# Question
Title: Why would I bid for white in armageddon in chess960?
Related:

Regular chess: Why would I bid for white in armageddon (in regular chess)?

Chess960: Why would I bid for white in armageddon in chess960?

Were there armageddons where white gets lower time or where you can bid for white?

Armageddon: Has anyone actually bid for white in chess (or chess960)?

---

Re 2023 Champions Chess Tour Airthings Masters

From Gukesh Beats Former World Champion Kramnik 3 Times, Dominates Play-In

Here, armageddon bidding is not for black but for your colour of choice! But black still gets draw odds of course.

**Question**: Let's say this were chess960 instead. In chess960, since there's no theory, is there actually no advantage in having to play for a win on lower time?

My guess: Yes. Best case scenario you get a good deal on the bid by winning with 9:59. It's essentially playing a regular game of chess960 where black has draw odds. Unless you hit the winning 1/960, you're on your own without any theory playing against someone with draw odds. All you get to do is maybe open a bishop diagonal 1st.

Also say I played 4 games with someone and won the 2 white games and lost the 2 black games. In chess960, I have no idea if my luck with white will continue in the next starting position. I guess it depends on to what I extent I feel that the white games were won 'because I am white' (Re the quote 'When I am White I win because I am White. When I am Black I win because I am Bogoljubow.'). But again even if that's the case, there's no guarantee it will carry over to the next starting position. But if we somehow do the same position for 5 games, then maybe.

# Answer
> 2 votes
> Why would I bid for white in Armageddon in chess960?

There is great variability in the engine evaluations for the different starting positions. According to this answer:

> the position that gives the biggest advantage to White is RKNQBBNR with a White score of 63.9%

This compares with of a white advantage of about 55% for the normal starting position. This means that there may be positions which some players judge as being too advantageous for white for draw odds plus time deficit to be worth bidding for black.

Similarly, with the relative lack of theory computer analysis becomes very important. If a player thinks they have superior computer analysis for a particular position they may again prefer white despite black's draw odds.

Bottom line: what time to bid and which colour to choose is very dependent on the particular starting position.

---
Tags: tournament, statistics, time-control, chess960, armageddon
---


# Question
Title: Why would I bid for white in armageddon (in regular chess)?
Related:

Regular chess: Why would I bid for white in armageddon (in regular chess)?

Chess960: Why would I bid for white in armageddon in chess960?

Were there armageddons where white gets lower time or where you can bid for white?

Armageddon: Has anyone actually bid for white in chess (or chess960)?

---

Re 2023 Champions Chess Tour Airthings Masters

From Gukesh Beats Former World Champion Kramnik 3 Times, Dominates Play-In

Here, armageddon bidding is not for black but for your colour of choice! But black still gets draw odds of course.

**Question**: Can the first move advantage really be worth having to play for a win on lower time?

My guess: Well in chess, maybe... In Chess960? Yeah right. But ok let's just restrict to chess, where there's theory. IF you can get a good deal on the bid like if you win with 9:59, then ok. Maybe theory will be a good way to compensate for draw odds? (Of course if the other person really wants black, then they're not gonna bid just 9:59.)

# Answer
I think of this case of Sergey Karjakin vs Robert Hess in the 2019 WFRCC 3rd qualifying round (ok it's from chess960, but not really specific to chess960 maybe) :

> At the end of this chaotic and potentially historic Knockout Qualifier, both finalists joined commentator GM Aman Hambleton to offer their thoughts. On Hess, Karjakin offered praise, "I decided to play with the black pieces (in Armageddon) because he was outplaying me with any color and I thought at least if the draw suits me at least I will have chances."

I think of a similar thing that justifies playing white. **Maybe I was not outplayed as white.** Like say I played 4 games with someone and won the 2 white games and lost the 2 black games. Then maybe I'd want white. But this is specific to chess, in particular to the openings I played as white in the 2 games and the opening I plan to play in armageddon. In chess960, I have no idea if my luck with white will continue in the next starting position.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: tournament, statistics, time-control, armageddon
---


# Question
Title: Why does Black want to trade off their King's Bishop in many d4 lines?
I feel that in many lines starting with d4, such as the Queen's Gambit Declined, or especially the Nimzo-Indian, Black is more than happy to trade their King's Bishop for White's knight on c3. For instance, one frequent line in the Nimzo-Indian (reached in 3200 games of the chess365 database) would be the following:

```

[FEN ""]
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. a3 Bxc3+ 5. bxc3

```

What strategic benefit does this hold for Black? They have given up the bishop pair, given White the chance to capture toward the centre with her b-pawn, in turn strengthening the d4 square for White, and moved the same piece twice in the opening. And yet, this seems to be a line where Black enjoys a *higher* win percentage than White, which puzzles me as it contradicts my naive understanding of opening principles.

# Answer
> 15 votes
Black gains a tempo. Black has played two bishop moves, but white has played Nc3, a3, and bxc3. Once the smoke clears, black has a lead in development with one minor piece out (vs none) and can immediately castle. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the doubled pawns are a weakness that can be exploited later.

If white does not play a3, black has no immediate need to take the knight, and it makes more sense to keep the pin. This is especially true because black does not gain the tempo without a3.

# Answer
> 11 votes
Bent Larsen explained it like this. If you want to win as Black you must unbalance the position, and this involves giving something to get something. Giving your opponent the two Bishops is something that you can do without a great deal of risk, because the advantage will probably not be significant until the endgame, and White must first of all get to an ending.

# Answer
> 0 votes
I don't think the most important detail regarding black's bishop in the Nimzo-Indian has been mentioned... And that is if white plays a3 attacking the bishop early, black has no logical choice but to trade the bishop for the knight. Because if black was to retreat, white could immediately play b4 and then c5 and black's bishop is trapped!

---
Tags: opening, strategy, positional-play, 1.d4
---


# Question
Title: What is the best option for White after 1.e4 e5?
So lets say I am white, and I open with 1.e4. Black responds with 1...e5. What would be the best move to get me into the best opening position?

# Answer
> 0 votes
Chess isn't a solved game so it's hard to give a definite answer. However experience tells us that 2.Nf3 (developing a piece and targeting the e5 pawn) is the preferred choice by strong players. 2.Nc3 and 2.Bc4 are probably just as good but not so flexible (for instance with 2.Nc3 you don't get the opportunity to play a quick c3+d4 plan).

Gambit lovers may also want to try 2.d4 (to get into a Danish Gambit after 2.exd4 3.c3) or 2.f4 (the King's Gambit)

You can explore a bit here

---
Tags: opening, 1.e4
---


title: Two different "accuracies"...why?

text:
# Question
Title: Two different "accuracies"...why?
Ok, I know it's probably not impressive to most, but I'm on my way to a 1000 rating on chess.com. I'm guessing it's because of different engine strengths or something.

I recently played the following game as white:

```
[FEN ""]
1. e4 c5 2. Bc4 d6 3. c3 Nc6 4. d4 cxd4 5. cxd4 Nf6 6. Nc3 Qa5 7. Bd2 Nxe4 8.
Nxe4 Nxd4 9. Bxa5 b6 10. Qxd4 bxa5 11. Bb5+ Bd7 12. Nf3 Bxb5 13. O-O-O e5 14.
Nxe5 dxe5 15. Qxe5+ Be7 16. Qxb5+ Kf8 17. Qb7 Re8 18. Qxa7 g6 19. Qxa5 Rc8+ 20.
Kd2 Kg7 21. Qe5+ f6 22. Qxe7+ Kh6 23. Qxf6 Rcd8+ 24. Ke3 Rhf8 25. Qg5+ Kg7 26.
Rxd8 h6 27. Qe7+ Rf7 28. Qe5+ Kh7 29. Nf6+ Kg7 30. Rg8# 1-0

```

And Chess.com estimated an accuracy rating of 94.2.

I pasted the same game into Lichess, and it estimated an accuracy rating of 99% under Stockfish 14.

So why the discrepancy in accuracies? And which is "more" accurate?

# Answer
As you've correctly guessed, since chess engines aren't some sort of "chess gods", they wil have different opinions on a given move (just as two Grandmasters would).

I'd say there's more than that than engine evaluation though. White has a completely winning position from move 10, so it's possible that one of the accuracy calculations is "punishing" White for not finding the fastest ways to mate while the other one is just "ignoring" everything that happened after White got a queen up and made an easy conversion into a win. Think of move 12 for instance, where White loses a minor piece but still has a totally winning position.

As for which one is more correct, there's no standard definition of "accuracy" so it's a matter of opinion. In fact nobody ever talked about accuracy until chess.com started to show it in big flashy numbers at the end of games. In general I wouldn't listen to engine analysis too much when it's about positions with big imbalances. Engines are dessigned to find precise continuations and nouance in positions where humans have a hard time, not to play positions where one side is a queen up for no compensation.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: engines, analysis, rating
---


title: Classical Time Control Armageddon?

text:
# Question
Title: Classical Time Control Armageddon?
The fate of chess has been discussed for a long time and in recent years it has become more and more common. Examples of this include the 2018 World Chess Championship(12 draws) and the 2016 World Chess Championship(10 draws). It has become a problem to the degree that now major super tournaments such as Altibox Norway have a straight-up Armageddon for breaking ties. I was wondering if the idea of having classical time control Armageddon (say white 90 minutes and black 120 minutes) has been debated. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of having such a game?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I would tend to think that you are the very first person to propose that, mostly because I really do not think it would work for this reason:

Even with the control you proposed, 90 minutes to 120, the guy with 90 minutes still has A LOT of time to think not only on his time, but also on the opponent's time. That makes draw odds a MUCH larger advantage at that control than in blitz.

I tried thinking about alternative controls that might even it up some, but they would have to be so unbalanced, that the players would be playing under radically different time controls like 15 or 30 minutes to two hours. Whatever the control, you would need to create a situation where white with the extra time has some reasonable chance to out-think black and win, and that is hard at that level to begin with, but it is all but impossible with that much extra time that black can think on while white is thinking.

# Answer
> 0 votes
As pointed out by GeneM here

> Armageddon Chess is a *fair* tie-break system only if the two players *bid* for how much time Black should have.

But any predetermined amount of time may have problems depending on the players' preferences.

Well I don't really know how much GeneM's answer depends on the time control for the losing bid (usually white). Recently, it seems armageddon is used for 15 minutes or less. In the 2016 USCC it was used for 45 minutes.

**Update**: Re the seemingly implicit assumption that it's never been done:

The 2010 USCC won by Gata Kamsky was classical in the sense that it had an armageddon game with a base time of 60 minutes and even had increment. But for some reason it is considered rapid.

