurely resigning them in order to take advantage of dips or spikes in their or their opponent's ratings. For instance, if I've been on a losing streak, so that I'm below my true average rating, this system actually gives me an *incentive* to immediately resign every other game where I'm not *winning*, because I'll lose fewer points now, by resigning them all at once while my rating is already low, than I would if I waited until my rating recovered. Alternately, if my opponent's rating drops while the game progresses, I have a strong incentive to make the game last *as long as possible* in real time, no matter whether I'm winning or losing--because either way, when my opponent's rating recovers, I'll come off better. This sort of gaming of the system is much harder to detect conclusively.

However, as others have pointed out, the individual results are more accurate, and people's ratings therefore converge faster. You'll also lessen the effect of the game played by a provisional 1200 against an established 1900, though personally I think this is not at all a big deal--established players, in my experience, don't care so much about temporary rating losses as newer players do.

* Hard to spot potential abuse
* Faster rating convergence
> 4 votes

# Answer
If you were modeling after the USCF system, you would be looking at scenario 2. 1650 played against 1680. I experienced this myself in the USCF rating system wherein I played a 10 week league tournament with the rating at 1953. And I played a Wednesday night game in my area around Week 6 and lost the game and my rating became 1929. After the 10th week, my USCF rating showed my increase from 1929=\>1995 and not 1953=\>x and x=\>y.
> 2 votes

# Answer
The most correct way would be to use the starting rating. Why? Because that was the rating they agreed to start the match upon, and knowing what they would win or lose made them decide to start it, after the evaluated the risk vs reward. So I think the starting rating of both players is the best solution.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: rating, elo
---


# Question
Title: Why Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is so popular in the chess world?
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has just been re-elected as the next FIDE president again. He's so far beaten two World Chess Champions in the elections - Karpov and Kasparov, both by some absolutely big margins.

What is his claim to (chess) fame?" What do people like about him to give him so much power? He's the real king in chess, the most powerful chess personnel in the world and dominating the chess scene.

# Answer
> 8 votes
I thought that Nigel Short summed it up pretty well here: http://www.chess.com/news/breaking-ilyumzhinov-beats-kasparov-110-61-at-fide-presidential-elections-4528

"There's nothing wrong with chess players. If you ask in the playing hall, I'll bet 9 out of 10 will vote for Kasparov. The problem is: delegates. If the delegate has received an incentive to vote in a particular way, it doesn't matter whatever reason or logic is presented to him."

Basically, many delegates voting for Ilyumzhinov received some strong form of compensation to do so. He consistently wins because he has money (much of which he gained while ruling Kalmykia) and has zero moral compunctions about how he uses it.

# Answer
> 1 votes
To me personally, Kirsan is the lesser devil of the two. Kasparov, as great a player as he was(greatest in my opinion), is a very volatile person and he's fighting Putin which occupies a majority of his time. He doesn't have the administrative qualities to lead a world chess organization and personality doesn't necessarily get you the FIDE president-ship. That said, 19 years of Kirsan has been a lot to take and maybe the time was right for a change. Maybe someone apart from Garry. Kirsan did do some good things to Chess, advocating introducing chess at schools and as I understand he was extremely successful in the republic state he governed. Dude is highly eccentric, though, with the 'alleged' abduction by Aliens.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Without getting into the pros and cons of either candidate or, more to the point, the cons of the incumbant, there might still be some value in reading this account of the FIDE presidential election.

The author, Kevin Bonham, is the delegate of the Australian Chess Federation and he's quite open about the attempts to sway his vote through bribery. He took the gifts, but it changed nothing because the decision was made prior to his departing for Tromsø (the ACF backed the Kasparov campaign much earlier in the year; I believe the ACF vote was held shortly after Kasparov visited Australia in April). Anyway, Kevin is a psephologist so he spends his working life studying the conduct and outcome of elections, which adds a slightly different dimension to accounts of this type of election. He is quite right in his comparison of the FIDE elections to those of the UN, except at the UN the bribing is generally of whole countries or the leadership of those countries, rather than of the ambassadors those countries send to the UN.

---
Tags: world-championship, fide, kasparov, karpov
---


title: Editing a chess wiki

text:
# Question
Title: Editing a chess wiki
I would like to edit wiki notes on chess, using a text editor that could interact with a program like xboard or similar (that is being able to enter moves and variations in the wiki by playing them from the board, for instance, and the other way round : click on moves in the text to see the position on the board).

The reason for this question is that scid, that I like a lot despite being a bit old-fashioned and buggy nowadays, has a very poor editor (no linking abilities, a pain to use). And xboard editor is even worse.

Of course, using latex could be an option, but it lacks the simplicity of a wiki, and I fail to see how to make a text editor interact with a xboard-like program.

It amazes me than no such a thing exists. The closest program I have seen is r/chess pgn viewer, but it does not seem under active development (not really an issue, but it is not clear to me how to use it for a private wiki). Any ideas ?

Help will be much appreciated.

# Answer
Have you tried one of the more recent forks of Scid? Specifically ScidvsPC, which is actively maintained. At the very least it reduces many of the bugs and there are some improvements. The export to HTML function now includes a javascript option to produce a board viewer for websites, that might do some of what you want. It will also display annotated games (though it usually won't display any introductory annotations before the first move). There's also ChessX which looks relatively decent, but I'm not sure how much it will meet your needs. They're both free, though, so worth a shot. CheesX runs on Windows, OS X and Linux. ScidvsPC includes a Mac version, but I can't remember if Linux support is native or needs Wine.

Both of those programs support exporting the PGN to HTML, which is good enough for web pages, but conversion to alternative mark up (or down) languages doesn't seem to have enough demand to have encouraged any development in that field yet. You might need to code it yourself or conspire with one of the projects under active development to do so.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: software
---


title: Why do people study openings?

text:
# Question
Title: Why do people study openings?
Although I think I've played a lot of games, my ability is still very low. I've never read any books on chess. Perhaps this explains my poor games.

As I'm starting to research chess online, I'm left wondering why people focus on particular openings. Surely these are all well researched by people, and you'd end up just playing through the motions of what a computer would do in certain situations. Why don't people open with more randomness, in a sort-of pieces scattered to the wind style? Surely opponents won't be expecting it and games will be played anew for both players.

Should you think the above is rubbish, please point towards a book or site that I should read.

# Answer
Openings have been classified roughly as being very "tactical and sharp" versus "positional and dull". For example: e4-e5 (king's pawn), e4-c5 (sicilian defense) fall under the former category, whereas d4-d5 (queen's pawn), e4-c6 (caro-kann defense) under the latter. But not all games strictly follow the above thumb rule, each opening can transpose to either tactical or positional depending on the lines chosen in the middle game.

That said, players chose their liking of openings and study various lines originating from the opening. Once the number of moves reaches 2 or above, the possibilities grow exponentially and hence most of the times will not result in the exact same game that the people had studied earlier, even at the grandmaster level, let alone amateurs.

You could open randomly, but in doing so you will be violating the basic opening principles and hence will most likely lose the game against an experienced player. You can check out the following link for some opening guidelines-

http://www.danheisman.com/opening-principles.html
> 4 votes

# Answer
"Why don't people open with more randomness, in a sort of pieces scattered to the wind style? Surely opponents won't be expecting it and games will be played anew for both players."

Many people do this. It's a perfectly valid strategy at lower levels of play (which is a category that includes people who laymen would think of as *very* good players).

However, there's a reason that some opening moves are played over and over at high levels: they are good. When you deviate from them, the different move you made is probably not as good. When your opponents are strong enough to recognize and exploit these subpar moves, your positions will be worse than if you had stuck to theory.

