# Question
Title: Was there anyway better to play this endgame?
```
[fen ""]
[Result "1-0"]
[ICCause "2"]
[ICEcause "4"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Nxe4 4.Qe2 Qe7 5.Qxe4 Nc6 6.d4 b6 7.d5 Nxe5 8.Bf4 Nf3+ 9.gxf3 Bb7 10.Nc3 f5 11.d6 cxd6 12.Qxe7+ Bxe7 13.O-O-O O-O 14.Bc4+ Kh8 15.Rhg1 g6 16.Nd5 Bh4 17.Rge1 Bxf2 18.Re7 Bxd5 19.Bxd5 Rad8 20.Bxd6 Bh4 21.Re5 Bg5+ 22.Kb1 Bf4 23.Bxf8 Bxe5 24.Re1 Bxh2 25.Be7 Rc8 26.Bf6#  1-0

```

# Answer
> 5 votes
There is not much of an endgame here. Black played the opening poorly, blundered a piece and white only had to convert the position with an extra piece which he did reasonably well.

Generally, in a clearly winning position, it is a bit meaningless to ask for better ways to play, or at least you need to specify what you mean by "better".

If you want the objectively best play you should have a computer engine analyze your game. This will tell you the best continuations, which is very roughly speaking, the shortest way to mate for the winning side or the longest way to mate for the losing side.

However as a human player that is not what you usually want in such situations. If you are on the losing side, you are basically hoping for mistakes from your opponent and you do everything to help him doing that (see also this recent question and answers), even if that means playing an objectively worse move. As such, in a lost position you:

* avoid simplification of the position, i.e. avoid the exchange of pieces
* try to complicate the position for instance by having more than one center of action
* try to set tactical traps
* try to create imbalances which are often more difficult to play (e.g. being a piece up is often an easier win than being an exchange plus a pawn up)
* go for a direct mating attack
* play quickly, hoping to get your opponent in time trouble
* aim for getting stalemated (only works rarely and only in endgames)

Conversely, if you have a winning position with material advantage (white here) you often:

* aim to simplify the position, by exchanging pieces
* avoid complications, e.g. by keeping the position closed to some extent
* keep your king safe
* slowly convert your advantage without rushing it

---

Regarding your game. The first main blunder by black is 6...b6. At this point black needs to play immediately 6...d6 in order to get the sacrificed piece back, taking advantage of the pinned knight on e5 while the white queen is unprotected. 6...b6 allows white to just defend his queen after which he is a piece up. Even worse, with 6...b6 black self-pins the knight on c6 and white could reply 7. Nc3, protecting the queen (thus winning a piece as above) and in addition creating the annoying threat Nd5 which attacks the black queen, threatens Nxc7+ and if the black queen leaves the e file you have deadly discovered checks with the knight on e5.

With 7. d5 white gives away all the advantage, losing his extra piece.

With 8. ...Nf3 black returns the favour. Most likely he was hoping to win the white queen, but did not take into account that the queen is protected after 9. gxf3. Now we have a clearly winning position for white and if white just makes normal moves, develops pieces, exchanges pieces, protects his pawns, there is not much that black can hope for. Creating complications after the queens get exchanged will be difficult because there is little material left and white does not have any major weaknesses. In what follows white made no major mistakes, but from a practical point of view, I would have played it more calmly/less tactical. Specifically:

* 11. d6!? This opens the diagonal for the bishop on b7. Why not just exchange queens, castle long, develop the bishop from f1, put the rooks on the open e-file and play it safe. There is not much active that black can do.
* 13. 0-0-0?! This allows 13. ... Bxf3 where black wins an exchange. So essentially white changes from playing with an extra piece to playing two pieces against a rook which is still winning but much more difficult to convert. Perhaps white should have left the king in the center on d2, where it is difficult to attack. The weak pawn on f3 could be protected with the bishop or sacrificed if you are going for active play.
* 13. ... 0-0? Black's best chance was to go for the Bxf3 line mentioned above.
* 15. Rhg1 Not a mistake, but 15. Bd5 would exchange black's strongest pieces and after 15...Bxd5 16. Nxd5, white would end up with a very strong knight and black with a very weak bishop on e7, which could be exchanged if needed, further limiting any potential counterplay.
* 15...g6 Still black could have taken on f3.
* 17. Rge1 natural enough move to occupy the open file, but Bxd6 could be a very good alternative, winning a pawn and threatening Be5+ with (almost) mate
* 19. ...Rad8 Too passive. If black hopes to get anything out of the game he should at least occupy the open e file by playing Rae8.
* 20. Bxd6. Here Bh6 would win an exchange because of the threat Bg7++.
* 21. Re5 a strange square for a rook. The discovered attack on the f8 rook is not dangerous and if you wanted to do that you could as well have done this with 21. Re2 which avoids any attacks on the rook as in the game. Generally, if the opponent has only one bishop, it is often a good idea to put your pieces on squares of opposite color to those on which that bishop operates. There is nothing wrong with 21. Re5, but from a practical standpoint it unnecessarily complicates the position.
* 24. Re1 As above, nothing wrong with this move, but it somewhat complicates the position. You have to calculate all kind of intermediate moves (like Bxb2, Bg3....). Easier would be to just move away the attacked bishop with 24. Bh6

---
Tags: endgame
---


# Question
Title: What does "knights have no long-lasting support points" mean in this game?
In this article on pawn structure, the author uses this game as example:

```
[Event "Prague 2008"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "David Navara"]
[Black "Vladimir Kramnik"]
[Result "0-1"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "rnbq1rk1/pp2bppp/2p5/2npP3/3N1P2/2NB4/PPP3PP/R1BQ1RK1 b - - 0 9"]
[WhiteElo ""]
[BlackElo ""]
[ECO ""]
[CurrentPosition "rnbq1rk1/pp2bppp/2p5/2npP3/3N1P2/2NB4/PPP3PP/R1BQ1RK1 b - - 0 9"]

9...Nxd3 10.Qxd3 f5! 11.Nb3 Na6 12.Be3 Nc7 { Defends d5 (making ...c5 possible) and, at the right time, move the knight to e6. } 13.Ne2 b6 14.Nbd4 Ba6 15.Qd2 Qe8 16.c3 c5 { The d4-knight is pushed back to the cold, dark, hellish vistas that occurs when you realize that you’ve been thoroughly outplayed. } 17.Nf3 Rd8 18.Rfd1 Ne6 { and Black has created a dream for Black. Here’s the rest of the game: } 19.a4 h6 20.a5 Qb5 21.Ng3 bxa5 22.Qc2 g6 23.Qa4 Qxa4 24.Rxa4 d4 25.cxd4 cxd4 26.Nxd4 Bc5 27.Rxa5 Nxd4 28.Rxa6 Nf3+ 29.Kf2 Bxe3+ 30.Kxf3 Rxd1 31.Kxe3 Rfd8 32.Rxg6+ Kh7 33.Ra6 R8d3+ 34.Kf2 R1d2+ 35.Ne2 Rd7 36.e6 Rb7 37.Ke3 Rdxb2 38.Nd4 R2b6 39.Rxb6 Rxb6 40.e7 Rb8 41.Nxf5 a5 42.Nd4 a4 43.Nc6 Re8 44.Kd4 Kg7 45.Kc4 Kf7 46.Kb4 Ra8 47.Ka3 Ra6 48.Nb4 Rd6 49.Kxa4 Kxe7 50.Kb5 Rd2 51.g4 Rxh2 52.Kc5 Ke6 53.Kd4 Rh4 54.f5+ Kf7 55.Ke5 Rxg4 56.Nd5 Ra4 57.Nc3 Rb4 58.Ne4 h5 59.Ng5+ Kg8 60.f6 h4 61.Kf5 Rb5+ 62.Kg6 Rxg5+ { , 0-1 }  0-1

```

Then, when explaining why `10... f5!` is a good movement, he says:

> The idea is that White’s knights have no long-lasting support points

What does this mean? how does the pawn on f5 achieve or help to this?

# Answer
> 3 votes
It's just another way of saying the knights will not be able to find permanent posts in this position because of black's central pawns. `f5` and `d5` are pinning down all the key light squares and the `c5` push to challenge the knight is unavoidable for white. In short, white cannot create useful space for the knights in this position (Notice that by move `21.Ng3`, the knights on `f3-g3` are well out of play as black's putting pressure on the centre and queen-side while white cannot create any immediate play with the knights on the king-side).

All of that adds up to the knights being a tad less useful than black's bishops in this position, bearing in mind black has no problem blockading the passed pawn. Black will try to play around White's fixed structure with the pawns on `f4-e5` (also blocking the bishop out of play). Notice that white's light square control is equally important here: `14...Ba6` stops any plan of playing `c4,` Kramnik's `Na6-Nc7-Ba6` maneuver is really beautiful.

The author's statement is made within the context of this position, and is not a general one. But generally, what you can intuitively imagine is that the equivalent of "*open diagonals*" for bishops is "*permanent central posts*" for knights.

# Answer
> 4 votes
It is not that the pawn on f5 achieves/helps this. As far as I understand Silman, what he means is that black can play 10...f5, which **gives white a protected passed pawn** and which **weakens the square e6**, because white's knights will eventually be driven away when black plays c5, etc

Look at the position after 18.... Ne6 for instance. Black has achieved everything he wanted: blocked the passed pawn with his knight, gained space in the center through his pawns on c5 and d5, has a very strong bishop on a6.... The white knights on the other hand have no good squares to go to and also the other pieces of white don't do much.

Consider the opposite situation, where the white knights could not be driven away (i.e. where they have long-lasting support points). For instance if white had a (protected) pawn on c5 in the initial position, black would have a very hard time after f5 because the knight on d4 attacks f5, c6 and hinders black from blocking the passed pawn by placing a piece on e6. It also hinders black from play on the queenside (because the c6 pawn might be weak or hanging). Furthermore the second white knight could be moved to e3 further adding to the pressure.

So essentially what Silman is saying is that Kramnik can play 10...f5 which is against the principle of not giving your opponent protected passed pawns, because in this situation here, white cannot make use of this asset. The knights will be kicked away and black's play on the queenside is more valuable than the protected passed pawn, which often only pays off in an endgame.

# Answer
> 1 votes
You can see as the game progresses and Blacks d5 pawn goes away, he still controls e4, thus depriving Whites knights of that square. I think the comment is a bit mistimed in his article and can see why you are confused by it, because e4 is already deprived by the d5 pawn so f5 doesn't at that moment independently contribute to that end.