# Answer
> -6 votes
Not debated nor seriously considered. Just changing time controls will not change the results significantly. Only at the VERY top levels are draws a problem. Stats show that there are plenty of wins and losses for more normal people.

Far better to stop playing such slow games. And get rid of all those delays and add ons that confuse people so they can't do proper clock management.

Play more games that are shorter and the results would be more meaningful. G30SD no delay no add ons is plenty of time for anyone. Clock management would still be necessary. G15SD+0+0 would be good for ordinary people.

Play more games not fewer games because they are too bleeping long.

Chess is not a game it is a puzzle, albeit complicated one. Maybe tippy top GMs have solved it like tittattoe but for the VAST bulk of all people it will still be fun if it did not take so long to play.

For me anything over G30SD is like postal chess and just takes too much time.

---
Tags: draw, time-control, armageddon
---


title: Is Armageddon always without increment?

text:
# Question
Title: Is Armageddon always without increment?
Robert Hess said tells Danya that no increment influences why Robert prefers white to black in Armageddon chess960. Of course it really depends on the bid, but I guess Robert would want a lower bid for black compared to an analogous case where Armageddon would have increment.

Have there been Armageddon games (in chess, chess960, shogi, xiangqi, go/baduk, etc) with increment? So far I've seen in chess960 they're all without increment.

---

# Answer
> 0 votes
2013 USCC Alejandro Ramirez vs Gata Kamsky had increment.

2013 U.S. Championships: Playoff (Part 2)

* 6:07 - 6:22 - It's a 5 second increment.
* 37:50 - 38:20 - Indeed both players get 5 second increment. Jen Shahade cites the increment as an explanation as to why players can afford to bid as low as, say, 18 min vs 45 min.

---
Tags: statistics, time-control, mathematics, armageddon
---


# Question
Title: Who is the Zhuralev countergambit in the Vienna game named after?
It starts with **1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Bb4**, I checked in the 1984 edition of *The Oxford Companion to Chess*, but couldn't find anything about it.

```
[Title "Vienna Game - Zhuralev Countergambit [C25]"]
[FEN ""]
[StartPly "4"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Bb4

```

# Answer
This what I have managed to come up with I am fairly certain that it is named after Valerij Zhuravliov https://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C4%93rijs\_%C5%BDurav%C4%BCovs#cite\_note-17 I had to translate the page to english,

according to chess tempo he was the first to play this variation which is why i believe it is named after him. He also died after 1984, which probably means that it was named after him posthumous, which would explain why it's not mentioned in my copy of The Oxford Companion to Chess,

https://old.chesstempo.com/gamedb/game/1796608
> 1 votes

---
Tags: opening, history, vienna-game
---


# Question
Title: Is armageddon more fair if bids aren't 1-time only?
As pointed out by GeneM here

> Armageddon Chess is a *fair* tie-break system only if the two players *bid* for how much time Black should have.

**Question**: But is it actually more fair if the bids are the usual English auction instead of 1-time only?

My guess is yes but they do 1-time only bids for practical reasons like with plurality voting. Of course it could be that either 1-time only is actually more fair than bid or somehow, the results will end up the same regardless of the kind of auction.

Consider recently in 2023 champions chess tour Airthings Masters magnus vs hikaru, where the bids were Hikaru 8:59 and Magnus 8:58.

2 ways to look at it:

1. I think with 1-time only, they're bidding far lower than what they normally would bid in an English auction - something like they're bidding not *how much they want black* (or white, if you can choose colour) but *how much they don't want their opponent to get black*. I think if they did an English auction, then black would end up with maybe 10-12 minutes.
2. But here, there's only a 1 second difference. Maybe they'd bid even lower. If the bids would continue - let's say the next bid must be at least 10 seconds lower than your opponent's bid - then the might go as low as 6 minutes.

Consider also:

3. If I were to bid exactly 15 minutes because my opponent thinks I'd go as low as 9 minutes. Then I'd trick my opponent to do like 8:30 whereas my opponent wouldn't even have gone lower than 10 minutes otherwise. I think this can be fixed with Vickrey auction as pointed out actually by Jim Ratliff in the same thread with GeneM.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Auction theory says that, under pretty general conditions:

> \[A\]ll four of the standard single unit auctions have the same expected sales price (or seller's revenue).The four standard single unit auctions are the English auction, the Dutch auction, first-price sealed-bid auction, and the second-price sealed-bid auction.

(See Revenue Equivalence for One-sided Markets, EconPort. See also the discussion in Math Stack Exchange.)

Here, the “sales price” corresponds to the amount of time on the clock a player is willing to sacrifice to obtain draw odds with the Black pieces rather than full time with the White pieces.

The reason this is achievable in a single round of sealed bids (as is the typical mechanism in Armageddon bidding) is that “truthful revelation” is the equilibrium, and the winner gets the loser’s bid.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Ok actually reading about the Vickrey auction made me think of the Jim Ratliff's answer made me think it's LESS fair:

If Hikaru wants to go for as low as 9 minutes, but Magnus wants to go for as low as 6 minutes, then maybe we'd just end up with that the final bid is - let's say there's a minimum of a 10 second difference between bids - Magnus with 8:50. Hikaru won't go lower, and then Magnus has a 3 minute advantage.

---
Tags: statistics, time-control, mathematics, armageddon
---


# Question
Title: What has Bobby Fischer said about increment (similar to chess960)?
Bobby Fischer talked a lot about chess960 aka Fischer random and more generally how chess is dead, etc. Were there any similar interviews or discussions for increment?

---

I guess not much because the entire chess (and chess960, shogi, xiangqi, go/baduk) world was automatically inclined to do increment? Like,Bobby filed for patent in 1988 and then it was **used right away 4 years** later in 1992 rematch with Boris Spassky, and then 6 more years later, used in the 1998 FIDE WCC. Meanwhile chess960 had its 1st tournament in 1996 but **only 23 years later** in 2019 was there a FIDE WFRCC.

But still did Bobby even briefly describe how he came up with the idea of increment, what the problems without increment are, what the benefits of increment are, etc?

Of course today, we can say in our own words why increment is so beneficial, but I want to know what Bobby's own words were.

---

All I found:

1

The actual patent https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/022857891/publication/US4884255A?q=pn%3DUS4884255

> A game timing apparatus and method for simultaneously timing events for two players is disclosed. The method involves presetting a pair of clocks for respective initial time periods, starting one of the clocks to time a first player's move, simultaneously stopping one clock and starting the other, and incrementing or decrementing each of the clocks by a time interval once for each move or a group of moves. The apparatus includes a pair of clock means, a pair of start switches for starting and stopping the clock means, and a compensation means for incrementing or decrementing each clock means by a time interval.

2

> Fischer would later complain that he was cheated out of the royalties for this invention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby\_Fischer#Fischer\_clock

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/observer/osm/story/0,,870785,00.html

Quote:

> This radio broadcast was Fischer's 17th in the Philippines. The karaoke interlude was a departure, but otherwise it was no different from the previous 16. Fischer's talking points never vary: · Bobby Fischer is being persecuted by world Jewry. · The United States government is a 'brutal, evil dictatorship' that has falsely accused Bobby Fischer of a crime and forced him to live in exile. · Bobby Fischer has been swindled out of a 'vast fortune' in royalties by book publishers, movie studios, and clock manufacturers (yes, clock manufacturers), who have brazenly pilfered his brand name, patents, and copyrights.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Although you cited to his patent, you didn’t quote the most interesting part, which is a long-ish rationale for why increment is good:

> The result of adjournments is often a skewing of a particular player's chess-playing ability since the success or failure of a player upon resumption of an adjourned game often depends on the amount of time spent analyzing the game during the adjournment as well as the quantity and quality of help that player had in analyzing the game during the adjournment.… Thus, the play of the game upon resumption of the adjournment does not necessarily reflect the ability of a particular player, but rather it may be more a reflection of the ability of his team of analysts, books and computers. There are many people, including the present inventor, who wish to eliminate adjournments for exactly this reason. A chess game should be an accurate reflection of the ability of a particular player and not a reflection of the strength and ability of his team of analysts, books and computers.
>
> Another problem with the present timing system for competitive chess is that the number of moves which must be made during the primary time period is arbitrarily selected. While at first glance this may not seem important, the arbitrary selection of the number of moves has a major impact on competitive chess games. For instance, selecting 40 moves to be completed in the primary period of 2 hours means that each player has 2 hours to complete his 40 moves and also that each player can allot his 2 hours among his 40 moves any way that player chooses to. The result of such a system is that perhaps too many games are decided between moves 30 and 40 because many players will take an inordinate amount of time for their first 30 moves and be left with but a few minutes to complete their remaining 10 moves. The result is often a mad time scramble to complete move 40 before the 2-hour period runs out. Numerous games are decided by blunders (sometimes gross blunders) during such time scrambles.
>
> Again, the decision of a chess game on the basis of several moves made during a time scramble may not accurately reflect the chess-playing ability of the players. Rather, it often reflects the ability of each player to budget his time appropriately. There are many people, including the present inventor, who feel that one's ability to budget time should not be such a decisive factor in deciding who wins and loses competitive chess games.…
>
> Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a new set of chess rules, a new method of timing chess games and an apparatus capable of performing the new timing method which will eliminate adjournments from competitive chess and which will eliminate the need for selecting an arbitrary number of moves to be completed in a primary time period.…
>
> It is the primary object of the present invention to provide a timing device for timing two events which employs a compensation means to increment or decrement each of the two clocks of the timing device in order to provide the ability to time two players for an unlimited number of moves.
>
> It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a timing device for use in timing competitive chess which, by encouraging quality chess in a reasonable time frame, allows the game to be concluded in one sitting.
>
> It is a further object of the present invention to provide a timing device for use in timing competitive chess games which eliminates the time scramble often associated with the completion of the primary (and sometimes secondary, etc.) time periods.

---
Tags: history, time-control, increment
---


# Question
Title: Why didn't Carlsen try to force exchanging Queens on move 23 against Vokhidov?
During the 2018 World Rapid Championship in 2018 in St. Petersburg, Magnus Carlsen played Shamsiddin Vokhidov.

White starts with setting up a Scholar's Mate, but Black doesn't fall for it.