This is why world-class players memorize reams of opening theory-to do anything else would be to make a concession to the opponent.
> 8 votes

---
Tags: opening, strategy, books
---


# Question
Title: Where can I buy the chess engine Komodo? Do I get somekind of bonus premium membership with it? And when will its next version be released?
I have three questions about the chess engine Komodo.

Firstly, where can I buy and order it? I would like to have it in a CD (not just download it). I went into the website of a chess store near where I live (Paris), but it apparently does not sell Komodo (but it sells Fritz, Houdini, Hiarcs, Junior, Rybka and Shredder).

Secondly, do I get a "bonus" with Komodo? When I bought Fritz and Houdini I got a bonus of one year premium membership into a chess server called "Playchess". Do I also get something like that with Komodo?

Thirdly, does anyone know when will the next version of Komodo be released approximately? Because if the version 8 gets released soon, then there's no point in buying the version 7 today.

I found the release dates of all the previous versions of Komodo:

* Version 4: December 2011
* Version 5: June 2013
* Version 6: October 2013
* Version TCEC: December 2013
* Version 7: May 2014

So it seems the version 8 will be released very approximately in November..

# Answer
> 2 votes
You can purchase Komodo 7 on ICC and get one month subscription to ICC free here: https://store.chessclub.com/komodo-7

---
Tags: engines, software
---


# Question
Title: Draws, en passant, and the FIDE's 2014 rulebook revision
Effective July 2014, the FIDE has revised its *Laws of Chess.* Some questions occur regarding the revision, including one re draws and *en passant.*

```
[Title "Black to move"]
[FEN "1rb1kbnr/ppppqppp/6n1/4P3/8/1PN5/P1PP2PP/1RBQKBNR b kq - 0 1"]

1... d5 2. Ra1 Ra8 3. Rb1 Rb8 4. Ra1 Ra8 5. Rb1

```

After Black pushes his queen pawn two squares, White could capture *en passant,* except that the capturer is pinned against its king. So instead (just to illustrate the point), our players start shuffling their rooks back and forth.

After 5. Rb1, can Black write 5... Rb8 on his scoresheet, stop the clocks, and claim draw by repetition?

Another way to ask the question: is the *en passant* position Black's move 1 introduces effectively an *en passant* position after all, according to the FIDE's revised *Laws of Chess?*

**DISCUSSION AND REFERENCES**

*Laws of Chess,* sect. 9.2:

> The game is drawn, upon a correct claim by a player having the move, when the same position for at least the third time (not necessarily by a repetition of moves): (a) is about to appear, if he first writes his move, which cannot be changed, on his scoresheet and declares to the arbiter his intention to make this move, or (b) has just appeared, and the player claiming the draw has the move. Positions are considered the same if and only if the same player has the move, pieces of the same kind and colour occupy the same squares and the possible moves of all the pieces of both players are the same. Thus positions are not the same if ... at the start of the sequence a pawn could have been captured en passant....

To *me,* this says that Black can indeed claim the draw mentioned above. However, decades of experience suggest that different players can understand the same rulebook language differently, especially in obscure cases like the present one. Is it possible to read this rule differently? One would like to be sure.

Related, earlier questions and answers on StackExchange, predating the FIDE's July 2014 revision, include this.

Further reading: Geurt Gijssen. Arbiter's Notebook.

# Answer
> 14 votes
> Positions are considered the same if and only if the same player has the move, pieces of the same kind and colour occupy the same squares and the possible moves of all the pieces of both players are the same.

After 5...Ra8, the same player has the move, pieces of the same kind and colour occupy the same squares and the possible moves of all the pieces of both players are the same. Therefore, Black can claim a draw.

> Thus positions are not the same if ... at the start of the sequence a pawn could have been captured en passant....

At the start of the sequence the pawn could not be captured en passant.

---
Tags: rules, draw, fide, en-passant
---


title: Can't find long term plan for Black

text:
# Question
Title: Can't find long term plan for Black
I am working on multiple lines from Scandinavian defense, with the goal to resurrect them. One line I'm working on is `3...Qd8`, and I have managed to achieve quite playable positions ( the results are the best so far, regarding other lines like `3...Qe5+` or `3...Qa5/Qd6` ).

Although I can get rock solid position from the opening, I just can't find the long term plan for Black.

The line I am referring is :

```
[Title "Scandinavian defense, with Qd8"]
[fen ""]

1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd8 4.Nf3 c6 5.d4 Bf5!? 6.Bd3!? Bxd3 7.Qxd3 e6 8.O-O Nf6 9.Bf4 Nbd7

```

Here is a diagram that illustrates the kind of positions I usually face:

```
[Title "Black to move"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "r2q1rk1/pp1nbppp/2p1pn2/8/2PP1B2/2NQ1N2/PP3PPP/R4RK1 b - - 0 1"]

```

I just don't know how to battle White's space advantage. I don't have a plan for engineering a freeing break.

Is there anyone who plays similar pawn structure, and is willing to give me some pointers on how to play this position as Black?

# Answer
For logical reasons the `3...Qd8` Scandinavian is not popular among top grandmasters whatsoever , Stockfish 5 gives it *0.45* after running for around a 5 minutes compared to *0.00* in the French Defense after `3.Nc3 Nf6`

For this variation I would recommend looking at the games of Montenegrin Grandmaster Nikola Djukic, who is the only grandmaster who employs the `3...Qd8` variation regurlarly. He also has a plus score with it against an opposition elo average of 2496 which is nice.

The `3...Qd6` Scandinavian is a lot more popular. The very strong Grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov has implemented it regurlarly with a massive plus score against an elo average of 2659.

The `3...Qa5` Scandinavian is the most popular of the 3, the Serbian Grandmaster Miodrag R Savic can be considered a specialist on this since he plays it approximately 71% of the time against `1.e4` with a very positive score against an elo average of 2508.

I've decided to just ignore the `3...Qe5+` variation, which is also called the "Patzer Variation" White scores 71.1% after `4.Be2`

Of course this post would not be complete if I didn't answer your question on how to find a plan in the given positions.

---

## FIRST DIAGRAM

Unfortunately the line you are referring to in the first game has only 2 games in Mega Database 2014.

```
[Event "?"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "?"]
[Round "?"]
[White "?"]
[Black "?"]
[Result "?"]
[Title "Scandinavian defense, with Qd8"]
[fen ""]

1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd8 4.Nf3 c6 5.d4 Bf5!? 6.Bd3!? (6.Bc4) Bxd3 7.Qxd3 e6 8.O-O Nf6 9.Bf4 Nbd7

```

OK, in the final position black is solid but there is pretty much no way for him/her to win (naturally, with exceptions in human play). White is castled, has 3 pieces and a pawn putting pressure on the center with an added space advantage. White is clearly better, the game has certainly not equalized in blacks favor. Maybe you have avoided theory and complications but unfortunately that is all you have gained.

Another problem with such a position is that black is really lacking in play here. This makes it much harder to formulate a plan of some sort, maybe this is why you are struggling to find a long term plan.

