# Question
Title: Why do so many children stop playing chess?
I've spoken to many people who played chess as children; some of them were very good players, playing at the national level. Around age 11 or 12 they stopped playing chess competitively and lost interest in the game altogether. I've asked them why & have received answers like *"It wasn't fun anymore"* or *"I was forced to play older children whom I couldn't beat"*. While it makes sense to me that a child is likely to lose interest in a game they can't win at, reaching the national level is something to be proud of. Even if you no longer play competitively, surely you'd still enjoy following chess and playing for fun? If we compare this to, say, soccer, I know many people who stopped playing competitively after primary school but still follow the sport. Why is chess different? Why do so many young people divorce themselves from chess completely when they feel they've reached their potential and can't advance any further?

# Answer
> 25 votes
In order to prevent my answer **to be misunderstood/wrongly interpreted**, let me state few thing now, at the beginning:

1. I **LOVE** to play chess.
2. I am inactive, and doubt I will **ever play** on tournaments again, but I **still follow the game.**

Now, let us proceed towards answering the OP's question:

> ...I know many people who stopped playing competitively after primary school but still follow the sport. Why is chess different: why do so many young people divorce themselves from chess completely when they feel they've reached their potential and can't advance any further?

In order for someone to continue sports/mountain climbing/collecting stamps/whatever they need to have a reason for doing it - **and it must be a very good and strong one!**

So let us start examining this from the athlete's point of view for a start, and then we shall compare our conclusions with those for a chess player.

## ATHLETE'S POINT OF VIEW:

A child athlete could like sports because he can :

1. Play with **people** of similar interest **and of the approximately same age** and he can be **a part of something**;
2. He can **improve his health or maintain its good shape**, he can get popular which can give him many social benefits;
3. He needs **little work to do in order to improve** compared to a chess player, and if he continues to pursue sports there is a chance for him to have **great future (fame, money and so on).**

## CHESS PLAYER'S POINT OF VIEW:

1. Young chess player is surrounded with his peers at the beginning but as soon as he progresses he meets **usually older people** to play against. Imagine a child on a decent tournament (this scenario is really plausible since 12 year old can reach FIDE master/near FIDE master strength) surrounded with older people - it makes him feel awkward, like he does not belong there. He can not socialize with them since they have no common conversational topics due to age difference - **which will lead to loneliness**, unlike the athlete who is usually **surrounded with their peers and feels great for being a part of the team, for belonging to a group.**
2. Chess improves mental abilities (some mathematical disciplines and memory), but spending too much time on the board **neglects a child's physical development.** In that age **physical development is far more important** on the long run than to be a spelling champion. Furthermore, a successful athlete gets the social benefits, like popularity in school and many others, while being a chess player is not being fully approved today-nobody likes to lose from a girl and guys are labeled as boring geeks. Sorry to say it, but in the long run being the athlete really has its benefits even if you do it for fun but playing chess in your free time does not.
3. Regarding the improving method athlete again has it easier. Let us take basketball for an example: If a tall child and a short one start training and invest **equal amount of work** the taller one will still be a better player because of his **innate height advantage.** We see this in sports all the time-**physical attributes play huge roll.** In chess these two will be **of equal strength** if they invest **equal amount of work.** Why is this so important? In order to be the best in sports you need **both physical attributes and skill** yet in chess **pure skill is the only thing that counts.** Let us take Shaquille O'Neil as an example - his free throws are horrible, but he is still a top player because his **physical attributes combined with other skills compensate.** In chess, lack of skill **can not be compensated** \- you must work hard to remove your shortcomings.

So what is the result for our 12 year old chess player? Work your butt off to be good chess player for what - to be socially labeled by a bad stereotype? So you can get kyphosis/scoliosis for sitting on the board for too long? We all know that only few chess players ended up millionaires compared to countless athletes out there. So what is the future for a child if decides to **really** pursue chess? He will most probably reach grandmaster strength with hard work only to realize that there are many others like him and that he will have to work **even harder** just to have a **chance to become top level GM.** Strong memory and good mathematical abilities do not count much - we have computers/smart phones and other stuff to do that for us, yet physical fitness is still **of paramount importance** for us.

Also, you can find sports report on any news station/newspaper/Internet page, yet chess resources are very skimpy - again this requires hard work or maybe **devotion** is the true word and not many 12 year old children possess it.

To conclude: After playing chess for sometime child will reach the peak at strengthening its memorization skills and after that it decides to pursue other interests **and to explore new things. Devoting oneself to one thing at this early age** is something that is not seen very often - children at that age learn about the world around them and it is **normal for them to want to try everything.** To devote oneself to chess - **and you really need to devote yourself based on the reasons posted above** \- requires strong characters.

I will end this quoting Mikhail Botvinnik:

> "Chess is for strong people, of strong character."

How many children do you know that possess these admirable traits?

Hopefully this answer will shed some light on the matter.

Again, I do not mean anything insulting, I just state my opinion which is backed up with arguments.

Feel free to comment, I will gladly reply.

Best regards.

# Answer
> 18 votes
Dan Heisman writes about this in one of his books. He states that 90 % of children who start in 1st grade or kindergarten stop playing around 7th grade. I have seen this in my work as Executive Director of the Wisconsin Scholastic Chess Federation. Children at this age have had enough chess and want to explore other interests. As an educator I do not think this is a bad thing. Our objective in teaching chess at a young age is to help them to learn to think differently and approach problems in a more thoughtful way. If they play for 5 or 6 years, mission accomplished.

# Answer
> 7 votes
I am going to answer the question from my perspective as a child that that was good and left chess at age 10.

I started to play at age 5, my mother taught me how to play. I started to play at school and I won several regional tournaments. I was the best at my region and my age, and I was selected to be trained by GM De la Villa at the federation.

This is me at age 8 in the regional newspaper. I was interviewed because I was the youngest participant of an International Tournament where I scored 3 points.

I am going to translate the interview because the read is pleasant and it helps me explain the worries I had in mind (Google translates from Spanish):

> *Age doesn't matter in chess*. **Playing with children**.
>
> The greatest praise that can be given to a man is to compare him to a child. During this weekend some were forced to temporarily become children to work at the board with the simple and awake logic of an eight-year-old boy, huge eyes, upturned nose, brown hair and white fringe, and that, according to his confession, his strong is not mathematics, but prefers French and English.
>
> When a child plays, he plays to be something, interprets, imagines, creates and adopts roles. In this case, Manuel Ignacio Muro Sabater moves pawns, castles and delivers checks with the same enthusiasm and seriousness as Kasparov himself in the Linares Tournament, only that in some case, the age of the rivals must multiply it by five.
>
> He does not shy away from combat and hides faculties that are watched with curiosity by his adversaries.
>
> He studies third grade at the San Cernin School, a pool of excellent chess players and has been the youngest among more than a hundred players. He assures that before a chess game and a video game he does not doubt it: "I prefer chess", which apart from constituting a virtue is an exception. He has learned to play by playing games "with my father and my mother" and the explanation of his presence sharing a table with international masters is a devastating logic. "As I had been playing for three years, Cervantes, who is the one who trains us at school, told me if he could go, and I came." "How would he start moving against Kasparov? He would play defense."
>
> His case in another sport is unimaginable. However, in chess there is no clash, nor do the differences in weight, age, sex or handicap typical of other sports modalities count. Mental gymnastics equalizes all contestants. G. Asenjo

When I said "my strength is not mathematics, but I prefer French and English" I lied like a damned. I was a prodigy that obtained maximum marks in mathematics. In fact, when the teacher was teaching us lesson two, I had solved the exercises of the lesson two and I was solving the further lessons alone with my book.

Why did I lie? Because I was very worried about not looking like a nerd.

> If we compare this to, say, soccer, I know many people who stopped playing competitively after primary school but still follow the sport. Why is chess different?

In my case I left chess for tennis. I was not bad at tennis, qualifying myself to national tournaments.

While at national tennis tournaments Catalonians won me 6-0 6-0, I think if I hadn't left chess I would have become a master and could earn my life playing chess instead than my boring work in administration. Who knows if I could become the first Grand Master of my little Spanish region Navarra (Mikel Huerga has since gained the GM title). But then I wouldn't have learned Science at University, which is more important in my humble opinion. .

Why I left chess for tennis? I think because you can't impress any girl or popular child playing chess, while tennis or soccer attracts more attention. I could make more *cool* friends playing tennis than chess. I searched popularity.

Why does a child approaching adolescence seek popularity?

The biologist Richard Dawkins wrote "The Selfish Gene (1976)", in which he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities". His hypothesis can be debated, but it is clear sex plays a role in human etiology. Popularity means more opportunities to have a partner.

Did I succeed? No. I didn't take the prettiest girl from school. In fact things became worse. I left sport endorphins to take drugs with *more cool friends*. It is now, at age 37, that I have left drugs and I have found a job and my life is normal again.

If fathers are reading this all I could say is try to convince your child not to stop playing chess (giving priority to his studies). Even if your child doesn't become the most popular child of his classroom, it is good for his brain, good to teach him manners, and he will be away from bad influences.

# Answer
> 6 votes
The US Chess Federation's experience (IIRC) was that there is a big fall-off at high school graduation. They used to offer a 5-year discounted membership you could buy at age 18, that I think they hoped would be a good graduation gift. My rather cynical view is that the college chess club tended to have few, if any, women, making it an unattractive use of time. I wonder if there is a different pattern in the relatively few places that almost as many women play chess as men (e.g., Republic of Georgia, by rumor).

# Answer
> 5 votes
I think that it's a healthy response for young individuals to completely divorce themselves from an activity that requires so much dedication in order to be successful at. These people derive more of their happiness from winning and from the social acceptance that comes with winning than from the beauty of the game itself. At the more competitive levels of chess there's ultimately less winning and thus less satisfaction. It's perfectly healthy to divorce themselves completely from an activity that is leading them towards an existential depression. Unlike an addict, they are able to stop something that is no longer getting them high and so they seek more pragmatic pursuits.