Then on the 22nd turn, White neglects to get his Knight to safety in time. He ends up losing his Queen for a Rook.

```
[Event "World Rapid Championship"]
[Site "St Petersburg RUS"]
[Date "2018.12.26"]
[EventDate "2018.12.26"]
[Round "2.1"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Magnus Carlsen"]
[Black "Shamsiddin Vokhidov"]
[ECO "C20"]
[WhiteElo "2835"]
[BlackElo "2480"]
[PlyCount "72"]
[fen ""]
[startply "45"]

1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Nc6 3. Bc4 g6 4. Qf3 Qe7 5. Ne2 Nf6 6. d3 Bg7 7. Nbc3 h6 8. Nd5 Nxd5 9. exd5 Na5 10. d6 cxd6 11. Bd5 Nc6 12. Bd2 Qf6 13. Qe4 O-O 14. O-O Ne7 15. Nc3 Qf5 16. Qb4 Nxd5 17. Nxd5 Kh7 18. Nc7 Rb8 19. Qxd6 b6 20. f3 Bb7 21. Rae1 Rfc8 22. Bc3? Bf8 23. Nb5 Bxd6 (23. Qxe5 {threat of mate on h8} Qxe5 24.Bxe5) 24. Nxd6 Qe6 25. Nxc8 Rxc8 26. Rxe5 Qd6 27. Rfe1 Bd5 28. a4 Be6 29. a5 bxa5 30. Kf1 Rc5 31. Rxc5 Qxc5 32. Ra1 d5 33. Rxa5 Qc7 34. Ra4 Qxh2 35. Rxa7 Qh1+ 36. Kf2 d4 0-1

```

Why didn't White force exchanging Queens on the 23rd turn? That might've cost him the Knight as well, but would've gotten rid of the Black e Pawn.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Carlsen went for the most practical move. By taking on e5 Black will win the knight after ...Qxe5 Bxe5 d6 and with both queens off the board the position becomes way too simple for White to keep any chances.

Sure, Carlsen's move leads to a losing position as well, but it's somewhat more complex and probably allows for more potential mistakes by Black later on (in other words, it's the best practical choice).

# Answer
> 2 votes
This is a tricky one, and really the only person best placed to answer it is Carlsen himself.

I ran the analysis through a few engines and in all instances the best move was Qxe5. This makes me think it was an inaccuracy as the second best move Nb5 was played. Just goes to show even the the best make mistakes.

---
Tags: analysis, carlsen, rapid
---


# Question
Title: Armageddon: How much more desirable is black in chess than chess960 based on airthings masters 2023 vs 2022 WFRCC?
All games in question are 15 minutes.

In the 4 armageddon games in the 2022 (inaugural rapid, not the *real*, classical) WFRCC (both qualifiers and final 8), the Black winning bids are: 13,13,11:10,11:25. Average is 12.1458333...min = 12min 8.75sec.

What were the Black winning bids in in the 2023 Champions Chess Tour Airthings Masters ?

# Answer
In the 4 armageddon games in the 2023 champions chess tour airthings masters the Black winning bids are (approximately)

1. Hikaru vs Wesley So - 9:30
2. Gukesh vs Rauf Mamedov - 11
3. Hikaru vs Magnus - 8:58
4. Hikaru vs Wesley So (again) - 8:05

Average is 9.3875min = 9min 23.25sec

This is a difference of (9.3875-12.1458333333333)/9.3875 = -0.29383044829 ~ -30%. Black appears to be 30% more desirable.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: chess-variants, statistics, time-control, chess960, armageddon
---


# Question
Title: Non-linearity in Armageddon bidding: Ostensibly, you give up more time in higher time control
Note: In the ff I assume everyone bids for black, not white.

# In blitz (below 10min) :

I see often there's a 5min vs 4min predetermined time. No idea if this is fair, but let's pretend arguendo players would really bid around 3:45-4:15 eg in the 2019 WFRCC and in the 2022 St Louis Chess 9LX in the 2022 women's US Chess Championship, Jennifer Yu vs Irina Krush.

* **The ratio of black's time to white's time is 80%** = 4min / 5min.

# In fast rapid (10min-32.5min) :

In the 2022 WFRCC and in the 2023 champions chess tour airthings masters, I notice they bid 9.3min for chess and 12.14min for chess960.

* In chess960, the ratio is still about 80%. It's 81% = 12.14/15.
* **In chess, the ratio drops to 62%** = 9.3/15.

# In slow rapid (32.5min-strictly below 60min)

(Actually I know of only 1 case.)

2013 USCC Alejandro Ramirez vs Gata Kamsky \- The bid is 19:45 vs 45min. Since there's a 5 second increment, this converts to 24:45 vs 50min.

* **The ratio has now dropped to below 50%, i.e. below half.**

**Question**: Ostensibly, you are willing to give up more time in higher time controls. I guess it makes sense intuitively, esp in the reverse way: You are more hesitant to give up time in lower time controls. But I'm not sure how to explain this precisely. **Why are players willing to give up more time in higher time control instead of just that the ratio is maintained throughout any time control?**

Or well maybe it doesn't have to do with armageddon specifically. Maybe in general a game where players have remaining time 3min vs 6min is really different from a game where the same players have remaining time 30min vs 60min?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I believe there are two main reasons for this.

1. The draw rate increases as the time control increases.

From here the draw rate in chess for elite chess is roughly ~36% for classical, ~30% for rapid and ~18% for blitz. This gives a larger advantage to black, and therefore a bigger incentive to give up time in order to gain this advantage.

2. The performance drop-off for losing time is less at longer time controls.

Ken Regan shared a model of how much performance of elite players degrade at different time controls on the Perpetual Chess Podcast. His model there can be viewed here

He uses the orange line (formula of 338.845\ -\ \frac{1442}{x^{0.283638564}}). This means in order to give up 100 Elo (for example) in classical chess you could give up ~100 minutes out of 165 minutes (60% of your time). In rapid chess, it would be more like: ~14 minutes out of 30 minutes. (45% of your time). In Blitz chess, you would give up roughly 87s out of 5 minutes (~30% of your time)

You would need to give up more Elo to compensate for the increased draws of longer chess

To make these estimates concrete:

* For classical chess with a draw rate of 36%, you would want to give up ~131 Elo. This equates to bidding 52 minutes for a 165 minute game
* For rapid chess with a draw rate of 30%, you would want to give up ~107 Elo. This equates to bidding 13:45 for a 25 minut game.
* For blitz chess with a draw rate of 18% you would want to give up 63 Elo, this equates to bidding 3:57 in a 5 minute game.

There is probably an additional third reason, which is that elite players have a "drawing repertoire" with black where they play more solidly for a draw. This repertoire probably has more force in longer time controls where they can find strong moves if white attempts to complicate. I don't think I'm a good enough player to comment on whether how much this is the case

---

> Maybe in general a game where players have remaining time 3min vs 6min is really different from a game where the same players have remaining time 30min vs 60min?

Yes, it's very different. In 30 vs 60 minutes the performance drop off (in Elo) is ~100 Elo. In 3 vs 6 minutes the performance drop off is more like ~190 Elo.

---
Tags: statistics, time-control, mathematics, armageddon
---


# Question
Title: Chess variants with less tactics and more strategy?
I really enjoy standard chess, but I was wondering out of pure curiosity: are there variants (or other non-chess games), that diminish the importance of tactics and put more emphasis on strategy? I was thinking that Kriegspiel was an interesting possibility. Anyone have other suggestions?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Most players who know both games would say that Go (when played on the standard 19x19 grid) puts more emphasis on strategy than chess. Complex, deep tactical fights *do* happen in Go and the ability to read them out correctly is very important to playing strength, but the outcome of a fight is often not clear-cut (e.g. one side may give up some territory in the course of a fight but take the initiative in another part of the board - who has "won" the fight is then a matter of deep positional judgement), and losing any particular battle does even at a high level not necessarily mean losing the game. Moves in Go are often good or bad for very long-term reasons, to the point that trying to see the difference by calculation of long concrete variations is often completely futile.

Among games that can be played with chess equipment, Arimaa seems like a natural candidate, as it was designed to be difficult for computer opponents and therefore contains many elements that make it difficult to play well by short-term calculation. But I have never played it myself.

Outside of two-player, turn-based, perfect information, zero-sum games, I would suggest Diplomacy. In general, I imagine multiplayer, imperfect information games will involve more strategy than tactics, because tactics become impossible to calculate when the game state is largely unknown and it is possible that other players may form a coalition against you.

---
Tags: chess-variants
---


# Question
Title: Problems importing pgn to Lichess from chess.com and/or chessbase
\[I'm writing this question so I can answer it for anyone who faces a similar problem in the future\]

I am having trouble importing pgn files of my games from chess.com and from chessbase into a Lichess study.

I have exported the pgn from chess.com and chessbase (separately), and when I use the import feature on Lichess study it will only import the first move.

# Answer
There were quite a lot of things I needed to do to the pgn files to make sure they imported correctly:

1. LINE BREAKS/RETURN: chess.com and chessbase both put linebreaks/returns within their pgn files. I had to remove these. When it is a small pgn file, I just do this by hand. When it is a large file, I paste the pgn into MS Word, and use the find/replace feature and replace ^p (special character for return) with a space " ".
2. GLIPHS: If the pgn includes any classical anotated gliphs like !? or =/- or ? or ! then I needed to go through and search for character symbols like "$5" and remove them from the pgn. The longer glyphs were turned into these "$X" characters, while "!" and "?" were kepts as these characters, and I needed to remove them as well for the import to Lichess to work.
3. IMPORT IN SECTIONS: To find these errors, the way I trouble shot and searched for a solution to the problem was by importing sections of my pgn (starting at the beginning), and importing a small section with "))))))" at the end (to close all variations in the list of moves). If it worked, I made the selection of moves larger, starting at the beginning, and eventually I would find a section of moves that would break the import. I then manually looked through these moves and tried to find anything that seemed out of place or non-standard pgn moves.

I hope this is useful to someone.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: pgn, lichess, chessbase, chess.com
---


# Question
Title: Classical world championship where someone lost 3 games in a row, COUNTING draws?
Obviously NOT counting draws there are a lot eg Nepo lost 4-0 total to Magnus in the 2021 WCC so removing the draws, there's that.

In the 2019 WFRCC, which was indeed classical, Magnus Carlsen lost to Wesley So in 3 classical games in a row, COUNTING draws: Draw and then 3 losses (and then fast rapid which was draw and then 1 loss).

Did this ever happen in regular classical chess (that are 1v1 tournaments but including finals or tiebreakers of tournaments that aren't 1v1) - 3 losses in a row?

Let's see...

1. 2006-2021 - None.
2. FIDE: 1993-2004 - Oh just 2 Alexei Shirov vs Vishy Anand in 2000 **but was it classical time controls?** And there's Anatoly Karpov vs Gata Kamsky in 1993 - ok so **WFRCC 2019 was the 1st time since either 2000 or 1993 that someone lost 3 classical games in a row in either WCC or WFRCC.**
3. Classical (PCA world championship i mean) : 1993-2004 - None.