---

## SECOND DIAGRAM

```
 [Event "?"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Black to Move"]
[Black ""]
[Result "*"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "r2q1rk1/pp1nbppp/2p1pn2/8/2PP1B2/2NQ1N2/PP3PPP/R4RK1 b - - 0 1"]
[PlyCount "5"]

1... Nh5 (1... Qb6 2.c5 Qd8  (2. a3 c5)) 2. Bd2 (2. Bg3 $6 Nxg3 3. hxg3
$11) 2... Nhf6 3. Rfe1 Qc7 4.Rad1

```

In the second diagram your main plan should probably be the elimination of the f5 Bishop, which is severely cramping your position. So therefore `Nh5` comes to mind, if the Bishop retreats to `g3`, simply chop it off and the position is equal, however white can retreat the Bishop and it is not so clear how to proceed for black. I have given some small variations to go by but overall the position seems to be completely devoid of play for black. Black is lacking in any sort of counter-play to put it bluntly. OK maybe after `3...Qc7` you can centralize the rooks with rook `a8` to `d8` and rook `f8` to `e8` and slowly maneuver your pieces, waiting for white, maybe move your `d7` Knight to `f8` to clear open the d-file and prepare a possible `...Ng6`. Black basically just has to sit and wait. The engine recommends ideas involving `...a6` but I find this quite dubious and unnatural, not suited for human play.

White on the other hand has the clear idea of `d5`, centralizing the rooks, `h3` to maintain the powerful dark squared Bishop. The position is rich for white. Better to say the least, because he/she has a clear plan to follow by.

I know that the computer evaluation is a powerful thing, but we are not computers. I highly suggest picking another variation to go by, one which involves "play". For a position with **counter-play** and **imbalances** is much more important than a dry one such as this one despite the silicon machine saying *0.36*.

I personally think that the `3...Qd8` Scandinavian variation is a very dubious one which should be avoided at all costs by the improving chess player and should only be played for the element of surprise.

*All statistics courtesy of Chessbase Mega Database 2014*
> 1 votes

# Answer
I inputted your position into Stockfish for analysis, and this is the continuation that the machine suggested:

```
[Title "StockFish analysis"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "r2q1rk1/pp1nbppp/2p1pn2/8/2PP1B2/2NQ1N2/PP3PPP/R4RK1 b - - 0 1"]

1...Rc8 2.Rfe1 Nh5 3.Be3 Qb6 4.Qe2 Qa5 5.a3 Rfe8 6.Qd3 Red8 7.b4 Qc7 8.Qc2 h6 9.g3 b5 10.c5 a5 11.Ne4 Ra8 12.Bd2 a4 13.Nc3 Re8 14.Be3 Red8 15.Rad1 Rac8 16.Ne4.

```

We end up with the following position:

```
[Title "Resulting position"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "2rr2k1/2qnbpp1/2p1p2p/1pP4n/pP1PN3/P3BNP1/2Q2P1P/3RR1K1 b - - 0 1"]

```

Additionally, even though White has an +0.52 advantage, nothing much can be done with that advantage since Black managed to create a very solid defense (without any attacking perspectives). If I would be playing this, I would propose a draw.

I also tried from this position to move Nd7-f6, but then that gets countered with Ne5. N:e4, Queen recaptures, but that once again doesn't lead anywhere after Nh5-f6. Drawish position, no attacking chance for Black if White play it carefully.
> -1 votes

---
Tags: analysis, positional-play, pawn-structure, middlegame
---


title: Free chess computer game

text:
# Question
Title: Free chess computer game
I am a chess novice.

Can someone suggest a good, free chess computer game that I can use to start to learn chess by playing against the computer? Maybe with some different difficult levels...

# Answer
It depends on which operating system you are running. If you are running a Linux OS, there are many, many options for you to choose from. One of the more-popular options is **glChess**.

It has a few features that make it a good game to learn on:

* highlighting possible moves when selecting a piece
* ability to turn board numbering on/off
* keeps a history of moves
* has a mechanism that allows you to iterate through the move history to see the development of the board.
* allows configuration of computer players using several existing engines.

Once you get a little more advanced, a good one is **XBoard**. While designed to run on Linux, there is also a Windows port called **WinBoard**.

While it might not look as pretty as other games, it has plenty of options:

* Like glChess, can be interfaced with several engines.
* Can play over the internet.
* Has an interface for Chess via email.
* Maintains your games in SAN notation.

While very feature-rich, XBoard is probably a good one to get once you have a few games under your belt.

If you are on a Windows OS (Windows 7 or Vista) **Chess Titans** is good for starting-out, too. While probably scoffed at by many on this forum, the advantages of Chess Titans are:

* Several levels of play (1 through 10) of increasing difficulty.
* If you have Windows 7 or Vista, you probably already have it installed.
* Aesthetically-pleasing (if you care about that).
> 7 votes

# Answer
You could check out http://lichess.org as a free online resource. They have general chess discussion forums and the ability to observe previous or current games. Also you can play against a computer (at multiple difficulties) and other players.
> 5 votes

# Answer
I would suggest going to chess.com and creating a free account there. You can play against computer with different difficulty levels, as well as against other players. At the same time there is loads of learning materials readily available for you (Book Openings, Tactical Trainer, Online Chess Mentor), which should prove very useful. You can also buy a premium account for 7$ per month, which will unlock even more learning opportunities like videos and etc, but a free account should be enough for the beginning.
> 2 votes

# Answer
You can play against computer for free online at http://www.apronus.com/chess/computer.htm \- you can modify the strength of the computer by giving it less milliseconds to think per move. You can also set up different positions there and play them against compputer, like for example you can have the computer play as black without a queen.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: learning, engines, software
---


# Question
Title: Is there a chess engine that allows you to specify which opening it uses?
I would like to practice against a particular opening - outside of bribing smart guinea pigs who know how to play chess, is there any way I can get opponents who always use a certain opening?

# Answer
> 3 votes
A great way of practicing your opening with a chess engine can be found on chess.com. You can create a free account, then go to the Learn Tab -\> Book Openings -\> Find the opening you want to practice -\> Play Opening vs. Computer. You also have the chance to change the computer's difficulty level and what side you play.

# Answer
> 2 votes
You can set up any position and play it against computer at http://www.apronus.com/chess/wbeditor.php.

For example, you can play the Najdorf Sicilian as Black against computer.

You can adjust the strength of the computer by setting it time per move in milliseconds.

# Answer
> 2 votes
If you want human opponents to play specific openings, Chess.com theme tournaments are your best chances. Example of a themed tournament: "Sicilian-Dragon", where the initial position is setup in accordance with the opening. But these are not "live" chess but "online" chess where you'll be playing time controls like "1 move every 3 days" and such.

If you are OK to play against engines, then its really easy to setup the position (initial opening moves) in any GUI like Arena or SCID vs PC and then continue from there against the engine.

To add: There are some strong players on FICS who are willing to play any specific opening you want, you will have to befriend them and play against them. :-)

---
Tags: opening, engines
---


title: Chess Olympiad statistics

text:
# Question
Title: Chess Olympiad statistics
I have watched some matches played in the chess Olympiad in Tromsø. The majority of the games I watched, one player played the English opening, and usually he won, I haven't seen any French opening game.

That makes me wonder if there's any site that has statistics about what is the most played opening, what opening has the highest winning rate and so and so forth.