---
Tags: strategy, pawns, pawn-structure, kramnik
---


# Question
Title: 2 rooks vs 2 minor pieces in a pawnless endgame
I know that 2 rooks vs 2 minor pieces is a win for the rooks (at least from the endgame tablebases), but I found nothing about the winning strategy.

For example, consider a KRR-KBB endgame with opposite colored bishops. It seems to me that the natural way for the rooks to win is to drive the enemy king to a corner, and then exchange the rook for the "good" bishop, which has the color opposite to the corne. This transforms it into to a KR-KB endgame with the opposing king is trapped in the "bad" corner so the side with rook wins.

How good good or bad is this strategy?

# Answer
> 4 votes
First of all I believe that this endgame must be really rare in practical games.

Playing around with the tablebase of rook+rook vs bishop+bishop, I noticed the following:

* the weaker side quickly runs out of checks
* the rooks cover quite some squares, leaving little space for the bishops
* it is not difficult for the rook side to avoid getting pinned
* with the help of all three pieces (two rooks + king) it is easy to drive the enemy king to the border
* once the king is at the edge of the board, you just threaten the typical mate with two rooks, to which there is no defense really (if a bishop is placed to protect against a check from the side, you can easily win this bishop using the other rook
* in many cases it also happens that you can win a bishop through a pin before the king is pushed to the side of the board

I suggest that you play this endgame against an engine to see for yourself. It does not seem particularly difficult that you would need any method. Just checking the king and pushing him to the border in the usual way is winning.

I'd expect that playing against two knights or bishop+knight should be even easier because of the shorter range of the knights.

---
Tags: endgame
---


# Question
Title: How to play against somebody using the book
I’ve not been playing chess that long, but I do not understand why chess.com and lichess have this thing called the book. This allows people to cheat in my ‘book”.

I used it for a while on lichess until it dawned on me I was learning nothing and became reliant on it.

Some people I play against use it and the book is useless whenever it can’t find a match for your position. Are there any tips to disrupt somebody using the book?

# Answer
The rules set by chess.com and lichess are basically the same (see this and this):

Use of computer programs or chess engines is not allowed for any kind of games. Use of (paper/e-book) opening books and games databases **is allowed** for correspondence/DailyChess games only.

So you cannot prevent your opponent from using an opening book. If you are uncomfortable with your opponent using help for the opening, there are a few things you can do:

* ask them not to use opening books
* try to play unrated games where players might be more eager to experiment (i.e. play without opening books)
* don't play correspondence games, but longer standard time controls
* go for sidelines that are not in the book (though that will not be good for improving your chess)

However IMO, correspondence chess is a special form of chess and the whole point there is that players get plenty of time in order to analyze the game on a board, in order to consult books, or even to use engines in some of the correspondence chess tournaments. Trying to restrict this seems kind of artificial to me. I mean, if you considered correspondence chess as just a regular game with extended time control (i.e. no external help whatsoever allowed), there is not much you gain from say having an hour per move or having a week for a move.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: opening, correspondence-chess
---


title: Clock simul time control

text:
# Question
Title: Clock simul time control
We would like to organise a simultaneous exhibiton at our chess club, but as we only have the room booked for 2.5hrs, we fear that it might not be over in the given time. I've heard about clock simuls, but I haven't found any "rules" on how to set the time control for each player. I'm assuming that the exhibitor should have a lot more time than the challengers (as he needs to spend time at different boards while all his clocks might be running simultaneously) but I don't know how much time would be fair to set (given that the simul should last for 2hrs, for example). Do you have any suggestions?

# Answer
> 2 votes
> A chess simultaneous display is where a strong player takes on more than one opponent simultaneously. Sometimes this is done with clocks but more usually without, **when people must move when the simul giver arrives at their board**.

Source: Chess Simul – Advice on giving and taking part, emphasis is mine

I would suggest using a single (normal) clock for all games. If a player (not the simul giver) has not ended their game after that time limit expires, then they lose on time. In this system, the simul giver cannot lose on time.

I would also advise that there is an arbiter present to prevent unreasonable delays when the simul giver comes to a player's board. In some simuls, a player is allowed three passes when the simul giver arrives at their board.

---
Tags: time-control, simultaneous
---


# Question
Title: Openings Recommendations to Study for Unrated Tournament
In little over a month I am planning on playing an unrated tournament. Since it is unrated I am assuming the skill level could possibly be from novice to strong. Due to the entry fee being very low I don't expect masters to be playing. My own play level, for discussion's sake, is amateur.

What openings would be recommended to study in preparation? I would like to build a repertoire for this event.

# Answer
I would personally stick to learning a few e4 and d4 variations and maybe the English Opening, though I didn't see it much at lower level play. I am also adding some fun, fairly solid variations if you wanted try the more obscure openings

**Ruy Lopez** 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5

A personal favorite of mine, especially the Rio Gambit Accepted line 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Nxe4, but in general it can create early control of the center and can lead to a strong position with an active bishop or forcing black to double pawns

---

Not my preference, but I used to see a lot of the **Giuoco Piano**

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5

and the **Giuoco Pianissimo**

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. d3

I wouldn't stress studying this one

---

**Sicilian Defense** 1. e4 c5

It's rare for me not to see this opening.

*Sicilian Sveshnikov*
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e5 6.Ndb5 d6.

It gives a menacing knight position to white, but allows you to prepare your pieces for development and gains a general grasp in the center

*Sicilian Dragon* 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6

Can create very aggressive and constricting pawn marches for white and a fianchettoed bishop and free queen for black. This is very aggressive and loads of fun to play

---

**English Opening** 1. c4

A very flexible and reliable opening if you are well studied into it.

---

**King's Gambit** 1. e4 e5 2. f4

A sacrificed pawn for quick development. What's not to like

---

A few others you could also look into are the Pirc Defense, Indian-Defenses, Queen's Gambit, Caro-Kann
> 1 votes

---
Tags: opening, tournament, repertoire
---


title: Is this tactics puzzle flawed?

text:
# Question
Title: Is this tactics puzzle flawed?
While solving puzzles on ChessTempo, I came across this puzzle:

```
[FEN "8/8/1p6/p1p3p1/P1P1B1K1/1P2kP2/5n2/8 w - - 9 1"]

1. Kf5

```

I played the intended correct answer,

```
[FEN "8/8/1p6/p1p3p1/P1P1B1K1/1P2kP2/5n2/8 w - - 9 1"]

1. Kf5 g4 2. fxg4 Nxe4

```

My question now, is this final position drawn, thus invalidating the puzzle?

I tried some lines but they all seemed to draw. Example:

```
[FEN "8/8/1p6/p1p3p1/P1P1B1K1/1P2kP2/5n2/8 w - - 9 1"]

1. Kf5 g4 2. fxg4 Nxe4 3. Ke5 Kd3 4. Kd5 Nf6+
5. Kc6 Kc2 6. Kxb6 Kxb3 7. g5 Ne4 8. Kxa5 Kxc4 {Tablebase draw} 1/2-1/2

```

# Answer
> 5 votes
Yes this seems to be a drawn endgame, most variations actually end up in a queen vs queen+knight situation which is generally a drawn endgame (one example below). But that doesn't mean the puzzle is *flawed* because as far as I know chesstempo puzzles are just about finding the *best moves* a priori, thus not always about a winning line. Good tactics trainers (such as chesstempo, lichess...) usually only say which side is to move, and the objective of the puzzle is actually part of the puzzle itself (that is, whether one is to play to mate, play to win material, or play to draw etc.)

In this particular position black has to come up with the best moves in order to hold the game it seems.

```
 [title "One possible continuation, 1/2-1/2"]
 [fen "8/8/1p6/p1p3p1/P1P1B1K1/1P2kP2/5n2/8 w - - 0 1"]

 1. Kf5 g4 2. fxg4 Nxe4 3. Ke5 Kd3 4. Kd5 Ng5 5. Kc6 Kc3 6. Kxb6 Kb4 7. Kc6 Nf7 8. Kb6 Ng5 9. Kc6 Kxb3 10. Kxc5 Kxa4 11. Kd6 Kb4 12. c5 Ne4+ 13. Ke5 Nxc5 14. g5 a4 15. g6 a3 16. g7 a2 17. g8=Q a1=Q+ 18. Kf5 Qf1+ 19. Kg6 Qg2+ 20. Kh7

```

# Answer
> 3 votes
I agree that this game seems to be a draw. And this fact DOES make the puzzle flawed, according to the rules of ChessTempo.

The rules of problems depend on the website. On some websites, the problem simply requires to find the best move. In those cases, the best move can be a winning move, or it can be a move that draws or equalizes an apparently lost position.

But on ChessTempo, the rules are different, the player is required to find a move that wins, and this is defined as giving a won endgame, or an advantage of at least two pawns.

So, if this position is really drawn (as it seems), then this puzzle is wrong, and should be reported to the administrators of the site.

---
Tags: endgame, tactics
---


# Question
Title: When to (and when not to) play Bxc6 (i.e. BxN) as White in Ruy Lopez?
Inspired by this question: when should one play Bxc6, capturing the Knight, in Ruy Lopez?

**Related**, but hopefully not a duplicate: this question, but it focusses on why Bxc6 isn't a popular move, while I ask what factors and ideas to consider while making the move.

### To elaborate

In the early stages of Ruy Lopez, Black's Knight is en prise for several moves and White's Bishop can capture it. However, this capture sometimes occurs and sometimes doesn't.

I haven't found a clear reason why White sometimes makes the capture and sometimes doesn't. It would help to know the what factors to consider before making the move.

### In short

I'd like to know the general ideas and motivating factors behind the capture (Bxc6), and when to, as well as when not to, make the capture (as White).

# Answer
> 1 votes
4 Bxc6 became popular after Fischer made extensive use of it. He followed up with 5.O-O and although this is no longer fashionable at GM level, a lot of lesser players are uncomfortable. White can choose to develop an attack against the King (because the center is closed to counterattacks) or play for a favorable ending, and can keep the options open for quite a long time. So, if you have Black, do you seek exchanges to avoid the attack, or do you decline the exchanges to avoid the ending? You constantly have to make that choice. The variation with 5.d4 usually leads directly to a Queen trade (5.d4 exd 6.Qxd4 Qxd4 7. Nxd4 and is played if White definitely wants the ending.

