The Chessboard Editor at Apronus.com --- Is it any good?

Is it useful for playing correspondence games by email?

I have never tried it.

  Is it useful for posting static diagrams (just one position image) in blogs and forums?

Do you mean something like this? I use it to generate FEN when posting answers here, all the time.

  Is it useful for posting dynamic diagrams (showing games or parts of games)?

Again, I generate the FEN on Apronus, but I post moves here myself. I have never tried to create "a game" and then simply copy/paste it here. If you can show me how, I could try it out and report my results.

  Is it useful for playing against computer from a set up position?

I did generate FEN on Apronus and successfully loaded it into Fritz.

  Is it useful for posting chess puzzles?

Again, it does a good job in generating the FEN, so I can post here any diagram I want.

  The Chessboard Editor at Apronus.com — Is it any good?

Serves me very well so far. I just don't know how to generate "games" and "dynamic diagrams" as you have suggested. That would be an awesome feature to posses, it would save me so much time!

If you need any help or you have followup questions, leave a comment.

Best regards.


Openings are typically decided by ECO Codes.

So as few as one move and as many as 5-6 or more moves could decide an opening. For example, as soon as you play 1. b3 it is a Nimzo-Larsen attack. (A01)

As soon as 1. e4 c5 is played it is a Sicilian defence. (B20) But there are many variations. If the game continues 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 a6, it becomes the Kan variation. (B41) So on and so forth. You can find a full list of recognized openings and their ECO codes in the link above.

As for your second question, no, after the identifying moves have been played, the opening is typically not completed yet. For example, take this line of the Budapest gambit.

[FEN ""]
[Event "Budapest Gambit"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5 3. dxe5 Ng4 4. Nf3

This is as many moves as it takes to recognize the opening as Budapest Gambit, Adler Variation (A52). However, you can hardly say the opening is over.

[FEN ""]
[Event "Budapest Gambit"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5 3. dxe5 Ng4 4. Nf3 Nc6 5. Bf4 Bb4+ 6. Nc3 Bxc3 7. bxc3 Qe7 8. Qd5 f6 (8... Qa3)

This is a very common continuation to the Budapest Gambit, even though these moves aren't needed to identify it as such - it is all still theory. The player isn't "on his own", there are still many established lines to follow.


Spotting potential mates isn't too difficult. There are a couple of obvious ones involving the b and h pawns which aren't far off from promoting. An immediate b7 threatens b8=N# for example. It can only be stopped by Bc7 but then after dxc7 black has Nxf6+ and the mate is delayed beyond 3 moves.
Pushing the h pawn is more promising. If it weren't for the black rook on h6 then it would be mate in 2 with Rxf7+ followed by h8=Q#. That can be fixed by starting with Nxh6.
Going back to the initial position it's worth looking at possible black spoiler moves, moves which either deliver check or threaten check which delay the mate. We've already seen that Nxf6+. Also Ne3+ and Ba2 threatening Bxc4+ if black is given the opportunity. If the mate is going to involve the Bishop on h3 delivering the coup de grace then we also have to watch out for Rxg6 followed by Rg4 blocking the check.
That said the key move of Nxh6 solves a lot of these problems. It gets rid of the pesky rook and it pins the pesky knight on g4. Hence I think the first part goes like this:
[Title "First part - mate in 3"]
[fen "5R2/p2k1p1P/1P1P1PPr/bPpKBN1p/1pR3n1/7B/2P2N1P/1b6 w KQkq - 0 1"]

1. Nxh6 Ba2 {threatening to disrupt with Bxc4+} 2. Rxf7+ {thank goodness this comes with tempo and black has no time for the disruptive check} Ke8 3. h8=Q#

So, remove the f5 knight and try and mate in 2. The b7 push is obviously too slow so the obvious line to take is mating with the h3 bishop.
The obvious first try is Nxg4. The problem is that black is not obliged to take with hxg4 allowing Bxg4#. Instead black has the tricky Rxg6 followed by Rg4 to block the mate. Mate in 2 is denied.
So, how to stop this defence? The cunning answer is to take with the rook. Then Rxg6 can be answered by Rxg6# or, to rub it in, Rg5#. What about Ba2+? That was one of black's disruptor moves. Does that stop us? No! We can just move the rook back to c4, blocking the check and delivering a discovered mate.
So:
[Title "Second part - mate in 2"]
[fen "5R2/p2k1p1P/1P1P1PPr/bPpKB2p/1pR3n1/7B/2P2N1P/1b6 w KQkq - 0 1"]

1. Rxg4 (1. Nxg4? Rxg6 2. Ne3+ Rg4) hxg4 2. Bxg4# (1...Rxg6 2. Rxg6#) (1...Ba2+ 2. Rc4#)

That then leaves this as the final problem. As @wimi points out the key here is to spot the possibility that black's last move could have been c7-c5 meaning that bxc6 en passant would be checkmate. Great spot by @wimi.
[title "Third part - mate in 1"]
[fen "5R2/p2k1p1P/1P1P1PPr/bPpKB2p/1p4n1/7B/2P2N1P/1b6 w KQkq - 0 1"]

1. bxc6#


SCID does everything you are looking for, it's great chess database software.


Is c5 a key move in an opening where white begins with d4?

First of all, 3...a6 after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 is not a terrible move for Black. It has been played by many top-level grandmasters, including Morozevich multiple times. 4.c5 is historically the eighth most common move in that position (4.cxd5 is the most common), so it's not like it refutes 3...a6. Opening theory has moved on since Alekhine.

To the more general question: putting a pawn on c5 in 1.d4 d5 positions changes the position a lot, played either as White or as Black, so it's always worth considering.

For Black, ...c5 is one of the primary ways to try to break up White's strong center based on d4. It can be easier to engineer than the other possibility, ...e5, because his dark-squared bishop is already supporting it. He can also play supporting moves like ...Nbd7, ...Qc7 (both of which are also useful for preparing ...e5), and ...Rac8. Often Black's early play is based on creating the opportunity to play ...c5; if he can get it in without problems, he's usually doing well. Note also that ...c5 is an incredibly important move in the French, again trying to pry open d4.

For White, c5 is fairly rare. It does gain space on the Queenside, but its main drawback is that it releases a lot of pressure on Black's d5 pawn. This means that his e6 pawn isn't as necessary to support it, which makes it a lot easier for him to play ...e5, since he doesn't have to worry so much about having lots of support for both the new e5 pawn and the suddenly-less-defended d5 pawn. Generally it is considered that the cons of c5 (removing pressure on d5 so that ...e5 is harder to stop) outweigh the pros (gaining space on the Queenside).

One exception is the Chebanenko Slav (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 a6), where 5.c5 is a quite common move. One extra thing it has going for it here is that it highlights the weakness of Black's b6 square, and it's going to be a bit difficult for Black to play ...b6 to engage with it. In the game you mention, Alekhine probably had a similar idea regarding the weakness of the b6 square after 3...a6.

(18.c5 in the game you link to had nothing to do with any of this; that move is good because it entombs the bishop on b7.)


Training plan for going from High Class A/Low Expert to National Master... Help?

I think you need 3 components to your campaign:

1) Play lots of tournament chess (which you are planning on anyway) preferably against players stronger and much stronger (+200) than you.

2) Analyze your own games and those of your opponents (where the draw is made far enough in advance and you can find their games - over time you will have games that you have played against them).

3) A course of theoretical study.

In your game analysis you are looking to identify when and how you lose games with a view to fixing your problems. Feed them into a chess engine. Stockfish is powerful and free. ChessDB is a good free equivalent of Chessbase in case you have an old or crippled version. At this stage you are aiming to identify lapses of concentration, weak tactical ability / poor chess imagination and "drift" where you aimlessly let your advantage slip away (planlessness or bad plans) or that of your opponent gradually build up (poor fighting spirit).

When you analyze your future opponents' games you are looking to see what they play against your repertoire and look for chances to unsettle them and take the initiative. Prepare what you are going to play against their different likely possibilities and familiarize yourself with the plans appropriate to the position.

In your theoretical studies you are going to want to systematically address 3 or 4 areas.

1) Opening preparation. Decide which openings suit your style and available time for study. Very sharp, current openings will require a lot of work to stay uptodate. You may prefer to limit your required study by choosing openings where you can quickly limit your opponents good replies.

2) Every time you lose an ending or draw one you should have won make a point of going over the theory of that particular ending in something like one of John Nunn's books. Gratuitously study endings you are unfamiliar with. This may not pay off in immediate extra points from getting into these endings (although over time it likely will) but it will improve your general endgame play and in particular your approach to the endgame. A good example of this would be KNBvK.

3) Hone tactics. There are lots of books out there stuffed of tactical problems. Pick one and do a few every day.

4) General chess study. There are several book-series courses out there. The most famous is Dvoretsky's "School of Chess Excellence" series. No offence meant, but I think this is likely to be too advanced for you. I have several of these on my bookshelves but have never managed to read more than a few pages. Maybe when you are going for your IM or GM title ;-). Yusupov has done 3 series of 3 books each - "Build Up Your Chess", "Boost your chess" and "Chess Evolution" which I would recommend you start with. I'm a similar level to you and have actually worked through 2 out of the 9 books and felt I got a lot out of them. You have the time so work through them systematically.

Under the heading of general chess study you should also read "left field" books which will broaden your chess outlook. Example books would be Jonathan Rowson's "Chess for Zebras" and "The Seven Deadly Chess Sins", John Watson's "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy", Willy Hendriks' "Move First, Think Later"


How many places can the queen move at each position?


AlphaZero hasn't solved chess, and it won't until it can find a strategy that results in the same outcome of the game given perfect play from both sides. According to Wikipedia:

  A solved game is a game whose outcome (win, lose or draw) can be correctly predicted from any position, assuming that both players play perfectly.

Since AlphaZero has lost games to Stockfish with both colours, we can assure it didn't solve the game. AlphaZero plays itself in training games. Had it solved the game, all these AlphaZero vs AlphaZero games will end up in one same result: either a win for white, a win for black or a draw.


UCI protocol
Based on your answer, it looks like there is a typo and a misunderstanding.
The typo: It should be position ... moves, not position ... move.
The misunderstanding: The UCI protocol is stateless in the sense that you need to give the entire list of moves leading to the intended position every time, or the position itself.
Examples:

position startpos moves d1b1 is invalid, because d1b1 is not a legal move in the starting position.

position fen 3rr1k1/1b3p1p/6p1/pp1p3B/3N1P2/P3P2P/1p4P1/1R3RK1 b - - 1 28 is valid

position startpos moves e2e3 d7d6 d1f3 b8d7 f1c4 e7e6 d2d4 d6d5 c4d3 g8f6 c2c4 f8b4 c1d2 b4d2 b1d2 d5c4 d2c4 e8g8 c4e5 d7e5 d4e5 f6d5 f3e4 g7g6 g1f3 c7c6 e1g1 b7b5 a1d1 a7a5 a2a3 c8a6 f3d4 c6c5 d4c6 d8c7 e4d5 e6d5 c6d4 c7e5 d4f3 e5h5 h2h3 a6b7 d3e2 c5c4 f3d4 a8d8 e2f3 f8e8 f3h5 c4c3 f2f4 c3b2 d1b1 is valid and sets up the same position

position startpos moves e2e3 followed by position startpos moves d7d6 is invalid, because d7d6 is not a legal move in the starting position.

Differences between fen and moves
It's up to the engine if it can do something useful with the list of moves. For Stockfish, it's almost the same as not having the list, with no difference in efficiency. But having the list of moves informs Stockfish about possible repetitions, so it can avoid or aim for repeating an earlier position three times.