# Answer
I don't know of any site that specifically does this for particular tournaments. But its very easy to do this yourself! Here's how you do it:

a) Download Scid vs Pc software (http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/)

b) Download pgn for the Olympiad in Tromso 2014 from TWIC (http://www.theweekinchess.com/assets/files/pgn/olym14.pgn)

c) Open a new DB in SCID vs PC software and import this PGN.

d) Go to Tools \> Opening Report

or

Windows \> Tree Window

to get the opening tree and the percentages

Here's the output from Olympiad 2014 taken from Scid vs PC:

```
4.2 Moves from the report position

 Move        Frequency     Score  AvElo Perf AvYear Draw ECO
 1: e4       1649: 43.6%   52.5%  2275  2313  2014  23% B00a
 2: d4       1404: 37.1%   52.7%  2327  2343  2014  29% A40a
 3: Nf3       363:  9.6%   60.0%  2346  2405  2014  24% A04
 4: c4        248:  6.5%   52.0%  2319  2324  2014  27% A10
 5: [end]      45:  1.1%   35.5%  2197  2058  2014   0% A00a
 6: b3         17:  0.4%   55.8%  2329  2202  2014  18% A01
 7: f4         15:  0.3%   33.3%  2152  2127  2014  13% A02
 8: g3         12:  0.3%   66.6%  2411  2399  2014  33% A00t
 9: Nc3         8:  0.2%   62.5%              2014  25% A00l
10: b4          7:  0.1%   78.5%              2014  14% A00p
11: e3          3:  0.0%   33.3%              2014  67% A00k
12: d3          2:  0.0%    0.0%              2014   0% A00j
13: f3          1:  0.0%  100.0%              2014   0% A00b
14: Na3         1:  0.0%   50.0%              2014 100% A00h
15: h3          1:  0.0%  100.0%              2014   0% A00d
__________________________________________________________________
TOTAL:       3776:100.0%   53.1%  2304  2326  2014  26%

4.3 Positional Themes

Frequency of themes in the first 20 moves of each game:
   Same-side castling:             73%    White Isolated Queen Pawn:       8%
   Opposite castling:               8%    Black Isolated Queen Pawn:       8%
   Kingside pawn storm:            15%    White Pawn on 5/6/7th rank:     52%
   Queens exchanged:               40%    Black Pawn on 2/3/4th rank:     34%
   Only one side has Bishop pair:   6%    Open c/d/e file:                50%

```
> 6 votes

---
Tags: opening, statistics, chess-olympiad
---


title: Connecting opening book to chess engine

text:
# Question
Title: Connecting opening book to chess engine
I have file Rybka.exe and when I use it for the first moves, it always goes Nf3 or Nc3 only (even at strength 1000 and depth 1). I assume that is because it doesn't have opening book assigned (?) to it. How does one connect opening books in .ctg (or other?) formats to the chess engine? I do not want to get some GUI, but rather understand how it is done.

# Answer
I don't have Rybka 4 but I do have the free version (Rybka 2.3.2). Rybka 2.3.2 doesn't support engine book. To verify this, open the engine in command, then type "uci". Look at how I did it.

Look the UCI options, we have one for multi-pv and others. But there is nothing for an opening book. If the engine doesn't support an opening book, you have to rely on a GUI to do it, for example, Fritz.

On the other hand, if you do the same thing to Stockfish, you'll see a Book options where you can specify path to your book be used by the engine.
> 1 votes

# Answer
It sounds like you're using the standard Chessbase interface when you mentioned a .ctg file. The Chessbase interface is used for many engines, so this title may work: How To Make Fritz Chess Software Play a Specific Chess Opening
Try this: http://www.chesscentral.com/Chess\_Opening\_Book\_a/137.htm
> 0 votes

---
Tags: opening, engines, books
---


title: Key indicators for deeper analysis

text:
# Question
Title: Key indicators for deeper analysis
I have trouble with managing my time in my games. I cannot determine if I need a deep analysis or I am in a position where any good move would do.

So, what are good indicators to determine if a position needs a more deep analysis or to just play any good move?

# Answer
If I see a position which can have multiple continuations, I will analyse each one and think everything through. Till then, beginning and end game should be pretty much the ones to take the least amount of time, because they can be learned.

Basically focussing on your question fully, if the positions seems complicated - analyse deeper and don't think about time. But once you chose that tactic, work your way through it and don't hesitate.

I might've misunderstood what exactly your question was, but I hope I didn't...
> 1 votes

# Answer
Usually a long series of forced moves indicates the need to look deeply into a position. Often times I see the exchange through to the end, but I do not look the next 2 or 3 moves to make sure I haven't trapped my queen or something. These are typically tactical positions. Fortunately tactics training helps you see these combinations quickly.

When the moves aren't forced then taking the time to calculate out every random pawn move and the next few moves after that would take too much time. When I am in this kind of position I do best when I do a fork and discovered attack check to ensure I don't get caught in a simple 3 move tactic and then base my next move on strategy. Only after deciding on a strategy do you need to calculate out the method of achieving your goals.
> 1 votes

# Answer
The tactical bells.

When should you calculate more than usual? That is a question that even a GM cannot properly answer, but tactical bells are the number one pick.

The idea is simple. If you check for tactics, you will find some at times. If you check most tactical puzzles, they have a pin, weak backrank, overworked pieces, etc. Look for that in a game. If you see a weak backrank, calculate. If you see a piece that has two jobs, start calulating. A pin? Try pawnstorming!

In attacks, always calculate several moves ahead. That is the only way to survive the piece sacrifice you might have made.

The positional whispers.

Put a knight in the center. The bishop pair. The pawn structure. Look for those. If you think that you can put a knight in the center, can they push it back? Will you force him to give a bishop up for a knight?

The endgame drums.

Endgame is the part of a game where you should calculate the most. Less pieces, more calculation. If you are in a king and pawn endgame, check for everything.

On everything else. Advancing a piece, pushing a pawn, etc, don't need a lot of calculation. The more chess you play, the more you will feel moves like that come right to you. Those moves need less than 10 secs of calculation.

In the end, playing reveals more. The more you play, the more you do. Hope it helps.
> 1 votes

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


# Question
Title: Increase font of rank and file labels in babaschess
I'm trying to memorize the squares A-H 1-8, but its difficult when the labels are very tiny. How can I increase the font-size of the Rank and File labels in babaschess.

# Answer
Here you go:

Babaschess \> File \> Preferences \> Board \> Board Window \> Board window display options \> Show Coordinates \> Font Size

Oh by the way, LiChess.org has a really neat feature to practise board square memorization in its training check it out!
> 1 votes

---
Tags: babaschess
---


# Question
Title: How to evaluate my move with UCI engine?
I am looking for a way to analyse the moves I play. I'm NOT looking for a suggestion of a GUI that does this, or using Chessbase to do this. I want to know how to do this by communicating directly with the UCI engine.

For example, when I tell the engine:

position startpos moves e2e4 e7e5 d2d4 g7g6

go depth 30

it returns the best move in this position:

info nodes 11295495 score cp -40

bestmove f7f5 ponder g8f6

But what I want is the evaluation of my latest move g7g6. How do i get that?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Enable multipv on the engine. When you are at "e2e4 e7e5 d2d4" it will list all possible best moves that the engine considers in order of their evaluation. If you find "g7g6" in this list, then what you have considered is one of the best moves also considered by the engine and you'll obviously have the score associated with "g7g6". So, you will find this information before you make the move "g7g6".

# Answer
> 1 votes
From a read-through of the UCI protocol (http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/UCIProtocol.html) I didn't find a single command to do exactly what you want.

What it looks like you could do is start with the position before g7g6, get the cp score (-40 is, I think, a .4 advantage for black), play g7g6 and get the cp score in the subsequent position. You could then take the difference of the two and you have an evaluation of the move.

Please let me know if this works/is what you are looking for. I haven't gotten into UCI implementation before but you've sparked my interest.

# Answer
> -1 votes
I think you've confused somewhat in the UCI. Your reported results is invalid. Either the engine has a bug or you've done something wrong. The command you give is correct but the bestmove it reports is invalid because it's white to move in the final position.