# Answer
> 5 votes
As a kid who played a lot of chess from 3rd to 7th grade and then stopped I feel obligated to point out that many children stop not because of loss of passion or online chess or video games, but because they don't have the TIME it requires. Around 7th grade is when many children especially the smart ones like those who play chess start stressing about high school applications. Most kids when they reach 7th grade are at a place where chess requires studying. But they need that time for schoolwork. Also at that age kids start to think about their futures, for most of them there is no future in chess, so they start to pursue other things. I stopped after winning the highest score under 1800 at a big open tournament the week before school started. I had been studying for weeks before the tournament so after the tournament chess became something that I felt needed to spend hours on and something that stressed me out. Especially the prospect that as I got better I would need to put in even MORE time. So I decided to pursue school. By that point many of my friends dropped out or stopped playing so there was very little social aspect making it way less enjoyable. And there was no sense of team I once had. So I stopped playing altogether. Sometimes I think of going back, but I'm a bit afraid of hurting my rating, to tell the truth, and it would take months of studying now to get where I was then. I'm happy with where I got, but I think around that then I felt it was time to move on to a different stage in life. I started doing debate and track, but chess will always be special to me.

# Answer
> 4 votes
I'd expect that many children give up chess on adulthood for the same reason they give up baseball, soccer, playing a musical instrument, and other childhood activities. Adults have less leisure time and access to school programs is cut off.

# Answer
> 2 votes
The previous responses chime with me but I'd like to add one more: OTB chess gobbles up time. If you play chess competitively as a high school and college student, you run the serious risk of ending up a chess bum as an adult. Not say it necessarily does happen but that it's a real risk. My son got up to a rating of USCF 1900+ but hasn't played competitively now for, oh, ten years I'd guess. In the interim he has earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in math and is working on his doctoral dissertation at the moment.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Many of the other comments are correct but one thing that hasn't been said but was a major factor for me: The opening book. Once I got to the point where I knew I couldn't much progress in terms of tournament performance without significant opening study (hours per week), I lost interest in competitive play. If Fisherchess/Chess960 or something similar took hold, I would be more likely to spend more time with chess, and more able to believe that chess has a non-niche future.

Other important factors: Computers have changed chess enormously. Separately, The internet has changed chess enormously too. This comment doesn't address these facts but they are relevant to this discussion.

Developing on someone's comment above, the fact that there exist now strong deep-strategy "video" games, means that young people who might have been drawn to chess are drawn to more "exciting" and "cooler" games.

I agree with the commenter above that the rarity of women in the chess community is a factor.

# Answer
> 2 votes
This is coming from someone who reached a rating of 1900 when they were 11. I started playing chess when I was 8, and it was definitely something I was passionate about. Within the first three months, I started playing on rated tournaments, and reached a rating of 1450. That's when the pressure started. Thinking that I had a gift for the game, my mom pushed me every day, told me to study openings and signed me up for tournaments every two weeks. By the time I turned 10,I hated chess. I was finding ways to quit, but my mom said that the only I’d be allowed to quit would be reaching a rating of 1900. Tens of tournaments later, I finally acquired the rating if 1900 and immediately quit chess. I was 11. I stopped playing chess for 3 years before starting my own chess club at school when I was 15. However, I’ve never played competitive chess since being 11.

# Answer
> 1 votes
As someone who is also interested in and participates in other sports, and who is currently coaching youth baseball, let me first state that the issue of kids leaving is not unique to chess. Young athletes leave sports such as baseball, football, soccer, etc. It is said that 70% of kids leave youth sports by age 13.\*

That said ... In my opinion, this is not something for which there is a single answer. Factors involved include interest, opportunity, outside activities and needs, pressure, and social factors. I'll illustrate some of this via my personal experiences.

Chess was something that was of interest to me from an early age and I learned it at the age of 9. This was during the Fischer craze. I often played classmates during recess when weather forced us to stay inside. However, over time that fad faded and playing at school stopped. I continued playing at home against my step siblings for a while, but advanced to the point where I defeated them easily and they would no longer play against me. At that time, we lived in a relatively remote area and I had no one else to play against, so I (mostly) stopped playing for a few years. Even after we moved to a more populated area, there weren't many people I knew who played. So, for several years I didn't have opportunity to play.

When I got into high school, there was a chess club. I played there and began playing in rated tournaments. Inside the group, we enjoyed socializing with one another. However, outside our group, we were seen as nerdy outcasts, which people that age usually don't want (or at least didn't when I was that age). So, I'm sure there are teenagers who may be interested, but who don't play (at least publicly) for fear of becoming socially ostracized.

Pressure and burn out are things I didn't have to deal with, but some kids do. I mention it here because it is often around high school that this leads players to quit. Kids who are pushed hard for several years to learn any skill often feel overly pressured and eventually burn out. I have seen it coaching baseball, where kids are pushed by their parents and/or coaches to work hard at the game to become experts. Parents may want the kids to win scholarships and/or turn pro; some coaches will be overly obsessed with winning. Such pressure often turns kids off and leads to burn out and dropping out of the activity.

The college I attended didn't have a chess club. Also, with studies and a part time job, I had little time for the game. Furthermore, I did not have much money for traveling to tournaments (the closest I knew of were a one hour drive) or paying entry fees. So I again stopped playing.

By the time I graduated college, chess was only a mild interest. I usually had a chess program on whatever computer I had and would play it occasionally. Otherwise, I didn't play much due to work, other hobbies, dating, and - at times - night school. I did read the occasional article about the game in mass media (such as Kasparov vs. Deep Blue), but that was about it for a few decades.

Historically, another factor might be the means of study available. When I was young, the only resources I had for improvement were rather dry books - coaching would have been done face-to-face then and we were nowhere near a coach (nor would my family have spent money on one). Now there are videos, online lessons, and books that are more interesting than those I remember starting and abandoning years back. Coaching can be done online. Hopefully more people will take an interest and stay involved in chess.

\*Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXw0XGOVQvw&t=2s

# Answer
> 0 votes
As a player and coach, all I can say is that I got lucky to start out late-ish (at 15), so nobody cared about me as a young chess player. The high-level children's chess world and I guess the only reason why not even more kids leave is that our game is great and some people really have a passion for it. Let's see:

First, there's a great chance you have a coach who thinks their student winning the next game is a matter of life or death. So after 6-8 hours of high-stress, high-focus tournament play, they'll tell you to go prepare some opening line. If you're playing a double-round classical time control tournament and you aren't a professional, the only thing you should do between rounds is resting. If you're a kid, probably just go play with your friends.

You'll have a huge amount of pressure from "achievements" that shouldn't have it. The most likely reason why you won a local U12 tournament is that there weren't many good kids at your age group in your area. Instead of having fun during the tournament, you were forced to listen to a bunch of adults making a big deal our of your every game. You'd be much better playing an open tournament against adults where you could also make a great result, but nobody would know/care about it because the final standings say you finished 85th rather than 1st.

Since you won that local tournament, you'll be put in some specialized training group with a GM coach that isn't your regular coach and probably has seen fewer than five games of yours. Those training sessions are particularly useless as many kids from different skill levels are put into the same group.

All of that is worse if you happen to be a girl. If you're actually good your experience will be similar to what I described, but if you're average, since there are very few girls, you'll still often be fighting for a top spot in your local age group championship, and you'll be put in training sessions with kids that are far, far stronger than you. So you'll be learning about the great advantage of the bishop pair or some opening line when you're rated 1200 and your training should consist of 15 minutes of mate-in-2 puzzles instead.

And then at some point you'll turn 18 and, to add to the fact that adult life has lots of responsabilities that will leave you with little time for chess, you're no longer allowed to play age-group-specific tournaments, which were most of what you played for your entire life. So you try some open tournament but you have nobody to go with because most of your friends have quitted. You're also not getting any of the attention and praise you were getting for all of your "achievements". Since you've been assigned coaches your entire life, you have no clue how to train chess by yourself. As time goes by you'll end up losing interest too.

# Answer
> -2 votes
Online games are killing it. Plain and simple.

Every child needs motivation. If the child can see in chess that he/she can join and win many tournaments in about every few weeks or a month, gain more ratings and progressively improving -- then it's a good investment.

But if he feels like "this is not my sport... I lost a lot" then he/she might just turn to something else like online stuffs especially online games where everything is so colorful and exciting.

This sport is for patient people who can appreciate the beauty of the game beyond the depths of the 64 squares.

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Tags: psychology, children
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title: The London System

text:
# Question
Title: The London System
I'm rated on Chess.com in 1400 right now (elo). But sometimes my rating fluctuates between 1200 to 1500. As I searched on internet, I'm a beginner that is going to the intermediate level. Should I, as a beginner, practice a lot with the London system, or there is another solid opening for beginners?

# Answer
It's fine to use the London system at any level. It's also fine to use other openings. It's not easy for someone to knock you out of the game immediately if you play it I suppose, thus it's more solid than some other openings with more immediately tactical lines. However don't be mistaken, every opening involves tactics, they are just pushed down the road a bit in the london.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Be reassured, there are masters who have almost exclusively played the london system as white. It is an unambitious opening that does not strive for much advantage(though some proponents often claim that because the black player likely has little knowledge of the london system, it is often the case that white get's some positional edge), and instead you must suffice with an equal middle game, maybe with some pressure. It is the opening associated with the chess players who do not want to learn much theory and skip this whole idea of an opening. The reason why it is called the london SYSTEM is because it is possible to play the same first 7 or so moves against anything, I think there may be some subtlety with move orders though. Many people know the London as the boring opening, though as mentioned in the other answers, tactics are always present no matter what opening you chose. Also, I have not investigated a great deal in this but Simon Williams supposedly has this new way of playing the London system in a very agressive manner, so it may not be the case that you cannot get something crazy from the london. However, when choosing this opening, make no pretensions that you will get to play games with tactical chaos more usually associated with gambits, e4, and etc.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I recommend you watch simon williams videos on youtube about London system. You can do analysis by yourself and if you want allot of deep detail then buy his dvd
> 2 votes

# Answer
I am rated 1200-1300 on blitz on chess.com. I only use London with white and I absolutely love it. I got the Ginger GM DVD from Simon Williams, and I have rewatched each chapter numerous times. There are so many nuances in the opening, and it does require intense study to understand the opening approach based on KID, QID, Sicilian, Benoni and Dutch defenses. I can crush unsuspecting opponents easily with traps in 15-20 moves, however better opponents will be more of a challenge. I do not find it boring and I love improving with it. I went from 800 to 1200 in six months.
> 2 votes

# Answer
You should pick one system that you like and matches the style of play suited to your personality. Then master that opening.