And then before 1993...

# Answer
> 2 votes
1930 - 1992:

1. 1986 Garry Kasparov vs Anatoly Karpov
2. 1961 Mikhail Botvinnik vs Mikhail Tal
3. 1958 Mikhail Botvinnik vs Vasily Smyslov
4. 1954 Mikhail Botvinnik vs Vasily Smyslov (again)
5. 1937 Alexander Alekhine vs Max Euwe

1886 - 1929:

6. 5 in a row 1910 Emanuel Lasker vs David Janowski
7. 4 in a row https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World\_Chess\_Championship\_1907
8. 4 in a row https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World\_Chess\_Championship\_1896%E2%80%931897
9. 5 in a row https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World\_Chess\_Championship\_1894
10. 3 in a row **twice** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World\_Chess\_Championship\_1889
11. 4 in a row https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World\_Chess\_Championship\_1886

---
Tags: history, statistics, world-championship
---


# Question
Title: Why do high rated players still take so much time to calculate a pawn endgame position close to a game that they (likely) had before?
The other day, a Tuesday probably, I was watching a blitz game between 2 titled players, Daniel Naroditsky and David Paravyan.

They only have about 1 minute remaining, and from this moment ...

they both struggle to perform complex calculations within the very narrow remaining time frame.

It would take an amateur player (incl. myself) quite some time to try to accurately push the right pawn or move the king.

But I thought at that level this position must have already occurred, or, more likely, be somewhat close enough to a previous one, that the players would play in a more automatic fashion.

Obviously that's not the case ; even at the candidates, or other major tournaments in standard games, in a 3 vs 3 pawns endgame, players dedicate a huge amount of time between some of these final moves. This is seemingly still complex.

While mathematically, there is still a huge number of possible combinations, isn't a few pawns endgame - at that level - resemble a pattern the players know, and they could play more quickly, but they take time just to prevent a stupid mistake?

# Answer
> 31 votes
> But I thought at that level this position must have already occurred, or, more likely, be somewhat close enough to a previous one, that the players would play in a more automatic fashion.

Not true. This isn't some position they've likely studied before because there's far too many pawns on the board for it to be a practical lesson in a book. If there's one or two pawns on the board, then yes it's entirely likely. But 5 for each side? No chance.

Both players clearly understand the principles at play here: get your king up in the endgame, try and create a passed pawn, don't allow your pawn majority to be frozen by a pawn minority, etc. However, king and pawn endgames are notoriously tricky. Seemingly similar moves can flip the evaluation completely on its head. Moreover, as opposed to other endgames, once you've moved a pawn you can never take back the move. So every pawn push is potentially a critical decision.

As you said, there's still a huge number of possible combinations, and so the position is not just seemingly still complex - it is still complex. If you have an extra minute on the clock and the game could turn on one brash decision, wouldn't you too use all your time to make sure you finish the game off correctly?

# Answer
> 18 votes
> But I thought at that level this position must have already occurred, or, more likely, be somewhat close enough to a previous one, that **the players would play in a more automatic fashion**.

Playing in an "automatic fashion" is a very good way to lose.

Let me illustrate with a trick question. Is the following position a draw or a win for white?

```
[title "Draw or white win?"]
[fen "4k3/8/8/8/8/8/4P3/4K3 w - - 0 1"]

```

Of course anybody who knows their king and pawn endgames knows that this is a draw if it is black to move and a white win if it is white to move. When such a simple position with the kings as far apart as they can be and just one pawn on the board depends on who has the move it is very clear that a position which is "somewhat close enough to a previous one" still requires very careful calculation. Playing on automatic pilot is a way to lose. Good players almost never do this in the endgame and when they do they regret it.

# Answer
> 9 votes
As others have mentioned, endgames in general are quite dependent on the specifics. It's true at some level that to grandmasters every endgame is "somewhat close enough to a previous one", but while these definitely inform the calculations, they're in no way a substitute.

To emphasize this point, even if a position is literally one pawn move away from something they've studied before, it could change the entire story. It's possible that all the calculation they did regarding the first position becomes totally irrelevant in the new one!

This is doubly true for endgames with only kings and pawns (as in the video you sent), which have a reputation of being extremely difficult to play perfectly. King and pawn endgames also much scarier for the players in the sense that they tend to be decisive (lead to a win for one player or the other, instead of a draw) compared to other endgames, so the stakes are higher.

# Answer
> 7 votes
I cannot speak for the greatest, but it is probably still easier to calculate these positions than it is to memorize them; effectively selecting candidate moves is a learned skill, and subtle differences in position can potentially cause the engine to sway one way or another.

Now we can also think combinatorically: there are 56 squares which pawns can occupy. Suppose White has w pawns and Black has b pawns left on the board. There are now a total of 56P(w+b) different possible locations of White and Black pawns, and let's not forget about the position of the Kings! To put this into perspective, if each side had only one pawn left, there are about 1.5 million distinct positions, and this increases to over 90 million if one side has two pawns instead of one. It just seems absurd to put time into memorizing.

# Answer
> 2 votes
The difficulty arises because there are many important variations that must be calculated, which are strictly winning/losing/drawing within the margin of only one or two moves. Furthermore, though similar positions and themes often occur, the nuances in each position are unique. These subtle nuances can cause two "very similar positions" that are different only by a square or two to be winning/losing/drawing.

---

As an aside, Naroditsky discusses common *themes* in pawn endgames in this video. He mentions a couple of core concepts common to many pawn endgames:

* Outside passed pawns
* Protected passed pawns
* Connected passed pawns
* "Trousers"
* Deep freeze

These (or combinations of them thereof) often play a role in various positions.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I had a similar question before, and hopefully your question will be answered the same as mine. There's this chess960 discussion in r/chess What's stopping chess960 from becoming more popular? by MingusMingusMingu:

auswebby:

> My view is that chess960 tries to solve a problem that doesn't exist and that opening theory is part of what makes chess a great game. You're welcome to disagree and prefer chess960.
>
> However, I wonder if you think it's bad to memorise endgame theory? How to checkmate with a rook and king, what to play in certain R+p vs R endgames etc.? Nearly every chess player would improve their rating a lot more by memorising endgame theory than memorising opening theory - memorising openings has very little benefit unless you understand the resulting positions, while whether you remember your endgame theory often determines the result of the game.

glider1001:

> Good point that Chess960 doesn't solve memorization. You should distinguish between two types of memories though - declarative and procedural.
>
> Declarative memory is this for example: 1.e4..c5 2.Nf3. etc etc. It is basically saying "I declare that I will play e4" and "I declare that I respond with c5".
>
> Procedural memory is this for example: "I play e4 to release my bishop", "I play c5 to claim some centre territory", "I play Nf3 to prepare castling".
>
> Can you see the difference? Endgame memorisation is procedural too. Problem with Chess is that the opening is all declarative memory which we want to minimise because it is just empty baggage. Procedural memories tell you HOW to do something not WHAT to do. Bobby Fischer said chess was dead already 200 years ago because of the declarative memorization problem. I happen to agree with him.

Now even though we had similar questions, we might not have had the same assumption behind the question which is that both opening and endgames involve 'memory'.

But anyway the above discussion perfectly answers (at least my version of) your question:

Even though there is 'memorisation' involved in endgames, the memorisation is **procedural, not declarative. Thus they'll still have to calculate.** In particular, even if this pawn endgame pattern is similar to many they've seen before, they're still not exactly the same and nowhere near exactly the same. (This applies to endgames in general unless of course you get to very specific endgames like queen vs pawn on 7th rank or the square of the knight vs pawn. But even then I think those will have exceptions depending on how far away the kings are.)

* So it's similar to like middlegames where they'd think 'Oh this Ruy Lopez middlegame looks a lot like this Queen's Gambit Declined middlegame' or whatever.
* But it's not similar to (very early stages of) openings at all. When players have played d4, d5, c4, it's exactly the same every time. There's nothing really to calculate at their level.

The case of chess (or chess960) endgames is then the same as the case of chess960 openings: In the future chess960 might have 'openings'. But no matter how much people 'memorise', the memorisation will be procedural not declarative.

* Eg in chess960 openings: Maybe people will have alarm bells when they see at the start a corner bishop diagonally opposes a corner queen like in the 2022 WFRCC Magnus vs Hikaru case but they'll still have to calculate. The most you really memorise are procedures.
* Eg in chess (or chess960) endgames: Aside from those very specific cases, the most you're really armed with are procedures or principles. So you'll still have to calculate even if the positions are familiar. Actually that's all the positions are: familiar. In chess openings, I'd argue you have more than familiarity. Again, when players have played d4, d5, c4, it's exactly the same every time. It's not like csgo or basketball where when players do a certain opening strategy because the same strategy could be different depending on, resp, their economy or their height.

---
Tags: endgame, grandmaster, time-management, pawn-endgame, game-complexity
---


# Question
Title: Mismatch between my puzzle rating and game rating on chess.com
On Chess.com, I recently passed 2000 in the puzzle section. However, in 10 minute games, I can't reach 1600. How do I bridge that gap and increase my game score? Is 10 minutes maybe too short of a game to find/apply tactics? I have some theory/strategy knowledge that usually gives me an edge (or at least an equal game) after the opening moves.

# Answer
> 13 votes
Rating method.

On chess.com, my puzzle rating is 700 points higher than my game rating, but my chesstempo puzzle rating is only about 100 points higher than my chess.com game rating. In other words, puzzle rating on chess.com is not comparable with your game rating.

I'd suggest just keep doing 10 (or more) puzzles a day and ignore whatever the gap.

# Answer
> 5 votes
**Is 10 mins maybe too short of a game to find/apply tactics?**

Absolutely not. Tactics can be found and applied in all time controls. Its more about your ability to locate them and execute it.

**How do I bridge that gap and increase my game score?**

Puzzle ratings aren't necessarily a good representation of "skill". It is common for individuals to have higher puzzle ratings than their game ratings (Blitz , Rapid more commonly). This makes sense when you think about it as with a puzzle you are analysing a position more objectively. In game you are unlikely to be spending the same duration of time analysing the position and objectively making the correct move.

Ultimately the best way to boost your game rating is to complete lessons, study and play. Think how long you review puzzle positions (5 seconds?) , double that time for each move when you are playing a game.

# Answer
> 5 votes
The first thing to know is that players in your rating range do make tactical mistakes, so you do get chances to show your tactical ability.