The point about Bxc6 is not that it gains a large advantage, but that White gets to decide what sort of game it will be. Those doubled Pawns are not weak, because they are hard to attack, but they make it very difficult for Black to create a passed Pawn. If you feel at ease in the resulting positions and if you study typical plans, then Bxc6 can almost always be a good move. However, the game that results is often dry and technical, so you had better enjoy that kind of thing.

I recall what Blackburne said about opening with 1.c4 "I do not play this because I like it, but because my opponent likes it less."

# Answer
> 3 votes
It is just a matter of taste. There are pluses and minuses to the move, but the strategic idea is gaining a better pawn structure. I have played the Exchange 4.Bxc6; the Deferred Exchange 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.Bxc6; and the Double-Deferred Exchange 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Bxc6. All have unique flavors and Black has to know the ideas in each or risks a very bad game. The Exchange variation was used with success by Fischer.

# Answer
> 0 votes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruy\_Lopez,\_Exchange\_Variation Links gives some pro's. Specifically endgame Pawn structure.

I haven't had much success with this variation. I wonder if losing the bishop pair outweighs weakening Black's Pawn structure is a reason I haven't had much success(the link mentions about these two issues). I fail at taking advantage of that and unsure why I do so but I still like the idea because of the move d4 after the exchange appeals to me.

---
Tags: opening, strategy, ruy-lopez, exchange, doubled-pawn
---


# Question
Title: Endgame study - how much time per exercise
I've decided to give endgame study high priority, and I'm studying Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, though also glancing around in other books. The issue is, that I'm finding Dvoretsky's exercises really, really difficult, and I can easily spend an hour or so on a single exercise and still miss something. This goes even relatively simple looking pawn endings.

I would like to know, from players who consider themselves as strong endgame players, if it sounds reasonable to indeed spend so much time per exercise? Or maybe, a more recommended course of action would be to spend 10-15 min on each exercises, look at the solution and try to internalize what the thought process should have been to get it right?

# Answer
> 2 votes
If you're an expert player (\>2000 Elo) there is nothing wrong with taking your time on each exercise; you will get most of them eventually if you put in some serious effort.

However, if you're rated 1700-1900 Elo (or even lower) you will most likely fail on most exercises in the Dvoretsky book, even if you spend lots of time on them. In this case you could spend 10-15 minutes on an exercise, and if you feel like you haven't found the solution you can setup the position on a chess board and start moving the pieces around to see whether you can find the solution this way.

Dvoretsky's endgame manual is an excellent endgame book (arguably the best general endgame book out there), but it's aimed at players who are already quite strong. There are other great endgame books on the market that are accessible to players at a lower level; I'd recommend *Silman's complete endgame course* by IM Jeremy Silman, and *100 endgames you must know* by GM Jesus de la Villa. Both of these are structured in a radically different way from Dvoretsky's book, but they are easier to follow and will give you more bang for your buck as a lower rated player. Dvoretsky's book can wait; it will still be there when you've gotten strong enough to take full advantage of it.

---
Tags: endgame, study, pawn-endgame, studies
---


# Question
Title: Suggestions for Newb in search of improving mid and end game strategy
Fairly new to chess, but have fallen in love and want to increase my strategies and techniques. All the reading and videos I’ve read and watched tend to overcomplicate to the point I get lost in the details.

Any suggestions on materials that keep strategy/technique teaching extremely simple and easy to understand would be greatly appreciated!

Approximately, how much can a player improve their winning percentage by reading and watching books and tutorials, versus, learning through playing repeatedly and learning from the mistakes made? Just curious to hear different opinions on this...

Thanks in advance for any positive feedback provided!

Cheers

# Answer
> 1 votes
In order to improve you need to 1) **study theory**, 2) **play games** and 3) **analyze those games**. Repeat until you are world champion.

Specifically to these steps....

## Study theory

As a beginner your biggest concern should be tactics. Start training yourself to always be aware of which pieces/squares are attacked, so that you don't blunder pieces in one move. You don't need to scan the whole board each and every time to check this. Use a gradual approach: since a move will only affect part of the board, update (in your memory) the information depending on which new squares/pieces are attacked (and which are not attacked anymore). For the long-range pieces (rook, bishop, queen), it might help if you imagine their range as some kind of "shooting range"/no-go zone,... whatever helps you to visualize it. For instance for a rook on h4 don't imagine that it attacks the squares g4, f4, e4, ..., a4, but imagine it as a piece which covers all of the 4th rank (giving it options to capture everywhere on this rank but also options to move everywhere on this rank). As you improve this will come naturally.

Also at this stage you want to learn and practice simple tactics, such as pawn and knight forks, pins, etc. There are many websites (lichess, chesstempo...) giving you tactics puzzles depending on your strength. For a beginner I recommend chesstempo, because each puzzle is tagged with the tactical motive(s). When solving puzzles (or fail to solve) make sure you recognize these motives in the respective puzzle.

Besides tactics, you need to learn some basic principles for the opening such as: develop pieces quickly, occupy the center, keep your king safe/castle, attack something.

Also learning some basic endgames such as mating with queen, rook, bishops, King+pawn vs king, ... will teach you a lot.

Don't bother learning any opening theory yet, because you are not in the position to understand the ideas behind the openings and will not be able to take advantage if your opponent plays a move you did not learn.

## Play games

Avoid short time controls which don't give you enough time to think. I'd recommend at least 20 minutes or more.

## Analyze

If you play online (e.g. on lichess) you have the option to automatically have the game analyzed by a computer engine. Do this and look for the main mistakes/blunders (where the evaluation jumped a lot). Understand why that was a bad move. Try to find a better move and compare with the computer suggested move. This will only teach you tactical mistakes.

Figuring out positional/strategic problems in your play is much more difficult and just about impossible if you are on your own. Ideally you'd have another, better player look over your games and point out some problems with your strategy.

For passive learning of strategy, reading/watching annotated games could be an option. Nowadays there are lots of streamers out there commenting while playing games online. Some of the chess24 streamers seem suitable for beginners.

Ideally you'd join a chess club where you can play, get tips from other players, etc.

---
Tags: strategy, online-chess
---


title: Could the black king move to C5?

text:
# Question
Title: Could the black king move to C5?
Could the black king move to C5?

# Answer
No, it is checkmate. Even if Pb4 is pinned, it still controls square c5, preventing the black king to move there.

Check rules 3.9.1 and 3.9.2 of the laws of chess.

> 3.9.1 The king is said to be 'in check' if it is attacked by one or more of the opponent's pieces, **even if such pieces are constrained from moving to the square occupied by the king because they would then leave or place their own king in check**.
>
> 3.9.2
> No piece can be moved that will either expose the king of the same colour to check or leave that king in check.

(emphasis mine)

1...Kc5 is illegal.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: checkmate
---


# Question
Title: Could chess puzzles change with the introduction of stronger engines?
Something I've noticed is even older chess puzzles never seem to age, somehow they even seem more masterful and demanding then the puzzles created today, but what if the solution for a puzzle is refuted by a program such as AlphaZero, or when quantum super computers are made, stronger engines, *different engines*?Will there be any shift with established puzzles, or do we just get to enjoy new theory and *different* puzzles?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Our modern chess engines are already perfect for solving tactical puzzles. @Bad\_Bishop's example is an easy problem for Stockfish.

If you're talking about artificial deep chess **problems** (not puzzles), even AlphaZero might have problems. Some chess engines (e.g. Houdini) has a "tactic" mode for those problems.

**No**. Nothing much will change with stronger engines.

# Answer
> 4 votes
Most probably a wide majority of cooked puzzles from history are already within the grasp of today's computers (and even of computers from, say, 2005), and that's why new softwares shouldn't bring any major changes, but it doesn't mean that they wouldn't bring some marginal corrections.

A funny example is given by Tim Krabbé in entry 324, "**A cooked, correct study**", of his chess diary.

```
[FEN "8/8/7r/3N4/8/8/7P/R3K2k w - - 0 1"]

```

White to play and win - E. Pogosyants, EG 1978

From the human point of view, the single solution is the composer's intention: 1.Ne3 Rxh2 2.0-0-0#.

From the tablebase point of view, since castling is not implemented (at least, such was the case in 2006, it might have changed...), this solution is impossible. However, there is also a single winning move: 1.h4! after which the KRNKR endgame is a mate in 33. Less poetic, sure.

Tim Krabbé:

> So this is a study with two solutions. A human solution that is beyond the grasp of the tablebase, and a tablebase solution that is beyond the grasp of humans.

The main but pointless point is that the puzzle *has* changed because of the computer assessment.

---
Tags: engines, puzzles, chess-ai
---


title: Examples of harmony?

text:
# Question
Title: Examples of harmony?
Recently my chess tutor used a word which in hindsight is very interesting: harmony. He mentioned I should not just develop my pieces in the opening, but develop them harmoniously. Since then, I've noticed this word pop up again and again in various books. At the time, I took it to mean "make sure they are defending each other and working toward a common and well-defined goal", but I didn't really press for clarification.

Of course, in our next lesson, I'm going to ask him about this, but in the interim, I am hoping you can give your favorite examples of harmonious positions/development, as well as non-harmonious positions/development, including why they are harmonious/non-harmonious. In particular, is my above understanding of harmony correct or is it sometimes more subtle than that?

# Answer
Admittedly, it's hard to make general abstract statements of any kind about chess (e.g. to say what "harmonious play" means) as it is a highly complex and concrete game. So everything said about it must be taken with some grain of salt, and with that in mind, here are some thoughts that will hopefully help you:

Let's draw an analogy with music: (-\> used for synonym here)

* harmony -\> consonance -\> unison of notes

Somewhat similarly in chess this sequence translates into:

* harmony -\> consistency -\> synergy of pieces

**Consistency**: "Having a bad plan is better than having none" by Yasser Seirawan (I'm paraphrasing). This quote really captures the essence: you need to have a strategy planned out which gives your play a sense of direction, otherwise your pieces would be moving around purposelessly all over the board which ultimately leads to redundancies (lost tempi), self-induced weaknesses, low value pieces (non-optimally developed), and so on. So always try to play with a plan in mind, as far fetched as it may seem, and make your decisions in consistence with that plan.

Now to clarify what strategy entails here, one would have to put it into context, but in general it goes without saying that it takes into account not only what you plan to achieve but also what your opponent is aiming for, so it's always adaptive. A strategy/plan in the opening and middlegames could be anything, for instance:

* Establishing a minor piece on a certain square - e.g. knights on permanent posts.
* A queen-side, central or king-side pawn expansion - e.g. sharp Sicilian type of positions
* Forcing the trade of a bad piece - e.g. the caged c8 bishop in many queen's pawn games
* Pawn breaks: plans to open up the game by undermining/challenging an advanced pawn (chain) - e.g. e5 - c5 type of breaks in many queen's pawn games again
* Gaining control over an open file or diagonal - e.g. being a tempo up in doubling your rooks and claiming the open file.
* Enabling a certain piece - e.g. fianchetto'ed bishops.
* the list goes on.