Two questions about Wesley So vs Varuzhan Akobian (2016)

But at what point was game not saveable, at what point did Akobian
  make a (big) mistake?

Qxf2 is a big mistake as after that it is forced mate in 7 moves. If So had played 24. Bxf6 there is no defense against all the mate threads and all black can do is prolong his suffering by throwing in some pieces.

[FEN ""]
[Event "US Chess Championships"]
[White "Wesley So (2773)"]
[Black "Varuzhan Akobian (2615)"]
[StartPly "46"]
[Result "1-0"]
[PlyCount "47"]
[ECO "C10"]
[Opening "French Defense: Rubinstein Variation, Kasparov Attack"]

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nd7 5. Nf3 Ngf6 6. Nxf6+ Nxf6 7. c3      c5 8. Be3 cxd4 9. Bxd4 Be7 10. Bd3 O-O 11. Qc2 h6 12. O-O-O Qa5 13. Kb1 Rd8 14. Ne5 Bd7 15. Qe2 Bc6 16. Rhe1 Bd5 17. c4 Bxg2 18. Bc3 Qb6 19. Rg1 Bc6 20. Nxf7 Kxf7 21. Rxg7+ Kxg7 22. Qxe6 Qxf2?? 23. Qxe7+ Kg8 24. Bh7+!? (24. Bxf6 Qxf6 25. Qxf6 Bg2 26. Rg1 Rxd3 27. Rxg2+ Rg3 28. Rxg3+ Kh7 29. Qg7#)

However So did not play 24. Bxf6 but went for Bh7+ instead which is of course also winning. Most likely he saw that after Bh7+ lots of material would  come off the board in a forced line and he would end up in an easily won endgame with queen plus 4 pawns vs. bishop plus 3 pawns
(no counterplay for black and no fortress either).

While mating quickly is more desirable for the beauty of chess, from a practical standpoint, going for a forced line which is easy to calculate and obviously won makes a lot of sense. 24. Bxf6 of course looks very good even without calculating concrete lines, but has more potential for error. Furthermore if So had played 24. Bxf6, he would have needed a bit more time for calculating consequences of that move and also Akobian might have fought on for a move or two. So in the end the second best move (Bh7+) might even have ended the game quicker, because it was obvious that white will win.

Back to Qxf2...

That's a curious choice as it leaves the bishop on e7 hanging and after that also the knight on f6 is hanging. I have no idea what Akobian was thinking here (probably desperation or time trouble?). He must (or should) have checked at least all the options of protecting the bishop on e7, like Qc5, Qc7, Re8 and Rd7. Both, Qc5 and Qc7 lose and it is easy to calculate this on the board. 22 .. Re8 seems to hold according to the computer. Black is still under a very dangerous looking attack and will have to find the correct moves to secure equality in the moves to come. 22 .. Rd7 will lose, but not as fast as 22 .. Qc5/c7. From a GM I would have expected to play one of Re8 or Rd7 at least.

Did Akobian go wrong before Qxf2?

Computers give more or less equality (small advantage for white) before that move, but from a human perspective I find 17 .. Bxg2 a strange choice as it opens the g file for white's rook. This will always be dangerous even if there is no immediate tactics.

Also I am not sure whether transferring the bishop from c8 to d5 via d7 and c6 was such a good idea. Wasted lots of tempi just to force white to play c4. Probably a better plan for black here was to go for a minority attack on the queen side with b5, b4...


I found an interesting page featuring the results of some data mining on a sample of 4,226,520 games, and from which answers to your questions can be extracted, at least for that large sample of games, which is probably reasonably reflective of what happens in general.

According to the numbers there, the average game has a ply count of 57.63 (i.e. total number of moves by both White and Black). So the number of times a single piece is moved is, on average,

57.63 / 32 = 1.8009

The page also lists the total number of moves played in these games by each type of piece of each color, from which we can derive the following per-game figures:

White piece moves
-----------------
P: 7.7708 total moves, .9714 per pawn
N: 5.1677 total moves, 2.5838 per knight
B: 4.6259 total moves, 2.3130 per bishop
R: 4.6985 total moves, 2.3493 per rook
Q: 3.5775
K: 3.1718

Black piece moves
-----------------
P: 7.7998 total moves, .9750 per pawn
N: 5.1576 total moves, 2.5788 per knight
B: 4.3511 total moves, 2.1756 per bishop
R: 4.5364 total moves, 2.2682 per rook
Q: 3.4869
K: 3.2875

These figures ignore the fact that some piece moves will have been made my promoted pieces, but on the whole such moves will be a very small piece of the pie, so these numbers shouldn't be too far off the mark.


Opening theory overlooking simple moves?

Joe Gallagher says of 22... Kf8 in Starting out: the king's indian:

  Vaisser relates how for many years this move was thought to lose because of some erroneous analysis.

Of 25...Qf8 he writes:

  This came as a great shock for Vaisser. According to theory at the time Black was supposed to play 25...Ra6 and lose

[FEN ""]
[White "Vaisser"]
[Black "Bauer"]
[Startply "50"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. f4 O-O 6. Nf3 c5 7. d5 e6 8. Be2 exd5 9. cxd5 Re8 10. e5 dxe5 11. fxe5 Ng4 12. Bg5 Qb6 13. O-O Nxe5 14. Nxe5 Bxe5 15. Bc4 Bf5 16. Nb5 a6 17. d6 axb5 18. Bxf7+ Kxf7 19. Rxf5+ gxf5 20. Qh5+ Kf8 21. Bh6+ Bg7 22. Bxg7+ Kxg7 23. Qxe8 c4+ 24. Kh1 Qxd6 25. Re1 Qf8 (25...Ra6 26. Re7+ Kh6 27. Qf8+ Kg5 28. Qg8+) 26. Qe5+ Kg8 27. Qd5+ Kh8 28. Qe5+ 1/2-1/2


Most over the board sets come with 4 queens total (2 of each color) for exactly this situation. It's quite likely that at some point in your games, you'll need to have 2 queens on the board simultaneously, so they give you the main queen and a spare.
If you really need more than 4 queens, you can always "steal" another piece from your neighbors' game so that you have enough pieces to continue playing. Just make sure you give it back when one gets captured or they'll be mad with you!
Of course, it's possible to have 9 queens simultaneously, but it would be unnecessary for any chess set to give you this much redundancy on the off chance you decide to troll your opponents and promote every piece to a queen. Same thing with underpromoting so that you have 10 knights, 10 bishops, or 10 rooks...


Sleep well and hit the gym.

Over the board is hard physically as well as mentally. And physical condition has big contribution to playing strength.

So in short, don't get tired before your opponent, be the last man standing.


Your examples are using Descriptive notation. For example, "Queen to Rook 5" (Q-R5) means "move the queen to the fifth row of the board (viewed from my perspective), and to the same column that had a rook in the starting position". You may notice that "Rook 5" could refer to two different squares, one on the leftmost column of the board and one on the rightmost. If you needed to distinguish between the two because the queen could move to either square, you'd say something like "Queen to King's Rook 5" (Q-KR5).

Descriptive notation was popular in English-speaking countries for most of the 20th century, and if you buy a chess book written before 1980 the moves will likely be in this format, but it is now basically obsolete.

Everyone has now pretty much moved over to Algebraic notation, which is much simpler. The rows of the chessboard are numbered from 1 to 8 moving away from White, and the columns are lettered from a to h from left to right from White's point of view. So White's move "Queen to King's Rook 5" in descriptive would be "Queen h5" (Qh5) in algebraic, and Black's move "Queen to King's Rook 5" would be "Queen h4" (Qh4).

Algebraic notation is much simpler than descriptive and is also the overwhelmingly more popular method of describing chess moves today, so I recommend that you use it.


It seems like there are really 3 parts to your question:

When and how should pawn breaks be made?
How should rooks be placed to support pawn pushes?
How should plans be made around pawn breaks?

As a disclaimer, these questions are incredibly complicated, so take this answer as a starting point.  Entire books have been written about pawn play.  Furthermore, every position is different.  While there are general ideas, the features of a specific position must be the main consideration.

So to begin - pawn breaks should be made for one of two reasons - to improve your own position or to deprive your opponent of good squares.  This seems a little silly, but consider how your position can be improved - either your pieces can get better squares and lines, or you can create a passed pawn.  A space advantage falls into the category of depriving your opponent of squares.

Bearing that in mind, pawn breaks should only be made when you can guarantee that your position will improve:

If a pawn break will leave an outpost for an enemy knight, it's probably premature.  (ex. don't play d4 if there are pawns on e4 and e5 but white's f pawn is missing because e5 will be a permanent outpost).

Pawn breaks are useful if you can create an outpost for your own pieces.  (ex. black pawns on d6 and e6, pushing c5 will create an outpost)

The last major consideration is space - in a closed or semi-closed position gaining space is incredibly useful because your pieces will have an extra rank on which to operate.  In these cases, push your pawns when you can do so safely while still keeping enough tension to favorably open the position later.

Moving on to part 2...  Simply, rooks should be posted on the files that will be opened after a pawn break.  While it frequently takes some calculation to figure out how everything will work out, once done, good squares for both rooks can be found.  Usually this is behind the pawn that you will push, but frequently it is on an adjacent file.

Finally, the crux of the matter - how to plan for and utilize pawn breaks effectively.  Generally speaking, you should only open the position in a part of the board that you already control.  That means that if you have a preponderance of force on the kingside, for example, f2-f4 immediately should become a candidate pawn break.

When you prepare a pawn break, frequently you will want to recapture the pawn with another pawn.  In this diagram, white has a space advantage but will eventually have to break the position open in order to win:

1. f4 immediately would be premature because black would gain the e5 square as an outpost for the knight.  Instead, white should prepare the break with moves like g3 and Rg1.  Only then should the break be seriously considered tactically.  With that said, f4 should also be the only pawn break considered.  Black owns the queenside, so a pawn break there would only serve black.  The center is locked, so a move like d4 would only lose a pawn.  Finally, g4 and h4 don't serve any purpose other than creating holes in the white position that black might later be able to utilize.

Hopefully that gives you a reasonable starting point, but again, every position is different and must be considered based on its own merits.


Is there a way to get a FIDE ID without playing in FIDE rated events?

See the licensing regulations from FIDE Handbook, particularly 1.13.3.

  1.1   Registration is the procedure of entering a player’s personal details into the FIDE players’ database.

  1.2   A player registered to FIDE acquires a FIDE ID number (FIN).

  ...

  1.13  Registration can be made in 4 different ways:

  1.13.1     National Rating Officers can register new players associated with their own National Federation and ‘FIDE flag players’.
  1.13.2     The FIDE Rating Administrator may register new players under special circumstances only, in FIDE events. In this case the
  Chief Arbiter and the Organiser are responsible for providing correct
  players' data. FIDE events are all competitions under the aegis of a)
  the World Championship & Olympiad Commission or Events Commission, b)
  Continental competitions that provide qualifiers to any of the
  aforesaid competitions, and c) events listed and described in detail
  in different parts of the FIDE Handbook.
  1.13.3     New players may register themselves in FIDE Online Arena playing zone (FOA). These players are not associated to any National
  Federation, but they are assigned the FIDE flag (FID) until they
  become members of a National Federation.
  1.13.4     When a child registers at sm.fide.com he/she will be allocated a FIDE ID. If such person already had a FIDE ID before that
  registration, his/her FIDE ID will be retained and a new one will not
  be given. After upgrading to Premium at psm.fide.com, a child gets a
  CiS rating.


The key word in the rule is "securely".

Meaning, that there is nothing the opponent can do to lift the blockade.

In the posted position, white has to play 1. Ng6  - otherwise black will play 1. .. g5 and be beyond the Troitzky line - achieving draw immediately.