When I did the same thing on Stockfish, I have the following. Please note that the first move in all PVs are white's move.

```
info depth 16 seldepth 24 score cp 103 upperbound nodes 2601011 nps 207169 time 12555 multipv 1 pv d4e5 f7f6 e5f6 g8f6 b1c3 f8b4 f1d3 d7d5 e4e5 d8e7 d1e2

info depth 16 currmove d4e5 currmovenumber 1

info depth 16 seldepth 26 score cp 131 lowerbound nodes 3046457 nps 207807 time 14660 multipv 1 pv d4e5 f7f6 e5f6 g8f6 g1f3 f6e4 f1c4 b8c6 e1g1 f8e7 b1c3 e4d6

info depth 16 currmove d4e5 currmovenumber 1

info depth 16 seldepth 26 score cp 131 nodes 3094910 nps 208061 time 14875 multipv 1 pv d4e5 f7f6 e5f6 g8f6 g1f3 f6e4 f1c4 b8c6 e1g1 f8e7 b1c3 e4d6
info nodes 3094910 time 14875

bestmove d4e5 ponder f7f6

```

EDIT:

Your question is a bit unclear because you ask for the evaluation for the move g7-g6. But this evaluation term is extremely unclear. From your comments, you're actually referring to the how well the move g7-g6 is relative to other moves that you can make in the same position.

If my interpretation is correct, your closest is multi-pv. Multi-pv lists the moves from best to worst. If g7-g6 is the second best move, you'll see the score and you can compare it with the score for the best move. I said it's closest because if your move is not one of the best moves, you'll find it hard to see in a multi-pv output.

UCI protocol is designed for computer vs computer playing, not really designed for human analysis like you described in your scenario. If you really want to know about your move. You have to play the move, get the score of it. Take the move back and find the best move in the position.

---
Tags: analysis, engines, evaluation, uci
---


# Question
Title: What are the common mistakes make by chess engines at ELO range 1500 - 1800?
I'm a software developer and occasional chess player at elo rating 1500.

Chess engines of different level play different type of games with some mistakes according to that given level.

1. I'm really eager to know that what are common factors differentiate the playing ability of chess engines from one level to another level?
2. Can somebody explain what are the common mistakes make by chess engines at ELO range 1500 - 1800 ?

# Answer
I'm also a chess engine developer, let me answer you from my own experience:

There're lot of reasons differentiate the playing ability. Actually, a lot. This is an area where one could write a PhD thesis, but let's take a quick look at the two major factors.

1. Ability to do a cutoff quicker
2. Ability to evaluate a position better

Unlike a human player, a computer chess algorithm doesn't need a sophisticated position evaluation. Lots of weak engines tend to use some very complicated evaluations, such as cubic interpolation of material values but none have been proven to work. Simple is the key. Stockfish, the strongest engine in the world, has an evaluation about Elo 1800. It might sound amazing that an Elo 3000+ engine has a simple evaluation that is only about Elo 1800 level. But remember, a computer needs to use this evaluation function for hundreds of thousands of positions. The simpler, the faster the engine can search, the higher depth it can reach and therefore the more tactics it can see.

Weak engines tend to use only alpha-beta. It's insufficient because the search space is too large. One would need to consider null-move, late move reductions and other advanced algorithms.

Now, to your second point. The common mistake made by chess engines at ELO range 1500 - 1800 is that their programmer doesn't understand chess programming. MicroMax, a super light chess engine (Google it if you don't believe) can play Elo 2000. Anything weaker than it is an indication that the engine has bugs and not performing as expected, as it should.

In general, an engine with a correct material evaluation function can perform Elo 2000.
> 4 votes

# Answer
It doesn't take much depth to a search to surpass an 1800 level... so even really dumb evaluators tend to surpass that level quickly. Engines that do have these problems seem to get stuck in quiet positions (or closed positions) which require a plan that terminates beyond the search horizon rather than a short tactical improvement. Often, a program can make random moves that cause a deterioration of their position, so a patient human can wait for weaknesses to be self inflicted.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: learning, engines, elo, programming, blunder
---


# Question
Title: Is it possible to know if someone is cheating in correspondence chess?
Consider a mobile chess app which allows to play correspondence chess.

Some apps, like this one, state that they'll punish someone (e.g., disable their account) if they discover that the person is cheating.

Is it really possible to reliably know if someone is cheating (e.g., uses a chess engine to decide on the next move)?

Are there any heuristics that can exist in the app that will calculate the probability that a player is cheating?

# Answer
The answer is, "Yes." See this article:

http://www.uschess.org/content/view/12677/763

Does your phone application have this capability? Probably no... yes! So don't do it!
> 5 votes

# Answer
As far as I have researched on the aspect of using engine assistance (in live games, let alone correspondence games), I had reached an understanding that it is almost close to impossible to detect it. Except for some moves as mentioned by SomePatzer in his answer, which experts can determine is engine like (with high probability in comparison with the player's level). With the option of Multi-PV in UCI engines, which gives "n" best moves in a given situation, a not so monotonous cheater, would choose the move among these n moves in random. So clearly it cannot be detected.
> 3 votes

# Answer
When someone is playing the computers suggestion 10 moves in a row then I would be convinced that he is cheating. Humans can also detect it since there are true "*computer moves*" that are nearly impossible to find for humans and that look very artificial. But you also have to consider the case in which the app developers just wrote this as a deterrent.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: software, correspondence-chess, cheating
---


title: understanding evaluation function

text:
# Question
Title: understanding evaluation function
I am developing a chess program. And have made use of an alpha beta algorithm and a static evaluation function. I have successfully implemented both but I want to improve the evaluation function by automatically tuning the weights assigned to its features. At this point am totally confused about the policy suitable for updating the weights of the function. One policy I have in mind is to check whether a move is good or bad before updating weights but I don't really know how to implement it. Thus I need ideas and pseudo code please.

# Answer
In Chess, you use SPSA and CLOP. Those are the algorithms used by Stockfish in Fishtest to tune its parameter. The algorithm worked so well that it made Stockfish be the strongest engine in the world.

Please note that the algorithms are very complicated mathematically. One could write a PHD thesis on this topic. In SPSA, you start from a best guess from the value. Then play games, use those games to derive a better gradient for the next series of parameters.

The maths is very hard, but it all boils down to some statistics - you play games, and use those games to derive a distribution to update the parameters you want to tune.

Please read:

http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?start=0&t=50823&topic\_view=flat

and

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/fishcooking/SPSA/fishcooking/WNrxeXAJ6VI/ZkCnRv4I\_qEJ
> 2 votes

# Answer
I might approach this via genetic algorithm.

1. Each param in the gene represents one weight you use for tuning.
2. Have a fairly large test suite of positions + moves made by grandmasters (randomly over many middle game positions).
3. Create a random initial population of genes to be used in competition. You can include any feature weights you already believe to be good as well.
4. For each gene, for each position, do a shallow search based on how much training time you want to take.
5. For every position where your program produces the same move as a grandmaster, add one to a total associated with a gene. This total is what the GA should try to maximize.
6. Random pairing for mating rights competition based on above score, and breed the results using standard GA techniques.
7. Run until convergence.

Whatever final weight you get becomes your feature weight.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: learning, software, evaluation
---


# Question
Title: Who is the winner between two powerful computer opponents?
If we suppose to have 2 powerful computer, that are able to calculate all moves in some seconds, who will win, the black or the white? Or the game will always be draw? (let say we have a unlimited number of moves in this case) Does the winner in this case depend from the strategy? We now chess game is very complex having 8x8 board with 32 peices.

# Answer
> 6 votes
The answer to "who wins between two perfect computers" depends on whether White or Black wins (or draws) with perfect play from both sides.