**Synergy**: or more simply coordination, means how to *collectively* coordinate your pieces towards achieving your planned strategy, after all chess is a team sport among your pieces. Given a target in mind, having a good coordination means you're enabling the right pieces efficiently (minimal tempi investment) while countering your opponent's preventive pieces of that plan. Slightly unlike strategizing, achieving a good coordination requires concrete (calculating actual lines) and tactical (using all the resources in the position) assessment of the position at hand.

So synergizing your pieces in accordance to a plan/strategy can be labelled as *harmonious play.* Harmony is precisely what opening theory provides us: openings revolve around very clear ideas (take any opening: Sicilian, Benko gambit, Nimzo, ...) and in a way provide also the recipes for how to achieve those ideas (concrete lines and side-lines). So learning from them you can form a mindset for how to develop your pieces harmoniously.

Now some examples: (in what follows I'll be mainly focusing on a schematic analysis of the ideas, as opposed to a purely concrete one).

**Example #1**: Sicilian Najdorf, in this example white's main plan revolves around (i) establishing a minor piece, preferably a knight, on the permanently (cannot be challenged by pawns) weakened `d5` square (ii) while not allowing black to expand on the queen-side. Once can argue that (ii) is in fact a side-plan that actually enables (i), as you will see later in the game. Coordination: To achieve (i) we need to remove the defenders of that square (`d5`), namely the `f6` knight and the potential `e6` bishop, develop or re-route the knights so they can simultaneously eye `d5`. The two defenders will have to be negated by our bishops (`Bg5` for `f6` and `Bc4` for `Be6`). (ii) on the other hand, is achieved by a timely `a4-a5` push, to permanently stop black from establishing a pawn on `b5` or a knight on `b6,` nor even allow them to semi-open the `b-file` with `b6.` (Diagrams annotated with additional remarks):

```
 [title "M. Vachier-Lagrave vs I. Nepomniachtchi 1-0, Sinquefield Cup 2017"]
 [fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

 1. e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 e5 {First critical moment: Black has finally made their intentions clear with a very committal e5 - all e6 or g6 variations are irrelevant now} 7.Nf3 {Instead of Nb3 because white wants to be able to re-route to d5 either via c4-e3 or c4-b6} Be7 8.Bg5 {developing the bishop to immediately challenge the f6 knight guarding the d5 square} Nbd7 9.a4 {Stopping b5} O-O 10.Nd2 {Re-routing to c4 while waiting for the d7 knight to move before capturing on f6, we don't want to allow a knight recapture.} Nc5 11.Bxf6 Bxf6 12.Nc4 Be7 13.a5 {Completely stopping any b5 or b6 ideas with a5 and Nc4} Rb8 14.Nb6 Nd7 15.Ncd5 {with a5 critically re-enforcing b6, a knight on b6 and d5, black has no way of establishing a knight on either f6 or b6} Nxb6 16.Nxb6 Be6 {last resort to stop Nd5} 17.Bc4 {immediately challenged - notice the coordination between white's pieces up to this point, almost perfect!} Qc7 {Freeing d8 square to re-route the dark-squared bishop in order to capture the knight before landing on d5.} 18.Qd3 Bd8 19.c3 Qc6 {preparing Bxb6, note black doesn't mind recapturing with the f-pawn on e6 as that would provide black with some well needed light-square control} 20.Bd5 {important intermediate move: first pushing the queen away from the defense of d6 pawn, then capturing on e6 to force black to re-capture with the queen. These are all the tactical/concrete aspects we were talking about earlier.} Qe8 21.Bxe6 Qxe6 22.Nd5 {Mission accomplished: you can argue that white has already won the main strategic battle of the game.} f5 {an important pawn break: to primarily undermine the defense of d5 while also creating play on the king-side} 23.O-O Rc8 24.Rfd1 fxe4 25.Qxe4 Qf5 26.Qe2 Kh8 27.c4 {the knight in untouchable. In what follows we have a beautiful conversion of this positional advantage into a win.} Bh4 28.g3 Bg5 29.Ra3 Rce8 30.h4 Bd8 31.b4 Qg6 32.h5 Qf5 33.Ne3 Qe6 34.Rad3 Be7 35.Nd5 Bd8 36.Rf3 Rxf3 37.Qxf3 Kg8 38.Kg2 e4 39.Qe2 Qe5 40.Ne3 Bg5 41.Rd5 Qf6 42.Nf5 Re6 43.c5 dxc5 44.Qc4 Qf7 45.Rxc5 h6 46.Rc8+ Kh7 47.g4 Re7 48.Qd4 Re6 49.Qd5 g6 50.hxg6+ Kxg6 51.Rf8 Qxf8 52.Qxe6+ 1-0

```

**Example #2**: Catalan by Kramnik, a lot of the ideas in the Catalan revolve mainly around the g2 fianchetto'ed bishop, that is, we want to on the one hand, prevent black from finding ways to exchange our g2 bishop, and on the other hand, further enable the bishop by challenging the g2-b7 diagonal. The g2 bishop similar to the g7 bishop for black in the Benko gambit, is what gives us a sense of direction in our play. Now let's watch Kramnik in action:

```
 [Title "Vladimir Kramnik vs Anish Giri 2014 (1-0)"]
 [fen ""]

 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.g3 dxc4 6.Bg2 b5 7.Ne5 {Adding pressure on c6} a6 {There's a tactical idea involved here: white would be doing themselves a dis-favour if they took on c6 here, as 8.Nxc6 Qb6 9.Nxb8 Bb7 would actually enable black to quickly challenge the g2 bishop forcing an undesired e4, while having got rid of the c6 weakness} 8.O-O Bb7 9.b3 {challenging the light-square control, in order to prepare Nd3. Note that white's queen-side pawns are often absorbed in challenging black's queen-side pawn expansion in these types of positions} cxb3 10.axb3 Be7 11.Bb2 O-O 12.Qc2 Nfd7 13.Nd3 Qb6 14.Ne4 {both knights coordinating towards the control of c5 square: as long as we control c5 the c6 weakness stands for black, a clear target for white} a5 15.Ndc5 Bc8 16.Qc3 b4 17.Qe3 Na6 18.Rfc1 {immediately re-enforce c5 after black's renewed challenge.} Nc7 19.Nxd7 Bxd7 20.Nc5 Be8 {let's step back and look at the position: Both semi-open a and c files contain black back-pawns, the c5 control has completely disabled black from getting rid of the c6 weakness, with a passive bishop on e8 black has no means of challenging white's g2 bishop,... we can safely say: white has won the main strategic battle of the game.} 21.Ra2 Qb5 22.Qd3 {The rest is Kramnik's beautiful conversion of this clear positional advantage} Qxd3 23.Nxd3 Nd5 24.Ne5 Ra6 25.Bf1 Nc3 26.Bxc3 bxc3 27.Rxc3 c5 28.dxc5 Bf6 29.f4 Bb5 30.Bg2 Ra7 31.c6 Be7 32.Be4 f6 33.Nf3 Rd8 34.e3 e5 35.fxe5 fxe5 36.Rc1 a4 37.bxa4

```
> 6 votes

# Answer
As in music, harmony is difficult to define, but two things come to mind.

One is the advice given "Talk to your pieces". Ask them if they feel like they belong to a team. If one of them says, "No I don't" then ask them why not and try to fix it.

The other is something said to me once by a very strong player "Try to make sure that each of your pieces is well-placed on its present square and has another good square to go to. In the two examples given by Phonon, that was true at almost every stage of the winners game.
> 5 votes

# Answer
I would suggest the 16th game of the 1985 WC match between Karpov (White) and Kasparov (Black).

Look after move 21:

```
[FEN "2rqr1k1/5p2/p2b1n1p/3P1bp1/Np6/1P1n1BB1/P2Q1PPP/1N1R1RK1 w - - 0 1"]

```

Although they don't create immediate threats, all black pieces work together, achieving complete control of all parts of the board until the fourth rank. Even squares deep in White territory are dominated by the pieces: c3,d3,c2,b2. There is excellent coordination (only Bf5, Ph6 and Pa6 are not protected) and complementarity (for instance, important squares such as c5,e5,e4 are controled three times).

So, I would define Black position has very harmonious. As a contrast, notice White minor pieces: the knights are quicked away from the center and the bishops are in front of their pawns, restricting their movements: not harmonious!

White doesn't have useful moves and soon found himself in near zugzwang.

Generally, your description of chess harmony sounds correct. I would suffer to give anything else than an intuitive definition of this concept.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: opening, strategy, positional-play, beginner, minor-pieces
---


title: Is castling legal in this position?

text:
# Question
Title: Is castling legal in this position?
Black's to move in a game I just played. My rival and I were wondering about castling.

Exactly:

1. White bishop in D6 threatens B8. Is legal for black to make long (queen) castle? (Black king and rooks have not moved)
2. If white bishop were in E5 threatening H8, would be legal short (king) castle?

Position:

```
 [title "-"]
 [fen "r3k2r/pp1nnp2/2pB2pp/3p1p2/3P4/2N3PB/PPP1PP1P/R3K2R b KQkq - 0 1"]

```

# Answer
> 9 votes
Yes black is allowed to castle here. The castling would be invalidated if one of the squares along the path the king has to cross (`e8` to `g8` or `e8` to `c8`) was under attack by an opponent piece. In your position, for example if the bishop was on `c7`, or a knight was on `e6` then castling wouldn't be allowed. Whereas the bishop on `d6` eyeing `b8` only concerns the rook's path to complete castling, so long castling remains legal.

Similarly, if the bishop was on `e5,` by the same logic short castling would still be allowed.

```
 [title "Position"]
 [fen "r3k2r/pp1nnp2/2pB2pp/3p1p2/3P4/2N3PB/PPP1PP1P/R3K2R b KQkq - 0 1"]

 1...O-O-O

```

# Answer
> 5 votes
Yes, it is legal. The King cannot move through check, however, the King will pass through both d8 and c8, which are both legal moves. The rook has no such limitation.

---
Tags: rules, castling
---


# Question
Title: Is there any software that will print a .pgn file in scoresheet layout
I'm looking for some software that will print the moves as

```
1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Bb5 Nf6

```

etc.