At your level there are dozens maybe hundreds of solid openings you could choose from that could work for you. Only a few would be best for you; but you need to decide that for yourself.
> 0 votes

# Answer
Playing against the London system was one of my weaknesses too. As such, I developed some line to stop some of the ideas. If the dark square bishop is developed early, black can create advantages.

```
[FEN "rnb1kbnr/pp3ppp/1q2p3/2pp4/3P1B2/4PN2/PPP2PPP/RN1QKB1R w KQkq - 0 1"]

```

This is just a starting point though, as there are several variations you need to consider. Most GMs usually exchange queens after these and Black can equalize from there with an accurate play. But for my elo, I play like this all the time.
> 0 votes

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Tags: opening, beginner, london-system
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title: What does columns 1-24 mean?

text:
# Question
Title: What does columns 1-24 mean?
I was reading *Modern Chess Openings* by Nick de Firmian, and found "columns 1-24 deals with 2...exf4 " in relation to a theory table. So what does "columns 1-24" mean?

# Answer
> 11 votes
This table can be thought of as a tabular representation of an opening tree of in-theory moves where the rows (y-axis) represent the flow of the game and the columns (x-axis) refer to variations/branches in the tree that can occur.

The author in your quote indicated that 2...exf4 spans a family 24 variations/sub-variations that are noteworthy (and considered theory) for reference.

Here's an example for another such page on these NCO/MCO opening references.

If this is confusing, let's consider a simpler example with the first few moves (with some early deviations) from the popular Danish Gambit.

Here's what a fragment of the opening tree would look like.

If I wanted to represent/transform this tree into a table, it would look like this.

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Tags: opening, theory, terminology
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# Question
Title: Why is my theoretical knowledge is not coming to any use?
For the last few months, I have been reading "How To Reassess Your Chess (I expected at least this book to work), "Simple Chess," "The Art Of Attack," some ending book, "Modern Chess Strategy," etc. I was not practicing at all, and now I have started to play against the Fritz computer, which has a rating of 1450. I am losing most of the time in the opening and blundering in the middlegame sometimes. I have not read any opening books as I have heard that only after a 2000 rating you should memorize openings (I know the basic setups). I just don't understand. People say doing lots of puzzle increases tactical awareness and reduces blunders. But I am still making mistakes with 2-3 move blunders. What did I do wrong? I have only played about 120 chess games sp far.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Perhaps so called theoretical knowledge has no real use.

You should ask why your rating/ability has not been improving.

At only 120 games you are a total beginner. I presume you meant online games. If those were actual OTB tournament games then you need to switch to checkers.

You need to play less and study more effectively. Just playing games will not help you very much and is a very slow way to improve.

You MUST learn two openings COLD no matter your rating. One for white and one for black.

You will need to do effective tactics training. Most online trainers are not done to help you learn efficiently. There are some, not a lot, books that are better.

You need to study GM tournament games. Play over every game by every player. You will get a feel for what good moves are and which are not so good.

Best if you do not play all the games then at least play all the games for W/B that used your preferred opening. None of them did? Maybe you need to pick a better opening.

Learn endgames! If you get that far you will be surprised how many high rated players are clueless about what to do. If you know them then you will beat a lot of players with lower ratings if you get to the endgame. Did I mention to learn openings and play GM games to get a feel for good moves?

After that you need to move to strategy and positional play so you will keep improving. Tactics will help you beat the slash and burn attack at all cost kiddies, but playing good players who do not do that will require positional understanding.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The other answers are focusing on openings but that's not at all the reason why you're stuck at your level. You've pretty much asked your own question: you keep making blunders. No matter how deep your strategical knowledge is, you won't get anything from it if you hang a piece, no matter how badly you'd been dominating your opponent before.

I'd suggest you to stop caring about more nouanced strategic ideas and pay attention to just the "interactions" between pieces. When you're finally able to keep track of who is attacking/defending whom and calculate the consequences of some forced moves (checks, captures, threats...), go back to the more abstract stuff.

# Answer
> 0 votes
The easy solution is to learn a system - i.e., London System; King's Indian Defence; etc. Look through a few setups and weigh the pros and cons. Then, pick 2 - one for the d-pawn opening and one for the e-pawn opening. Play around 50 games with this system to get the hang of it. I'll leave you to work the rest out.

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Tags: opening, theory, tactics, blunder, best-practice
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title: Franco-Sicilian Defense Theory

text:
# Question
Title: Franco-Sicilian Defense Theory
I am wondering what the main lines and point of the Franco-Sicilian Defense are for Black. I could barely find any theory about it online, and it' is my favorite opening as Black. As such, I am looking to improve on it. Any reference material will also do!

I also wonder why it is so rarely played. The engine doesn't hate it that much, and it fights the center very well, as well as allowing for a quick queen and dark-squared bishop battery in the midgame. So what is the effective response from White that makes it so unplayable? I have yet to encounter one.

```
[FEN ""]

1. e4 e6 2. d4 c5

```

# Answer
> 6 votes
It is certainly playable. The main drawback is that you give White the choice between two very different mainline openings:

1. 3.Nf3 transposes to a **Sicilian**, where Black is already committed to e6 (Kan, Taimanov or Scheveningen, but no Najdorf, Sveshnikov, etc.).
2. 3.d5 reaches a **Benoni** structure and may transpose to a mainline Benoni if White later plays c4. But in some lines White may profit from not having played c4, e.g. by posting a strong knight on c4 instead.

So you are giving White a pleasant choice, and you don't really gain anything in return. If you are prepared to play the Sicilian, then why not meet 1.e4 with c5 straight away? Sure, White could choose some Anti-Sicilian line, but most true Sicilian players feel that these are not as challenging as the Open Sicilian, so they have no need of a move order that tries to trick White into playing the Open Sicilian.

Additionally, the Benoni is of course far less popular than the Sicilian, which is another reason for your move order being played so rarely.

# Answer
> 5 votes
3. d5 is a very good Benoni for white (if there is such thing as a not-very-good Benoni for white) exactly as Arne mentioned, because white can maneuver his knight to c4. Usually arises from a different move order though, 1. d4 c5 2. d5 e6 3. e4, and this is the reason why 1. ... c5 is not great against 1. d4. You'd want to wait for that pawn to arrive on c4.

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Tags: opening, theory, sicilian-defense, french-defense, reference-request
---


# Question
Title: Identifying principles and thought processes to use in locating a +3.2 or similar move
```
[Title "indrekaavik-Swifty15, chess.com, 5/3/2021"]
[FEN ""]
[startply "29"]

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 Bf5 4. Nf3 e6 5. h3 c5 6. c4 Nc6 7. cxd5 exd5 8. Bb5 Qa5+ 9. Nc3 cxd4 10. Nxd4 Bd7 11. O-O Nxd4 12. Qxd4 Bxb5 13. Qxd5 a6 14. Rd1 Rd8 Qf3 Ne7 16. Bd2 Ng6 17. Qxb7 Nxe5 18. Nxb5 Rxd2 19. Qb8+ Qd8 20. Qxe5+ Be7 Rxd2 Qxd2 22. Nc7+ Kf8 23. Nd5 Qg5 24. Qb8+ Bd8 25. Rd1 g6 26. g3 Kg7 27. h4 Qh5 28. Nf4 Qxd1+ 29. Kh2 Bxh4 30. Qe5+ Bf6 31. Qe4 Qf1 32. Nh3 h5 33. Qb7 h4 Qb3 hxg3+ 35. Qxg3 Qe1 36. Kg2 Qe4+ 37. Kf1 Bxb2 38. Nf4 Qb1+ 39. Ke2 Rh1 Nd3 Qd1+ 41. Ke3 Re1+ 42. Nxe1 Qxe1+ 43. Kf4 Qb4+ 44. Kf3 Qc3+ 45. Kg2 Qxg3+ Kxg3 Bd4 47. Kf3 f5 48. a3 g5 49. a4 g4+ 50. Kf4 Be5+ 51. Kxf5 g3 52. fxg3

```

I'd like to improve my thought process when considering a move, but I don't understand what rules/principles to apply to a particular situation where I got it wrong. This happened in the above game I played as black on chess.com. I am aware that I made plenty of mistakes before and after the move, but those I understand. I am rated 1200.

I discounted the rook exchange 15... Rxd1. After the game, the engine told me I would have had a +3.2 advantage if I had made the exchange. I can't work out why it creates that advantage.

I considered the exchange, but I thought I would stay disciplined and principled. I remembered GM Smirnov's rule "to take is a mistake. I have been reading in IM Silman's '"The Amateur Mind." It teaches that a simple one-move capture, attack, or check is pointless if it can be easily parried.

My thinking was that exchanging rooks MIGHT be useful if I gained a tempo by sending my opponent's knight to the back rank. But I saw when that they could just recapture with their queen and take control of the d file. It didn't seem that I had anything to gain. As such, I just continued to develop my pieces.

Can anyone explain why this was such a critical move, and the thought processes I could have used to identify it?

# Answer
Let us list white's trumps in this position:

* White is ahead in development
* White's king is safer than black's

If we list black's trumps, we find the following:

* **BLACK IS AN ENTIRE BISHOP UP FOR A MERE PAWN!**

If we simply count the number of trumps for each side, we see that white has seemingly more trumps than black. But here black's trump carries more weight due to the concrete nature of the position. The material advantage is so great that black will have a winning advantage as long as they manage to consolidate their position and prevent white from launching a successful attack against their king, and this is something that black can do (which is why the engine gives you a 3.2 evaluation).

In particular, we make the following observation: **if black trades away white's pieces, then white will have fewer pieces left to attack with**. This suggests that 15...Rxd1+ is a very interesting move for black to make. Another very natural move that I immediately considered in the position was 15...Bc6, since white's queen attacks the pawn on b7. One very reliable way for black to lose this kind of position is to give away their material advantage for free, so it's good to avoid this while at the same time attacking white's queen. But I strongly prefer 15...Rxd1+, since it is such a straightforward way of snuffing out white's attacking chances.