No one knows the answer to this question. If we did, Chess would be considered to be solved. That is, we would be able to define "perfect play". However, Chess is not generally considered likely to be solved anytime soon: the number of possible positions is simply far too great to even represent on any current machinery. If you could somehow store the correct move for any given position in a *single bit* (which you can't), you'd still need (approximately)...

```
1,250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

```

...**PETABYTES** of storage space just to hold the tablebase. Obviously, this is so far beyond our current technical capabilities that it is, for the moment, impossible.

See here for more (with further links to a small fraction of the huge amount of research that exists on the topic).

# Answer
> 0 votes
The two current strongest chess engines are Rybka 3 and Stockfish 5. An 8-game match was played between those two engines a month ago. Rybka 3 lost +0 =5 -3. Ofcourse, it all also heavily depends on how strong the chess engine is by itself, but I would hypothesise that if we were to take two absolutely equal engines in strengths, then the majority of games played would be draws, although wins could also be possible (specifically for the side playing white), since white has an extra tempo, which can be masterfully utilised by the engine.

You can find the match on YouTube, here's a link to the first game.

# Answer
> -1 votes
"Powerful computer" is a relative term. Different chess engines use different algorithms and strategies to weigh what would be considered the best moves in a given position, but no computer or chess program is able to calculate all the possible moves in a chess game in advance, except for when there's only a few pieces left on the board.

If you mean who would win when two perfect chess programs with unlimited computing power go head to head: noone knows the answer, since chess still hasn't been "solved". I'd assume the most likely outcome would be a draw though.

---
Tags: theory, software
---


title: Using jin to play on chess.com

text:
# Question
Title: Using jin to play on chess.com
I decided to play a few games on FICS, and I really loved jin's interface. Is there any way to tweak it so that I can connect to chess.com's server? (Or using any other interface, for that matter. In particular, are you absolutely forced to play in-browser at chess.com?)

# Answer
> 1 votes
The chess.com business model depends on locking people into using their site to play through in order to convince those users to purchase subscriptions to the site (just as is the case with Chessbase's Playchess site, the ICC, FIDE Online Arena and several others). Opening up access to their API (they do have one for their smartphone apps) in the way you suggest could be readily used to break through those commercial barriers. Which is a round about way of saying, no, there's not much chance of using any other program with their site.

# Answer
> 1 votes
> Is there any way to tweak it so that I can connect to chess.com's server?

Of course. Just use Fiddler to monitor the HTTP traffic to chess.com from your desktop/mobile phone/tablet to see how it can be done. It is technically possible.

# Answer
> 0 votes
I don't think there currently is a way judging from the discussion in the following link:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/chesscom-desktop-client?page=1

---
Tags: online-chess
---


# Question
Title: Best book with several annotated games by top GMs with the Dutch
I'm looking for annotated games by top GMs featuring the Dutch defense. These could be in a book with lots of other non-Dutch games. Unfortunately Botvinnik's "Botvinnik: One Hundred Selected Games" as I recall doesn't have quite a half dozen and they are all Stonewalls: I'd like some "Classical" variation games too. How about "Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953"; Bronstein played the Dutch, didn't he? Unfortunately with Amazon's "search inside" feature it doesn't look like the games were indexed by opening. As you can tell I don't mind if the games are old-ish (and this will weed out lots of Leningrad Dutch's I'm not necessarily interested in at this point), though I'm also open to more recent games too. Thanks in advance.

# Answer
The World Championship Match between Botvinnik and Bronstein in 1951 contains quite a number of Dutch Defense games. I didn't find many books about the match, but there was one by Botvinnik that may provide a good reference point.
> 3 votes

# Answer
The Killer Dutch by GM Simon Williams includes 24 annotated games, as well as a lot of great advice and new ideas for Dutch players. It focuses mainly on the Classical Dutch, so it sounds ideal for you.

There's also an accompanying DVD that's very decent, available from Simon's own site here or as a digital download from OCL.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Check this link out on chessgames.com: for ECO A91 dutch defense:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessopening?eco=A91
> 0 votes

---
Tags: books, master-games, dutch-defense
---


# Question
Title: What are the most commonly used open digital formats for chess games?
I have many of my old games in PGN format and a still quite many in paper format that I want to make digitally available.

I prefer make the digital versions in an open format that is widely used.

What are the most commonly used open digital formats for chess games?

# Answer
The most used is PGN.

You can arrange them in a database once you have enoguh PGNs to make it worth it. If you have money, ChessBase is great. If you want a free option there is SCID vs. PC (SCID for Linux)

Some links:

Note :

SCID vs PC is better than the Windows version of SCID. My opinion of course.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: pgn
---


# Question
Title: Can a rook put an opponent's king in check as a result of castling?
Earlier in my game I had moved my king 1 space to right of its original position. Later in the game, after my opponent castled he placed his rook correctly which resulted in the rook being directly across from my king on the other end of the board with no pieces in between. He then stated I was in check. Is this a legal check since he actually moved his king first in the castling action, or should he only be able to call a check after my next move? In other words, can he check me from a castling move since his king did not originally have me in check?

# Answer
Yes, of course he can; you're indeed in check. Imagine if checks didn't exist--then on the next move, if your king hasn't moved, he could just take your king with his rook.
> 15 votes

# Answer
Yes, it is check. It doesn't matter which piece was moved.

```
[Fen "8/8/8/8/8/8/8/R3K1k1 w KQkq - 0 1"]

```

You can also have *discovered check* where your opponent moves a piece, exposing a piece behind it which attacks your king. This is another example of a check in which the checking piece wasn't moved.

```
[Fen "4r3/8/4k3/8/8/4K3/8/8 w KQkq - 0 1"]

```

.

```
[Fen "8/4pr2/5k2/3b1P2/8/4B3/4KR2/8 w KQkq - 0 1"]

```
> 5 votes

---
Tags: castling, check
---


# Question
Title: What is the Elo of a player who is half as good as another player?
You often hear players refer to others as half as good as me, while they have the same Elo. Is there a formula to measure this? It must take in account that being half as good as Carlsen, for example, is somewhere near a 2600 GM level, while half as good as a club player, is at 1000 level.

What I think that being n times weaker than a player is.

If an n times weaker player plays the player he is n times weaker, it means that if they played an infinite match, the weaker player should get n points, while the stronger player n\*x.

Any other ideas? Are there any papers written on this? If my idea were to be true, is there a formula to calculate the Elo difference?

# Answer
> 14 votes
This answer addresses one concrete portion of the OP; namely, for an arbitrary `N > 0`, what rating difference between Player A and Player B corresponds to Player A's expected score against Player B being `N` times the expected score for Player B? I'll speak in terms of the USCF's Elo rating system, since I'm most familiar with it.

If Player A's expected score is `N` times that of Player B when they face each other, then Player A's expected score is `N / (N + 1)` while Player B's expected score is `1 / (N + 1)` (since the two expected scores must sum to `1`). Let `A` be Player A's rating and let `B` be Player B's rating. According to the USCF rating system, these ratings are intended to indicate that Player A's expected score is then

```
1 / (1 + 10^((B - A) / 400))

```

Thus if we solve the equation

```
1 / (1 + 10^((B - A) / 400)) = N / (N + 1)

```

for `A - B`, we will have an answer as to what rating difference corresponds to Player A's expected score being `N` times greater than Player B's when they match up. What we get is that

```
A - B = -400 * ln(1 / N) / ln(10)

```

So we have the following approximate rating differences corresponding to certain values of `N`:

```
N     A - B
-     -----
1     0
1.5   70
2     120
3     191
4     241
5     280

```

# Answer
> 3 votes
Jacob Aagaard gives in a comment in his blog a rule of thumb that doubling one's strength corresponds to increasing elo by 135. He gives no citation, but it might sound plausible if you consider the amount of work needed to achieve certain level etc. This (coincidentally?) seems to be close to the value given in ETD's answer for the rating difference when the better player scores 2/3 and the worse player scores 1/3 in a match.