Instead of

```
1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6

```

etc.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Scid can export to pgn, LaTeX and HTML. During export you have the option ''Column style (one move per line)? Yes/No''

I just tried it and it works for all three export formats. That's for scid version 4.6.4 on linux.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I've just discovered that Fritz (which I have) also has a "Print Scoresheet" option. Thanks to everyone who answered.

---
Tags: pgn
---


# Question
Title: Shortest sequence of moves to create biggest material imbalance
What is the shortest game with the largest material imbalance? This of course means that one side will have 9 queens, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights, and a king, and a bare king on the other side. From some experimenting, I got this:

```
[FEN ""]

1.h4 g5 2.hxg5 h6 3.gxh6 Rh7 4.g4 Rg7 5.h7 Rg6 6.h8=Q Bh6 7.g5 f5 8.f4 e6 9.e4 d5 10.d4 c5 11.c4 b5 12.b4 a5 13.a4 Qe7 14.exf5 Bb7 15.fxe6 Bc6 16.cxd5 Bb7 17.bxc5 Bc8 18.axb5 Bb7 19.c6 Bc8 20.Rxa5 Ra7 21.b6 Rd7 22.Qe5 Nf6 23.b7 Kf8 24.c7 Rd6 25.f5 Kg8 26.Nc3 Bd7 27.c8=Q+ Kh7 28.Qc4 Nc6 29.b8=Q Be8 30.Bd2 Qf8 31.e7 Qg7 32.Bg2 Bf7 33.e8=Q Re6 34.dxe6 Bg8 35.d5 Nb4 36.d6 Nc6 37.d7 Nb4 38.d8=Q Nc6 39.e7 Nb4 40.Qdd7 Na6 41.Qed8 Nc5 42.e8=Q Nd3+ 43.Qcxd3 Ng4 44.f6 Ne3 45.f7 Nf5 46.f8=Q Qf7 47.Qfb4 Rg7 48.g6+ Kh8 49.gxf7 Ne7 50.Q3d6 Kh7 51.Q6xe7 Kh8 52.f8=Q Kh7 53.Qed5 Rf7 54.Bh3 Kh8 55.Q7xf7 Bg7 56.Ke2 Kh7 57.Ke3 Kh6 58.Kf4 Kh7 59.Q8xg8+ Kh6 60.Qgxg7#  0-1

```

This can of course be improved though, as I was essentially moving pieces around randomly.

# Answer
> 12 votes
I got this, which is much shorter.

```
[FEN ""]

1. a4 a5 2. b4 b5 3. c4 c5 4. d4 d5 5. e4 e5 6. f4 f5 7. g4 g5 8. h4 h5 9. bxa5 Bd6 10. axb5 Be6 11. dxc5 Nf6 12. cxd5 O-O 13. fxe5 Rf7 14. exf5 Ra6 15. gxh5 Rb7 16. hxg5 Rbb6 17. bxa6 Nc6 18. axb6 Qe7 19. dxc6 Kh8 20. cxd6 Ng8 21. a7 Qf6 22. gxf6 Ne7 23. b7 Bd7 24. e6 Ng8 25. c7 Kh7 26. f7 Kg7 27. e7 Kf6 28. h6 Ke5 29. f6 Kf5 30. a8=Q Kg6 31. b8=Q Ba4 32. c8=Q Bb5 33. f8=Q Bc4 34. d7 Bd5 35. d8=Q Be4 36. f7 Bf5 37. e8=Q Bd7 38. h7 Bc6 39. h8=Q Bb7 40. Qcxb7 Kf5 41. fxg8=Q#

```

It's one move above the lower bound, but I feel that this is optimal.

---

As @Evargalo suggested, here is @user1583209's proof of optimality from their comments.

"I have a proof now: Start by labeling the columns/files by numbers, i.e. a=1, b=2...h=8. Then for each pawn calculate the sum of the respective files. So in the initial position this sum is 1+2+3...+8=36. Now, if a pawn captures, it changes its file by "1" (either plus or minus 1). In order to achieve a solution in 40 moves, we have to queen the pawns on each of the squares on the 8th rank. This means that in the final position the sum of files (for pawns+promoted pawns now) needs to be 36 again. However we also need to do 15 captures with these pawns. Each capture changing the file sum by 1, it is impossible to end up with 36 as sum, basically because 15 is an odd number. (If you have x captures to the left and y captures to the right you end up with equations: x-y=0 and x+y=15 which has no integer solution) That proves that it is impossible to achieve a solution in 40 moves and the solution with 41 moves given by orlp is optimal."

---
Tags: problems, records, material-balance
---


title: Players that have trouble finishing

text:
# Question
Title: Players that have trouble finishing
Some players have trouble converting a winning position, perhaps even blowing it. As the strength increases, these "winning" advantages become smaller and more subtle.

How does one "finish" in chess? Is it about defense, or having a strong attack?

# Answer
**All players have trouble finishing, also GM's, only at a different level.**

For instance, there are many examples of winning (especially rook) endgames that where drawn by top players.

It is never easy to win a winning position, and it is always possible to blunder. In fact, it is one of the most difficult things in chess to win a winning position.

**Why?**

Because there are many possible reasons why a winning position can be lost or drawn. The most common reason are big blunders, where the player loses material. But there are also more sophisticated examples of how a winning position can be lost, for instance if the attacker has a winning position, but he ignores counterplay of his opponent. Another example is, that the position is strategically winning, but the player doesn't know the winning strategy, for example if he has a big lead in development, but he doesn't open the position, or if he is in an endgame, and he trades the wrong pieces, so that the win turns into a draw.

Furthermore it is not easy to tell whether an advantage is big enough to win and how exactly to do this. This is one of the skills that make a strong players. I recommend you to read the chapter "Winnability" of the book "What it takes to become a chess master" of Andrew Soltis, if you have access to this book.

**So how can you improve your ability of converting a winning position in a win?**

First of all, there are some well known technical principles for converting an advantage into a win: **Avoid blunders/counterplay! (most important)** If possible, try to understand where your opponents counterplay could come from, and try to avoid it. (This is not always possible.)

**Never rush!** If your opponent has no counterplay, then you don't need to rush. For example, before you attack, bring up all your reserves!

There are other principles, but these two are most important. Follow these principles, and try to constantly improve your position.

A good exercise is to chose a winning position and try to win it against a strong player/stockfish.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Id' reckon converting an advantage into an actual win has a lot to do with keeping in mind that a position is worth nothing unless you are there to steer it accurately towards victory. Otherwise it's very easy to be visited by 'the ghost of the won position', which would try to convince you that you can relax before the game is over, trying to trick you into making unneccessary mistakes which would diminish your advantage.

When you write "finish" I interpret that as "converting a big advantage into a win". Is this a correct interpretation? If so, then it all depends on the position at hand; if your opponent played an unsound sacrifice for an attack you may have to defend, while if your opponent played too passively you may have to attack to accurately steer the game towards its logical conclusion.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: learning
---


title: Swiss system chess tournament

text:
# Question
Title: Swiss system chess tournament
In a swiss system chess tournament, how long should a round last? If a player exceeds his time who will be the winner?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Swiss system has nothing to do with time controls. It is a tournament pairing system based on the principle that in each round players with so far similar results are paired together, and that each player has approximately as many games with white and black. Details can be found in wikipedia.

---
Tags: time-control, swiss-pairing
---


# Question
Title: Which pieces do I have to keep on the board, to win my endgame?
How do I win this endgame?

```
2R5/pr6/3kp2p/4n1p1/5B2/P4P2/2P1K1PP/8 w - - 0 1

```

More specifically, I want to know whether I should trade off pieces, and in case of a trade, which pieces I should keep on the board.

I considered three options here:

**A** Keep all the pieces on the board.
This could be done by 1.Bg3 Kd5 2.Rh8 etc.

**B** Trade off the rooks.
This could be achieved by 1. Rd8+ Rd7 2. Rxd7 Nxd7 etc.
1...Nd7 is bad because of 2.Kd3 Kc6 3. Rh8!?

**C** Trade off the light pieces.
This can be done by 1.Bxe5 Kxe5 2.Rh8 etc.

My further questions are:

1. Is the rook ending in C a draw? If it is possible to win it, how would it be done?
2. Which endgame is better/easier to play A or B?
3. I guess that A and B are both winning for White. How are the winning strategies in both cases, i.e. how to win them?
4. In general, in Rook + Bish vs Rook + Knight endings, who wants to trade of the rooks?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Endgame D, after exchanging rooks AND minor pieces, is a trivial win.

Endgame C, with rooks, looks winning as well but might require more tactful play.

Endgame B, without rooks, is quite an easy win.

Endgame A, with R+B, is winning. The best strategy will probably involve a rook exchange...

Question 4: generally, the side with the bishop wants to keep rooks and the side with the knight wants to keep queens. There are a lot of exceptions though, including cases like this one with material imbalance (an extra pawn).

From the diagram, the logical continuation should be 1.Bg3 Kd5 2.Rd8 Nd7!, keeping rooks. White should win nonetheless. The plan (loosely explained) will be: centralisation, threats against h6/g5, helping the c-pawn forward. A bit of concrete thinking is needed too, because you don't want to allow too much counterplay against your somewhat loose queenside pawns.

# Answer
> 1 votes
As is evident from the comments, tactics often trump strategy. For example, although I agree with Evergalo's general comments,in his variation 3.Kd3! wins immediately because of the mate threat. In fact, after 2.Bg3, The threat of Rd8 is enormously strong (..Rd7 3.Rh8) The move that loses most slowly seems to be 2..Kd7, but then 3.Rh8 (forcing the Knight to a poor square) Nf7 4.Ra8 and the a-pawn is about to fall (Bf2!) This very nicely illustrates the power of the Bishop in open positions, a pin, a mate threat, switching from one wing to the other. But Bishops blocked by their own Pawns are easily outshone by a Knight.

Reaching this position in a game I would realise that I am a Pawn ahead, and that if I could exchange all the pieces it would be an easy win. But I would not like the ending after Bxe5 because I would not see a way to exchange the Rooks and I also have some vulnerable Pawns. I would see that Black has more weak Pawns than I do, and they are easier to attack than mine, and they are all on the color of my Bishop, so I would probably retreat to g3 quite quickly. Even so I would be a bit surprised by how nicely the tactics work out. A stronger player would already see the tactics and base his decision on them.