I decided to answer this question because I noted that both you and your opponent are still at the stage of your chess development where you struggle to avoid hanging pieces. While there is nothing particularly wrong with the advice you've read from GM Smirnov and IM Silman, that advice is a bit beyond your current chess level.

GM Smirnov's advice is based on an observation that many amateur players tend to trade down by habit, often squandering advantages and making their games way more difficult because they just make the trade without considering the consequences of it beforehand. But his statement is made on general grounds, and if the trade actually helps you, you should just go ahead with it.

With regards to Silman's advice, it's simply not applicable at your level yet. I assume he's describing the tendency of many amateur players to sometimes play a lazy trap that they already see how their opponent can avoid with ease. What tends to happen in these cases is that the amateur will play a lazy trap that they know is not very good if their opponent avoids the trap. In general, you have to assume that your opponent will play the absolute best move, so if you play a move that you already know that your opponent can refute then what's the point?

Right now, if I were you I would focus on improving my tactical vision in order to see hanging pieces more consistently. A good way to do this is to scan the board in the following order at every move:

1. First, look for ALL possible checks.
2. Next, look for ALL possible captures.
3. After this, consider other moves if necessary.

If there is one piece of general advice that I would follow, then it's this one from GM Bent Larsen: **a bad plan is better than no plan at all!** Planning is an important skill to develop, and even crude plans can be very effective. For instance, while your move 27...Qh4 came with a rather crude threat, it certainly had a great payoff! When you start playing more advanced chess you will notice that these crude threats can often be used in combination with one another to create more subtle and elaborate threats, and while individual crude threats may be weak in isolation they tend to become deadly when used together.
> 5 votes

# Answer
This position is more complicated than it first looks! You need to see more than one move deep to understand the difference between 15...Rxd1 and other moves.

As Scounged has pointed out, you *already* have an advantage of about +3 because you're a piece up. The problem is that white is attacking your pawn on b7. So some time soon, you want to play a move like ...Bc6 to defend that pawn. In fact, if you play ...Bc6 right away, it's almost as good as ...Rxd1. But the computer thinks it's even better to play 15...Rxd1+ 16. Qxd1 Bc6.

With your chosen move, white missed an opportunity.

Option 1: 15...Ne7 16. Qxb7 doesn't work for white, because of 16...Rxd1+ 17. Nxd1 Qe1+ winning the knight.

Option 2: 15...Ne7 16. Rxd8+ Qxd8 17. Qxb7, and now white has two pawns in exchange for the bishop, and the game is almost on equal terms (black is still ahead, but it's not as good as if you'd played 15...Rxd1).

Suggestion: if you don't already know the word "zwischenzug", look it up and think about how it relates to this position. Sometimes the engine isn't really telling you about the next move, but pointing out something further along the sequence.
> 5 votes

# Answer
I think there's also an important misunderstanding of engines. When they're ahead, they like anything that maintains the lead. It is one methodical way to win. But `Rxd1` is **NOT** a critical move. It is simply a fair trade that magnifies the material imbalance without creating any new threats for either side. It is not lazy if you check carefully that your weaker back rank is not a sudden problem!

Bolstering my non-master opinion with the best-in-class Stockfish 13 engine, `...Bc6!` *is actually superior and more instructive*. Since you are up a full light-square bishop, you use it to dominate the light squares. Further, *pawns matter*. That's how you should be thinking. For the sake of learning, that is, how to consolidate a big lead with active threats and full-board vision, try this approach.

If both of you leave the Rooks on the board for a while, it matters little! The real problem is you didn't think in terms of "I have this light squared monster and he doesn't."
> 2 votes

---
Tags: analysis, learning
---


title: A FM needs training help too

text:
# Question
Title: A FM needs training help too
tl;dr: How to visualize and assess if you can't?

I'm pining, no, not for the fjords, but for returning to the board after Corona. I still read a good amount of chess books, but maybe some specific training couldn't hurt in the meantime.

Not surprisingly, as a FM I exactly know my weaknesses:

* 1 ageing (I'm 60 now)
* 2 no knowledge of opening theory
* 3 a certain shortcoming when dealing with pin tactics
* 4 horizon effect

When dealing with that...

* 1 I'm currently going for my diploma in computer science, so probably my brain's still flashing like it did when I was young (ha, Rolling Stones reference). Nothing specific I could do anyway except constant practice.
* 2 Remembering and playing main variants would take the fun out of chess for me (and it's even doubtful if it increases my score - what good is it losing 25% less by opening desasters when drawing 50% more?).
* 3 This could be easily trained specifically, e.g. with a Lichess pin themed training set.
* 4 This is what I am asking for (but feel free to comment on the other points). It seems I always calculate (when I calculate at all, my intuition is extremely good, i.e. I quickly see the candidate move if there is only one) exactly one move too short. (And that is when the figures begin to blur before my mental eye. I'm a very lousy "blindfold" player by the way.) For example, if the problem involves trampling the poor king to death with Q and R, the calculation tree forks to kingdom come and I am unable to follow it.

Thus: How to decide when one can cut a variant with a definite result? And don't *just* answer "quiet"! A prime recent example (donated to me by a chess club colleague as a tactic problem for our club zine:

```
[fen ""]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Bg4 4.dxe5 Bxf3 5.Qxf3 dxe5 6.Bc4 Nf6 7.Qb3 Qe7 8.f3 Nc6 9.O-O Qc5+ 10.Be3 Qe7 11.Nc3 Nd4 12.Qa4+ c6 13.Rad1 b5

```

Of course, I start calculating Nxb5 in a microsecond (no FM needed for that...). Hack, hack, hack, slice and dice, rook doubling, oh bother, Black can protect the mobbing victim on d7 sufficiently. Quiet. *Cut.* (Of course I'd play it anyway as the piece would be lost in any variant, but also of course I must already decide about that when playing Rad1.)

A check on Lichess with Stockfish shows Black is dead as a doornail: the position is quiet for one, two moves, but even if White could not play B-xa7-b6, Black would take ages to untie while White simply promotes one of the queenside pawns. Thus, again: how can I "see" that, even if I'm more or less unable to actually "see" the position before my wrong cut?

# Answer
I'm not that old (yet), but I do know how it feels. I even showed a few of my games to GMs asking for feedback, and it turns out that very often I have seen the (good) move recommended by them, pondered about it, but could not calculate properly and played another move instead. Too bad.

The solution I came up with is largely based on Dvoretsky books (not the latest ones but those from maybe 80-s or 90-s): calculation is overrated. Calculating is for engines; for humans it is very inefficient in terms of energy consumption and error costs. Instead, you should avoid calculating as much as possible, and only do it when absolutely necessary. With your experience, you should trust your intuition and know which move is good and which not before starting to calculate lines. In your example, you already knew that Nxb5 was **the** move; there was no need to calculate it before you actually had the position after Qxb5+ Nd7. Dvoretsky actually has quite a few examples how to solve studies using this method.

This is not going to be a popular opinion due to the recent progress of engines chess; a lot of noobs will think that if computers play better than humans, they should try thinking just like engines do. I suppose if you're 15 this might indeed work for you.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I think there is a different type of calculation more grounded in a satisfying form of logic, rather than tactical fireworks.

The *cut* is when you recognize a positional lock. Granted, I'm 400 points lower than you and just aspirational here!

"Black is tied down with 3 defenders on the 3 attackers, *including his King in the center*. He cannot move anything."

"Black must castle to deploy his forces else he is playing 8 points down. Instead of pawn race counting, we can do Castle counting: g6, Bg7, O-O, (or Qe6, Be7, O-O) and when he does d7 falls anyway." So then, what kind of progress can you make with 3 or 4 unopposed tempi?

"Traditional calculation fails here. It's a rare case where the two sides are hardly interacting at all (desperate consolidation vs. pawn storm) so you can make moves however you want."

I always love when my coach gives me a positional-lock type of lesson!
> 1 votes

---
Tags: training, calculation, visualization
---


title: Endgame improvement books

text:
# Question
Title: Endgame improvement books
I am not playing a bad game, but my endgame is not so good. How can I improve my endgame? Please suggest me some good books for that.

# Answer
> 15 votes
Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess Endings \- Very good book, especially for beginners. Written by one of the best instructional authors out there. This book is written for beginner-intermediate level so it is very easy to understand, but has many lessons that can carry through to advanced levels.

Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual \- Very indepth guide. Has just about anything that most players would need until professional level, and even there it has strong value. Can be fairly complicated at times, and assumes at least intermediate level skill from the reader. It can be a good reference manual however, as each topic is clearly outlined. Just be warned that there are many complicated situations that almost never arise in anyone's game, so you should focus your study on more important endgame techniques before conquering specific situations.

Silman's Complete Endgame Course \- More like a guide than Dvoretsky's Endgame manual, allowing beginners to pick up the book, and progress through until master level endgame technique (as suggested by the front cover). This is the one I most recommend as it is much simpler for most players with less clutter.

Of course, there are loads more out there! Chess.com has asked this question before, and produced fairly consistent answers from players on the website. In the end, it will largely come down to your skill level, dedication to study and personal preference.

# Answer
> 4 votes
If your playing strength is at amateur level (say, 1400-1800 FICS rating) I'd recommend to start with this small brochure: Yuri Averbakh -- Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge

# Answer
> 3 votes
If you want to learn more than just endgame theory, but also some strategy, then I can recommend the book *Endgame Strategy* by Mikhail Shereshevsky. I learned a lot from this book.

Here is a nice review: "Endgame Strategy" by Mikhail Shereshevsky

# Answer
> 1 votes
100 endgames you must know by GM De la Villa is a good book to study endgames.

> Jesus de la Villa debunks the myth that endgame theory is complex and he teaches you to steer the game into a position you are familiar with. This book contains only those endgames that: show up most frequently are easy to learn contain ideas that are useful in more difficult positions.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I'd like to add "Endgame Preparation" by Jon Speelman to the lsit of suggested titles.

# Answer
> 0 votes
You might want to check (pun intended) the internet first:

In general, you may want to look at this page on Wikipedia.