If you believe Aagaard's formula, then with elo difference of x, the better player is 2^(x/135) times better, and if a player is n times better than another, their elo difference is 135\*log\_2(n).

---
Tags: rating, elo
---


title: Longest path for knight

text:
# Question
Title: Longest path for knight
Suppose the knight is on square X and he wants to get to square Y, and in order to do that he has to move N moves. how big could N be?

Could that be solved using a mathematical equation? Say Nf3 should capture Bg8, could that be solved mathematically without having to take a look and analyze it step by step? is there an equation?

# Answer
The furthest distance is from one corner to the opposite one. You can get from a1 to h8 in six moves, for example a1,c2,d4,f3,e5,g6,h8. There are few pairs of squares that take more than four moves.
> 6 votes

# Answer
N can be infinite. I can always make a zillion knight moves. So I expect you really want to know the smallest number of moves a Knight needs to get from square A to square B.

Some N's won't work. A Knight on a1 can't get to b3 in any even number of moves.

One thing we know - if the start and end squares are the same color, it will take an even number of moves. If they are different colors, it will take an odd number of moves.

It doesn't take long to figure out the longest path on the board (a8 to h1 for example) requires six moves. Note the start and end squares are the same color. For alternating colors, the requirement is 5 moves, max.

I don't think there will be an equation where one enters the square locations and a single number comes out.
> 3 votes

# Answer
If the knight cannot touch the same square twice then the answer is 63. See Knight's tour

A coworker of mine wrote the software to determine the route a long time ago.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I think the options are finites (not infinite) is possible calculate all the possible moves from f3 to g8 so the Knight can take the Bishop but its a longest number.

Since the chess board is finite in dimensions (8x8) all the possible moves can be calculated, but off course it will be again a very longest number.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: theory, knights, mathematics
---


# Question
Title: Why do players think after they have made a plan?
I have seen many live competitions from top GMs, and I can usually see one thinking 15 minutes straight, then doing a tactical move. After some thinking from the other player, he does the main move, the one the engines say it is the best, and probably was considered by the first GM. I keep seeing GMs thinking, spending more time, even if the opponent plays what they wanted. Double checking might be it, but still, isn't it valuable time spent on checking an already checked position?

# Answer
> 10 votes
I had the same thought myself. For a couple tournaments, I started playing lines which I had calculated out with about 10 seconds of thought on each move. My results were terrible.

The reason, I think, is that the extra move being played on the board gives you quite a bit of added calculation power. I now take more time on the moves following a long think and I frequently encounter errors in my previous analysis, which I either have to find fixes for or find a new move.

# Answer
> 7 votes
Chess has *far* too many possibilities to calculate. It also has time constraints, so at some point you always have to stop thinking and make a decision based on imperfect information. Barring forced moves and forced wins, you always have imperfect information and so you have to rely on judgment all the time.

When Carlsen was considering Bxf7, he had to think about several possible replies, and of course he also had to spend time on the other moves he could have played and the possible replies to those. After fifteen minutes he decided that Bxf7 looked best so far, spending more time wasn't productive and he went for it. That doesn't mean the position after Kxf7 is "already checked" in any sense of the word.

Now that he can concentrate only on the position after Bxf7 Kxf7, and not on all the other positions that might have occurred, it makes sense to spend more time to look deeper.

# Answer
> 3 votes
A lot of times, Grandmasters will not make concrete plans. The plan might be **general** \- "I have to attack the enemy king", without having any specific ***move order*** in mind. Also, many times grandmasters make moves based purely on **intuition** than on concrete analysis. It might seem to the observers that the grandmaster has been "planning", but it may just be that all this while he/she was simply making sure their intuition was sound, or was even occasionally distracted by some irrelevant thought.

Mikhail Tal notes one such famous incident in his own life (emphasis mine)-

> I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where **I was intending to sacrifice a knight**. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.
>
> **And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanović Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus"**. I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: **just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh?** I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.
>
> After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. **Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.** And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice.

— Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.

Here's the game for your viewing pleasure. The knight sacrifice is on move 19.

```
   [FEN ""]
   [White "Mikhail Tal"]
   [Black "Vasiukov"]

   1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. d4 dxe4 4. Ne4 Nd7 5. Nf3 Ngf6 6. Ng3 e6 7. Bd3 c5
   8. O-O cxd4 9. Nd4 Bc5 10. Nf3 O-O 11. Qe2 b6 12. Bf4 Bb7 13. Rad1 Nd5
   14. Bg5 Qc7 15. Nh5 Kh8 16. Be4 f6 17. Bh4 Bd6 18. c4 Ba6 19. Ng7 Kg7
   20. Nd4 Nc5 21. Qg4 Kh8 22. Ne6 Ne6 23. Qe6 Rae8 24. Qd5 Bh2 25. Kh1 Qf4
   26. Qh5 Qe4 27. Rfe1 Qg6 28. Qg6 hxg6 29. Bf6 Kg8 30. Re8 Re8 31. Kh2 Bc4
   32. Rd7 Re6 33. Bc3 Ba2 34. Ra7 Bc4 35. Kg3 Bd5 36. f3 Kf8 37. Bd4 b5
   38. Kf4 Bc4 39. Kg5 Ke8 40. Ra8 Kf7 41. Ra7 Ke8 42. b4 Bd5 43. Ra3 Kf7
   44. g4 Re2 45. Bc5 Re5 46. Kh6 Re6 47. Rd3 Bc6 48. Rd8 Re8 49. Rd4 Re6
   50. f4 Ke8 51. Kg7 Be4 52. Bb6 Bf3 53. Rd8 Ke7 54. Rd3 Be2 55. Bd8 Ke8
   56. Rd2 Re3 57. Bg5 Bd3 58. f5

```

---
Tags: grandmaster, time-management
---


# Question
Title: What is the number of "CPU" next to each engine's name in engines rating list? And is my computer 1CPU, 2CPU or 4CPU?
Look at this engine rating list which compares all the versions of Stockfish.

After the name of each engine we can see one of these three things:

* 4CPU
* 2CPU
* Nothing, which probably means: 1CPU

And it seems that the same engine is stronger by roughly 80 Elo when run on 4CPU instead of 1CPU.

I'm not exactly sure what the number of "CPU" is... Is it related to the number of cores?

I would like to know if my computer is 1CPU, 2CPU or 4CPU.

Here is the specifications of my computer (which I found in Control Panel\System and Security\System):

* Alienware M18x
* Windows 8.1
* Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3740QM CPU @ 2.70 GHz 2.70 GHz
* Installed memory (RAM): 16.0 GB
* System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

So is my computer 1CPU, 2CPU or 4CPU ?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Before multicore processors, if you saw something like 4 CPUs they would be referring to a chess engine running on a computer that had a motherboard that actually had 4 separate processors on it. Now, they they could be referring to multicore processors. For example, your i7 is a quad-core processor with 4 processor cores. It's like 4 processors in 1 package.

It's hard to say for sure which one it is, because even after reading their testing information in the about page, etc. They do not make clarifications about the actual hardware it is running on.

This is all I could find:

> Should be set to the same value of either 128 or 256 MB for all engines in a match or tourney. There are two exeptions: 1) Engines using 2 CPUs should have double hash size, compared to single-CPU engines in the same tourney. 4-CPU engines should have 4 times amount of hash. 2) Smaller hash size can be used if an engine has problems with particular hash size, or if it does not allow to configure hash size.