Subsequently, the black king will march toward the pawn, starting with 1. .. Kc5 and force the g6 knight away, as white is not in time to defend it, neither with the king nor the other knight. Then, g5 will and draw will follow.

Thus, the position appears to be covered by the rule in its current wording, as the pawn is not securely blockaded.

EDIT - answering to the comment.

4N3/6p1/8/8/1k5N/8/8/7K w - - 0 1

1. Ng6 Kc5 2. Kg2 (2. Nc7 Kd6 3. Nb5+ (3. Ne8+ {pointless}) Ke6 {white is one move short of getting the other knight to e5} 4. Nd4+ Kf6 {white must move the knight away and g5 follows}) Kd5 Kg3 Ke6 4. Kg4 (4. Nf4+ Ke7 {white has to move the knight away and g5 follows}) (4. Nc7+ Kf7 {white is not in time to defend the knight, g5 will inevitably follow after a couple checks}) Kf7 {white cannot defend both knights}

EDIT 2

As for the later added positions, I believe they are all covered by ETD's answer.


Heavy piece endgame with 2 extra pawns-how to convert?

1r6/5pk1/2q1p1pp/3p4/r2P4/2P4P/PPQ2PP1/R3R1K1 w - - 0 1

1. b3 Ra7 2. a4 Rab7 3. Reb1 Rc7 4. b4 Qxc3
5. Qxc3 Rxc3 6. b5 Rcc8 7. b6 Rb7 8. a5 Ra8
9. a6 Rbb8 10. b7 Ra7 11. Rb6 Kf6 12. Rab1 Ke7
13. Rc6 Kd7 14. Rbb6 Rxa6 15. Rxa6 Rxb7 16. Rcb6 Rc7
17. Ra8 Ke7 18. Rab8 Kf6 19. R6b7 Rxb7 20. Rxb7

You should move your pawns forward first since the a-pawn and b-pawn are passed. Do not allow black to blockade them. If pawns get blockaded, switch your attack to the kingside, and try to mate black king. You should move your queenside pawns forward quickly, and support them...if not, you might lose your chance.

Some very unpolished examples.

1r6/5pk1/2q1p1pp/3p4/r2P4/2P4P/PPQ2PP1/R3R1K1 w - - 0 1

1. b3 Ra3 2. c4 Rba8 3. c5 Rb8 4. Rec1 Qb7
5. c6 Qc7 6. Qc5 Ra5 7. Qc3 Ra3 8. Qg3 Qb6
9. Qe5+ Kh7 10. c7 Rc8 11. Rc5 Ra5 12. Rxa5 Qxa5
13. Rc1 Qxa2 14. Qf6 Qxb3 15. Qxf7+ Kh8 16. Qf6+ Kh7
17. Qe7+ Kh8 18. Qd8+ Rxd8 19. cxd8=Q+ Kg7 20. Rc7#

If rooks want to blockade, you may have to sacrifice pawns to promote and queen one pawn.

Do not forget your king safety. This variation is forcing, and promotes the pawns.

If you do not gain space on queenside, black can kill your pawns because of better mobility, so you must keep your edge and not fall from it.


Can we play to reach study like positions?

So, can we play some variation which can result in such positions ?

If a study is legal, so can be reached from the starting position by a series of legal moves, then the answer to your question is trivially "Yes".

Chess players shouldn't really collude before the game to decide the outcome but when siblings or partners play each other they sometimes play an agreed sequence of moves which leads to a forced draw.

In the same way two players could work out the moves required to reach a particular study position, agree to play them and then play them.


Why is `a5` a better move in this position?

First, you need to see that in the original position, Black has already a close to winning advantage. Especially the pin on f3 is nasty; it's hard for White to defend the knight now that the bishop is 'offside' and Black can easily attack it with another piece (Qf6).

Both moves (a5 and b5) share the same idea: gaining space on the queenside, with tempo. The move a5 doesn't attack anything but threatens to trap the bishop. The move b5 has a deep tactical refutation involving a (temporary) queen sacrifice:

[FEN "r2qkbnr/pp3pp1/2pp3p/4p3/B2nP1b1/2NP1N2/PPP2PPP/R1BQ1RK1 b - - 0 1"]

1... b5 2. Nxd4!! Bxd1 3. Nxc6 bxa4 4. Nxd8 Bxc2 5. Nc6 Bxd3 6. Rd1 Ba6 7. Nd5

and White has more than enough compensation for the pawn; center control, space advantage, advantage in development and a better pawn structure. (Immediate tactics on c7 look promising but aren't.)

Black is better off trying to hold on to the queen, but he'll have trouble protecting his king from the dangerous bishop-knight battery:

[FEN "r2qkbnr/pp3pp1/2pp3p/4p3/B2nP1b1/2NP1N2/PPP2PPP/R1BQ1RK1 b - - 0 1"]

1... b5 2. Nxd4!! Bxd1 3. Nxc6 Qh4 4. Bxb5 a6 5. Ba4 Bxc2 6. Bxc2 Be7 7. Ba4 Kf8 8. Nd5

This is an unbalanced position with chances for both sides; in any case, much less than Black started out with.


What is the best structured resource for self training?

I'm reading the Artur Yusupov training course and I can tell you it's really great! But I don't have so many books.

The series is supposed to be a three years training course (but I think it will take a bit longer to me): Fundamentals (1600-1800 FIDE), Beyond the basics (1800-2000 FIDE) and Mastery (2000-2200). Every year is made of three books: Build Up Your Chess, Boost Your Chess and Chess Evolution.

Every book have several lessons (the first one, 24 lessons), each lesson on one topic (Tactics, Strategy, Positional Play, the Endgame, Calculating Variations, Openings, all of them mixed up), and each lesson ends with 12 short exercises (10' each one at most), and it usually takes to me 1:30 to 2:00 hours to finish each lesson with its exercises.

If you want to take a look, at Quality Chess webpage you can find an excerpt with the contents and one complete chapter.


limit stockfish 9 to a specific range of ELO rating

https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish. Check UCI_LimitStrength. One of the UCI options.


How do grandmasters prepare against computer endgames?

As has been stated in the comments GMs don't compete against computers very often. They more often use the computer to help analyse their own games, especially to help find "computer moves" by which I mean obscure unnatural looking moves that they didn't/wouldn't find in the game but which are tactically sound.

The endgame in particular is the part of the game where gameplay methods are well established and it actually comparatively easy to see who has the advantage and how the game will end. In many GM games they resign before I would have even been able to tell we had reached the endgame.

In studying endgames the advice I have seen included in the commentary from a GM that came with Chessmaster 8, and in some books, was to practice recognizing the weapons (ie pin, double check etc) in actual endgame positions, learn the basic rules to help speed calculations in the endgame. These are such things as can the king get into the square defined by the diagonal from the pawns position to the back rank, if he can - and no other pieces can interfere - he can stop the pawn promotion, if not he can't, opposition, etc.


Does the chick promotion rule in dobutsu shogi really matter?

The promotion rule actually matters a lot. With perfect play the game ends in a draw instead of a win for white/gote if you drop the promotion rule. In fact, the evaluation of all four moves in the initial position changes in this way.

I have used two independent methods to get this result in order to double-check that there is no bug in my implementations:

Using an engine with alpha-beta search, namely my Stockfish fork for fairy chess variants (including shogi variants), I ran deep searches (~1h) before and after disabling the promotion rule, see the results below.
Since dobutsu shogi is a solved game, there are tablebase generators for it. I have used an open-source tablebase generator and modified it to disable promotions (I am not very familiar with this code base, but since the results of the two methods are consistent, my change seems to work fine). I ran the tablebase generation with both rule sets and checked the results, which you can find below.

1. Search results

input:

setoption name multipv value 4
setoption name hash value 4096
setoption name UCI_Variant value dobutsu
position startpos
go depth 90

output with promotion rule:

info depth 90 seldepth 87 multipv 1 score mate -43 nodes 2423491649 nps 889420 hashfull 338 tbhits 0 time 2724798 pv c1c2 a4a3 c2c1 b3b2 a1b2 c4b3 C@a1 C@a2 c1c2 a2a1+ b2a1 b3c2 b1c2 a3b3 c2b1 b4a3 E@b2 a3b4 b2c1 b3a3 a1b2 a3a4 b1c2 b4c4 b2c3 a4a3 c3b2 a3a2 C@a1 a2b2 c2b2 G@b3 b2b1 E@a3 G@c2 C@c3 c2b2 c4b4 b2a2 b4a4 a2a3 a4a3 a1a2 a3b4 b1a1 G@c2 a1b1 b4c4 E@a1 b3b4 a1b2 c4b3 a2a3 b4c4 b1a1 c2c1 b2c1 b3a3 G@a2 a3b3 a2b2 b3a4 b2a2 C@a3 c1b2 a3a2 a1a2 c3c2 C@b3 E@c3 b2c3 c4c3 b3b4+ a4b4 E@b2 c3b3 a2b1 b3b2 b1b2 E@a3 b2a1 E@b2 a1b1 G@a1 b1c2 C@c3
info depth 90 seldepth 87 multipv 2 score mate -43 nodes 2423491649 nps 889420 hashfull 338 tbhits 0 time 2724798 pv b1c2 b3b2 a1b2 c4b3 c2b1 a4a3 C@a1 C@a2 c1c2 a2a1+ b2a1 b3c2 b1c2 a3b3 c2b1 b4a3 E@b2 a3b4 b2c1 b3a3 a1b2 a3a4 b1c2 b4c4 b2c3 a4a3 c3b2 a3a2 C@a1 a2b2 c2b2 G@b3 b2b1 E@a3 G@c2 C@c3 c2b2 c4b4 b2a2 b4a4 a2a3 a4a3 a1a2 a3b4 b1a1 G@c2 a1b1 b4c4 E@a1 b3b4 a1b2 c4b3 a2a3 b4c4 b1a1 c2c1 b2c1 b3a3 G@a2 a3b3 a2b2 b3a4 b2a2 C@a3 c1b2 a3a2 a1a2 c3c2 C@b3 E@c3 b2c3 c4c3 b3b4+ a4b4 E@b2 c3b3 a2b1 b3b2 b1b2 E@a3 b2a1 E@b2 a1b1 G@a1 b1c2 C@c3
info depth 90 seldepth 87 multipv 3 score mate -43 nodes 2423491649 nps 889420 hashfull 338 tbhits 0 time 2724798 pv b1a2 a4a3 a2b1 b3b2 a1b2 c4b3 C@a1 C@a2 c1c2 a2a1+ b2a1 b3c2 b1c2 a3b3 c2b1 b4a3 E@b2 a3b4 b2c1 b3a3 a1b2 a3a4 b1c2 b4c4 b2c3 a4a3 c3b2 a3a2 C@a1 a2b2 c2b2 G@b3 b2b1 E@a3 G@c2 C@c3 c2b2 c4b4 b2a2 b4a4 a2a3 a4a3 a1a2 a3b4 b1a1 G@c2 a1b1 b4c4 E@a1 b3b4 a1b2 c4b3 a2a3 b4c4 b1a1 c2c1 b2c1 b3a3 G@a2 a3b3 a2b2 b3a4 b2a2 C@a3 c1b2 a3a2 a1a2 c3c2 C@b3 E@c3 b2c3 c4c3 b3b4+ a4b4 E@b2 c3b3 a2b1 b3b2 b1b2 E@a3 b2a1 E@b2 a1b1 G@a1 b1c2 C@c3
info depth 90 seldepth 85 multipv 4 score mate -42 nodes 2423491649 nps 889420 hashfull 338 tbhits 0 time 2724798 pv b2b3 c4b3 a1b2 a4a3 C@a1 C@a2 c1c2 a2a1+ b2a1 b3c2 b1c2 a3b3 c2b1 b4a3 E@b2 a3b4 b2c1 b3a3 a1b2 a3a4 b1c2 b4c4 b2c3 a4a3 c3b2 a3a2 C@a1 a2b2 c2b2 G@b3 b2b1 E@a3 G@c2 C@c3 c2b2 c4b4 b2a2 b4a4 a2a3 a4a3 a1a2 a3b4 b1a1 G@c2 a1b1 b4c4 E@a1 b3b4 a1b2 c4b3 a2a3 b4c4 b1a1 c2c1 b2c1 b3a3 G@a2 a3b3 a2b2 b3a4 b2a2 C@a3 c1b2 a3a2 a1a2 c3c2 C@b3 E@c3 b2c3 c4c3 b3b4+ a4b4 E@b2 c3b3 a2b1 b3b2 b1b2 E@a3 b2a1 E@b2 a1b1 G@a1 b1c2 C@c3