Look at your games and be honest, how many mistakes do you miss? This is the most probable reason, as nobody notifies you that your position is winning, so you are not looking as hard for a winning move. There is a great video about cues for when a tactical motif is present in the position: "How is your Tactical Awareness?" by ChessNetwork

Apart from that, chess sadly is not only tactics.

Formulating middlegame plans and technical conversion are two other areas where work put in will result in huge increase of play quality. Learning middlegame plans is best done by studying games in the openings you play and seeing what good players do once fully developed. Learning conversion is a matter of learning endgames mostly.

# Answer
> 4 votes
It seems that about 400 point gap is normal, it is for me on Lichess

However, being disciplined about what moves you consider can improve your rating. Do you consider all checks and captures on every move? What about all checks and captures your opponent can play against your main candidate move before playing it? Even simple checks like this can prevent a lot of blunders. Just take a look at your blunders and see if these checks would've prevented them.

It might be hard to do a check like this in severe time trouble, so 10+10 is probably better.

# Answer
> 1 votes
You're comparing apples and orange. When you do a puzzle, you can take as long as you like (unless it's timed) to solve it. And knowing that there is a solution is in itself an advantage, as opposed to a game situation when you don't know ahead of time that there's a winning move. And I don't think a 10" game gives you enough time to analyze all the possibilities in depth. Noted players who were skilled at quick chess became skilled before they began playing quick games. Botvinnik wouldn't even play quick games. I frankly think you should play slower games first until you become more skilled before graduating to the quicker ones. I know they're more time consuming and may not be as much fun, but you have to decide which is more important to you.

# Answer
> 0 votes
3 misconceptions here, but #3 shows that you're on to something:

1. There are other factors besides puzzles that influence rating. Even if chess is 99% tactics (In this case tactics is synonymous to puzzles?), I believe the pareto principle has a lot to say for that 1%. There's still eg endgames.

1.1. In particular, I bet you're talking more about chess not chess960. So openings are relevant too.

2. Even if there's a relation between puzzle rating and chess rating, it doesn't mean there's an exact relation. It could be that the 2000 puzzle rating converts to 1800 rapid. For example this rating converter https://www.chessratingcomparison.com/graphs says 2000 puzzle is about 1378 in rapid.

Look at even the plus minus 187 and the scatter plot. I don't think that's even like 50% correlation. ( But then again I was never the best guessthecorrelation player.)

3. There's even a (significant) relation between *untimed* puzzle rating and chess rating. I say more here: Is my chesstempo timed puzzle rating actually expected to relate to my chess rating or at least more so than any untimed puzzle rating?

People could get the same puzzle correct but at largely different times. Additionally, not everyone is doing the untimed puzzles the same way: People could take their time like I do or set an arbitrary time limit for themselves, eg 5min per puzzle. Thus, there's not really an expectation that there's gonna be that much of a relation between untimed puzzle ratings and regular chess ratings. I believe in theory an untitled player could even reach the same level as even a titled player in puzzle rating but still have a huge gap in chess (or chess960) ratings.

This is where chesstempo's blitz mode comes in: This feature is so beautiful and incredibly underrated in that it's so far the only thing I've seen of its kind in the history of chess. **You're now graded based on your time relative to the time others have taken.** Even if there's an inherent (yet unspecified) time limit of around 1 minute, it's still a 'reasonable' time limit in the sense that it's not arbitrary: The time limit is not the same for each puzzle and is based on your rating, the puzzle's rating and other players' ratings that you're expected to complete the puzzle in within the time limit. This is opposed to doing untimed puzzles where you might set an arbitrary time limit on yourself and as opposed to a hypothetical site that imposes, say, a 5 minute time limit on every puzzle (I think the hypothetical site is better than arbitrary self-imposed time limits but not as good as chesstempo).

* Note on uniqueness: The closest I've seen to chesstempo's blitz mode is https://blitztactics.com/ which gets from lichess' puzzles but afaik the puzzles don't necessarily change ratings depending on the lichess' puzzle or player ratings.
* Note on lichess: lichess' puzzle storm or puzzle racer aren't really like chesstempo's blitz mod because the puzzles and players don't really have ratings.

So what I think you're looking for (and what would be better for chessratingcomparison.com to show) is a conversion between chesstempo's timed puzzle ratings and your chess ratings. I think it'd be similar even to like a conversion between ratings between any 2 sites say chesscom rapid and lichess rapid.

In chessratingcomparison.com, the scatter plot definitely shows high or at least much higher correlation compared to the puzzle rating to chess rating above:

>

In fact, I don't think you even need chessratingcomparison.com for this. As long as you're playing regularly and doing puzzles regularly ('regular' is relative to the rating deviations of each rating system I guess), you should be able to get a feel that eg 1550 in chesstempo converts to about 1600 in chesscom rapid especially if after awhile, say, there's a period of the last 3 months where your rapid rating is about 1520-1589 while your chesstempo timed puzzle rating is about 1470-1539.

Re

> How do I bridge that gap and increase my game score?

If your timed puzzle rating is about 1550 (according to the aforementioned example I gave), then I guess there's not really a 'gap' to bridge.

As to what happens if there really is a gap? Well I have a feeling you'll gain enough rating with some more games if your *timed* puzzle rating really says so.

**Bonus**: I think that this conversion is even more accurate in chess960 compared to chess since there's 1 less factor involved, namely openings.

---
Tags: rating, online-chess, puzzles, chess.com
---


title: Why Chess960/9LX and not Chess959?

text:
# Question
Title: Why Chess960/9LX and not Chess959?
This question asks if Chess960 is really Chess960 and not Chess959, i.e. the dice are really not re-rolled (positive, instead of normative). The answer is yes, it really is.

However, why is Chess960 used over Chess959? (This is normative, instead of positive.)

Personally. I encountered this only once (and I remember the castling fail was funny). But in general, anyone playing this more than 959 times is expected to encounter this once. I believe the point of 960 is to get rid of openings. But technically it, ostensibly, doesn't (but of course, it does with at least 99.895833333% accuracy). Please explain what's going on.

My guess: Fun. Trolling players.

# Answer
Fischer Random is actually not chess960 but really chess959...at least for FIDE's WFRCC but not necessarily for, say, lichess or chesscube. (In chesscom, I've never encountered SP 518, and I believe I've played over 960 chess960 games.)

As to why lichess insists on SP 518? Who knows? But for FIDE:

**2019 WFRCC**:

From 'Regulations for the 2019 FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship', it's excluded:

> If during the event the start position of classical chess is selected, the draw for the initial setup of the pieces will be done again.

**Even 2022 WFRCC**:

Also Regulations for the 2022 FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship

> If the start position of classical chess is randomly selected, the draw for the initial position of the pieces will be repeated.

---

Check out:

Chess959 not Chess960 ! See in 2019 and 2022 regulations that FIDE's World Fischer Random Chess is actually Chess959. Now can lichess please do the same?

>

---

But notice FIDE really calls their tournament 'Fischer Random' not chess960. Lichess calls their variant 'chess960'. SP 518 is technically part of the 960 positions. However, chesscom says 'chess960' and St Louis Chess Club says 'Chess 9LX' not 'Chess 9LIX' so lichess what's your excuse?
> 1 votes

---
Tags: history, chess-variants, chess960
---


# Question
Title: Is Titled Tuesday now 2x week still 2x a day?
It says last week Wesley So Becomes 2nd Player To Sweep Titled Tuesday

> On a day when he played a match in the Champions Chess Tour, GM Wesley So also found the time to win both Titled Tuesday events on February 7. He is now the only player besides GM Hikaru Nakamura to achieve this feat in the roughly one year since Titled Tuesday began running twice a week.

It doesn't say 2x a day so maybe it really is 2x a week but not on the same day. But at least in Wesley So's case it appears to be 2x a day.

1. Early tournament \- Feb07
2. Late tournament \- also Feb07

**Question**: What's going on? Is it 2x a week but not necessarily both on Tuesday but in this particular case it was now both on Tuesday?

# Answer
According to chess.com's article "Titled Tuesday: All The Information":

> Titled Tuesday is Chess.com's weekly 11-round Swiss tournament for titled players, occurring twice each Tuesday since February 1, 2022 at 8 a.m. PT/17:00 CET and 2 p.m. PT/23:00 CET.
> 3 votes

# Answer
> Is it 2x a week but not necessarily both on Tuesday but in this particular case it was now both on Tuesday?

The clue is in the name "Titled **Tuesday**". Not "Titled Monday" or "Titled Wednesday" or "Titled Some-other-day-of-the-week". Whenever there are two such tournaments in the same week they are also on the same day - Tuesday.
> -3 votes

---
Tags: tournament, chess.com, famous-events, wesley-so
---


# Question
Title: Do chess960 and chess differ for reasons 'far beyond just opening theory'?
David said in What exactly does Bobby Fischer mean by 'talent' re 'I'm better than Morphy' in 2005 (probably re chess960)?

> The differences between classical chess and 960 go far beyond just opening theory. Many strategic themes and even pawn structures that appear on 960 are hardly ever found in classical chess.

Is that true? I guess that would explain what Larry Kaufman said about Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So.

> Magnus doesn't generally play such great openings, he strives to get the game out of book as early as possible usually. I think the issue here is that his greatest strength is the endgame, but FRC games are much more likely to be decided in the middlegame as the players are on their own so early. That's probably why he doesn't shine as brightly in FRC as in Classical chess.

But Levy Rozman (Gothamchess) said

> All the pieces move the same. There's just no openings.

Or maybe that's just heuristic on Levy's part?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I think of the converse of this explanation: Many important strategic and tactical patterns in traditional chess (a) are specific to the initial position even though (b) they are not specific an any opening line. Think:

* Attacks on the short-castled king, including
* “Greek gift” Bxh7+ sacrifices,
* Sacrifices on f7 or f2.
* h2-h4 attacks
* Isolated queen pawn strategic themes
* Bishop fianchettos
* and more…

Thus, when switching to chess360, you (a) don’t need to remember opening lines but also (b) you can’t rely on many of the tactical and strategic themes that have become second nature in traditional chess. Whereas (a) is seen as a plus for many, (b) might be seen as a drawback.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Yes, it is true that the differences between Chess960 (Fischer Random Chess) and traditional chess go far beyond just opening theory. The starting position of the pieces in Chess960 is completely random, which means that players cannot rely on established opening theory and must use their strategic and tactical skills to create a winning position from scratch. This creates a level playing field for players of different skill levels, as the advantage of having memorized more opening theory is largely eliminated.

In addition to the lack of opening theory, there are other strategic and tactical differences between Chess960 and traditional chess. For example, the placement of the pieces in Chess960 can create unusual pawn structures and tactical patterns that are not commonly found in traditional chess. This requires players to think creatively and adapt their strategies and tactics to the unique position at hand.