---
Tags: engines, software, programming
---


# Question
Title: What are good books for learning Queen's Gambit opening
I am looking for book recommendations on the Queen's Gambit. I already own some general opening books, which cover many openings and also many variations in each opening. However, I am not advanced enough to figure out the strategic plans attached to the many variations by myself.

So what I am looking for is something that is less broad than e.g. Fundamental Chess Openings. On the other hand, if possible, I would not want to delve only into the details of a single reply, e.g., QGD. So what I am looking for is a book that somehow covers a reasonable amount of different defenses in reply to the Queen's Gambit. Of course I understand that this is a huge topic. But at least a book that covers roughly QGA, QGD and the Slav would be nice.

# Answer
> 4 votes
The best for QGD is *Mathew Sadler-Queen's Gambit declined* in my opinion. Every line in the Queen's Gambit declined has been explained. It is dated, so you will need to do your own research to find latest theory. Still, QGD is "stable" opening so theory rarely changes here...

For Queen's Gambit accepted, you could try a book from Starting Out series, or *Semko & Sakaev-Queen's Gambit Accepted.* QGA is simple, its all about not letting Black to finish development. You just need the moves to survive the opening. Maybe you will need to learn how to play against Isolated pawn. If that is the case, you can start with this post on Chess SE.

As for Slav defense, again Black aims for solidity and White tries to hinder his harmonious development. The lines are sharp but easy to understand, and you need to know theory. Maybe sometimes you will end with "hanging pawns" but there is a book about this type of middlegame. The best book I found on Semi-Slav is one from *David Vigorito.* As for Slav, again you can Google for one of the Starting out series.

> Of course I understand that this is a huge topic. But at least a book that covers roughly QGA, QGD and the Slav would be nice.

*Lars Schandorrf-Playing the Queen's Gambit 2nd edition* could be what you want. It gives you most up to date theory at this point. Combine it with the above books and you should be fine. For latest opening theory you could consider getting 2 volumes from Avrukh ( *Grandmaster repertoire 1* and *Grandmaster repertoire 2* ).

## CONCLUSION:

**Shandorrf and Avrukh give opening moves but don't explain basic ideas.** I have listed them so you can survive opening **as there were recent novelties** in the Semi-Slav and Slav. For basic ideas get Starting out series and Sadler's book, they should be enough for you to start.

In my opinion this is the best you can do to solve your problem at the moment. If you need further help leave a comment. Good luck!

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Tags: opening, queens-gambit
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# Question
Title: How many positions are there in n-pieces endgame tablebases for different values of n?
Note that I don't want the exact values, I only need approximations. And I am only interested in small values of n (not more than 12).

# Answer
> 5 votes
This depends a great deal on how (and what) you count. In a discussion at the CCRL board, Kirill Kryukov offers the following counts on the number of unique legal positions (NULP) for some small numbers of pieces:

```
Pieces          NULP
  2                  462
  3              368,079
  4          125,246,598
  5       25,912,594,054
  6    3,787,154,440,416

```

But it is important to note that his numbers (which he was in fact soliciting independent confirmation of, so take with a grain of salt) depend on his definition of a legal position:

> I use simple definition of legality: 1. Side to move does not give check. (2. No pawns on promotion rank or before the starting rank. 3. Exactly one white king and exactly one black king are on the board).

Thus he doesn't consider the matter of positions actually being reachable from the starting position of chess, for instance. There is a lot of discussion there to go through if you wish.

Another key point is that these position counts take the symmetries of the chessboard into account. With the 2-piece positions, for example, the naive count (which would be reduced a bit for legality, i.e. non-touching kings) would be roughly `64 * 63 = 4,032`. The reason his count is so much less is because he is counting unique positions as would be stored in tablebases, where for the sake of saving space positions that are symmetric variants of one another are not counted distinctly. The `462` 2-piece positions can be pictured like this (and forgive my ugly drawing):

Taking symmetry redundancies into account, there are only 10 unique squares where our first king could be placed (those within the red border). And then, taking legality and further symmetries into account, there are only so many remaining squares where the second king could be placed (indicated by the numbers, for each of the 10 initial squares). These sum up to the `462` unique positions in question.

To illustrate one case, why is the count `30` for the d4 square? Of the `63` remaining squares, `8` wouldn't be legal. Of the remaining `55`, the `5` on the long diagonal are all unique, but the remaining `50` come in `25` pairs of squares whose resulting positions are no longer unique with respect to the symmetries of the board (in particular, they are mirror images of one another when reflected across the long diagonal). So there are only `5 + 25` unique placements of the second king once we place the first king on d4.

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Tags: endgame, statistics, tablebases, mathematics
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# Question
Title: What book should I refer to to begin learning chess?
I'm a highschool student and want to play chess seriously. A friend of mine taught me the basic rules of the game. What book should I refer to to begin learning chess?

I tried Capablanca's *Chess Fundamentals* but got stuck in the first chapter due to notations, I did not quite understand what 1K-K7 and things like those meant.

I'd love if you could give me an ordered list of books I can read :)

# Answer
Learn Chess by John Nunn. A highly respected chess author. Do not be put off by the title!

Silman's Complete Endgame Course by Jeremy Silman. A modern classic, improvement in the endgame will improve your whole game, I should recommend studying up to the Part Five then saving the rest for later.

Tactics Time! by Tim Brennan and Anthea Carson. Tactics is an essential part of chess improvement.

How to Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman. A challenging book but a good study of it will leave a permanent mark on you.

I believe that intense study of these four books will yield very good results for you. I recommend studying them in the order

1. Learn Chess
2. Tactics Time!
3. Silman's Endgame Course
4. How to Reassess Your Chess

The most important thing to do is to keep playing, once you have studied these books and feel that your level of play is better, check out Dan Heisman's Book Recommendations for further reference

Edit: Post *RemcoGerlich*'s comment I have decided to change Build up Your Chess 1: The Fundamentals to How to Reassess your Chess as I realized that the Yusupov book is actually quite challenging and less approachable than Silman's. Although it should still be recommended for when your level of play is higher.
> 10 votes

# Answer
The best way to improve in chess is to play serious, slow games, and to read books that have *a lot of exercises* at the right level. Books without exercises tend to give the feeling that you learned to lot, but turn out not to change much in the choice you actually make behind the board.

Chess Steps is a training method that was developed by Dutch masters and coaches Brunia and Van Wijgerden, that starts at absolute beginner level (and for very young children, almost a bit before that) and that continues to strong club player level at least. It has a very strong focus on tactics, and a secondary focus on endgames. It is the official training method of the Dutch chess federation and I *think* of several others, but that I don't know for sure.

Steps 1 to 5 are intended to be taught by a teacher, after which the pupils do the exercises. However, in my experience, for older players it is doable to just do the workbooks. You could of course get the teacher's manuals as well, if necessary. Step 6 is designed for self-learning (because there are few teachers that are strong enough to teach it).

Workbooks are cheap, and if a step gives you difficulty, there are "Extra" and "Plus" workbooks. I think this is clearly the best line of "books" for serious beginners.

After step 4 or 5 or so, Yusupov's series is also great, but it is much too hard for a beginner.
> 5 votes

# Answer
The best books are all by John Emms, and Chess Traps and Zaps ain't bad either for beginner.

You must find first THE most elemental rudiments, neatly and most importantly, DIGESTIBLY presented to you in a balance of challenging and rewardingly fun.

Anything by John Nunn and...

if you want some lessons, I'm on Ir© ¢hess 666DUI the handle :%)
> 2 votes

# Answer
Try the http://chesstempo.com tactics server. It automatically adjusts the level of exercises to each user based on his or her performance.
> 2 votes

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Tags: learning, books, beginner
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