output without promotion rule:

info depth 90 seldepth 52 multipv 1 score cp 0 nodes 2745548262 nps 965315 hashfull 244 tbhits 0 time 2844199 pv b1a2 a4a3 a2b1 b3b2 a1b2 c4b3 C@a1 b4a4 c1c2 b3c2 b1c2 G@b3 b2c3 C@c4 c3b2 a4b4 E@a2 c4c3 c2c1 b3b2 c1b2 E@b3 b2b1 b3a4 G@b2 b4c4 b1c1 a4b3 a2b3 a3b3 b2b3 c4b3 G@b2 b3c4 E@b3 c4b4 c1b1 G@a3 b3a2 b4c4 b1c1 E@a4 c1b1 a4b3 b2b3 a3b3 a2b3 c4b3 G@b2 b3b4 E@b3
info depth 90 seldepth 52 multipv 2 score cp 0 nodes 2745548262 nps 965315 hashfull 244 tbhits 0 time 2844199 pv b1c2 b3b2 a1b2 c4b3 c2b1 a4a3 C@a1 b4a4 c1c2 b3c2 b1c2 G@b3 b2c3 C@c4 c3b2 a4b4 E@a2 c4c3 c2c1 b3b2 c1b2 E@b3 b2b1 b3a4 G@b2 b4c4 b1c1 a4b3 a2b3 a3b3 b2b3 c4b3 G@b2 b3c4 E@b3 c4b4 c1b1 G@a3 b3a2 b4c4 b1c1 E@a4 c1b1 a4b3 b2b3 a3b3 a2b3 c4b3 G@b2 b3b4 E@b3
info depth 90 seldepth 50 multipv 3 score cp 0 nodes 2745548262 nps 965315 hashfull 244 tbhits 0 time 2844199 pv b2b3 c4b3 a1b2 a4a3 C@a1 b4a4 c1c2 b3c2 b1c2 G@b3 b2c3 C@c4 c3b2 a4b4 E@a2 c4c3 c2c1 b3b2 c1b2 E@b3 b2b1 b3a4 G@b2 b4c4 b1c1 a4b3 a2b3 a3b3 b2b3 c4b3 G@b2 b3c4 E@b3 c4b4 c1b1 G@a3 b3a2 b4c4 b1c1 E@a4 c1b1 a4b3 b2b3 a3b3 a2b3 c4b3 G@b2 b3b4 E@b3
info depth 90 seldepth 59 multipv 4 score cp 0 nodes 2745548262 nps 965315 hashfull 244 tbhits 0 time 2844199 pv c1c2 a4a3 c2c1 b3b2 a1b2 c4b3 C@a1 b4a4 c1c2 b3c2 b1c2 G@b3 b2c3 C@c4 c3b2 a4b4 E@a2 c4c3 c2c1 b3b2 c1b2 E@b3 b2b1 b3a4 G@b2 b4c4 b1c1 a4b3 a2b3 a3b3 b2b3 c4b3 G@b2 b3c4 E@b3 c4b4 c1b1 G@a3 b3a2 b4c4 b1c1 E@a4 c1b1 a4b3 b2b3 a3b3 a2b3 c4b3 G@b2 b3a4 E@b3 a4b4 b1c1 G@a3 b3a2 b4c4 c1b1 E@b3

See the UCI protocol description for details on the meaning of the in- and output.

2. Tablebase results

input:

show lines

output with promotion rule:

Gc4-c3 : #-78  (25.00%)
Lb4-c3 : #-78  (25.00%)
Lb4-a3 : #-78  (25.00%)
Cb3xb2 : #-76  (24.99%)

output without promotion rule:

Cb3xb2 : 0     (25.00%)
Gc4-c3 : 0     (25.00%)
Lb4-c3 : 0     (25.00%)
Lb4-a3 : 0     (25.00%)

Please note:

The mate distances differ for two reasons:

Stockfish counts the mate distance in full moves (unless you enable the USI protocol), whereas the tablebase generator counts in ply (half moves).
The search does not not necessarily find the shortest way to mate, whereas the tablebase result should be accurate.

The two softwares also use different coordinate systems to describe the squares (the ordering of ranks is inverted), so be careful not to mix them up when comparing move strings.


Does 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f6 have to be a bad opening?

After

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f6 3.Nxe5 fxe5 4.Qh5+ g6 5.Qxe5+ Qe7 6.Qxh8 Nf6

with ideas of trapping the queen, 7. d3 followed by Bg5 or Bh6 and there won't be any issues getting the queen out, e.g.:

7.d3 d5 8.Bg5 Nbd7 9.Nc3 b6 10.0-0-0 Bb7 11.e5

Black can try to minimize the damage after 2...f6? with something like 3.Nxe5 Qe7

You aren't losing the exchange any more, but you've still destroyed your position with ...f6.

2... f6 should be avoided.


Is there a better winning plan from move 37?

I annotated the whole game, and a few things stuck out.

The first is a lesson for all players, and that is in this game, white was supposed to be playing on the queenside, and black had play on the kingside. White allowed the play on the queenside to be blocked, and thus had to just wait for the axe to fall on the other side of the board. You can never let the side where your play is to become blocked. The only exception is when you have a good piece sacrifice that you see coming to break up the locked pawns.

The second is that you really should have had a better feel for f5 in that position. It was screaming to be played, and had white not locked the queenside, your play may have been too slow. I do not know that you would not have played it differently, but f5 was screaming to be played.

Lastly, and this is probably something that you have seen in print before, and that is I think that maybe you cashed in a little too early taking the exchange. Sure, it was winning, but I might have just kept up the pressure for a while longer. In the line that I give to move 38, which plays out the plan below, but with stronger moves for white (in particular, repositioning the N to the kingside, and then to e4), you can see that while winning, it is still a bit of a tough nut to crack. Had you kept that strong knight and that passive Rf1, something easier might have popped up since defending that would not be fun.

As far as plans go after taking the exchange, I definitely would have looked at bishop moves that kept that knight on a4, like Be4-d4 if given the opportunity, and moved the king to c7 defending everything over there. You might have had to put a rook on e7 first to stop f4 in some cases. Then move all the major pieces to the kingside, and work on opening it up.

There are very extensive written notes in the lines below.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 g6 2. d4 Bg7 3. Nc3 d6 4. Be3 a6 5. a4 Nf6 6. h3 O-O 7. Nf3 Nc6 8. Qd2 e5 9. d5 Ne7 10. Be2 Bd7 11. a5 c6 (11... Nh5 $5 {This seems more in line with the spirit of the black's kingside play.} 12. g4 Nf4 13. Bxf4 exf4 14. Qxf4 Rb8 $1 {Only now that the Bg7 exerts incredible influence over the white queenside is this opening over there justified.} 15. Qd2 b5 16. axb6 Rxb6 17. Ra2 f5 $1 $11 {With play all over the board.}) 12. Bb6 Qb8 (12... Qe8 {This is very in the spirit of a fianchetto defense, and is often seen in the King's Indian. From e8, the queen will defend the Nh5 after Nh5 and f5.} 13. dxc6 $2 Bxc6 {And there is no time to win d6.}) 13. O-O (13. b4 $2 cxd5 14. exd5 e4 $19) 13... c5 14. Rab1 $2 {A mistake, but already in a tough position after letting the Bb6 get shut in.} (14. Ra3 $1 Nc8 15. Rb3) 14... Nc8 15. Rfe1 $2 {As often happens, one mistake follows another.} (15. Qe3 Nxb6 16. axb6 Qd8 17. Nd2 Qxb6 18. b4 {With good counterplay.}) 15... Nxb6 16. axb6 a5 {I do not understand this. First, not going after the free pawn, and second, it gives up the b5 square for no reason.} 17. Qe3 Qd8 18. Nb5 $2 (18. Nd2 {Seems much more natural.}) 18... Qxb6 19. c4 Bxb5 20. cxb5 Qd8 $1 $19 {This is now already positionally won for black beyond just the pawn. black can always seal the queenside, and continue the attack on the kingside where white has nothing to do but wait for the execution. The only plan for white might be if black gets careless, and allows a timely b4, but as long as black is careful, b4 axb4 is just the loss of a second pawn.} 21. Bc4 Nh5 22. g3 b6 {There is no real need for this yet. Bring the Qd8 out, and prepare f5.} 23. Kg2 Ra7 24. b3 Qe7 $2 {This does not spoil things, but you want the rooks on the f-file, or maybe g-file, and this puts the queen in the way.} (24... f5 {Or Kh8 first.} 25. exf5 gxf5 {And that the computer wants to trade queens here for white is a very good sign for you. You have a killer bishop compared to the pathetic piece on c4, an extra pawn, and most of white's pawns are weak.} 26. Qg5 Qxg5 27. Nxg5 Kh8 28. Ne6 Rg8 {As good as this bishop is, you do should not mind leaving just that Nh5 versus that Bc4.} 29. Nxg7 $2 Raxg7 {And Nf6, and h5 winning.}) 25. Re2 Re8 $2 {The clear plan is f5 soon, so why does the rook move from the potential open file? I see your plan with Qf8 and Bh6, which is admirable, but after f5, and the almost forced ef gf, the Bg7 will come to life and get to d4 soon. See my recent question about the "Gufeld Bishop", and if it gets to d4, it will be a knockout.} 26. Ne1 Qf8 27. Nd3 f6 (27... f5 {Again, is almost winning.}) 28. Rf1 Bh6 29. Qf3 Rf7 30. Nb2 Ng7 31. Na4 Rb8 32. Qd3 f5 33. f3 fxe4 {This does not feel right giving up the e4 square. I would have looked for a more patient move that gradually built up the attack on the kingside.} (33... Nh5 $1 {Bringing the N back into play with tempo. The threat is Bf4 winning.} 34. Qd1 Qe7 {Idea Qg5 with ominous threats.}) 34. Qxe4 Nf5 35. Ref2 Ne3+ (35... Be3 $1 36. Re2 Bd4 {And the troublesome knight is stuck. Now, you can bring your king to c7, and have what is almost an extra minor piece on the kingside.}) 36. Kh2 Nxf1+ $6 {Cashing in too early in my opinion. Your position is so strong, that an exchange is not enough.} 37. Rxf1 Qe7 38. Kg2 (38. Nb2 Kf8 39. Kg2 Ke8 40. h4 Kd7 41. Nd1 Kc7 42. Nf2 Rbf8 43. Nh3 (43. Ng4 Bf4 $1 $19 44. gxf4 Rxf4 45. Qe1 e4 46. Nh2 Rxh4 {And wins easily.}) 43... Qf6 (43... Qd7 44. Be2 Qf5 45. Nf2 Qxe4 46. Nxe4 Be3 47. Rd1 h6 48. Rd3 Bd4 49. Rd2 Rg7 50. Rd3 g5 51. h5 {And you still need to break through.}) 44. Bd3 Bd2 45. Rd1 {And it is still hard to breakthrough.}) 38... Kf8 39. Nc3 Bd2 (39... Qg5 40. Rf2 Qe3 41. Qxe3 Bxe3 42. Re2 Bd4 43. Ne4 Ke7 44. h4 Ra8 45. Ng5 Rg7 46. Ne6 Rgg8 47. Ra2 {And white is still hanging on by a thread.}) 40. Nd1 Ra8 41. Nb2 Qg5 42. Kh2 Rb8 (42... Bc3 $1 {Idea Bd4 so if the Na4 moves, you can trade it off leaving an extra piece to attack the kingside.} 43. Na4 (43. Nd3 a4 $19) 43... Bd4) 43. Na4 Ke7 (43...Be3 {Again, this plan.}) 44. f4 $2 {This makes it easy for black,and is the final mistake. Here, it was white, who lost patience.} Qf5 45. Qe2 Bb4 {And this is now out of play really.} 46. fxe5 Qxf1 47. exd6+ Kd8 48. Qxf1 Rxf1 49. Bxf1 Kd7 50. Kg2 Kxd6 51. Bc4 Bd2 52. Kf3 Bg5 53. Nc3 Rf8+ 54. Ke2 Ke5 55. Na4 Rf6 56. Nb2 Kd4 57. Nd3 a4 58. Ne1 Kc3 59. Nf3 Rxf3 60. Kxf3 a3 61. b4 Kxc4 62. bxc5 Kxc5 63. Ke4 a2 64. Ke5 a1=Q+ 65. Ke6 Qf6+ 66. Kd7 Qd8+ 67. Ke6 Qe7#