While it is true that all the pieces move the same in Chess960, the lack of a fixed starting position creates a significant difference in the strategic and tactical requirements of the game. Therefore, the skills required to play Chess960 effectively are different from those required to play traditional chess, and players may excel in one format more than the other.

---
Tags: opening, chess-variants, chess960
---


# Question
Title: Why is FIDE investigating Karjakin and Shipov, but not Karpov?
Recently FIDE decided to refer GMs Karjakin and Shipov to the ethics and disciplinary commission for supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They have not, however, decided to refer GM Anatoly Karpov, even though Karpov is a member of the Russian parliament and voted to recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.. Why?

# Answer
> 8 votes
**There is a different quality in how these players expressed themselves in public.**

Both Karjakin and Shipov uttered statements in favour of the war and in support of Russia. FIDE ultimately decided to suspend Karjakin (and this suggests the reasons they investigated these players in the first place):

In a ten-page document, the commission gives reasons for its decision. Among other things, the officials explain that the **publicity of statements** is a factor in the decision. The statements of the world-class player Karjakin would have **triggered a considerable number of reactions**, while Shipov was far less visible. The Commission states that Sergey Karjakin's **statements have damaged the reputation of chess and FIDE**.

Karpov, on the other hand, has done nothing of this kind. His vote in the Duma cannot be seen as a personal public statement in favour of war comparable to that of Karjakin or Shipov. He is subjected to constraints in Russia, e.g. because of his party membership and the political situation in Russia, i.e. "disadvantages" for dissenters. He is a follower rather than an enthusiast warmonger like Karjakin. In Russia, the opinion that the invasion was right, is common. Karpov, a Russian, most likely shares this opinion, but political opinions are not sanctioned by FIDE.
There is also no "kinship detention" for Russians in general, even though prominent players increasingly approve of such ideas. Karpov voted in his function as a member of the Duma and did not harm the reputation of chess or the FIDE and did not use his visibility as a prominent chess player to promote war.

# Answer
> 18 votes
Karjakin is an active super-gm who has played Carlsen for the world championships and was involved in the current candidates cycle. Karpov no longer plays serious chess at the top level. To call it exhibition chess would be going too far but it is approaching that. If you look at his recent playing record at standard play it is mostly the occasional Bundesliga appearance. Those invitations are unlikely to be repeated any time soon.

What FIDE are looking to do is to strip him of honorary FIDE titles. According to their updated "Official Statement":

> After receiving the opinion of Mr Rivello, the Chair of FIDE Constitutional Commission, the **FIDE Council decides to suspend the title of the FIDE Ambassador for Life for Anatoly Karpov** and asks the General Assembly to take a decision on the matter. The **FIDE Council also approves that sanctioned persons would be denied to hold any honorary or official positions in FIDE and would not be invited to any official FIDE events**. Both decisions have been taken by the majority of votes.

---
Tags: fide, karpov
---


# Question
Title: Online Neustadtl Sonneborn–Berger score?
Where can I find a site that calculates Neustadtl Sonneborn–Berger score (or Sonneborn–Berger score or whatever) given a cross-table? Closest I found is this.

Eg Given the cross-table (implied from these results by rounds) from St Louis Chess Club's 2021 Chess 9LX tournament:

I calculated the ff: (And you can also see SB in the players' links in the 2nd column.)

Based on Neustadtl Sonneborn–Berger score, Wesley So is 4th place behind Sam Shankland & MVL even though they are tied for 2nd place.

# Answer
pgnhelper is a command line tool to generate a round-robin table along with some tie-break systems one of which is the SB. It can take a pgn file and output to html, csv and txt formats.

### Setup

0. Install python 3.7 or later like 3.10
1. Open command prompt or powershell if you are in windows.
2. Install the package with the command:

```
pip install pgnhelper -U

```

#### Example

```
PS F:\Github\position-trainer\pgn> ls

    Directory: F:\Github\position-trainer\pgn

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a----        2023-02-12     23:50         536764 airthingsmastpl23.pgn
-a----        2022-09-21     02:52        1516345 cheurind22.pgn
-a----        2022-09-21     02:50         114370 ftxcrpyto22.pgn
-a----        2022-08-14     17:01        3859792 olym22.pgn
-a----        2022-09-08     10:37          87717 stlbli22.pgn
-a----        2022-09-08     20:26           1719 stlbli22_2games.pgn
-a----        2022-09-08     20:05           3602 stlbli22_4games.pgn
-a----        2023-02-12     23:59          85511 tatamast23.pgn
-a----        2023-02-13     00:04         775054 wbliw22.pgn
-a----        2023-02-15     16:32        2575075 world_blitz_women_2022.json

PS F:\Github\position-trainer\pgn> python --version
Python 3.10.6
PS F:\Github\position-trainer\pgn> pip install pgnhelper -U

PS F:\Github\position-trainer\pgn> pgnhelper roundrobin --inpgnfn tatamast23.pgn --output tatamast23.html

```

### output

tatamast23.html

### Standing

You can also use standing directive to output the standings.

```
pgnhelper standing --inpgnfn tatamast23.pgn --output stand_tatamast23.txt

```

### Output

```
 Rank                   Name  Rating   RChg  Games  Score  Score%  DE  Wins    SB  Koya
    1            Giri, Anish    2764  15.41     13    8.5   65.38 0.0     0  0.00   0.0
    2 Abdusattorov, Nodirbek    2713  20.49     13    8.0   61.54 1.0     4 51.25   5.0
    3        Carlsen, Magnus    2859  -7.56     13    8.0   61.54 0.0     5 48.00   4.0
    4             So, Wesley    2760   6.20     13    7.5   57.69 0.0     0  0.00   0.0
    5    Maghsoodloo, Parham    2719   9.31     13    7.0   53.85 0.5     4 42.50   3.0
    6       Caruana, Fabiano    2766   0.02     13    7.0   53.85 0.5     2 43.75   3.0
    7       Rapport, Richard    2740   0.16     13    6.5   50.00 0.5     3 37.75   2.0
    8         Aronian, Levon    2735   1.15     13    6.5   50.00 0.5     1 41.25   3.0
    9      Praggnanandhaa, R    2684   6.15     13    6.0   46.15 1.0     2 38.75   3.0
   10    Van Foreest, Jorden    2681   6.73     13    6.0   46.15 0.0     2 38.50   3.5
   11            Ding, Liren    2811 -23.71     13    5.5   42.31 1.0     1 35.00   3.0
   12              Gukesh, D    2725  -6.88     13    5.5   42.31 0.0     2 35.00   3.0
   13        Keymer, Vincent    2696  -6.18     13    5.0   38.46 0.0     0  0.00   0.0
   14        Erigaisi, Arjun    2722 -21.28     13    4.0   30.77 0.0     0  0.00   0.0

```

Tie-break is described in the documentation. The source code is in github.

### Chess 9LX

pgn source is from weekinchess.

```
pgnhelper roundrobin --inpgnfn champshow9lx21.pgn --output 9LX.html

```
> 1 votes

---
Tags: programming, statistics, tie-breaks
---


# Question
Title: Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess - Visual Teaching of Chess
I have severe dyslexia which means that for the majority of chess books I find it very difficult to accurately read games (although having a board does help). My favorite chess book when I was younger was *Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess* (which I am sure many of you have picked up at one time or another); its visual style really appealed to someone with my particular difficulties. Is there a series of chess books, or an author/website which uses a similar purely visual method to tackle the more in-depth aspects of chess?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Since you have yet to receive any answers involving books, perhaps my earlier comment may serve as an actual answer: these days, for those like yourself working through obstacles like severe dyslexia, there is an ever-growing body of video-based chess instruction materials that could be well-suited visual alternatives to typical chess book fare.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Don't know if you are still looking for books, but if you are there are a couple that fit your bill.

The method that was used in Bobby Fischer Teaches chess is called programmed instruction.

There are two books that use that method. One is called The Chess Tutor: Elements of Combinations and the other is called The Genesis of Power Chess: Effective Winning Technique for Strategy and Tactics. Both are by Leslie Ault.

Leslie Ault was involved in the writing of Bobby Fischer Teaches chess as well.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Chessable have turned a large number of chess books, many of them classics, into audio-visual chess courses. I think you can register for free to preview their material. Alternatively they have a YouTube channel which also publishes previews.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Bruce Pandolfini's Chess Movie may work for you. See if you can find a sample.
I used to take it to read after a hike. No board required.

---
Tags: books, fischer, websites
---


# Question
Title: Bishop and Knight exchange with opponent's Rook and pawn
Chess games statistics

In Chess, Are there advantages or disadvantages of exchanging your Bishop + Knight with opponent's Rook and Pawn in middle game?

Knight 3 points

Bishop 3 points

Vs

Rook 5 points

Pawn 1 point.

Is (Bishop + Knight) against opponent's Rook exchange fine?

In end games rook against opponent's bishop + knight, who is having the edge of winning?

# Answer
> 2 votes
During the games, pawns aren't really that important, but they will be in the endgame and they could be used for promotions. So depends with the pawn.

A bishop + knight is a good trade for a rook. But like mentioned above, it depends on your position of the chess board.

You should try to target the pieces that your opponent uses the most or relies on. I wouldn't worry about a pawn greatly, assuming you have more pawns, but it depends.

# Answer
> 11 votes
In the middle game, where pawns are generally less important than the endgame, two pieces are better than one. So, in the middlegame the bishop + knight are worth noticeably more than the rook and pawn.

In the endgame it all depends on piece activity. If the bishop and knight are very active, if the knight has a good outpost where it is supported by a pawn, if the bishop has free range with no same colour squared pawns in the center block it, then they can still confer a big advantage. If they can combine in attack then two pieces are still better than one.

If the side with the rook and pawn has no pawn weaknesses while the bishop + knight side has pawn weaknesses that the rook can attack then the rook plus pawn can be better.

# Answer
> 6 votes
When everything else is traded, the side having an extra rook and pawn is the only one with winning chances. The pawn can promote, and can have good support from the rook, while B+N just barely win against even a naked king.

*However*

Those two light officers are going to cause so many problems for the entire game up to that point, giving the side down a rook attack opportunities, chances to win pieces, and probably a good numbers of pawns. Ouch.

To exchange a bishop and knight for a rook and pawn, **you need a concrete follow up**. The endgame is too far away to be a concrete follow up.