---
Tags: endgame
---


# Question
Title: Why do modern Grandmasters prefer playing quiet openings?
I am rated 1450 and I am have been analyzing GM level games since I began playing chess. I noticed that most GMs consistently play balanced almost boring openings against each other and that only a handful of top level GMs consistently play double edged/ aggressive openings.

For example MVL is one of the few top players that plays the Sicilian as black exclusively. Finally I want to make it clear that I understand that while most openings aren't as crazy as as the Sicilian (at GM level) I know that they are complicated and challenging in their own right.

# Answer
Aggressive openings often rely too much on preparation and most top players would rather play something "quieter", trying to outplay their opponent later on, rather than exposing themselves to being surprised by a novelty thier opponent spent hours or even days analyzing at home.

Also note that the theory of some of those "sharper" openings is so deep these days that sometimes they're just "known to be a draw". Take the Poisoned Pawn variation of the Najdorf Sicilian for instance.

That being said, it's worth noting that lots of interesting and even "chaotic" ideas are appearing all the time in openings that used to be considered "quiet".
> 7 votes

---
Tags: opening
---


# Question
Title: What is a good French-like defense against 1. d4?
I enjoy playing the French Defence as black against `1. e4`, for the following reasons.

1. It often creates a closed position without wild tactics
2. It takes white away from the more familiar lines (`1... e5` and `1... c5`)
3. If black survives the attack, black will likely have a better pawn structure for the endgame.
4. It doesn't involve a kingside fianchetto, which never seems to work out for me.

I'm curious what would be a similar option against `1. d4`. I find that when I try to play positionally, looking for long-term advantages, I often find myself in extremely symmetrical, drawish positions.

I'd like a system to play against `1. d4` that is not extremely common and is reasonably safe, and not prone to symmetrical positions.

I'm strictly a club-level player that has no aspirations of being competitive with class-A players.

# Answer
One option is to play `1... e6` against `1. d4` anyways!

After `1. d4 e6`, white doesn't really have a choice other than to transpose into a standard opening anyways. If white plays `2. e4`, well that's just the French Defense that you know and love.

If white plays something else, like `2. c4` (as most Queen's Gambit players will), then you have a few options:

1. **Queen's Gambit Declined** (`2... d5`)
You have to be prepared here because white will most likely know a few good openings. There are some obvious similarities between the French and the QGD (black's light square bishop!), but there are a few key differences that you will need to practice.
2. **Benoni** (`2... c5`)
If you don't want to deal with a symmetrical game, the Benoni is a good option. However, this is likely to lead to a fairly tactical game after `3. d5 exd5 4. cxd5 d6`. Since you weren't thrilled about a tactical melee, that brings us to the...
3. **Dutch Defense** (`2... f5`)
Although the Dutch Defense doesn't have the best reputation, it fits your criteria: it's not very tactical (at least the Stonewall, the Leningrad is a totally different story!), black will have some positional trumps (namely the e4 square), and it's offbeat enough. Black's simple plan is to setup pawns on f5, e6, d5, and c6 and then stick a knight on e4. The whole battle revolves around control of the e4 square, and black has had good results with the Stonewall Dutch.

After mentioning all that, `1. d4 e6 2.c4` can also lead directly into Indian structures with either `2... Nf6` or `2... b6` (the Nimzo and Queen's Indian respectively). If you are familiar with one of these openings, this is a good way to try to get a French, but fall back on a main line opening if your opponent doesn't oblige with `2. e4`.
> 27 votes

# Answer
Rudolph Spielmann, a great advocate of the French Defense, would play e6 against d4, to give White the chance to transpose into the French defense with e4. When Rubenstein played c4 instead, Spielmann played f5 and went into a Dutch defense/Stonewall formation, rather than play d5, which seems to give White an edge.

If White plays c4 on the second move after your e6, an alternative to f5 is Nf6, which holds back the d pawn and in some instances heads for a Nimzo-Indian.
> 16 votes

# Answer
As a French player, I never liked d4 e6 because I didn't want to go into the QGD. I see its dynamic potential now, but it's just not my style.

I can't say this is based on strict logic, but my play got a big boost from the Benko Gambit. The French and Benko have a reputation for just being annoying and they shouldn't be solid, but they are. And you won't have to memorize as much theory to get a good start.

The Benko has more positional maneuvering than you'd expect in the main pawn-sac line, and it also has the same themes of queenside play if White advances, along with a cramped but potentially dynamic position. It has some thematic moves that flow pretty naturally too. In this case you may fianchetto a bishop, but it's not blocked in.

I tried the Dutch but found there were too many good anti-Dutch systems.

The French is a woolly opening that requires you to recognize many different odd positional things. So is the Benko. I was worried about sac'ing a pawn, but I think it helped me play more dynamically. And it is definitely not symmetric! The main drawback is White doesn't have to play d5.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I play the French and the Gruenfeld against 1.d4. Both are counterattacking, that's what the French really is anyway a counter attack. So a French player will feel at home in the Gruenfeld despite its more open nature.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Well, I think the Tarrasch defense is pretty 'french-like'.

```

[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

1.d4 d5 (1...e6 2.c4 (2.Nc3 d5 3.e4 Bb4) 2...Nf6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Nf3 c5) 2.c4 e6
3.Nc3 c5 *

```

As you can see, the gradual c5 thrust is universal against pretty much all d4 setups. You can play this way against the London System, you can play this against the Queen's Gambit (which is strictly the Tarrasch defense), you can even play this against the Stonewall attack, etc.

Enjoy! )) P.s.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1378589
> 2 votes

# Answer
How about the Old Indian (1.d4, Nf6 2.c4, d6)? It is not popular at the highest levels, but I have forgotten why not, and so will most of your opponents. Of course, White might not play c4, but Im sure you did not expect an easy answer. It can make a lot of sense to play a slightly inferior opening that you understand very well.
> 1 votes

# Answer
I think the most "French-like" reply to 1.d4 is the King's Indian Defense. By playing an early ...e6 and ..d5 you're making the same moves as in the French, but you hardly ever get a similar type of pawn structure.

However, with the King's Indian, you'll often get a closed center with a chain of blocked pawns on it, with each side playing on an opposite side of the baord, just as in so mnany variation of the French.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: opening, theory, french-defense, 1.d4
---


title: Clive Ke’s wrong?

text:
# Question
Title: Clive Ke’s wrong?
As you see, Clive suggests moving the knight, but how on earth can black get a pawn to a3?

>

# Answer
> 8 votes
It's probably a typo. Perhaps he meant ...h6

---
Tags: analysis
---


# Question
Title: How do I to convert tarrasch-base.tdb into pgn for scid?
I have a tarrasch database in a tdb file that I would like to run into my scid-vs-pc gui. But after spending a lot of time looking for some information on Google, I found nothing that can help me. How do I to convert tarrasch-base.tdb into pgn for scid?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The Tarrasch Chess GUI is an open source, free Windows download. It uses a proprietary database format and the author approached Mark Crowther, the brains behind TWIC to ask if he could use Mark's database of games. Mark agreed but part of the way Mark makes his living is by selling his full database. There is an *export to pgn format* function in TCG but to protect Mark's work this feature is limited to 10,000 games.

So, provided your tdb consists of fewer than 10,000 games you can download the program, import the tdb database and then export as pgn. If, on the other hand, you are trying to rip off Mark Crowther's database you are SOL (out of luck). If you are determined to deprive Mark Crowther of his dues for developing his database then your best bet is to download the TCG source code, extract the code for pgn extraction and modify it.

---
Tags: database, pgn, scid
---


# Question
Title: What is the algebraic notation for the bishop?
Let's say that I have a pawn at b2 and a bishop at d2 and I want to capture the pawn on c3 with my bishop. The expression I used is bc3. However, it uses my pawn at b2 to capture the pawn at c3. I then tried b2c3, but it did the same.

How do you use bishop to capture the pawn at c3 with algebraic expression in this case?

```
[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/8/8/8/2p5/PP1BPPPP/RN1QKBNR w KQkq - 0 4"]

1.Bxc3 (1.bxc3)

```

# Answer
> The expression I used is bc3

Lowercase letters **ALWAYS** refer to pawns/files. Uppercase **ALWAYS** refers to pieces. You need to use Bxc3 for "Bishop at d2"xc3.
> 20 votes

---
Tags: notation
---


# Question
Title: How to create a file in Scid-vs-pc; new chess pieces?
I am a Linux hobbyist and I would like to know if someone could help me understand what steps I should follow to create this chess piece file in scid-vs-pc:

http://gorgonian.weebly.com/scid-vs-pc.html

> NOTE: piece data is contained in a text file which should be saved in the \ bin \ pieces sub-folder of the main SCID vs. PC directory (it needs to be created).

When I open the page there is nothing that can direct me to 'save' anything, it is just a text that the most I could do is to copy and paste ... in a file that I can previously create in my 'home' ... but, in bin? -- they give a different path: bin / pieces, I don't understand, I'm a dilettante. Could someone please briefly indicate the steps ...? Thanks.

# Answer
The info is here: http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/doc/Board.htm
> 1 votes

---
Tags: software, scid
---


# Question
Title: Does SCID have a function that allows to print a single game with variations as ECO table?
Other major chess database programs allow this, but I am curious if SCID has this "print as repertoire" function. Opening report in SCID creates an ECO table from multiple games, but I'd like to instead use a single game with sub-variations as input.

# Answer
With pgn-extract, you could "Output each variation as a separate game (--splitvariants)"

The --splitvariants flag will output each variation of a game as a separate game. The headers of the containing game are reproduced for each variation, except for the Result tag, which is replaced with "\*" to indicate that it is not necessarily a complete game.

The flag takes an optional positive integer to limit the depth of variants output as separate games. For instance: --splitvariants 1 will only output separate variant games for top-level variants. Others are suppressed from the output. A value of 0 is used to output all variants and may be omitted.

Create an small database with your games with variations of interest. Export to pgn and process with pgn-extract. Import again those games to SCID and use Opening Report with this temporal database.
> 1 votes

# Answer
First of all, I do not know if trying the feature Opening Report on a single game (or a database composed of a single game) would show the variations in the ECO tree. If you have not tried it, this would be my first step.