Struggling to improve past beginner level

EDIT ( edited on January 8th, 2014 ):

Some of the other excellent answers pointed out a flaw in mine: I have failed to mention the importance of analyzing one's own games. This is corrected below, for the sake of completeness. I apologize to the OP and others who found my post useful.

First off, let me say Happy New Year and Marry Christmas to you!

Second, you will have to invest quite some work to be really good, but I believe it is doable based on the information about your current skill you have provided.

Based on the information you provided I think that you can help me with this and I hope that we can successfully solve your problem. In order to suggest you resources for your improvement I need to get to know you as a chess player. I need to know *what pace of play you like, what type of positions you prefer and so on**, but you did not provide me that information so I will cover both options.

So far I have concluded that you are experienced enough to learn successfully from books and tutorials so I will tend to recommend those resources to help you self improve.

Rule #1 that drastically improves players strength:

Know your openings!

You really have to know your openings well, so you do not:
1. Fall for cheap traps
2. Get horrible position which you will hopelessly defend for 50 moves, only to resign later.

If you like fast-paced games with lots of sharp, tactical play, I could recommend the Sicilian defense against 1.e4, and the King's Indian defense against everything else ( King's Indian defense will reduce your time required to learn the openings, as it is very flexible ).

If you are slow-paced, positionally oriented player I recommend the French defense and Queen's gambit.

Just search for the Starting Out series on Amazon and read those first.

Rule #2 that drastically improves players strength:

Know how to play the middle game that arises from your openings!

To learn how to play the middle games from those openings here is a masterpiece:

Andrew Soltis: Pawn Structure Chess (1995)

A must have - period! This alone can improve your strength by 50%!

Rule #3 that drastically improves players strength:

You must know how to play endgames!

You need to know basic principles, at least, or else you will squander all the advantage you have built in your middle game.

End games are tough to master, and you will need lots of books. I can not recommend one made for beginners at this moment.

You can try with Mastering Endgame Strategy ( Johan Hellsten ).

Rule #4 that drastically improves players strength:

You must be able to exploit tactics in the game!

We have all "been there": You have a "won" game, yet you lose it because your opponent found a "lucky move". Or you just got destroyed by a sacrifice you didn't expect.

There are lots of books on this topic, and I will recommend Starting Out: Chess Tactics and Checkmates.

Rule #5 that drastically improves players strength:

You need to know the basics of the "positional play"!

Sometimes you will play openings that require from you to "deaden" the position, or your opponent will do it, and without this knowledge you will end up in a "boring game", you will lose focus and your opponent will easily "pick you off". Also, the problem with these openings is that raw calculation does NOT help you to find a plan.

You can calculate until you die, but you will not find a plan; you will need the knowledge of the positional themes to get you by.

Try with Mastering Chess Strategy ( Johan Hellsten ).

Rule #6 that drastically improves players strength:

Analyze your own games! I can not believe that I have forgotten about this one! This is the most important part.

This is the pattern that I use:

Write down the game you have played;
Compare the opening you played with the moves in the book about that opening ( here Starting Out series come in very handy );
Evaluate the soundness of your middle game plan by consulting the Soltis' book, discover all the tactics that were in the position ( the computer is great for that ) and consult computer/stronger player/books to see how you would correct both your mistakes and opponents, and most importantly try to pinpoint the game deciding moment in the game;
Evaluate the endgame that arose: is it won, drawn or lost?
Evaluate the time you spend in correlation with the position's difficulty: do you get overly excited when things get tough/you are winning so you waste too much thinking time? Or are you too impulsive so you make moves without thinking?

As others have pointed out, your main goal is to play and not to get too distracted with the books I have recommended. Those books are easy for reading, and will teach you the general ideas + give you the least amount of concrete variations so you can get by in your game. My apologies for omitting this advice, I have forgotten about it, but without it everything else is really useless.

SUMMARY:

Find books from Starting Out series for openings you wish to play. Get the book on middle games that arise from those openings; the ones I have recommended is excellent. Learn chess basics: tactics, positional play, endgames. For that, I can recommend the book I have used, but here is a problem:

The book is not written on English and you will have to find the translated version.

The book was written by Vladimir Vukovic, and is called Uvod u sah or Introduction to chess when translated to English. If you get that consider your problems regarding endgame, tactics and positional play solved. If you fail to find this book, try with the books I have listed above ( I have edited my post to provide you a book for each of the rules stated above ). I haven't read them, but I have a good feeling they can help-based on the critics I have read on Amazon.

I would start with opening books and middle games ( the Soltis' book recommended above ), and then improve my tactics, then positional play and only then end games.

This will be a long journey for you, but definitely an enjoyable one.

If you ever need any help, leave a comment and I will respond as soon as possible.

Best of luck, call if help required!

Best regards.


Is it possible to get a professional degree in chess?

There are a couple that come to mind, but I am not sure of the present status of them:

Texas Tech has SPICE (Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence) founded by Susan Polgar and is the first chess institute of it's kind in the world.

Aberdeen University in Scotland was preparing to launch the world's first doctoral program in Chess.

As far as research goes, you can research anything you want about chess, but keep in mind that one normally does not research chess alone, but researches things build up to chess.  By things, I might mean certain data structures or algorithms that are found in chess software.  Other avenues of research can be explored besides the technical part of it as well.

Equating a chess title to a degree title is too subjective.


In Spassky v Fischer '72 game 11, why is 14. Nb1 considered such a great move?

Taking a look at the comments in your link, I came across a post quoting GM Edmar Mednis:

  A move which was invariably given two exclamation marks - 14.Nb1!!
  after the game. May I respectfully suggest that if Spassky had
  proceeded to lose this game it would have read 14.Nb1?? If we look at
  the nature of the position, it should be apparent that neither of
  these extremes is warranted. White has difficulties in how to
  continue, so he decides to first kick Black's Queen. However, this is
  an open position and White's QN is placed well on c3. Retreating it to
  b1 obviously cannot be a winning maneuver. It is simply an interesting
  concept, which works because Fischer has an off game. Under the
  circumstances 14.Nd1!? would also have probably won. As a historical
  note, it may be stated that those commentators who were loudest in
  applauding 14.Nb1!? neither played it themselves nor worried about it
  when their turn came.


Is it too dangerous for white?

Yes.

  what are the ideas for white?

Try to use your open lines and get good piece play, I suppose. Black is already better, though (up a central pawn with no weaknesses), so you shouldn't expect to succeed.

  And what is the winning percentage for white?

In my database it is 19%.

  Is it still played among titled players?

No, and it never was (I can find only 2 games where it was played by someone with a rating over 2200).


Deep Rybka vs Deep Fritz vs Houdini vs (other), which one to buy?

I would suggest you look into some open source engines. And tools for analysis.  These will be free. Some will be quite fully featured and very very powerful:

Stockfish. Rating: 3121
Critter (free) Rating: 3207

Also, look into SCID: an information database to which you can import millions of games and pair the database with analysis engines, add chess move-engines etc.
    -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane%27s_Chess_Information_Database

note 1: there are millions (literally) of master games which have been annotated, and can be downloaded in zipped .pgn files, then which can be imported to SCID for play through etc. So analysis, openings, endgames etc, can all be analysed via scid though whichever engines you decide on (no reason to only have one).

note 2: Crafty finished in second place in the 2010 Fifth Annual ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships. Crafty lost only one game to the first place winner Thinker.

note 3: In various computer chess rankings Stockfish 2.1.1 was second or third behind the top gratis program Houdini and the free program Critter.

Good Luck!


Do Stockfish and the tablebase work together or independently?

play the game until six pieces

Stockfish doesn't do that, that's not what tablebase is for. Briefly, tablebase boosts engine search well before six-men position reached on the board.

Let's do an exercise, add the board 5 pieces. Now you have 10 pieces on the board, and it's not something you can find in any tablebase. However, during the engine search whenever Stockfish trades down to 6 pieces, it can instantly use the tablebase information. The tablebase information gives Stockfish whether's the position is a win/loss/drawn without ever going down to anything like 5 pieces. Therefore, the search is faster and more efficient.

EDIT:

The relevant code is https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/src/search.cpp:

// Step 4a. Tablebase probe
if (!rootNode && TB::Cardinality)
{
    int piecesCount = pos.count<ALL_PIECES>();

    if (    piecesCount <= TB::Cardinality
        && (piecesCount <  TB::Cardinality || depth >= TB::ProbeDepth)
        &&  pos.rule50_count() == 0
        && !pos.can_castle(ANY_CASTLING))
    {

TB::Cardinality is by default 6. Stockfish checks how many pieces, if it's no more than 6 it consults the tablebase information. Otherwise, regular search.


Why can't I analyze with Stockfish 2.0.1 in Winboard 4.5 beta?

Stockfish is a UCI engine so it doesn't understand xboard as they are different protocols. As user @WesFreeman mentioned in the comments, polyglot is an adapter that can get UCI working under Xboard/Winboard. Perhaps visiting the Winboard Startup Dialog or reading the help file may assist you in resolving this issue.

Winboard can also execute polyglot internally if you use -fUCI in the command line, i.e.

xboard -fUCI -fcp stockfish -sUCI -scp stockfish

To download the required programs, you can type:

sudo aptitude install xboard polyglot stockfish


When exactly does a checkmate or stalemate take effect?

Take your pick.

Conventionally in computer chess, we express your idea of phases as "plies", or half-moves, where 2 plies is one "turn".

You can detect checkmate in the ply where the checkmating move is made, but it is more common for checkmate to be detected in the following ply, where your program generates legal moves for the mated player, only to find that there are 0 available.

It is often more convenient and efficient that way, as the work to generate moves would have been done anyway had the position not been mate, so no extra work is done to determine whether a position is checkmate.


How do I trap the queen once it pins my rook?