One little-noted advantage that the Bishop has over a Knight, is that if, perhaps after a change in the Pawn structure, exchanges become desirable, then exchanges are often more easily forced by the Bishop. In other words the player with the Bishop has more chance to dictate WHEN exchanges occur.

# Answer
> -1 votes
Capturing the knight enables you to play Rh8. So I'll trade minor pieces and keep rooks on board. I don't think there is any need for any deep calculation here.

---
Tags: endgame
---


title: Sacrifice a pawn to reorder the pieces

text:
# Question
Title: Sacrifice a pawn to reorder the pieces
Consider a chess variant which plays exactly (\*) as chess except that the players have a special option for first move.

White can, instead of moving a pawn/knight as its first move, sacrifice any of its pawns (removing it from the board) to reorder its pieces (within the first rank).

Then, Black has almost the same option: it can reorder the pieces instead of moving a pawn/knight, but a sacrifice of a pawn is optional.

Would it be advantageous for White/Black to pursue this option instead of a regular opening move?

Which would be the best options for sacrificed pawn and permutations of pieces?

(\*) For castling: if the king is between the rooks, castling follows the rules of Chess960/Fischer Random Chess. If it isn't, castling is forbidden.

# Answer
A few thoughts, but as I expressed in the comment, I don't think this question will have a single good answer.

Based on general opening principles in regular chess, I would *not* sacrifice a central pawn, because that might reduce control on the center.

Secondly, in order to speed up development, I would sacrifice a pawn that already opens lines or diagonals for the development of rooks/bishop/queen.

Based on my experience playing Fischer random/chess960, I found positions quite convenient where the bishops are on a1, b1, g1 or h1, so that they immediately attack something once the pawns moved away.

Combining all this, one possible position could be

```
8/8/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPP1/BBKRQNNR w - - 1 1

```

Here I go for an atack on h7, g7, and also all pieces could support any operations in the center of the board.
> 1 votes

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


# Question
Title: How Do Top Engines' Achieve Large Search Depth
Im new to programming chess engines. I have implemented a transposition table, search tree, and alpha-beta pruning, an can analyze ~80000 boards per second. However, even with alpha-beta search, when I increase the depth of the search by 1, it analyzes approximately 20 times as many boards and takes 20 times as long. Therefore I can only search 5 to 6 moves deep, which is clearly terrible. How is it that top engines can analyze 20+ plays deep? Even if I could analyze 100x as many boards each second, that would still only get me 1.5 more plays deep, so I don't think my board analysis speed is that big a factor. Also, are there any books that you would suggest for a good introduction to chess programming? Thanks in advance.

# Answer
I am not a specialist about programming chess engines, but the notions of depth is a little bit misinterpreted. "Depth" is somehow the maximal value reached by the engine during his search but the engine is absolutely not searching in every position with a depth of 20 moves. Modern engine uses heuristics to determine line of play and reducing the number of positions to analyse.

I don't precise way to do so but I can imagine that line of play with too much imbalance are not completely analysed by the engine, for example.

One point as well is about the evaluation function of your algorithm, if the function is too time-consuming then the algorithm would run longer as well.

One thing is about the transposition table (TT), you need to check if the TT is not becoming too large which would result into some memory issues.

I really believe that the number of positions to analyse at each step is strongly bound by the way of choosing which position to analyse or not.

I think you know the chessprogramming wiki, but there is a lot about improving searching on http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Search.

I hope I've helped you :)
> 2 votes

# Answer
It's hard to answer (I voted to close for "too broad"), you'll need to do some research. Some possibilities:

* Your TT table implementation is slow
* You're not saving positions properly to the TT
* How you make the hash key for TT table is very slow
* You might want to try null-move pruning
* You made a debug build for your engine
* Your evaluation function is too **simple** for effective pruning. Are you just counting materials?
* You're not sorting the moves
* When a top engine says 20+ deep, it doesn't mean it searches everything up to 20+ deep. It could mean quiescence search or something else. In any case, most of the search tree would be discarded.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: engines, beginner
---


# Question
Title: Unit Testing a chess board representation
So this is a bit of outlier question.

I am writing a chess library, essentially from scratch. You can find much of the code here, with the intention of using it for a GUI and/or an engine. (The game is Grand Chess but for the purposes of this question it doesn't really matter.)

I am currently writing unit tests to verify that my functions work as expected. And I was wondering if there was some sort of library or database of suggested positions to test I can use and work from, categorized by whether they're Checkmate, Stalemate, Check, Legal, Illegal, etc.

tl;dr I am looking for a list of positions to unit test my code against.

You can find my current tests here, I add to them every few days. However, I want to make sure the tests are exhaustive before I go debugging the code. (Half of them fail currently).

Edit : to clarify : I am not looking for *engine* ("best move") tests. I am looking for *board representation* ("is this position checkmate") tests. I already have a few puzzles lined up for engine testing.

# Answer
> 1 votes
When reading your question, my gut reaction is that your scope is too complicated for unit testing. I recommend a quick read through the free e-book Unit Testing Succinctly. However, I have no experience writing chess code (maybe your paradigms are different) - although I do software for a living.

A unit test should be very simple and test a function that does 1 single thing. Then you can combine the functions with some reasonable expectation that they will work. For example, I would expect a unit test for each piece to determine if a particular move is legal. A unit test for each piece to determine if it is putting the king in check. A test for each piece to determine where it is attacking, etc.

Testing a position seems like a very complicated unit test and would be much harder to do thoroughly. Instead write smaller tests against smaller functions and then know that those individually work - evaluating a position is just a matter of iterating over the simple functions.

If you want to test a position for a good (not forced) move, I think unit test's will artificially limit the long term development and strength of your chess engine... a binary result of a unit test will force your engine to make the same move every time.

I'd also look at adding unit tests for 'most direct' path to a mate with known endgames. I'd look to add unit tests for traversing through known openings as well. Mid game unit tests will be much harder - maybe plugging in a position and evaluating that the engine produces a usable result (which is a binary response).

For the question of evaluating a set of positions for your engine, you may do far better putting this question on https://stackoverflow.com/ with the "chess" tag.

# Answer
> 1 votes
While this is an old question, I thought that the concept presented in this blog might be useful: http://scionsoftware.com/blog/write-tests-by-playing-chess

The idea is that you would play a chess game on a GUI and have a mechanism to capture the state of the chess board by serializing to a file.

You could name those files per the test cases and feed them into whichever test method you define: IsCheckmate; IsLegal; IsDraw

One of the main reasons you would want to use a natural UI to create these test cases, outside of ease of creation, is that enough conditions also rely on move counts: castling, en passant, draw conditions.

# Answer
> 0 votes
I don't know any unit-testing database for chess engine (in general), and yes, writing exhaustive unit test is almost impossible.

You can maybe explore alternative testing technic like property-based testing (QuickCheck in Haskell, I don't know the F# environment but it certainly exists something like that for F#), which can automatically generate a large amount of "position" and test them using property defined by you.

Hope this will help a bit :) !

---
Tags: engines, database, programming
---


# Question
Title: What is the average size of a move in kilobytes
I have a slow connection and I always face connection problems when playing bullet games. My lag (according to lichess) averages 400 milliseconds. However, when I ping Google's IP address 8.8.8.8 it shows a lag of 245 milliseconds.

So why do these two numbers differ? Are chess moves larger in size than what is needed to ping an IP address?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The move itself is small (depending if the Chess-software is sending only the move or additional data (e.g. a FEN of the position)) this is sginificantly less than 150 bytes.

Depending on how moves are transfered one moves takes about 500 to 800 bytes. You should check the size of the package sent by your ping: If you ping 8.8.8.8. you should get something like

```
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=60 time=12.638 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=12.814 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=15.309 ms

```

The lag might change during daytime or even seconds depending on the load or setup of your provider.

More important seems to me that the ping to 8.8.8.8 lags with you for 245ms - this is way too much (I e.g. get 12ms). So probably your provider is too slow.

---
Tags: lichess
---


# Question
Title: List of how AlphaZero evaluates openings
In his process of learning Chess and getting stronger and stronger each second AlphaZero learned openings. Some were played often at the beginning, but lost in AlphaZero's popularity over the time (e.g. French Defence). You can find four examples here: The future is here – AlphaZero learns chess

I read somewhere that AlphaZero played (and so: evaluated) 12 openings. I would like to see a list of them, perhaps with the graphs (not only the 4 mentioned above).

Thanks in advance.

# Answer
> 11 votes
You can find the complete table in their paper. See table 2 in the arXiv version linked below:

How to read them:

* The plots show the proportion of times alphazero played a given opening during its self-training games as a function of training time. So e.g., you can see that its interest in employing the French defense peaked after 2 hours, but past that, it abruptly drops to near 0, indicating that after 2 hours+ training it realised the emergent lines from that opening are non-optimal compared to other choices, such as the Caro-Kann defense (which had a promising plateau after 2 hours but eventually dropped too, plot shown below).
* Then below the diagrams, you see how it fared against Stockfish in 100 game matches for each line. Finally, alphazero's principal variation for each opening is also indicated below the plots. *Please see the table's caption in the paper for any other details.*

Overall, the English opening stands out: it kept employing it consistently throughout its training. Ultimately, the pattern suggests a tendency towards more versatile openings.

Caro-Kann diagram from table 2: \[Ref\]

---

\[Ref\]: Silver, David, et al. "Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm." arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.01815 (2017)

# Answer
> 2 votes
Check the paper itself, in particular page six. There are indeed 12 openings, some of which AlphaZero kept playing, others which it played for a while and then discarded.

---
Tags: opening, alphazero
---


title: Illegal Move Missed-Too Late?

text:
# Question
Title: Illegal Move Missed-Too Late?
This question is about standard games under USCF rules (if FIDE is different, I'd like to know). Say that one side makes an illegal move-specifically, castling through check. Neither player notices. Five moves later, the same side that made the illegal castle makes a now legal move to create checkmate. During analysis, the losing side recognizes that the castling was illegal. I believe that once the checkmate position is reached, it is too late to correct the illegal move, even though it is within the last ten moves. Is that correct? Would the answer be different if the checkmate was created using the rook that was used in the illegal castling?

# Answer
The FIDE rules say this:

> 7.5 If **during a game** it is found that an illegal move has been completed, the position immediately before the irregularity shall be reinstated. If the position immediately before the irregularity cannot be determined, the game shall continue from the last identifiable position prior to the irregularity. Articles 4.3 and 4.7 apply to the move replacing the illegal move. The game shall then continue from this reinstated position.

So you can't claim an illegal move after the end of the game.