Example of a concrete follow up:

```
 [title "Bishop and Knight for Rook and Pawn"]
 [fen ""]

 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Bc5 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nxe5 O-O 5.d4 Bb6 6.Nxf7 Rxf7 7.Bxf7 Kxf7

```

Black's king is wide open, white's queen is looming, and black's knight is misplaced, easily attacked by the e pawn (8.e5 Nd5? 9.Qf3+ fork, 8.e5 Ne8? 9.Qh5+)

# Answer
> 5 votes
I feel like I should add a minor point to the good answers here. This kind of trade is something that I usually made during my early days in chess. Because I thought that the rook is way more important than bishop and knight and the extra pawn would be a win move.

But then I became familiar with chess engines and got used to analyzing my moves with the help of StockFish and such. I say it rather from personal experience: this trade is almost *never* approved by a good chess engine. In every case that I remember, after making this trade my score fell down by a point or two. So I learned the hard/easy way that it's a bad trade.

---
Tags: endgame, middlegame, knights, bishops, rooks
---


# Question
Title: What happens in a King-Rook vs King-Bishop with a perfect play in a no pawn endgame?
Suppose both the kings are left in a fairly neutral positions with just rook at one side and a bishop at the other side. What is the outcome if both the sides play correctly?
Can a side with only bishop claim a draw?

Related:

# Answer
> 9 votes
See Pawnless Chess Endgame on Wikipedia:

> Rook versus a bishop: this is usually a draw. The main exception is when the defending king is trapped in a corner that is of the same color square as \[their\] bishop (see Wrong bishop#Rook versus bishop). If the defending king is trapped in a corner that is the opposite color as \[their\] bishop, \[they draw\] (see Fortress (chess)#Fortress in a corner). See the game of Veselin Topalov versus Judit Polgar, where Topalov defended and drew the game to clinch a win of their 2008 Dos Hermanas match.

Mate is possible, and the side with the Bishop definitely cannot claim a draw (until 50 moves is up).

# Answer
> 4 votes
The side with a bishop can't immediately claim a draw as there are opportunities for checkmate.

At lower levels, the defense isn't trivial either and it's in fact impossible if the side with the bishop can't manage to one of the "safe" corners (the ones with the color opposite to that of the bishop)

---
Tags: endgame, bishops, rooks, 50-move-rule, claim-draw
---


# Question
Title: How can one easily learn chess board coordinates?
I am relatively new to chess, and I wonder, what is a fast (and hopefully easy) way to learn chess board coordinates? This is so when I am watching a video where the commentator says, for example, "Knight f6," I know to look quickly at f6, and I don't waste time looking for coordinates on the edge of the board or count it.

# Answer
> 14 votes
Some websites offer "coordinate drills". I'm not sure how effective they are for learning, but you can certainly give them a try. I found it to be surprisingly entertaining to try to beat my personal record number of coordinates per minute (or whatever the time limit is). Here are the two I know of, but maybe there are others (and maybe there are apps, as well):

https://www.chess.com/vision

https://lichess.org/training/coordinate

Personally I've found that studying openings (and to a certain extent, checkmate patterns) helps learn coordinates because you start associating coordinates with certain moves, which gives each square its own "personality". For example, c4 is not just c4 anymore; it is the square where the bishop goes in the Italian game, or where the pawn goes in the queen's gambit.

# Answer
> 7 votes
Memorize not just squares, but ranks and files. a: Queen's Rook b: Queen's kNight, c: Queen's Bishop, d: Queen, e: King, f: King's Bishop, g: King's kNight, h: King's Rook. 1: White's back rank, 2: White's pawn rank, 3: White one pawn-move, 4: White's two pawn-move. For each square, you should become familiar what role that square in particular play, but also what role its rank and file plays. For instance, since Black usually castles into g8, f6 the square a knight can attack the king, and where a pawn can attack the middle of the three f7, g7, h7 pawns, etc. It's where a bishop can threaten mate when combined with a queen on the g file, etc. The f file is just off the center on the king side. It's where you're likely supporting you e pawn from, and losing control of it means that attack can come into the g file (where you king usually is). Rank 6 is the last rank before Black's pawns.

Start with the edges of the board: a file, h file, rank 1, rank 8. It should be easy to get a1, a8, h1, and h8 down. Then go for the middle: rank 4, rank 5, d file, e file. Memorize d1, e1, d8, e8, then d4, d5, e4, e5, then move on to a4, a5, h4, h5. Every other square is only one King's move away from one of these 16 squares.

# Answer
> 5 votes
This is something that you gain through experience. One good way to obtain that kind of experience would be to buy a large game collection - for example, a modern algebraic edition of the 1953 Zurich tournament book by Bronstein - and play through them. Not only will the experience accustom you to finding each square, you'll undoubtedly learn something from playing through so many master games.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I see from your profile that you are familiar with programming concepts. As a programmer myself, familiar with hexadecimal and other number base notations, I have found it easier to convert the alphanumeric chess position to two numbers first before locating the position.

So when you see an `a, b, c, d, e, f, h` convert it to a number in your head first `1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.`

Then you look for square `[3, 4]` or `[7, 1]` remembering that the column is first, then the row.

So all you need to learn is to quickly convert the following:

```
a=1
b=2
c=3
d=4
e=5
f=6
g=7
h=8

```

So when you see a position like c3, immediately say `[3, 3]` in your head before looking for it.

Bear in mind that just like a map of the earth turned upside down where you could still easily point to let's say India, a square like f6 would always be closer to black on the left.

So thinking about squares like this, f6 is a name just like India - is quicker than trying to count alphabet letters from right to left. But like everyone else said - it takes practice before it becomes natural.

# Answer
> 2 votes
This might disappoint you but the only thing you can do in the beginning when learning coordinates is to count, since you will lack the intuition necessary to identify coordinates immediately. As you gain chess experience the intuition necessary to quickly determine the coordinates of a square will be built up to the point where you know exactly where (for instance) f6 is on the chessboard without having to think about it.

But in the beginning (as with anything else) you will have to spend some mental effort to locate squares on the chessboard by their coordinates. To make the learning process quicker you could try to incorporate identifying the coordinates of squares while playing (for instance by keeping a scoresheet of the games you play) but other than that there isn't really a quick method to just learn this without effort.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Playing blindfold chess might also help with coordinates a lot, once we have a visual sense of where the squares should be, and how they are related spatially in the mind, we can get really comfortable using the chess algebraic notations.

If you just want to learn notation, its a-h horizontally, and 1-8 vertically on the 8x8 board.

# Answer
> 1 votes
While specialized training may be useful, you also need to be in a situation where that training can be used.

I'm mainly interested in chess compositions, and had much the same problem following solutions, or setting up problems from notation (i.e. not from diagrams, but from textual description such as "White: K at KR3, Q at KB2, ..." and so on. Descriptive or algebraic notation.)

I found that while I could get the file right pretty easily, the rank required counting. But after a while, it became obvious that ranks 6, 7 and 8 were easier to count backwards than forwards, (i.e. as 0, 1, 2 from the back rank) and doing that adjustment mentally was quite easy. Getting ranks 4 and 5 right was a bit more of a problem, and I mixed them up for the longest time. But persistence pays off. I think it took me about a year of more or less daily use to make errors reasonably rare. (Now I mix up black and white coordinates in descriptive notation instead ...)

But that's me. I suspect it's fairly individual -- I started more or less from zero.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I feel you. I always struggled with the notation, and never bothered with memorization exercises or drills. There are a lot of great answers here.

But I learned by watching a lot of chess content, like Agadmator, Daniel Naroditsky, Levy Rozman (Gothamchess), Eric Rosen, ChessNetwork, etc. They nearly always state the moves out loud in algebraic notation as they are being played, but also attribute 'character' to certain impressive squares or moves. You may recognize these phrases.

* "Never play f3/f6" (Ben Finegold)
* "I saw Rook a4, I just didn't like it" (Gothamchess)
* "c4 is explosive"
* "Knife (knight) on f5 is worth at least a pawn" (Gary Kasparov?)
* "Always play b4. The person who uses the b4 square the best wins the game" (Agadmator)
* "play h6 or g6 for luft(air) so you don't get back rank checkmated (when you are castled on the kingside)"
* "Dragon bishop on g7 in the Sicilian Dragon"
* "King knight's natural post on f3 or f6" (ChessNetwork)
* "King b1, always a useful prophylaxis when castled queenside to get off the c file" (Agadmator and others)
* "The b2 pawn is poisoned"

There are also exceptional moves/squares that can stick with you.

* Ba3!! (Botvinnik-Capablanca, AVRO 1938)
* Bxc3! (Wojtaszek-Caruana, Tata Steel 2021) While analyzing this game, Daniel Naroditsky said something along the lines of: "If you play a move like this, you would have gotten your hands chopped off in Russia!"

If you consume a large amount of chess content, you might find yourself naturally able to associate squares with certain moves or ideas, all without doing a coordinate training drill.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Chess coordinates aren't that hard. Basically, every square has a coordinate which is like a name. For example a1 or b5. The coordinate consists of a letter and a number.

Chess.com offers coordinate practice at chess.com/vision.

Lichess.org also offers coordinate practice at lichess.org/training/coordinate

But you can also learn coordinates on your own. If you want to see coordinates in play, you can see the coordinates of your and your opponents moves on the left side of the screen when playing a game.

---
Tags: learning, notation, chessboards
---


# Question
Title: Where does the term 'fianchetto' come from?
I know what a fianchetto is, developing a bishop on the 2nd/7th ranks on the long diagonals. But how did the word 'fianchetto' come into play as a chess term?

# Answer
> 7 votes
This is what a dictionary like Merriam Webster says:

> from Italian, diminutive of *fianco* side, flank, from Old French *flanc* — more at flank

That's what it *means* and what its origin is; as for how it became a chess term, the most logical explanation is that Italian players started or at least popularized this. The 1847 book Chess Preceptor: A New Analysis of the Openings of Games by Carl Friedrich Jaenisch seems to confirm this:

> We must observe; en passant, that the Italians in general designate by the term "fianchetto" a game in which one or both players, instead of opening with their centre pawns, first move the pawns on their wings. To play the "fianchetto" (the "flank," or "wing" opening) of the king, would be then to commence by the King's wing pawns; and so of the Queen and her "fianchetto." However, the "fianchetto" of the King only extends, properly speaking, to beginning with K B P, and the "fianchetto" of the Queen to commencing with Q B P. This latter falls into a regular French opening, while the King's "fianchetto" classes as an irregular.
>
> As, however, the term "fianchetto" is exclusively used in Italy, we shall, to avoid confusion, only apply it here to games begun by the Knights' Pawns moved one square, to place Bishops on Knights' second squares. You may, indeed, try to advance, from the very beginning of the game, the Rooks' Pawns two squares, and more, to attempt getting Rooks instantly into play. But these débuts are disadvantageous, since the premature sortie of the Rooks loses precious time, while it confuses their own game, and weakens the wings.