I don't think you can trap the Queen, but you ought to be able to force the Queens off the board.  Once you do that your extra piece becomes very powerful.  After 11... Qf6 white can only avoid a queen trade by 12. Qg4 but is followed by 12... h5 and preparing for an eventual Rg8.  Black's having a great game though his King is in a drafty place.  Razor sharp.


Is this blocked situation a draw? If not, how can I win as Black?

This is a dead draw.

There are no sensible piece sacrifices for either side.

There is no plan that isn't easily parried (Black could gang up on the a5-pawn with Qd8 and Bc7, but white just doubles the rooks on a1 and a2. White could try to invade with the knight to b6 and d5, but black would just go Bxa4 when the knight turns up on a4.)

Black isn't better here and black isn't worse. There is just nothing any side can do.

Edit: I think I'll expand on this a bit, because for some reason the concept of a dead draw seems to be hard to grasp.

Positions are usually evaluated based on best play by both sides. That can be tricky because there are positions that should be equal or even favourable for one side, but in practice are more promising for the other side.

But in the given position the level of play needed to hold a draw against best play, is very, very low. To put it differently: A 1500 player would have no trouble holding this position with white against Magnus Carlsen. The fact that a computer engine gives a small plus for black doesn't mean black has any advantage whatsoever. It just means that engines aren't yet able to understand completely blocked positions and other kinds of fortresses very well.

Let's go back to our fictional 1500 player. The only thing he has to do is keep e4 and a5 well protected and there is nothing Magnus Carlsen will ever be able to do. Now e4 is already over-over-overprotected. Let's say Carlsen comes up with the cunning plan to attack a5 via Qd8 and Bc7 and our 1500 player isn't sharp enough to double the rooks quickly. Now the a5 pawn falls …

r2q2k1/r7/p1b2p1p/b1p1pPpP/1pPpP1P1/1P1P4/R2NB3/1R1Q2K1 w - - 0 1

1.Rba1 Bc7 2.Ra4 Bxa4 3.Rxa4

Black is a pawn and the exchange up. Possibly the computer will give a even better score for black, but the facts haven't changed: This is still A DEAD DRAW.


Do the official rules of chess forbid promoting a pawn to a piece of the opposite color?

Yes.

FIDE Laws of Chess, rule 3.7e:

  When a pawn reaches the rank furthest from its starting position it must be exchanged as part of the same move on the same square for a new queen, rook, bishop or knight of the same colour.

The Wikipedia article on promotion contains some information about the history of the rule, which previously implicitly allowed promotion to a piece of the opposite color.


Rules: How does right to castle and en passant get considered for the purpose of calculating a threefold repetition?

You have identified the correct rule governing these situations. 9.2.2 is the relevant clause that applies; 9.2.2.1 and 9.2.2.2 are just clarifications of this rule.

So to answer your queries:

1) Your interpretation of castling rights is correct. Each player has two castling rights which are irrespective of the current board position. The right to castle short is lost only when the king or h-rook moves for the first time. The right to castle long is lost only when the king or a-rook moves for the first time. Other restrictions are irrelevant.

2) If a pawn moves two squares without an enemy pawn ready to capture en passant next to it, the position is the same as the one which could reoccur after some more moves. This is because all the players have the same possible (legal) moves (the relevant en passant is, was, and will be unavailable) so under 9.2.2 it would be the same position.

3) Similarly, if en passant is illegal due to a pin (exposing own king to check) or another reason, it does not count as a possible (legal) move, so under 9.2.2 the position and the repeated one later are considered the same.

An additional note: comparing FEN is not a correct implementation according to the FIDE rules, since FEN always records down a pawn moving two squares, regardless of whether an en passant capture is possible or not. Hence a direct PGN comparison would yield a wrong conclusion in the two scenarios you described.


Bishop and queen endgame from a computer chess game

Queen endings are among the most difficult.
We usually say "win by force" when there's a definite winning line. You're asking if White is certain to win, not at all certain.
A human player would look first to winning the  queenside pawn and then with an advantage on both wings, many chances to win. But while that pawn sits on a black square White can't coordinate force against it.
And I don't think White can try for a kingside initiative while the a-pawn has to be tended to. White doesn't want to move it to a5, where it's fixed and can be coordinated against, and it's always exposed to threats on a4.


What's the purpose of this question & answer?

I see a lot of misuse of engines in this community. I see topics where people do opening "analysis" by copy pasting engine outputs. Even worse, I saw opening "analysis" by copy pasting in first move!

Lots of beginner in this community believe that engines give best possible move in every position, because they beat human players.

I tried to explain why this is wrong under several topics shortly, but I see short explanations are not enough, people don't want to believe some stranger saying that using the engine in such ways is wrong without explaining with every detail. So I, as a computer science student and hobby player(used to play OTB but quit it) wrote this very long, tiring answer, in hope of changing wrong beliefs.

Notes: This is a very long answer. I have probably a lot of grammar mistake and typo. Also it may be possible to explain these in a more fluent or in a shorter way. So, if you think you can improve this answer, please suggest edits, I would highly appreciate it.

How does an engine work? What are these numbers in analysis window?

Engines evaluate all positions using different metrics(which is very closely related to engines playing strength)

For example: Engines has predefined values for materials, like 1 points for a pawn, and 3 points for a bishop etc.

But that's not all of course, they use more advanced metrics too. For example: A passed pawn 0.2 points, bishop pair 0.1 points etc.

So, it evaluates all positions like this, and inserts into a tree(if you want to learn about tree's more, please take a look at this paper).

But, as the memory is not infinite, if computer runs out of memory, engine stops right? So engine has to use memory carefully. How? It deletes some nodes (positions) from tree which are not promising (has bad (it may not be easy to decide which is bad) evaluation score).

Longest possible path in the tree is the depth of the analysis. As every node represents a position, depth of 2 equals 1 move.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of engines comparing to humans?

Engines are absolutely better at tactics comparing to humans. Because tactics are

convertible to concrete (material, including checkmate) advantages in short-term (generally in less than 10 moves)
computers have overwhelmingly more memory comparing to humans (Can any chess player memorize and evaluate 10^3 different continuations in any position in 1 minute? No. But computers today can do it for more than 10^12)
computers don't make calculation mistakes(practically), but humans do.

Humans are absolutely better at strategy and positional evaluations. Because:

after all, engines are using metrics to evaluate which are absolutely open to question, for example there is no correct metric for bishop pair, or pawn.
a master chess player is far more better when assessing metrics(machines are stupid)
humans are overwhelmingly stronger at pruning, our search tree is far more smaller(we can eliminate a lot of unnecessary positions, computers fall short in this)

Let me demonstrate these in this position, which a 1200 Elo player can assess a draw(rightfully) in 3 seconds.

 [Title "Komodo-9.3 depth=48, -17.61"]
 [FEN "rr2k3/6b1/8/p1p1p1p1/PpPpPpPp/1P1P1P1P/8/4K3 b - - 0 1"]

Engine says it's -17.61, after seeing 24 moves ahead. Why? Is it that stupid? Can't it understand black can't progress?

Yes! It is that stupid! And you are the one who needs to understand it's draw, not the engine, it's a tool for you!

-17.61 is result of the evaluation metrics. Is the evaluation wrong then? No, evaluation is correct, if you interpret it correctly. The engine sums up metrics, which results -17.61, because black has a lot of material advantage. Interesting thing is that much material advantage isn't enough in this position and that's the part you should assist the engine with your intelligence.

Evaluation scores are not position assessments!!!

There are only two things can be considered as an assessment in an engine's output:

Mate in x
Draw by 0.00

Other than these two all evaluation score outputs are opinion-based. Like in the position above -17 evaluation can be assessed as a draw, it's very unlikely but possible.

So, engines are really far from perfect, that's why we have tablebases. Tablebases are sources of the absolute truth of a given position. A tablebase gives an output which tells the position is either mate (in x moves) or draw. State of the art tablebases has covered all positions having at most seven pieces.

How to interpret evaluation scores?

As I mentioned earlier, engines do their best to use limited memory and computational power. Because these are limited, engines tell users that how deep they went.

Imagine that you are a commander (engine) of an army, and you are in an open terrain. Your army has 10k soldiers. You have 10km (depth of search) line of sight, and you see enemy forces 9km ahead, you guess (evaluate) their count as roughly 100 soldiers, and you decide to attack. You and your army starts to run towards enemy. But after getting 3kms closer to enemy forces (gaining 3km more line of sight), you suddenly see 100k more enemy, and you suddenly decide that this battle is lost.

This was an analogy of horizon effect problem. There are times, in which the key move happens out of the horizon of the engine, and engine evaluates the position falsely. This problem happens lot more in endgame, because in endgame, comparing to middlegame and opening, positions evolve slowly, more moves needed to get same amount of progress. Remember the long manoeuvres of endgames. That's why engines are using tablebases (precalculated, sure as death assessments of positions which have less than 8 piece on board), to fight with horizon effect.

Let's return to position above and clarify why we can so easily assess it as draw, but computer don't give 0.00?

Engine has calculated 24 moves deep, nice. But we are calculating all possible continuations, until the end! We are not faster than computers, but we are quicker than them. Because we understand, after checking several moves, all continuations are trivial, and prune them all. We only calculate few positions, and assess it as draw. But engine calculates tons of, because its not clever enough to understand its trivial to calculate all these positions.

Now, how not to use chess engines?

As an endgame god, like it knows it all
As an opening god, like it knows it all
As a strategy god, like it knows it all
As a tactical god, like it knows it all(it generally knows it all, but there are exceptions, because of the horizon effect)

But to use as:

A foolproof mate searcher
The best tactician in the world
A questionable advisor in strategical/positional evaluations

Don't forget that analysis and match are different tasks. Humans can't beat engines on matches doesn't mean it's the same in analysis. Actually these are very distinct tasks, because analysis aims to find the best move with infinite resources, but match aims to win with finite resources, and for winning, it's enough to play better than opponent. All competitive engines are tuned for matches, to get highest possible success in engine tournaments.

Read also

A nice article about chess engines, relevant to this topic.
A very instructive article about interpreting engine evaluations.
A related topic: Why do chess engines sometimes miss good moves (or take forever to spot)?
Another related topic: Computer evaluations: How trustworthy are they?

Examples of Engine Fails, for Unsatisfied Readers

More examples of positions, which state-of-the-art engines can't find the correct move, which was found by human-beings

[Event "Linares "]
[White "Topalov, Veselin"]
[Black "Shirov, Alexei"]
[FEN "8/8/4kpp1/3p1b2/p6P/2B5/6P1/6K1 b - - 0 47"]

1...Bh3!!-+ {Shirov played this} ( 1...a3? {Komodo-9.3 with 50 ply, 5GB Hashtable, evaluates -2.58} )

Analysis of Shirov's game


The attacking manual by Jacob Aagaard might be just what you are looking for. I enjoyed it a lot. It contains instructive games and exercises.

Other good books on attacking: Spielmann, The Art of Sacrifice, Vukovic, The Art of Attack,  Christiansen, Storming the barricades.


Convert between different rating systems

I assume that you're interested in conversions involving USCF ratings. Here you can see the algorithm used.

As an example the conversion between FIDE and USCF is USCF = 180 + 0.94*FIDE if the FIDE rating is under 2000 and USCF = 20 + 1.02*FIDE if the FIDE rating is over 2000 elo points.


Creating a Opening Lines Book in ' tree-like' format

https://tailuge.github.io/chess-o-tron/public/openings/openingtree.html
and
https://www.openingtree.com/
both create something similar from your games on lichess.org. I do not believe they take into account opening names or transpositions.

You could draw this on paper, or you could use a online drawing software such as Lucidchart or Google Drawings.