On the other hand, you can't checkmate using an illegal move:

> 5.1 The game is won by the player who has checkmated his opponent’s king. This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the checkmate position was in accordance with Article 3 and Articles 4.2 – 4.7.

I don't know about USCF rules, but I suppose they are similar.
> 9 votes

---
Tags: rules, illegal-move, uscf
---


# Question
Title: How does one look at hundreds of master games a day?
IM Jeremy Silman responds to the question, "What kind of study program did you use?":

> I mostly looked at endless master games (while simultaneously eating copious amounts of ice cream), sometimes going over several hundred in a single day (only stopping when I was slaphappy and drooling). Most young players I talk to don’t go over nearly enough master games, but now that databases are available there’s simply no excuse for this.

Does one simply just take in the patterns that the masters play? How can one learn like this?

Wouldn't it be better to look at maybe ten games in a scrupulous manner?

# Answer
That depends on what you want from the games.

If you are looking for deep human style analysis, it is of course not possible.

If you are interested in shallow computer automated analysis (like lichess evaluation graph), then it’s possible.

If you are interested in opening theories, it’s possible again. For example, a French player would skip Ruy Lopez games.

Professional players generally don’t study chess games randomly. They would have an objective like rook endgames with two pawns down. Good database search would be useful.

Please define what you want from the games.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Hundreds of games in one day is a HUGE amount to be scrutinizing in detail. However, what might be good to do is go through the games fairly quickly, but be looking for pawn structure patterns, or tactical setups, or something else specific. That way you can go through 100 games easily without blowing your brain ;)
> 1 votes

# Answer
Maybe Silman literally did not mean it that way. He is also known for his tongue-in-cheek attitude:

> Q: What attracts you to chess?
>
> A: The money and the women.

It is most likely that he looked at many games and took away one lesson, tactic, strategy etc. from them.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Only after one has reach a certain strength and knowledge level can you get anything from zipping through a bunch of games in a day. For example, lets say you did a thorough study of the French Exchange Variation (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.exd5 exd5) You learned basic lines ideas, etc. Now, you can look at a ton of games in that line and you should be able to spot the new ideas or novelties, etc.

This kind of thing is done mostly by seconds to the elite players who have to be aware of all new ideas.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: learning
---


# Question
Title: The Giuoco Piano after 4.c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. e5
```
[FEN ""]
  1. e4             e5
  2. Nf3            Nc6
  3. Bc4            Bc5
  4. c3             Nf6
  5. d4             exd4
  6. e5

```

I've faced this line as black a couple of times. Unfortunately all I know about this line comes from Burgess's *The Mammoth Book of Chess*, where he treats this in a couple of sentences: he says it can be highly effective at club level, and that black needs to find the counter-thrust 6...d5 to get a satisfactory position.

My question is, what does black do after 6...d5 7. Bb3? One of my opponents confidently played that against me. I was out of book, played 7...Ng4, and he developed a strong initiative. Now that I check the position with an engine, the engine suggests 7...Ne4 8.cxd4 Bb4+ 9.Bd2 Nxd2 10.Nbxd2 Bg4 and evaluates as a very small advantage to black. However engine analysis is just a bunch of lines, not very human-comprehensible.

Can anyone familiar with this line give me some pointers on how to treat this position?

# Answer
> 3 votes
(Answering my own question since I got some help from an expert)

Bb3 is a weak move, since the game will soon be focused around the d4-square. White should have played 7. Bb5, pinning the knight. Playing Bb3 instead yields an inferior version of what happens next.

e4 is the best post for the knight - it's a central square, and it's defended as well. Now white has to play 8. cxd4 or he'll be down a pawn. Black responds with Bb4+. The aim of this move is to force a minor piece to d2, which interferes with the queen defending d4. After 8...Bb4+ 9. Bd2 Nxd2 10. Nbxd2, black plays Bg4 pinning the knight and making it very difficult for white to defend the d4-pawn. If white plays 9. Nbd2 instead black can just continue with Bg4 and leave the c1-bishop to stew.

Now white's position starts to get unpleasant. In addition to Nxd4, black threatens 11...Bxf3, ruining white's pawn structure (11. a3? Bxf3 12. Qxf3? Bxd2+ 13. Kxd2 Nxd4 wins a pawn since 14. Qxd5?? Nxb3+ wins the queen). White has to play 11. Ba4, which shows why 7. Bb5 occupying the diagonal sooner was the correct move. Black's position is still preferable: white's knights are pinned, and after 11...O-O 12. Bxc6 (forced) bxc6, black is ready to play ...c5 contesting the center. In the final analysis position below, black has more space, the initiative, and the bishop pair.

```
[FEN ""]
     1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. e5 d5 7. Bb3?! Ne4 8. cxd4 Bb4+ 9. Bd2 (9. Nbd2? Bg4) Nxd2 10. Nbxd2 Bg4 11. Ba4 (11. a3? Bxf3 12. gxf3 Ba5) O-O 12. Bxc6 bxc6 13. O-O c5

```

As to what happens after 7. Bb5 ... that's another question entirely =)

# Answer
> 2 votes
```
[FEN ""]
     1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. e5 d5 7. Bb5 Ne4 8. cxd4 (8. Nxd4 {Is the Scotch Gambit.  Considered good for white in most lines.}) Bb4+ 9. Nbd2 Bg4 10. a3 Bxf3 11. Bxc6+ bxc6 12. Qxf3 Nxd2 13. Bxd2 Bxd2+ 14. Kxd2 {white has good pressure down c-file}

```

Both are good lines, however too much to explain here. But the doubled pawns are compensation for the two bishops, if black can keep them, and the weak dark squares are a nightmare for black.

---
Tags: opening
---


# Question
Title: What would be the estimate of the ratings of white and black in this game? Keep in mind, it's a rapid game
```
[Event "Rated Rapid game"]
[Site "https://lichess.org/PuymBQf1"]
[Date "2018.02.22"]
[Round "-"]
[White "chess_lover_2001"]
[Black "potema"]
[Result "1-0"]
[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]
[UTCDate "2018.02.22"]
[UTCTime "14:38:35"]
[WhiteElo "1133"]
[BlackElo "1390"]
[WhiteRatingDiff "+21"]
[BlackRatingDiff "-19"]
[Variant "Standard"]
[TimeControl "900+3"]
[ECO "B00"]
[Opening "St. George Defense"]
[Termination "Normal"]
[Annotator "lichess.org"]

1. e4 a6 { B00 St. George Defense } 2. d4 b5 3. c4 c6 4. b4 e6 5. c5 Bb7 6. e5 Ne7 7. Nc3 a5 8. Bd3 axb4 9. Ne4 Nd5 10. Nf3 h6 11. Bb2 Qa5 12. O-O g5 13. Nd6+ Bxd6 14. exd6 f5 15. Ne5 Na6 16. Qh5+ Kd8 17. Nf7+ Kc8 18. Nxh8 Kb8 19. Qe8+ Ka7 20. Qxd7 Nf4 21. Nf7 Nxd3 22. Ne5 Nxb2 23. Nxc6# { White wins by checkmate. } 1-0

```

# Answer
> 3 votes
As above in the comments, it is impossible to estimate the rating based on a single game only. The reasons for this are:

* The rating number itself is *statistical and relative*, i.e. it tells you something about the level relative to other players. Basically if you play against players of the same rating 1000 games, you would score half the points. Of course each individual game could be a win for either player or a draw.
* Playing strength and therefore rating depends on many factors (e.g. tactics, positional/strategy/...., playing style: active/passive....). Also you might very well have situations where a lower rated player is scoring particularly well against a higher rated player because their relative playing styles are such that it favors one player.

That being said, based on the game, I note that black has weak positional understanding (creating too many weak squares, blocking his own pieces....) and is not aware of general principles like develop pieces, don't make too many pawn moves... All of this is typical for a beginner player rated around 1000.

The white player was playing much more normally, developing pieces, occupying the center, castling, etc.

As a positive note, neither player did an *easy* piece blunder. Black blundered mate in 1 with 22...Nxb2, but might have thought that he could recapture on c6 which he cannot because of the pin. White probably did not calculate the consequences of 22...Nb8 (which was not played) when the position is not all that simple (but of course still winning for white). Not blundering pieces is not typical of a 1000 rated player.

Given that the lichess ratings are based on hundreds of games, I would trust them to some extent. Of course these ratings only tell you the relative strength among players on lichess and can not be converted to FIDE ratings (which describe the relative strength with respect to FIDE rated players). When attempting to convert I'd give them an error margin of plus minus 200 points or so.

So all in all, I'd estimated these players to be between 900 and 1300 for black and between 1200 and 1600 for white, but as mentioned this is very rough.

---
Tags: analysis
---


# Question
Title: How to avoid the French in the Alekhine, Scandinavian Variation?
After 1. e4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3. e5 Ne4 4. Nce2 Nc5, black intends to undermine White's center with ...Ncd7 and ...c5. The e5-e6 pawn sac is not available at the moment.

What is a good way to keep the opening sharp, or steer (or develop) the position into those reached by 4. ...f6 (the main line here runs 5. d3 Ng5 6. Bxg5 fxg5 7. h4)?

# Answer
> 4 votes
The 4...Nc5 line clearly differs from the mainline you've given, since the knight on c5 will not be traded on g5 with black's pawn structure getting somewhat compromised. However it seems like the immediate knight retreat has some drawbacks since white can just play d4 immediately and kick the knight around a bit; note that after 4...Nc5 5.d4! Nd7 white can suddenly play the pawn sacrifice 6.e6! with a nice position.

Looking in my opening database I see that the most common move for black after 4...Nc5 5.d4! is 5...Ne6. In this position it seems like white has a pleasant choice of several good alternatives. For instance, 6.Be3 develops a piece and makes it a bit more difficult for black to play ...c5, while 6.f4!? seeks to gain even more space and to further kick the black knight around.

Basically, after 4...Nc5?! 5.d4! it seems like white gets a phenomenal position with a space advantage typical of the french defense, but without any drawbacks since black's knight loses so much time on its journey around the board.

---
Tags: opening, alekhine
---


title: Is castling a king move or a rook move?

text:
# Question
Title: Is castling a king move or a rook move?
Most computer chess games consider castling to be a king move. You click on the king and it shows an option to castle.

What do the FIDE's rules say about this though? Is castling a king move, a rook move, both, or neither?