I also don't know if the ECO table can be directly printed as on ChessBase (it certainly is a great feature), but what you can do, albeit being a bit more of work, is to make a SCID database rewriting all the variations as whole (unfinished) games, and then use Opening Report to get the desired ECO tables.

What I mean by this is that if I have a game that goes:

```
    [FEN ""]
    1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 (2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4) Nc6 3. Qh5 Nf6 4. Qxf7#

```

Then the variation shall be included in the database and this game would be split into two, the main line and the variation, when being rewritten. When using Opening Report on this variation filled database, you will certainly obtain the ECO tables (and more).

This should not be extremely difficult and hopefully not long. I suggest you take a look at this video, as here the theme of easily including and saving variations in a game is a bit discussed (although the main purpose of the video is to use SCID to develop an opening repertoire).
> 2 votes

---
Tags: software, scid, eco
---


# Question
Title: In the game of shogi, what is the meaning of "sabaki"?
I'm reading the book *Sabaki at a glance* by Madoka Kitao. It's a very nice book with many good examples one can learn from.

The problem I have is that I am left with only an intuitive understanding of the word itself. There is a note by the translator:

> "Sabaku" or "sabaki" as an act in shogi has a nuance with the mixture of the following points.
>
> * To resolve an awkward or problematic position of the own pieces into an acceptable outcome.
> * To give the piece an opportunity to efficiently participate in the game or fulfill its task in a way even by sacrificing it.
> * It usually involves light footwork, or a skillful and dynamic piece maneuver.
> * It usually happens in the middlegame.

I find this a bit too general to make immediate sense. What is "sabaki", and what would be the corresponding concept in western chess?

# Answer
I'm a Japanese native and have been a chess and Shogi player for a long time.

The Japanese word *sabaki* basically means proper handling of some complicated task, thus can have different meanings in different fields. In my opinion, the closest chess term is a "freeing move/maneuver". For example, after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e3 o-o 6.Nf3 Nbd7 7.Rc1 c6 8.Bd3, Black may play dxc4 9.Bxc4 Nd5 (Capablanca freeing maneuver). This looks similar to middlegame *sabaki* in Shogi to my eyes.
> 11 votes

# Answer
I am not a Shogi- or Go player (only briefly looked at the games in the distant past), but I am an Aikido instructor. In this martial art the term 'tai sabaki' is one of the fundamental notions. While a literal translation is difficult, in Aikido (and other martial arts) it is described as 'changing the position of the body so as to cause an attack to fail'. It requires body movement out of the line of attack while at the same time gaining an advantageous position, enabling you to connect to the attacker, undermine his balance, and take him into a throw or an arm lock. I have also heard it explained as 'no longer being available to the attacker'.
> 5 votes

# Answer
In Jiu Jitsu, we practice Tai Sabaki which we are told means "foot placement" or "foot movement". Additionally, in the videogame Persona 5, you befriend a shogi player who teaches you a move called "Koma Sabaki" which allows you to change your party mid-battle. With that information, and being a Japanese speaker, I conclude it most likely means "piece placement" or "piece movement" like a formula or plan.
> 2 votes

# Answer
* To resolve an awkward or problematic position of the own pieces into an acceptable outcome.

This one is bit abstract, so let me try to explain it. The philosophy behind “Sabaki” should mean “please try to utilize all your pieces.”

And Official Guidebook says

> 捌く【さばく】 働きのにぶい駒を好所に移動させたり、相手の駒と交換して効率化を図ること。

*"Move your piece which does not work well into good position or exchange a piece with the opponent piece so that your plan goes efficiently."*

The concept reminds me of "Kaizen" movement in a manufacturing industry or "Food Rescue" .

All in all, they say “please try to glean your malfunctioning pieces which may lead to the game plan goes efficiently”.

---

By the way, I am an amateur Japanese shoji player. Recently Shogi has been very popular in Japan because of rising up of the youngest titles holder Sota Fuji and the comparison of AI's several billion's position searching and his choice has been paid attention.

I hope chess also has been developing too.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I know the term Sabaki from the game of Go where it means to make life in an endangered position or to repair a thin position. Maybe this helps to understand the concept in Shogi, too.

In an English language Go book I found the the term *resilience* as a circumscription of *sabaki*, and I find it perfectly cromulent.
> 1 votes

# Answer
The chess-language equivalent of "sabaki" is something in between "tactics" and "maneuver".

Madoka Kitao's books are great !
> 0 votes

---
Tags: theory, chess-variants, shogi
---


title: Turton theme in OTB play

text:
# Question
Title: Turton theme in OTB play
I regularly surprise opponents - if unprepared - with an obscure side variant of the Sicilian which most often ends up in a pericritic Turton reversal, like e.g. so:

```
   [FEN ""]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Be2 a6 7.O-O b5 8.Bf3 Ra7 9.Be3 Rd7 10.a3 Bb7 11.Bg5 Be7 12.Re1 O-O 13.Qd3 Qc7 14.Qe3 Rc8 15.Rad1 Rdd8

```

Can you come up with an example of *useful* rook doubling? (Note: In my example, the reversal was just for teh lulz, since it played no role whatsoever. "Useful" could be a) if it's done by QR or QB, where the order matters, but I already know such examples, even from my own games, b) assume your rooks are on d4 and e5 and you want to double against d8. But if Re5-d5, say, your Rd4 stands in the way of Be3. Thus you double either Rd4-d6,Re5-d5 or even Re5-e3-d3, where the interference is only lifted when the first rook crashes into d8. Those are "true" Turtons.)

Link to game base appreciated.

# Answer
I believe this qualifies as a useful Turton doubling from OTB play:

```
[Event "Eforie Nord Romgaz op"]
[Date "2007.08.09"]
[White "Berescu, Alin"]
[Black "Filip, Lucian"]
[WhiteElo "2511"]
[BlackElo "2400"]
[FEN "6k1/p2b1rpp/qn2Rp1b/2BP1P1Q/1P1R3P/8/P5P1/7K w - - 0 38"]

1. Re1 Qxa2 2. Rde4 Qa4 3. Re7
Rf8 4. R7e4 Rf7 5. Rg4 Qc2 6. Qxh6 Qxf5 7. Qf4 Qxf4 8. Rxf4 Nxd5 9. Rd4
Nc7 10. Red1 Be8 11. Rd8 1-0

```

Black was threatening 1... Qf1+, so there was no time for 1. Rde4. On the next move however, 2. Rde4 was obviously strong, threatening 3. Re8+ with checkmate to follow. After Black defended against that, 3. Re7 was good enough, although there were other good options at this point, as shown by the game continuation after the repetition.

Trying to save the bishop with 5... Bd2 would have run into another interesting way to double the rooks: 6. Qxf7! followed by Re1-e7xg7 and checkmate in two more moves.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: problems
---


# Question
Title: An aggressive counter for white vs Scandinavian Defense
My chess rating is somewhere between 400 and 500 and I have a lot of trouble countering the Scandinavian Defense. My first move is usually e4 but when my opponent uses the Scandinavian Defense (d5), I have a hard time countering that. I heard from everyone that only beginners do it for a reason but I can't exactly figure out why nobody else would use that defense. I am curious if you know an aggressive counter to the Scandinavian defense.

# Answer
> I heard from everyone that only beginners do it for a reason but I can't exactly figure out why nobody else would use that defense.

It's not true that nobody but beginners use the Scandinavian - I use it, and my rating is in the 1700s. The opening is, however, somewhat rare; I've only seen it about 4% of the time when I've played 1.e4 in tournament games. Some beginners perhaps like this opening because it gets their queen out early. But this is actually a *bad* thing for Black, not a good thing.

As White, one good idea is to make that queen your target. This game is the fastest I've lost playing the Scandinavian, and I lose when my opponent (rated 2042) traps my queen:

```
[FEN ""]
1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nf3 Qa5 4.Be2 Nf6 5.O-O Bf5 6.d4 c6 7.c4 Nbd7 8.Nc3 e6 9.Bf4 Be7 10.a3 c5 11.Nb5 O-O 12.dxc5 a6 13.Bc7

```

And here's a game where a beginner (rated 535) tries the Scandinavian against me. Notice how, when possible, I attack his queen with moves that also develop my pieces.

```
[FEN ""]
1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 {I attack his queen. So far this is the mainline.} Qd4 {This is where we deviate from the mainline Scandinavian. This isn't the best square for his queen.} 4.Nf3 {I attack his queen again.} Qb6 5.Bc4 {I develop another piece. I don't attack his queen with Nd5 or Na4 because that wouldn't help me develop.} Nf6 6.O-O Qd6 {He moves his queen again. His plan is probably to trade off my f3 knight with Bg4 and Bxf3, and then play Ng4 to threaten Qxh2#.} 7.h3 {To prevent his plan. It wouldn't work, but Bg4 is annoying so I prevent it.} Nh5 {Moving his knight again and putting it on the edge of the board. That's usually not a good idea.} 8.Re1 {Activating my rook. It's not the strongest move I could have played. Ng5, attacking f7 and discovering an attack on his knight, was better.} Qg6 {Moving his queen yet again! We're on move 8, and he's moved his queen 5 times. His threat is Bxh3, and I can't play gxh3 because the pawn is pinned by the queen.} 9.Ne5 {Threatening his queen again. He can't play Bxh3 if his queen isn't safe. This also threatens his f7 pawn.} Qg5 {Still threatening Bxh3.} 10.d4 {A discovered attack on his queen. Perhaps I should have just played Bxf7+ now, but this also works.} Nf4 {Blocking the attack on his queen and threatening Qxg2#.} 11.Bxf4 {I have to do something about his checkmate threat.} Qxf4 {Eleven moves in, and his queen is his only piece that isn't on its starting square, while my army is just about fully developed. It's time for me to attack.} 12.Bxf7+ Kd8 13.Bd5 {Threatens Nf7+ forking his king and rook.} Qg5 {Trying to set up Bxh3 again, but it just makes my impending fork worse.} 14.Nf7+ {King-queen fork.} Ke8 15.Nxg5 h6 {From here I have a forced mate.} 16.Qh5+ Kd8 17.Nf7+ Kd7 18.Be6+ Kc6 19.Qc5# 1-0

```
> 7 votes

# Answer
If you are having trouble with it, maybe you need to slow down the aggression!

My advice is to play 2.e5. It is theoretically a "bad" move because it allows your opponent to play an improved Caro-Kann or French. But at your skill level, nobody who goes for the Scandinavian will know anything about how to play those!
> 3 votes

# Answer
You are correct to seek an aggressive line since at this stage in your chess development you should be going for the throat.