Bughouse sitting/stalling full strategic breakdown

Well, since the values of pieces in bughouse chess depends severely on the position type (e.g. a queen is often useless) you may want to stall/not play immediately when you're waiting for a specific piece to complete your strategy in general, not necessarily to win you a piece or gain some specific advantage.

E.g. you may have noticed experienced bughouse players starting with 1.Nf3 followed by Ng5 or Ne5 and sacrificing at f7. Now, when the king takes the knight, you might not reach an immediate advantage, but getting a knight could yield you a nice aggressive position.
Or another example would be waiting to get a pawn very early to disturb your opponents development as early as 2nd or 3rd move, with the goal of attacking, but also getting more space and a psychological advantage.
While we're on that, sometimes if you're playing blitz bughouse casually, chatting etc. you might want to spend some time just to get your opponent off track, since psychology plays a huge role in chess, and therefore in bughouse as well.

However, I would agree with you that on most occasions it is that you see you're getting checkmated in the next move so you let your partner play as long as he can(given that you have more time than your diagonal opponent, of course).

That's pretty much all I can think of, I hope you find this answer useful!


Which webpage broadcasts a single chess game, usually Carlsen's, in infinite analysis?

You are probably thinking of analysis.sesse.net.


What makes a chess puzzle hard to solve?

Each player has his own form of tactical blindness, so "what makes a problem difficult" varies from solver to solver. If one of the key moves is backward-going, I'll never find it.
Some players forget that when they move a piece within their calculation, it no longer covers the squares it did before.  Some players have a hard time counting multiple exchanges on the same square. Different for all.
"Black puzzles are harder" is silly. Chess pieces are only light and dark for convenience. The pieces could all be the same shade of gray, and chess could still be played as long as the players remembered which gray pieces belong to which player.
When it's "Black to play and win", flip the board so Black's on the bottom of the diagram, and you will find them just as simple to solve.


Is there a good online opening training software?

2018 update:

It seems lichess.org offers a lot of the features you're looking for. On lichess, go to tools then choose Analysis board:

The editor allows you to import FEN, PGN or edit the board yourself.
You have access to two proper opening databases, one extracted from the games played on lichess and one from the masters games (top players). It's not only an opening explorer showing the lines, but it also shows you samples of games where a given line is employed.
You can set up your position and play through the opening branches, while simultaneously verifying the engine assessment on the position. From a given position you can also choose to practice against the computer, for instance for a variation you've come up on your own.
Last but not least, once your analysis is done, you can save it all as a study (which can also be made private). As such, all the variations and side-lines you've explored/tried and plan to keep will be saved together with the engine analysis of them. These will be your personal repertoires, which you can continuously modify whenever you find improvements.

The features are available to everyone. Once you've created a couple of repertoires and started practicing them on lichess, in your profile there is an analytics page where all sorts of statistics will be calculated based on your performance. For example, your rate of win with a certain line, or your frequency of certain moves and so on. That will help you to assess how you are performing with your different openings.

Older suggestions:
In terms of simple online opening explorers, there's always the Shredder Opening Database, can be useful for quickly checking something.

Then there's the database available on chesstempo which is actually really detailed (statistics on each opening etc) and gives exemplary games of any opening played by real players.

But I believe for what you want to do, lichess is the go-to choice here.


How to move knights so that black moves first?

It's impossible. Knights require an even number of moves to reach a square of the same color as where they started, or correspondingly an odd number of moves to reach the opposite color. Both sides need to make an even number of moves to reach the starting position.


Three way fork-Why take the rook instead of the queen?

Both moves lead to crushingly won positions for White, so all things considered it doesn't matter which one you choose. For me, Stockfish shows +14 for Nxg8+ and +9 for Nxd7. The difference between +9 and +14 is a lot less significant than the difference between, say, +0.5 and +2.5.
About the material calculation you gave: Nxd7 costs two minor pieces for the queen rather than just one, since if Black responds to Nxd7 with ...Rxg7 then the knight on d7 is also lost. So to the extent that this matters, on balance it probably favours Nxg8+ (which gains a whole rook).


What Chess board companies are the most reputable?

The standard vinyl board is hard to beat for everything except showing off a chess set.  You can get them for cheap from the USCF or from any other purveyor of chess gear.

Here's one from Cajun chess for $4.  I bought a few sets from them. I like them.

Looks like tournament-sized wooden boards begin at $50.


Online chess with full disclosure of name and FIDE ID

Only FIDE could enforce that.  Talk to them.
No other platform can or does do that.


Welcome to Chess Stack Exchange.
I believe you're doing well here.  It is surely a checkmate. Probably the website isn't programmed that way to recognize that move. But, as per your question, this is clearly a checkmate that resembles the one-rook-mate pattern.


Simple answer: it is everybody's job to promote chess.

FIDE stands for "Fédération Internationale des Échecs" which stands for "International Chess Federation". It is their job to promote international chess -

World Championships
Candidates tournaments
Continental Championships
Olympiads

It is the job of the national federations to promote chess at the national and regional level -

National Championships
National Leagues
Regional Championships
Regional Leagues

It is the job of clubs and their affiliates (in some countries the national federation is also run completely by the clubs) to promote chess at the local level

Local Leagues
Local congresses

It is the job of internet companies to promote chess online (although FIDE and the federations sometimes like to try as well)

It is the job of rich sponsors to fill in the gaps and provide the icing on the cake. Here I'm thinking of lucrative, major opens like the Isle of Man, Gibraltar and the big events run out of St Louis Chess club (and bankrolled by Rex Sinquefield)

No one group of organizers is best overall. It would be ridiculous for FIDE to try and run every minor city league. It would be equally ridiculous for clubs to run the World Championships.

Note that I haven't mentioned entrepreneurs for the simple reason that making money from organizing chess tournaments, while possible, is extremely difficult. Whoever can crack the TV market and turn chess into a sport with the same televisual appeal as soccer deserves to be a billionaire.


Tablebases say this position is drawn, but Stockfish disagrees-What does that mean?

If the tablebase says that it's a draw with optimal play from both sides, then you can always ignore whatever Stockfish or any other engine says. The tablebase knows the objective evaluation for any position with 7 pieces or less.
What Stockfish 11 (or any earlier version) does is calculate as far as it can ahead, evaluate the positions it reaches in its search, and then use those numbers to give an evaluation for the starting position (obviously a lot more is involved, but that's the basic idea). If Stockfish reaches a position where Black's still up a knight, it will usually give some evaluation in Black's favour due to how its evaluation function works. It has no way of knowing that it's certain K+R will draw against K+R+N, unless this knowledge was explicitly programmed into it. Stockfish will only say it is a draw once: it's calculated a forced repetition will happen, it sees that a K+R vs K+R is forced, or the game has reached the 50 move rule (or will imminently do so). Although if you were to hook up Stockfish with a tablebase (some people do this, such as serious correspondence players), Stockfish should always give the tablebase evaluation in positions with 7 pieces or less.
However, it's worthwhile noting that Stockfish NNUE (as well as Stockfish 12 I'd assume) gives an evaluation of equality, with the number somewhere around -0.13 for a K+R vs K+R+N endgame I set up, after not thinking for too long. In the position you have with the pawn, NNUE started giving a 0.00 evaluation once it reached around depth 20. This is probably because "it" had experience playing this K+R vs K+R+N endgame, and in all normal circumstances the result is a draw. So, NNUE's neural net evaluates this endgame appropriately as equal. Note that this is all without the use of a tablebase.


Endgame where two knights against a lone king is a draw, you can't force a checkmate. However, with a pawn the side with the two knights can setup a mating net without running into stalemate. That's why it's always important to leave a pawn.

Just a few days ago, Karjakin demonstrated the technique against a very strong US grandmaster. Please note in the final position, it's a stalemate without the black pawn. Please go through the game, note how Karjakin never attempted to win the final pawn.

White is threatening Nh6, Nf7#. Again, this setup is impossible without the black pawn.

  http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1937249


What should a player do in blitz if he knocks a piece on to the floor after pressing the clock?

The relevant section from the rules would be Article 7.4.1:

  If a player displaces one or more pieces, he shall re-establish the
  correct position in his own time.

The rules do not specify a certain procedure, but what I have seen happening in practice is: Player A knocks a piece over on his opponent's time. Player B is now allowed to press the clock to make sure he does not lose time. After the correct position has been reestablished, player A will press the clock again so player B has the move. I certainly don't feel the rules mandate that the arbiter needs to be summoned in this case.

If the displacement caused an unusual disturbance or the affected player is very low on time (<10sec), as an arbiter I would consider applying Article 12.5 regarding external disturbances and add something in the range of 20-30 seconds to the clock of the affected player.

The following objections could be raised, although I feel they are rather academic in nature:

It would be in the spirit of the rules if the person displacing the pieces would stop their opponent's clock and start his own again. However, I have never seen this happening and it may well be inadvisable to do that just for practical reasons, depending on the circumstances.
If the game is played with increment, the additional two clock presses add time to the players' clocks. Therefore, the clock settings (times and move counter) would be incorrect after such an incident. However, at least in the German-speaking chess community, Article 6.10.2 is generally considered to only apply in cases where there is a non-negligible time difference. As a rule of thumb, it should take an arbiter at most one minute to adjust clock settings. If the time differential to be corrected is smaller, the arbiter should not interfere. Additionally, the move counter of the clock is not a reliable indicator of the number of moves played.

In the comments, Article 7.5.3 has been mentioned:

  If the player presses the clock without making a move, it shall be considered and penalized as if an illegal move.

This article has been added fairly recently to make sure a player can be penalized for pressing the clock for no reason. It should not be applied if the player enforces the rules.

Making a move and then expecting to correct the position of a displaced piece defeats the purpose of the rule: The distraction by the missing piece is immediately affecting the other player.


I'm assuming you're mainly referring to the central pawn mass - wanting to get a structure with a Black pawn on b3 seems too specific.

In general, it's much harder to deliberately maneuver the game into a line where you are the person with the pawn on d4 (or if you're playing White, with the pawn on d5). This is because you need to get your opponent to provoke your d-pawn forward with e4 and c4. If you liked playing the White side of that diagram, I would recommend playing the Czech Benoni as Black (i.e: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e5 4.Nc3 d6).

If you want a higher chance of getting the structure with c4-, d5-, and e4-pawns (so basically being on the flipped side of Black in that diagram), I'd recommend playing 1.d4 and 2.c4 as White. Your opponent could go into the aforementioned Czech Benoni (although it isn't very common), or they could play the King's Indian Defense. In that structure, Black often plays ...e5/...c5, and once in a while pushes both pawns (getting you into a situation you want).

I don't have much advice for how to get that structure as Black. You're at the mercy of your opponent to dictate the play. One of the most common ways I know of getting it is if White plays a reverse King's Indian, allowing you to push all your pawns with ...d5, ...c5, ...e5, but most people don't do this.


There are several ways to teach online chess for free.

1. Skype + Chessbase. An old version of Chessbase Reader can be downloaded for free (just google "free download Chessbase"). This program will have everything you need to play, analyze, and save games, along with many other options. With this program, you can use the "share screens" option on skype, where you have the chessbase program open, and your student can see the board on his screen. You can then proceed with the lesson via voice call. This is all 100% free.

2. Skype + Online Analysis Board. Some websites, particularly chess.com and ICC, have ways for two users to share a board, meaning that both can use the board. For example, on ICC (requires membership), you two can share a board, and make a call, and have the lesson.

These are just two ways, and the first should suffice completely.


I played 2.f3 by accident! How do I save my position?

With 3. f4, you are playing the Latvian Gambit with colors reversed!