---
Tags: history, terminology, fianchetto
---


# Question
Title: How to turn the PGN of opening into a image?
Does anyone here knows how to turn a PGN, let's say for example

> 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 ( 2.c3 Nf6 ( 2...f6 3.Na3 ) 3.e5 Nd5 ) Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 ( 4.c3 ) g6

into an image? I preferably would like to put out a \*.dot-file (Graphviz) that manually created looks like this in the example

```
digraph chess_openings {
    {
        node [shape=box];
        n1 [label="e4"]; n1-> n2;
        n2 [label="c5", style=filled]; n2 -> n3; n2 -> n4;
        n3 [label="Nf3"]; n3 -> n8;
        n4 [label="c3"]; n4 -> n5;
        n5 [label="Nf6", style=filled]; n5 -> n6;
        n6 [label="e5"]; n6 -> n7;
        n7 [label="d5", style=filled];
        n8 [label="Nc6", style=filled]; n8 -> n9;
        n9 [label="d4"]; n9 -> n10;
        n10 [label="cxd4", style=filled]; n10 -> n11;
        n11 [label="Nxd4"]; n11 -> n12;
        n12 [label="g6", style=filled];
    }
}

```

which Graphviz turns into that kind of image

So I'm looking for either a simple and free software that can create such graphs automatically or a script that converts a pgn-file into a dot-file. Can anyone help?

# Answer
OMG guys! I did it. With my limited skills it took me two days to come up with a script that turn PGN of an opening to a nice graph. All you need to do is insert the PGN and run Graphviz with "dot -Tsvg graph.dot \> output.svg" after running the python script.

```
import ast

pgn = "1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 ( 2.c3 Nf6 ( 2...f6 3.Na3 ) 3.e5 Nd5 ) Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 ( 4.c3 ) g6"

hauptzaehler = 0
knoten = []

class Node:
  def __init__(self, name, move, parent):
    self.name = name
    self.move = move
    self.is_white = None
    self.parent = parent

def pgn_to_list(pgn):
  pgn = pgn[pgn.find("1."):]
  pgn = pgn.split("*", 1)[0]
  for i in range(11,26):
    pgn = pgn.replace(str(i) + ".", "")
  for i in range(1,11):
    pgn = pgn.replace(str(i) + ".", "")
  pgn = pgn.replace(".", "")
  pgn = pgn.rstrip()
  pgn = pgn.replace(" ", "\", \"")
  pgn = pgn.replace("\"(\", ", "[")
  pgn = pgn.replace(", \")\"", "]")
  pgn = "[\"" + pgn + "\"]"
  pgn = pgn.replace(", \")\"", "]")
  feld = ast.literal_eval(pgn)
  return feld

pgn = pgn_to_list(pgn)

def mache_dicts(feld):
  global hauptzaehler
  for i in feld:
    if type(i) != list:
      feld[feld.index(i)] = {"index": hauptzaehler, "zug": i, "parent": None}
      hauptzaehler += 1
    else:
      mache_dicts(i)
  return feld

def parentify1(feld):
  for i in range(len(feld)-1,-1,-1):
    if type(feld[i]) != list:
      if (i == 0):
        feld[0]["parent"] = None
      else:
        for x in range(i-1,-1,-1):
          if type(feld[x]) != list:
            eltern = feld[x]["index"]
            feld[i]["parent"] = eltern
            break
    else:
      parentify1(feld[i])
  return None

def parentify2(feld):
  eltern0 = None
  eltern1 = None
  for i in range(0,len(feld)):
    if type(feld[i]) != list:
      eltern0 = eltern1
      eltern1 = feld[i]["index"]
    else:
      feld[i][0]["parent"] = eltern0
      parentify2(feld[i])
  return None

def knotenliste(pgn):
  global knoten
  for i in pgn:
    if type(i) != list:
      knoten.append(Node(i["index"],i["zug"],i["parent"]))
    else:
      knotenliste(i)
  return None

def get_parent(feld, parent):
  for i in feld:
    if (i.name == parent):
      return i

def einfaerben(knoten):
  for i in knoten:
    if (i.parent == None):
      i.is_white = True
    elif (get_parent(knoten, i.parent).is_white == True):
      i.is_white = False
    elif (get_parent(knoten, i.parent).is_white == False):
      i.is_white = True
  return None

def get_kinder(feld, index):
  kinder = []
  for i in feld:
    if (i.parent == index):
      kinder.append(i.name)
  kinderstring = ""
  for x in kinder:
    kinderstring = kinderstring + " n" + str(index) + " -> n" + str(x) + ";"
  return kinderstring

def write_dot(knotenfeld):
  open("graph.dot", "w").close()
  dot = open("graph.dot", "a")
  dot.write("digraph chess_openings {\n  {\n    node [shape=box];\n")
  for i in knotenfeld:
    schwarz = ""
    if (i.is_white == False):
      schwarz = ", style=filled"
    dot.write("    n" + str(i.name) + "[label=\"" + i.move + "\"" + schwarz + "];" + get_kinder(knotenfeld, i.name) + "\n")
  dot.write("  }\n}")
  dot.close()
  return None

pgn = mache_dicts(pgn)
parentify1(pgn)
parentify2(pgn)
knotenliste(pgn)
for i in range(0,len(knoten)):
  einfaerben(knoten)
write_dot(knoten)

```
> 1 votes

# Answer
The free program DiagTransfer version 3.0.1 will make a position diagram from a pgn or epd file. Works well on Windows 10. I've used it hundreds of times to insert chess positions into word processor files or print diagrams on file cards. Has several options including adding arrows.
> 1 votes

# Answer
The website Chess Tree allows to import pgn and show them as an horizontal tree, with the moves inside circles. I have not seen an option to graphically export the tree or print it. Perhaps the author trust the print option in web explorer menu for this purpose. It allows also to activate an overlay with move statistics of the in site tree data base.

Another one that could catch your interest, comparing your repertoire with your games, is Chess Lens. A description of the app by its programer is in this article.
> 0 votes

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Tags: opening, software, programming, pgn
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# Question
Title: Is there a list of chess openings online without names
I have been searching for a list of eco (Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings) chess openings online by moves rather than by name so that I don't have to sort through thousands of names but I can not find such a list anywhere. Has anyone got any suggestions?

# Answer
> 5 votes
https://www.365chess.com/opening.php for instance has what you look for.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I'm not sure what you're exactly looking for but an opening explorer would probably do the job.

On the lichess analysis board you can use the opening explorer by clicking on the book icon (the left-most button at the bottom of the right panel).

There you can check the most commonly played moves from any given position. You can filter for master games only, for all games played on Lichess or for the games you have played yourself on the site. You can also get a list of full games where the position was reached.

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Tags: opening, analysis, pgn
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title: "Unclear" becoming outdated?

text:
# Question
Title: "Unclear" becoming outdated?
It was the Chess Informant who gave us "∞ - position unclear" (as we all know, a position can only be won, lost or drawn ;-). Now that we have super-strong computers, I expect that ∞ will slowly wither away...or is Chess so complex that we still have "∞ - only on a higher level"?

I doubt *that* question is answerable here, so a cheap proxy: Has the use of ∞ in the Chess Informant gone down over time? (Including positions that were rerated in later issues.) Note that later C.I. come as pdf, so counting can be automated.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Computers have expanded our ability to analyze chess positions, but they're far from outdating the use of "unclear". There are plenty of positions where you'll get contradictory evaluations depending of which engine you use and the machine on which you run it. Those positions are candidates to deserve the ∞ sign in "automated" analysis.

However, all engines can give us is their best guess to an evaluation number. Engines that calculate the "sharpness" of a position exist, but they're not commonly used. It's getting more and more common to have engines as a replacement for analysis rather than as a tool to assist it (which is it's original purpose).

That's lazy analysis though. Sometimes, humans will just blindly trust the output from the one engine they're using and assign a final "+-" symbol to a position where the engine claims it's +2, even though deeper analysis would disagree.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I will continue to use "unclear".

"Unclear" is a description of an experience. I feel this position is unclear. I can and do feel this way after analyzing with a computer sometimes.

I have never worked through as deep an analysis as the first position in `Dvoretsky's Analytical Manual: Practical Training for the Ambitious Chessplayer` That may be the least clear position I have ever experienced.

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Tags: analysis, terminology
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# Question
Title: Is there a website that records the moves of a chess game in video or gif format, and also allows illegal moves?
I've wanted to record some chess games in 2d video or gif form from a version that I made that has different rules, but it won't allow me to import it because it has illegal moves. Is there a way to get around this?

# Answer
Yes. gfychess.com allow you to import PGN files and convert to GIF with some illegal moves, such as moving pawns two spaces anywhere on the board, or taking your own pieces.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Yes, chess.com has its feature of producing gifs from PGNs or using game links. You can find the option here.
> 0 votes

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Tags: chess-variants, illegal-move
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# Question
Title: What are the [authentic] scientific studies conducted, which suggest that playing chess can cause weight loss by burning calories?
A video which conveys that playing a \[classical\] Chess game is equivalent to playing a singles lawn tennis when it comes to burning calories! \[It also suggests that\] Brain consumes a lot of glucose during such tournaments. Apparently the host says that it's backed up by some scientific research.

Which are such studies preferably with references?

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Related:

# Answer
> 2 votes
There are none. Exercise is a poor way of losing weight. You have to use large muscle groups for extended periods of time to achieve any significant weight loss. There are no muscles in the brain and there is little extra use of energy when playing chess (Subscription required). See also this:

> Quantitatively, metabolic and circulatory changes associated with \[brain\] activations are also distinctive. These changes are very small relative to the ongoing hemodynamic and metabolic activity of the brain. Attempts to measure whole brain changes in blood flow and metabolism during intense mental activity have failed to demonstrate any change (2). This finding is not entirely surprising considering both the accuracy of the methods and the small size of the observed changes. For example, local changes in blood flow measured with PET during most cognitive tasks are often 5% or less

The most effective way of losing weight is to permanently change your diet to one which consists mainly of highly nutritious food (meat, eggs and dairy) and consists of little (preferably none) of low nutrition foods which are the ones high in carbohydrates.

> Brain consumes a lot of glucose during such tournaments

The brain functions best on ketones which the body will manufacture from fat when glucose levels are low. High levels of glucose are very bad for the body and it will take immediate steps to reduce levels when this happens.

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Tags: tournament, reference-request, studies-published-report
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