# Answer
The FIDE rules say this about castling:

> This is a move of the king and either rook of the same colour along the player’s first rank, counting as a single move of the king
> 12 votes

# Answer
Castling is a combination move of both pieces. The king should be moved first or both pieces simultaneously, since a rook move could stand alone and an opponent might make you stop your move at that point as being "legal", not letting you complete castling.
> 3 votes

# Answer
As a purely separate thought on the stupidity of the current rule consider the following hypothetical case: White can castle, but both the f- and h-files are open. White plays Rf1, suddenly realises he has missed a much stronger move and quickly moves his king to g1 . As the rule stands his opponent or, as happened in a recent Soviet event, the arbiter can insist on a rook move. White calmly plays the winning Rh1-h8.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: rules, online-chess, castling, rooks, kings
---


# Question
Title: How does lichess rating compare with chess.com rating?
I have accounts on both of these websites, but I don't know the difference of how they do the rating. Can anybody tell me at least a difference between lichess and chess.com rating?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I would say lichess is about +200

---
Tags: rating
---


# Question
Title: How can an Elo 1300 player improve his or her endgame?
I have noticed that, among opponents of Elo strength about 1300 (USCF class C to D), many play the opening and midgame almost as well as a 1400- to 1500-strong player but seem suddenly to drop to, say, 1100 strength as the endgame approaches. The 1300-strong player who blunders away endgame after endgame is a familiar character in the world of chess.

Without an excessive investment of the player's time, what are some ways a typical 1300-strong player can improve his or her endgame?

# Answer
> 7 votes
Some advices:

* **Look at grandmasters' endgames with comments**.

Replay their games and try to understand their moves and the evaluation of commentators. There are several good books, I think Evgenny Shereshevsky's excellent classic "**Strategy in the Endgame**" is understandable at 1300-level. At least most of it, and you can keep the most difficult examples for later when you will have developed a better understanding of general principles. Some books about Bobby Fischer's endgames have been well commented too. I suppose there are good videos/DVDs on the market as well. Avoid anything overly complicated right now, like John Nunn's works; Mark Dvoretsky's and Karsten Muller's ones are very good but too hard at 1300 elo - keep them for later.

* **Start with pawn endgames**.

The rules there are somewhat more clear-cut (there is basically one single goal: queening one of your pawns first), and they are mandatory if you want to understand more complex endgames later on, because several concepts are similar and because they may transpose to pawn endgames in case of exchanges.

* **Do not try to swallow too much theory**.

Endgame theory can be surprisingly complex, it is a dry matter to memorize, and pratical endgames is what you should be looking for. At 1300 elo, I assume you already master the basic mates KQK, KRK and KBBK. KBNK is fun to look at but not super useful in practice, learn it if you enjoy it but don't force yourself if you don't.

I would still encourage you to learn KPK well enough to be able to evaluate any position with KPK in less than thirty seconds, and be sure about the next best move. Have a look at KPKP theory (counting in pawn races, opposition, trebuchet) and at KRPKR (Philidor, Lucena), but already here you merely want to get familiar with the ideas, not to remember everything.

* Some **training websites**

like chesstempo or lichess offer endgame exercices and adapt their difficulty to your performances in solving them. If you have fun doing some once in a while (I sure do), do it! Usually the free registration is enough to get access to five or ten exercices per day - just the right amount for effective training !

* **Stay away from tablebases** (and more generally from chess engines).

You may use them to have a look at the evaluation of a given position *if you have already studied it by yourself or with a book/video* and want to check your conclusions. But going through variations generated by tablebases is disheartening enough : sometimes they lack logic, or make you feel that simple things are overly complicated because they try to minimize distance to mate, and they come without explanations (or explanations limited to even more complicated variations)...

* If you **play endgames in your own games**, study them afterwards.

The best way is: first alone or with your opponent, then *write down your main conclusions/interrogations*, and then review the endgame with a stronger player / a coach / a reference book if the position is a theoretical one / a software if really you have nothing better available. Finally, compare with your first notes, that's when you will make huge progress about your thinking process !

Good luck !

# Answer
> 4 votes
Here are two relatively simple endgame-related principles from which a typical Elo 1300-strong player could profit.

**PAWNS ON SQUARES BISHOPS CANNOT REACH**

When some but not all bishops have been captured, the 1300-strong player can learn to push his or her pawns to squares of the color the bishops cannot reach.

Here is an example from an actual game. The Black player's Elo strength is about 1300.

```
[FEN "8/pb3kp1/2p1p2p/2P1Kp1P/1P2pP2/P3P1P1/2B5/8 b - - 2 33"]
[Title "Black to move, the board seen from Black's perspective."]

```

In this game, White had been playing tactically until Black unwisely let the dark-squared bishops be exchanged. Foreseeing a won endgame, White stopped playing tactically, quickly exchanged rooks and queens along the open d-file, and soon reached the diagrammed position.

Material is equal, but White's bishop

* enjoys freedom of movement and
* sees enemy pawns on squares it can target.

Black probably never realized that his game was already lost. Indeed, Black probably left the board without understanding what had just happened to him, because he did not grasp the principle of pawns on squares bishops cannot reach. White won a game Black should probably have drawn. Black never knew why.

Now you know why. Next time in such a situation, you can do better.

If your strength is about Elo 1300, then you might add an easy 20 to 25 points to your strength merely by recongnizing—before the endgame arrives—how the colors of the squares on which the pawns stand can advantage the one player or the other once the endgame arrives.

**KINGS BEFORE PAWNS**

Players at an Elo strength of 1200 often fail to hurry their kings toward the fifth or, better, sixth rank when the endgame arrives. Some 1300-strong players too fail in this way. In the example, Black might have salvaged a draw if his king were further forward.

This is actually a complicated point, because sometimes it is preferable to push a *pawn* toward the *seventh* rank as soon as possible, temporarily leaving the king far behind. Admittedly, better players (Elo 1800+) disagree among themselves as to the general desirability of such pawn sprints, but even when a sprint is tried and even at the Elo-1300 level, the sprinting pawn tends to distract the opponent long enough for the king to be brought up a little later, so the principle still applies.

Most good players agree in any case that leaving pawns at home while the king hurries forward is often a prudent endgame practice, especially if all relevant pawns are on the same wing but sometimes even when pawns on both wings are in play. Once the king has centralized itself, preferably at least on the fifth rank, pawns can march as opportunity allows.

Kings before pawns: a little reflection on this principle can add another 5 or 10 points to one's strength in the 1200-to-1300 range.

**COMPUTERS**

Computers can calculate or tabulate absurd numbers of exact endgame variations a human master would never attempt. Therefore, it can be hard to learn proper endgame play when one's opponent is a computer. Playing Black, a computer might salvage a draw or even a victory in the diagrammed position, not only taking the game but also cheating White of the position's teaching value. For this reason, a 1300-strong player might prefer human opposition against which to practice endgame principles like the principles this answer discusses.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I am a big fan of ChessKing's material for mobile devices. Perfect for tablet size devices that you can study. Their applications range from opening, mid to endgame and tactics and more.

The catch is you have to pay for the app to get the full complete courses but they do allow you to try it for free.

I'm an Android user so here's the Google Play site if your interested.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=8196632901699712832

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Tags: endgame
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# Question
Title: How do I respond to an arrogant beginner?
I played a skittles game (no clocks, arbiter etc.) against a beginner who did a lot of trash talking, which I didn't rise to. Here is an example of the conversation:

> **Beginner**: I'm going to beat you easily!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop**: I'd like to see that. I play at quite a high level. Do you want a refresher on the rules, such as *en passant* and castling?
>
> **Beginner**: No, I know all that already
>
> **Bad\_Bishop**: OK
>
> **Beginner**: I'll take white. They always win!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop**: Hmmm...
>
> **Beginner**: \[Part way through the game\] How do knights move again?
>
> **Bad\_Bishop**: In an 'L' shape
>
> **Beginner**: \[After being checkmated\] OK, you won, but I took 2 pawns and a knight!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop**: Hmmm. Do you want to play a different game?

My questions are, **should I have handled this beginner's trash talk differently? How?**

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I didn't keep a scoresheet, but this is what I remember of the opening:

```
[FEN ""]
[White "Beginner"]
[Black "Bad_Bishop"]

  1. b3             d5
  2. Na3            e5
  3. Nb1            Bc5
  4. d4             Bxd4
  5. Kd2            Bxa1
 *

```

# Answer
> 5 votes
A much better way of handling it -

> **Beginner**: I'm going to beat you easily!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop**: Of course you are.
>
> **Beginner**: I'll take white. They always win!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop**: \[Emphatically\] Always! \[pause, then with a note of doubt in your voice\] Even when you are black?
>
> **Beginner**: \[After being checkmated\] OK, you won, but I took 2 pawns and a knight!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop**: You were just so, so unlucky. \[As you push the black pieces over to his side and start setting up the white pieces on your side\] My turn as white.

# Answer
> 4 votes
This isn't about chess. It is about manners. I would explain to the youngster than this isn't Call of Duty. Trash talking is not acceptable.

"Young man, are you aware you're being rude to me?" "uh, what" "There is no trash talking in chess. There are only moves and they speak for themselves."

# Answer
> 2 votes
From experience, I would have done something like this:

> **Beginner:** I'm gonna beat you easily!!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop:** Maybe, maybe not, anything can happen in chess ;)
>
> **Beginner:** I'll be white. They always win!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop:** They don't win **all** the time ;)
>
> **Beginner:** \[After being checkmated\]Ok, you won, but I took 2 pawns and a knight!
>
> **Bad\_Bishop:** True, but did you learn anything from this game, that's what's important. :)

# Answer
> 2 votes
If it is an online server you played the person on, avoid playing the user. There are better beginners to spend your time playing with out there.

If it is in the club, hard for me to say. Avoiding the player at the club, regardless of how the player acts, may give an unwanted reputation change but maybe not. Maybe people would be understanding, not sure. I typically in interactions like that(be it chess play or not) I assume conservatively and avoid the trash talking, take everything they say as a joke and brush it off. You gain nothing doing anything else as far as I am concerned.

They are obviously insecure about their game that they resort to trying to affect your mental game play by trash talking instead of making good moves on the board. Only the moves on the board win.

I have no tolerance for that type of etiquette/sportsmanship. As a lower level/rated player myself we should be grateful a higher level player agrees to play with us. We only get better when we play people who are better than we are.

# Answer
> 0 votes
IMO this is a subjective question.

Personally, I would start capturing his pieces one by one by forcing moves making sure I have a overwhelming material advantage before I make his king run all over the board, only to be choked in the center.

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Tags: beginner, etiquette
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