[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. f3 Nf6 3. f4


Queen against rook-drawn and won endgames

Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnless_chess_endgame#Queen_versus_rook

  A queen wins against a lone rook, unless there is an immediate draw by
  stalemate or due to perpetual check, ... (or if the rook or king can
  immediately capture the queen)

The same article also says

  With perfect play, in the worst winning position, the queen can win
  the rook or checkmate within 31 moves

In practice if the defending side knows what they are doing it can be quite difficult to win, especially if, as you say, the king and rook remain in contact. A key position to know is the Philidor position, where white can force the king and rook to be separated, and then the rook can be won by a fork. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philidor_position#Queen_versus_rook


Why are there 64 squares on a chessboard?

Nothing is stopping you from playing chess in a 4x4, 6x6 or 9x9 board. In ancient times people have tried such approaches.

To answer why 64 squares, I have to answer a bit mathematically. Let me start with this:

  [Chess, in] its early form in the 6th century was known as chaturaṅga, which translates as "four divisions (of the military)": infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry.

It says that chaturanga means 'game of squares' and it also mentions 4 divisions of military, where 1 division = 8 pieces (4 pawns + 4 main pieces). So 4x4 = 16 pieces each side. This also means, all in all, a total of 32 pieces in the board (8 in each row).

For 32 pieces to be fully mobile on the board, 36 squares would be too congested and not possible; 49 squares would be still too congested; 64 sure makes sense, and is also the perfect square of 8.


It really depends on whether you are willing to do the work, but I have tried this with people before, and it has worked extremely well. Most weaker players are initially weak because they lose material so often and easily.

First, I believe strongly in an immersion-type training program. If I give you 20 problems, and you get 100%, you only learned 20 problems. If I give you 150, and you only get a 66.6%, you still learned 100 problems, or five times what you did when you got only 20 problems. I firmly believe that the more you see in a short period of time, the more you will learn. In this case, I am advocating quantity over quality.

This is based on my own personal experience, and is based on my learning Russian in the Air Force. The first night, I got 20 words to learn, but by the end of 47 weeks, we got about 300 words every other night. I also had a friend, who was 38 at the time, and he went from 1000 to about 1850 on the Internet Chess Club in three months doing what I am about to recommend.

I am not a fan of the chess.com and other site tactics programs for a couple of reasons. First, they are checked by computers, and often take the computer route in the defense portion of the solution, rather than the human path. Second, they are not well grouped by theme.

I still love the grouping on the two Fred Reinfeld books, "1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate, 21st Century Edition" and "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations, 21st Century Edition".

You start with the 1001 checkmates book because the first chapter is queen sacrifices, so you have two big hints: Give up the queen, and checkmate. Now, I want you to try to do 50 per day (25 minimum though), spending no more than two minutes on each problem trying to figure it out. If you do not get it, just look at the answer, and play it out on a board, if necessary. You may not have gotten it right, but you have absorbed something. Write in pencil next to the diagram 1-5, with one being that you solved it easily, and five that you had no idea.

Go through the whole book at 50 per day. You can skip the last chapter on composed mates if you want. Do the same with the 1001 sacrifices book.

Now, you have read both, and have rated how easily you got them. Go back ans read the both books again in the same order. They are both grouped so well, that you will start to pick up on themes better than ever.

Funny, in early 2019, a new book, "The Woodpecker Method" came out, and recommends a very similar method to the one that I have been recommending for over 30 years.

I have found over the years that even guys, who are 2000-2100 over-the-board, are still not that great tactically, so keep doing this, and as you get better with your two original books, pick different tactics books for some variety. We never stop practicing that, and calculation, in general.

Of course, as you get better, there is a lot more to learn about opening pawn structures (search my other posts about this), and of course, the endgame.


You need to use mate search function of a chess engine.

Some engines have this function, for example, Houdini 4: http://www.cruxis.com/chess/manual/index.html?game_play.htm

You can activate it using UCI parameters, or more easily, using a Fritz GUI on Windows as it has a mate search button, which makes life easier.


Bronstein's lines of attack on the chessboard

This is actually a common piece of advice given to students of chess. Often chess blindness begins with not projecting your piece movement abilities beyond the first encountered piece in it's way. this helps to clear that deficiency away and begin to cultivate imagination and fantasy position ideas in your mind.


Hardware used in AlphaZero vs Stockfish match

That's why I wonder whether there have been any attempts made to
  provide comparable hardware to both.

This is Google you're talking about! So the answer is obviously "No".

From the original paper hardware used for initialising and training -

  Training proceeded for 700,000 steps (mini-batches of size 4,096)
  starting from randomly initialised parameters, using 5,000
  first-generation TPUs (15) to generate self-play games and 64
  second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks

and hardware used for the games -

  AlphaZero and the previous AlphaGo Zero used a single machine with 4
  TPUs Stockfish and Elmo played at their strongest skill level using 64
  threads and a hash size of 1GB.

So, AlphaZero used special hardware developed by Google. It used specialized Tensor Processor Units (TPUs) rather than general Central Processing Units (CPUs) as are available commercially.

This is how Wikipedia describes the second generation TPUs they used -

  The second generation TPU was announced in May 2017. Google stated the
  first generation TPU design was memory bandwidth limited, and using 16
  GB of High Bandwidth Memory in the second generation design increased
  bandwidth to 600 GB/s and performance to 45 TFLOPS. The TPUs are then
  arranged into 4-chip 180 TFLOPS modules

They used 4 TPUs for the games, so a processing power of 180 TFLOPS.
Note TFLOPS = 1000 billion floating point operations per second.

For comparison Intel's latest most powerful chip is the Core i9 Extreme Edition processor which clocks in at 1 TFLOP. A top of the line I7 that you would find in a gaming machine would typically be about 100 GFLOPs (i.e. one tenth of a TFLOP).

I think it's fair to say that AlphaZero was using an 800 pound gorilla of a hardware configuration compared to Stockfishes mouse.


Does playing tournament chess help one in the field of chess-related math?

To the extent that "chess-related math" requires any expertise in chess beyond the rules(*), tournament play is probably not as useful as solving and composing chess problems/studies.  Typical positions in tournament play are too complicated to evaluate with mathematical certainty, while problems and studies should and usually do have rigorous proofs of correctness that are comprehensible to human players and problemists.

(*) Sometimes one needs no expertise beyond (say) how the Knight moves (as for questions involving the Knight's tour, or dominating the 8-by-8 board with a minimal number of Knights).


From the OP and the discussion in comments I guess you're looking for more nuanced variations. Here's one that comes to mind from the Queen's pawn game (symmetric-pseudo-Catalan), where if black doesn't break the symmetry at some point, white will either be up a pawn or have tangible positional advantage.

 [title "Queen's pawn game example"]
 [fen ""]

 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. g3 g6 4. Bg2 Bg7 5. O-O O-O 6. b3 b6 7. Bb2 Bb7 8. Nbd2 Nbd7 9. c4 c5 10. e3 e6 11. Ne5 Ne4 12. Nxe4 {Here black can no longer keep playing symmetrically, as exemplified in the shown mainline. Instead black has to simply recapture on e4 and it's a normal game.} Nxe5 (12...dxe4 {optimal continuation for black here, breaking the symmetry.} 13. Nxd7 Qxd7 14. Qc2) 13. dxe5 dxe4 14. Qc2 Rb8 (14...Qc7 15. Bxe4 {and white is up a clear pawn}) 15. Rad1 Qc7 16. Bxe4 Bxe5 17. Bxe5 Qxe5 18. Bxb7 Rxb7 {despite the symmetric pawn structure and equal material, white has a clear positional advantage as they control the only open file and black's disconnected rooks are far from being in time to challenge the file.}


If you call somebody a club player, you not only distinguish him from professionals and masters (though those obviously play in clubs too), but also from hobbyists. And that distinction makes some sense, because hobby players usually don't reach a strength beyond 1500 Elo or so.

So a club player is somebody who is serious about chess, plays rated games regularly and knows something about the game. He is only implicitly not a master (otherwise you'd call him that). Depending on which distinction you want to stress, you might also call him a "rated player" or an "untitled player".

The term amateur is also often used, but of course, depending on context, an amateur can also be a hobbyist or even a non-professional world class player (like, Euwe, McShane, Malakhov …).


ChessBase allows you to search for positions with promotions to each piece, with or without check. In the Mega 2019 database, there are 8,266,473 games.

In those games, there are 486,622 promotions to queen; 7,223 promotions to knight; 1,486 promotions to bishop; and 9,606 promotions to rook. Of the 7,223 promotions to knight, 5,733 came with check, or 79.3%. Bonus: Of the 5,733 knight promotions with check, 106 were mate on the move.

Of course, Mega does not have every game, but this can give you a pretty close idea.


Why is the Ruy Lopez a sensible opening for white?

Sure black's a6-b5 come with tempo, but let's say at a very basic level, if you just compare pieces, structure and development progress, you can see that white is:

Ready to castle whereas black hasn't yet developed either kingside pieces, so at least 2 tempi away from castling. This translates into white having a safer king 1-2 tempi earlier, which means white has the upper-hand in launching some sort of attack or push.
White has developed two minor pieces that stand quite well: Knight on f3 attacks e5 and has the potential to coordinate on f7 with the bishop on b3 already eyeing black's kingside. In contrast, black has only developed a knight, one that stands defensively on c6 covering e5.
Besides the e4 pawn, white has nearly kept all pawn advancement options still on the table (therefore, can opt for various pawn structures still), whereas black has made 2 additional commitments that cannot be undone, which can on the one hand, prove to have been self-inducing weaknesses, and on the other hand, be hooks (targets) for white's pawn advancements on the queenside, e.g. an a4 push, to which black has to react immediately.

These ways of reasoning can be adopted to conceptually assess nearly any opening you see, at least at a basic level.

The point on pawn commitments cannot be emphasized enough, they're the most committal moves in the game (trades come close but at least in principle a piece can be brought back to life with a promotion, but pawns cannot! :P ). Even at the highest level, for instance take a look at any of Caruana's openings in the match so far, where roughly speaking, he intentionally favours lines where he can delay unnecessary pawn moves and keep most of his options open. Examples:

Game 2:

 [title "Game 2, move 13, only 3 central pawns moved, compare to white!"]
 [fen "r1br2k1/pp3ppp/2n1p3/q1bp4/2P2B2/P1P1PN2/2Q1BPPP/3R1RK1 b - - 0 13"]

Game 4:

 [title "Game 4, move 13, only 2 central pawns moved, compare to white!"]
 [fen "r1bqr1k1/ppp2ppp/3b4/4p3/1P6/2BP1BP1/P3PP1P/1R1Q1RK1 b - - 0 13"]

game 6:

 [title "Game 6, move 13, only 2 central pawns moved, compare to white!"]
 [fen "r1b1kb1r/pppn1ppp/3pn3/3N4/3P4/N1P2P2/PP4PP/R1B1KB1R b KQkq - 0 13"]

game 8:

 [title "Game 8, move 16, only 3 pawns moved, compare to black!"]
 [fen "1rbq1rk1/1p2b1pp/pN1p4/P2Pnp2/4p3/8/1PPBBPPP/R2Q1RK1 w - - 4 17"]

Anyhow I think the idea is clear now! It's important to add that in all these examples, the simple fact of having moved less pawns doesn't directly or necessarily translate into having a better position, chess is never that simple or linear. Partly, specially in this examples, it is a case of style and preference (and thus the adopted openings), but on the other hand it shows you the importance of diversity in pawn structures that can still be opted for as they translate into having more choices, abundantly clear even at the highest level.

I hope these ideas have shown you why the Ruy Lopez is such a liked opening, which I have only tackled from the white side in this post, and clearly, black's side has its own merits in the Ruy Lopez compared to alternative options that are available for black against 1. e4, but that's a discussion for another time.