Here is a suggested line:

1.e4 d5

2.d4 dxe4

3.f3 or Bc4 \[EDIT\] 3.Nc3 is most common, then the ideas of f3 or Bc4.

Seeking fast development. You can target f7...
> 2 votes

# Answer
At your elo opponents are not really prepared with theory so you can surprise them with the following gambit lines :)

1. You can surprise the casual Scandi player with Mieses gambit that goes: 1. e4-d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. b4 with idea of opening the b-file and using the rook to apply pressure and develop with tempo
2. You can transposition into Reti/Tennison gambit after: 1.e4-d5 2. Nf3 dxe4 3. Ng5 which has very deadly trap if your opponent is not prepared
> 2 votes

# Answer
You could play 2.d4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3 to transpose into the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: beginner, aggressive-play, scandinavian-defense
---


# Question
Title: Resources on Italian Game, Two Knights Defense with 4. d3 h6 and quick ...g5
Do any books or other resources discuss this variation for Black? Does it have a name?

The general idea is to go 4...h6, then ...d6 and ...g5 in some order, depending on what White does.

S. Mamedyarov plays this line a lot.

Sample line:

```
 [FEN ""]
    1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d3 h6 5. c3 d6 6. O-O g5

```

# Answer
FM Andrey Terekhov's Two Knights Defense repertoire on Chessable uses this variation against 4.d3.

That repertoire deserves to be more widely known: it's one of the best on Chessable, the author updates it frequently, and it's free!

In the introductory text of 4.d3 h6 he notes:

> In the beginning, this line has been mostly used as a surprise weapon, but in the past two years it developed its own body of theory. GM Alexey Kuzmin published a couple of articles summarizing the latest developments in this line in "ChessBase Magazine" (in 2018) and in Russian "64" (2019) .

So those are sources too.

And according to a ChessPub discussion, there are also two analyzed games in this line in Alexander Ipatov: *Unconventional Approaches to Modern Chess Volume 1*; Thinkers Publishing 2019, although I don't see it in that book's list of contents.
> 6 votes

---
Tags: opening, italian-game, two-knights
---


# Question
Title: What are the ideas behind the 4.Qxd4 variation of Philidor's Defense?
I recently learned that this is a valid way for White to play for advantage against the Philidor:

```
[FEN ""]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 exd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Bb5 Bd7 6.Bxc6 Bxc6

```

According to the Lichess database, White has won 59% of games from this position, while Black has only won 34%. The Masters database also heavily favors White, with 31% White wins / 17% Black wins.

What are the ideas behind White's 4.Qxd4 move, and why does it have such a high winrate? What is White's motivation for violating principles like bringing out his queen very early / giving up the bishop pair?

# Answer
The principle is to not bring out the queen *too* early when it can be easily attacked. In this situation there's no easy way for black to attack the queen on d4, so it's not too early. So instead of being a weakness, the queen in a central square is a huge strength.

A very similar phenomenon happens in the following line of the Scotch game where white develops the queen early and gets a +.6 edge and 43%/21% winrate on lichess.

```
 [FEN ""]
 1. e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6, 3.d4 exd4, 4. Nxd4 Nxd4 5.Qxd4

```
> 9 votes

# Answer
This position also arises from the Old Steinitz variation of the Ruy Lopez.

```
[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 d6 4. d4 exd4 5. Qxd4

```

White has achieved the Ruy dream pawn structure and a space advantage. Likely followups are either **c4** or **Nc3** then **Nd5**. Black may give back the bishop-pair to eliminate the strong Knight.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Well, why shouldn't it? It's a developping move that recaptures the pawn. "Don't move your queen early" is not really a "principle". The correct "principle" would be "activate your pieces better and faster than your opponent", which often involves some rules of thumb like "don't move your queen early" or "don't move the same piece several times", but some of those "derived rules" are broken in almost all major openings

White has a great spatial advantage, and a lead in development. His pieces have better squares to go to. A quick queenside castling followed by an e5 break could be a threat to deal with.

Anyway please note that **4.Qxd4** scores worse than **4.Nxd4** (ChessTempo's database), so (IF statistics are a valid way to judge it), it's not the best move in that position but rather just another reasonable way to answer **3...exd4?!**. **4.Bc4** scores even better by the way!
> 2 votes

---
Tags: opening
---


# Question
Title: How many positions per second can a modern supercomputer calculate?
If we created a very powerful supercomputer (as powerful as the current most powerful supercomputers) which was only designed to find forced mates, how many positions could it calculate per second?

I only need an approximation. And remember, the computer doesn't waste time evaluating every single positions (like normal engines do); it just calculates as far as he can until he finds a forced mate (if there is any).

I tried to find the answer to the question myself, but I'm not sure at all if my conclusion is correct. So what follows may be wrong.

* I found that the supercomputer Deep Blue "was capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second" (from Wikipedia).
* But Deep Blue was old, supercomputers have became much more powerful since 1997, and Deep Blue wasted time evaluating every positions.
* Therefore 200 million is only a lower bound for the answer to this question.

Since Deep Blue had a performance of 11.38 GFLOPS, and the current most powerful supercomputer (Tianhe-2) has a performance of 33.86 PFLOPS = 33 860 000 GFLOPS, we could estimate that the answer would be closer to 200 000 000 * 33 900 000 / 11.38 = 6 * 10^14 = 600 trillion positions per second. That seems like a lot, but taking into account that in average a position has around 35 legal moves, given 3 minutes such a computer would only be able to calculate every single positions up to a depth of 11 plies. Since Deep Blue wasted time evaluating every single of those 200 million positions per second, I believe Deep Blue should have been able to calculate approximately a billion positions per second if it didn't have to evaluate them.

So the true answer to the question is probably closer to 3 * 10^15 = 3 quadrillion positions per second. That's still not much: given 30 seconds it would just be able to calculate everything up to a depth of 11 plies. Even given an entire year it would only be able to calculate every positions up to a depth of 15 plies.

# Answer
To answer the question in the title: In chess programming, perft is used for debugging move generators and testing their performance: the goal is simply to calculate the number of possible ways the game could continue until a mate or a stalemate for the next N moves. Modern engines give around 10-100 million nodes per second using one core of a modern processor. This program apparently searches 20 billion nodes per second using a modern GPU instead of a CPU.

---

However, as I said in the comments, searching for a mate in N moves is very different than searching all possible moves until that depth. The following observation is the heart of alpha-beta pruning: for example, if you have found that after 6.Nc3 Qxb4 7.Nd3 white can mate, there's no need to see what happens after 6.Nc3 Qxb4 7.a4.

Another, perhaps more likely example: You have found that the position after 5.e3 is drawn, and then find out that 5.e4 Qc7 gives a draw, too. Now we already know that the position before 5.e4 is at least a draw for white, and find out that the position after 5.e4 cannot be a win for white. Because it does not matter whether white draws or loses after 5.e4, we don't have to see what happens after 5.e4 Qb6.

As you probably can see, move ordering is critical here: it is beneficial to search best moves first. In fact, with perfect move-ordering, alpha-beta can reduce the number of searched nodes to approximately square root of the original value. So with perfect move-ordering, the number of positions needed to search for mate in 10 plies would be 35^5, not 35^10. But to get a good move ordering, one needs to do something else than just generate moves: perhaps evaluate the intermediate positions to get a good hint of the values of the moves. Of course, for the search of mate in, say, 20 plies, the best evaluator function would probably be different than what is used in engines designed to play a full game of chess.
> 7 votes

# Answer
This depends heavily on how complicated your evaluation function is. The more complicated it is, the more time is necessary to "calculate" (more accurate word here is evaluate) one position. That's why the current neural network engines calculate three orders of magnitude fewer positions per second than traditional engines. In the same way, engine speeds are usually slower during the early-middle game when there are more pieces on the board, and therefore more functions in the evaluation need to be calculated (e.g. if all the knights are gone then the *knight* function in the evaluation can be ignored).

Since you're only after an order of magnitude estimate, we can make these assumptions:

* The engine playing is Stockfish with NNUE enabled, currently the strongest engine available. NNUE is a version of neural network evaluation that can run quickly on CPU. It is slower than the traditional handcrafted eval (by about a factor of 2), but not by much.
* If you look at the latest TCEC Superfinal, game 1, you can see that Stockfish evaluated about 120 million positions per second. TCEC's CPU engines run on 88 physical cores.
* The world's fastest supercomputer right now has, if I am not mistaken, about 8 million cores. Therefore it is about 100,000 times faster than the TCEC computer.

**Conclusion**: about 12,000,000 million positions a second - or about 12 trillion positions per second.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Since another user already commented on alpha-beta and the importance of good heuristics for move ordering, I will focus on a different aspect of your question.

You specifically asked about forced mates rather than general board position evaluation, which makes the question somewhat easier to answer because it does not depend on the strength and cost of some evaluation function heuristic.

There is a family of related tree search algorithms collectively known as PN or proof number search (distant cousins of the general alpha-beta pruned search) which are particularly efficient at solving binary subproblems in computer games, such as whether or not there is a forced mate in \<=N moves in chess (rather than the more abstract question of which board position is "better"). The algorithm proceeds by visiting each node and trying to either prove or disprove the initial query by checking which conditions must be satisfied for that branch to contain a solution (or a countersolution) and evaluating them in a "good" order such that proof failures can be detected early. The search quits as soon as it finds the first solution to the query (unlike ab- search, which keeps going until it finds the optimal minimax sequence).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-number\_search

In general, the "deepest" searching algorithms based on PN combine two searches, the "top" half running some PN variant sped up by transposition tables, and after some critical depth which depends on the amount of memory available for the tables, a second search algorithm without TT is launched, for some maximum depth of plies. It is the case that large enough searches will far exceed in number of nodes any reasonable amount of memory, so the TT can only help skip redundant branches at the lowest depths.

If we assume we can build a TT in memory with something like 10^9 positions (for a memory in the order of several Gb), we will in theory fill it with the surviving search candidates from a search in theory twice as deep (10^18 positions), the vast majority of which will have been ruled out by the algorithm without further analysis. Stockfish can run in the order of 70 million plies per second on a high-end computer, which means a "regular" computer can fill the top half of the search in the order of 10s of seconds to a few minutes. This top part of the search roughly corresponds to 11.6 plies already.

The expensive work however is to launch a search at each one of the leaves, which can fortunately be done in parallel using as much hardware as you can throw at it. The point here is not so much how many "computations" can be done per second but whether or not you want to check the table (memory accesses are costly, but narrow the search), build a local TT of just a few Mb to speed up purely the local search, or just use CPU power as means of tree exploration.

Tianhe-2 has something like 10^7 cores, so we are talking about assigning ~100 subproblems to each for maximum parallelism. So two minutes of thinking time will roughly translate into 1 second of unbounded exploration for each of the 10^9 leafs. Now assume each core visits 5 million (pruned) positions in this second and we get in theory an extra 8.7 plies of depth for a total of 20.3 plies of depth.

HOWEVER, the true number will be much higher because we ignored the effect of transpositions. Since we are considering ALL legal moves each turn, we can approximate the number of transpositions as roughly (M!^2) with M=2P the number of moves. This is because most moves outside of a strategy do not interfere with other legal moves elsewhere on the board.

So visiting 10^9 nodes in the first half actually implies solving 30 ^ P = (10^9)^2 (P/2)!^2, which gives a (possibly too optimistic) bound of P~24, and similarly the bottom half gives P~14 for a total depth of 38 plies.

Now of course in reality moves will end up not commuting, and the children nodes are not always visited in optimal order, but on the other hand we are using all legal moves as branching factor, which is a very pessimistic selection choice .
> 1 votes

# Answer
I am unable to comment so im commenting here. Do you assume the computer starts calculating from the very beginning of the game or from a middle-endgame position? From the very beginning it would be impossible to find a forced mate because if both sides were to play their best lines it would be a draw. Lets say for example that out of the infinite chess mate positions possible it comes up with the fools mate first. If your computer were to calculate to find the first available mate it would find that. The question would be better asked if you have a move min or max to help centralize the math.

Potentially super computer in the future will have unimaginable processing rates and they will progress in their ability until infinity would we conclude then computers could calculate infinite amount of moves in a second? It was good you defined your parameters in the beginning by keeping the processing power limited to today's limits.

As refered to in the first comment the question should be how many positions a comp can generate in a second. To analyse a move and its infinite amount of possible positions would take infinitely long.

I might be rambling on at this point but i just wanted to ask a few questions to help refine your questions.
> -1 votes

---
Tags: engines, software, computer-chess
---


# Question
Title: Where can I find a description of the "old" USCF rating system (that was in use through the 1990's)?
Where can I find a description of the "old" USCF rating system - not the Harkness system, but the one after that, that was in use up until about 2001 when the "new rating system" was adopted? I was sure I had a copy of this at one point, but I can no longer locate it. The US Chess Federation Official Rules of Chess, 3rd Edition, has a high-level overview of the old system, but not all of the specifics.

I am particularly interested in a refresher on how the computation of provisional ratings was done. Based on my recollection, I think that for a player's first 20 games, their provisional rating was the average of their performance ratings for every game they played, calculated as "opponent's rating +400" for a win, "opponent's rating -400" for a loss, simply "opponent's rating" for a draw. Then after 20 games, a more Elo-like formula was used, with a fixed K factor of 24 for players rated under 2000, or 18 for players rated 2000 or over. But, I can't find the actual specifications of this anywhere. The 3rd Edition rulebook does talk about calculation of provisional ratings in the way I described, but it's not clear to me from reading the high-level description if the "average of performance ratings" based provisional rating was carried through the entire 20 game provisional period, or if it was done for a smaller number of games and then something else was done for the rest of the provisional period.

In any case, I'm sure that finding a copy of the actual description of the rating system (which the 3rd Edition rulebook says can be had "free for the asking from the USCF" - though I am not sure they'd still have any copies available of the specifications for a rating system that hasn't been used in about 20 years. ;-) ) would answer all of my questions - but I just can't locate it anywhere....

# Answer
> 2 votes
I found this page from Glickman which contains the old provisional formula. That formula is:

> `R[post] = (N R[pre] + mR[avg] + (W - L)400) / (N+m)`
>
> where `R[pre]` is the player's pre-tournament rating, `N` is the number of games upon which `R[pre]` is based, `m` is the number of games the player completes in the tournament, `R[avg]` is the average of the opponents' ratings, `W` is the number of wins, and `L` is the number of losses. If the player is unrated, set `N=0` and `R[pre]=0`. The final result is rounded to an integer.

The August 1994 report of the USCF Ratings Committee discusses the old provisional system a little. There are some details in there, like how unrated players were initially treated as if they had a rating of 1000 when calculating the ratings of other unrated players.

---
Tags: rating, uscf
---


# Question
Title: Is there a term for when each player captures a sequence of pieces without recaptures?
There is a situation that arises occasionally, where each player goes on a rampage through the other player's pieces (often using a queen), never stopping to recapture or defend. It usually ends when either there is no more material to safely capture, or with check.

Is there a term for this kind of war on two fronts?

# Answer
> 4 votes
If each of the marauding pieces is itself *en prise* during most or all of the sequence, it can be called a **desperado**; see for example the Bogolyubov-Schmid game cited in Wikipedia's article on "Desperado (chess)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desperado\_(chess)#Bogolyubov\_versus\_Schmid

# Answer
> 4 votes
The late Xavier Parmentier, a very succesful chess teacher, writer, and a leading figure in the French chess community for decades, focused on those lines in his calculation exercices and wrote about them in his book "Les secrets de l'initiative aux échecs" (literally: *Secrets of Initiative in Chess*), and probably in other works.

He dubbed them **"supermarket variations"** (*les variantes supermarché*) : each player grabs what he wants on the shelves without interfering in their opponent's captures.

# Answer
> 2 votes
It would be an example of repeated Zwischenzugs, where instead of making the expected move (a recapture), each player makes an intermediate move—capturing a different piece.

Zwischenzug is a general expression applying to any intermediate move; I don’t know if there is a more specific term for the scenario you describe.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I agree with @DavidH, the best technical description is *multiple (consecutive) zwischenzugs*. As for a more specific term, I don't know an established one either, so maybe it's time to invent one. I propose to call the scenario you describe a **caterpillar (line)**, after the famous picture book by Eric Carle, *The Very Hungry Caterpillar*. According to Wikipedia:

> The book features a very hungry caterpillar who eats his way through a wide variety of foodstuffs before pupating and emerging as a butterfly.

I've used this image in teaching, and it tends to work very well, especially if it's a pawn who does most of the capturing. Here's one of my favorite examples:

```
[Event "Stuttgart simul"]
[Date "1958"]
[White "Tal, Mihail"]
[Black "NN"]
[Result "1-0"]
[FEN "2r1k2r/1p1bppb1/p2p1np1/q3n1p1/3NP2P/2N1BP2/PPPQB3/1K1R3R w k - 0 15"]
[PlyCount "7"]
[Source "Schach 10/1994, p. 69"]

1. hxg5 Rxh1 2. gxf6! Rxd1+
3. Nxd1! Qxd2 4. fxg7! 1-0

```

That former h-pawn turned out to be a very hungry caterpillar indeed. Black resigned just when the beautiful butterfly was about to emerge on g8.

---
Tags: terminology, attack, captures
---


# Question
Title: Would bishops be stronger or weaker on the same coloured squares?
Assuming one or both players makes a mistake and transposes a bishop and the adjacent knight when setting up the board, would this help or hinder them?

The answers to this similar question suggest it's a disadvantage. However using the lichess board editor for different variations of this (one vs both sides with both on light squared or dark squares, etc) generally shows a larger starting advantage for white for all variations in the stockfish evaluation (up to +0.8 for white having 2 dark-squared and black 2 light-squared, and +0.2 for black being normal but white having 2 dark-squared compared to +0.1 for the standard start), but I'm not sure how valid this analysis is for an alternate starting position.

# Answer
> 16 votes
And the correct answer, as always, is: "it depends on the position" :-)

OK, assume that you start with Bb1/Nc1. Lichess says +0.1. But this is the sum of...

* the N generally standing a bit ugly on c1/f1, from my positional feeling
* the B doing some concrete attacking (Stockfish unsubtly starts with c3)
* other random concrete aspects
* the question you asked: What is the isolated effect?

The isolated effect, of course, is that you are a whole piece up on all white squares, but down on black squares. GM Bangiev would rejoice: Adapt your strategy to be playing your dominance on white. (If that is possible.) For example, Bc4+Ng5 against short castling is completely useless. Fire it up with an additional Bb3 and Black already has a big problem.

Remember that different-colored bishops tend to be an advantage for the attacker, who exactly enacts the strategy I just described. (As the dude with the pair I of course would try the exactly opposite strategy - trying to get a position where both of your bishop just stare at pawns posteriors.)

# Answer
> 13 votes
Are you familiar with the variant known as Crazyhouse? Basically, if you capture an opponent's piece, you can spend a later turn to place it anywhere you like on the board, as your own piece. This creates a situation where same-coloured bishops are possible, should you so choose.

The ability to create bishop 'batteries' can be quite good, presuming that you are leveraging your advantage on those coloured squares. Alternatively, if your opponent has a strong light-square pawn chain, adding more light-square bishops might have little benefit. This points to the answer provided by @HaukeReddmann - you are up on light / dark squares, and down on dark / light squares. You would need to analyze a specific position to know whether this is something you can leverage.

If you were to make such a change before turn 1, then you could also say that your development is already steered in a particular direction, meaning your opponent might be a bit more prepared for it, but that you might 'crash through' anyway.

# Answer
> 0 votes
It depends greatly on the position. If you are attacking you can trade one pair of bishops and still have a dark/light bishop. It will be unopposed. Also in the end game if you have a single pawn and the queening square is your bishops pair color, it is an advantage.

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Tags: chess-variants, bishops
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