Are there any chances that the Fischer who reappeared in 1992 was not the real one?

At the very least we know that in 1992 a man that looked and sounded like an aged version of Bobby Fischer played Boris Spassky in a match, and won it. Assuming that this old man was actually not Fischer, we must think of plausible alternatives for who it possibly could've been. What old man besides Bobby Fischer will look like Bobby Fischer and be able to play well enough to beat a former world champion? How couldn't this mysterious veteran be at least somewhat famous in the chess world (being a strong player that is also a Fischer look-alike)? And how did he manage to dupe the chess world (including all the people who knew him on a personal level) into thinking that he was Bobby Fischer?

It is very difficult to give plausible answers to the above questions, and since there is no real indication that it wasn't the real Bobby Fischer to played Spassky I will go ahead and use Occham's razor to conclude that the most reasonable explanation is that it was the real Fischer that played in the 1992 match.


How different would chess be if a stalemate was a win?

Building on SmallChess' answer, KP vs K endgames that are normally drawn would be lost. This has very big ramifications, as there are many rook endgames where the side up a pawn can easily transpose into a (formerly drawn) KP vs K endgame. For example:

The Philidor Endgame
A normal K+R+3P vs K+R+2P on the same side of the board.
A K+R+4P vs K+R+3P where the extra pawn is a passed a-pawn. If the defending rook is behind the pawn, the endgame is considered barely drawn. However, the attacking rook might be able to exchange the extra a-pawn for a pawn on the kingside, reaching the aforementioend K+R+3P vs K+R+2P endgame.

This logic can also be applied to other endgames, such as K+Q+P vs K+Q. However, Rook endgames are the most common, and by making stalement = a win, many of these fundamental endgames are ruined.

Once that has happened, it's often not difficult for the better side to transpose down into one of them (especially the Philidor).

So making Stalement a win would drastically lower the number of draws that happen when one side is defending an endgame. However, there are many cases where no one was ever winning in an endgame (i.e., even material throughout), and most of these would probably result in draws still. The reason is that many draws in equal endgames arise from an "impasse" both sides create, where neither can make progress.


Playing rating is higher than tactics rating

Most sites are way overgenerous with their ratings.
And they are all inconsistent between them too.
One factor that matters is the strength of the group who are competing.  Your tactics cohort may differ a lot from your online opponents.


Is there a list of ALL potential mates/traps under 10 moves or so?

I would suggest investigating Bill Wall's Chess Page, specifically:

700 Opening Traps
Miniatures that relate to your favourite openings, e.g. 500 Caro-Kann Miniatures
The PGN files related to you favourite opening


Continue the Attack, Or Meet the Positional Threat?

I think you are asking the correct question at the wrong move.  12.Bf4 is probably questionable and after 12...f5 you need to think about countering Black's kingside expansion.  A move like 13.Ng5 looks strong, a possible line being 13...Rf8 14.h4 h6 15.Nh3.  Then you can reroute the Bishop, put the pawn on h5 and Nf4 with a bind.

It is probably too late to thwart Black's light squared bishop with 15.Nd2 (which just looks ugly to me) as you are now having to deal with a kingside pawn storm but 15.Ne1 looks much better.  The idea is to play g3 and reroute the knight via g2 at some point.


How can I know if the chief arbiter has "cheated" in the pairings and possibly report it?

I participated in a local, FIDE-rated tournament. In its first round,
  the chief arbiter paired the players 4 times

This has happened to me too, although not as many as 3 repairings that I am aware. As an arbiter I've also done repairing in the first round although only ever in small local events. I would try very, very hard indeed to avoid doing this in a norm event. Normal procedure for the first round in a norm event to avoid this happening is to require the players to register their presence before a certain time and do the pairings when this time is reached. Any player who doesn't register in time is excluded from the first round.

There is a unique problem in the first round of a tournament in that usually it is possible as a player to ask for and be granted a half point bye and players will often choose to miss the first round. This information goes to the organiser who should pass it on to the arbiter but often some of this information "goes astray". With luck this is discovered before the round starts. In that case the correct procedure is to redo the pairings taking into account the updated bye information.

Sometimes this information isn't discovered until the round has started. In this case some players will have sat there with no opponent because the opponent requested a bye but that information got lost. They will be awarded the full point. When you look at the pairings the next day you will see that these players are shown not having an opponent in round one (even though when the round was played they did) but each getting one full point instead of the half point they would get for a bye. Any time you see more than one player get a full point bye you know this is what happened.

The organiser and arbiter can try and be strict and say byes must be agreed the day before but then half an hour before the first round is due to start a player rings up to say that there has been an accident on the motorway, he is going to be delayed and won't arrive in time to play his game, can he have a half point bye?

When this happens, again, the arbiter should repair using the new information. This can be annoying but it is real life.

Now modify the scenario slightly. This time the round has started but it is still before the default time and again a player phones up. He is giving a lift to another player and again they will miss the round because of an accident. They are not paired against each other so two players are sitting at their boards without opponents. As the arbiter, what is the best thing to do? As long as the organiser wrote in the tournament conditions that in this situation the players can be repaired then the correct thing is to repair the two players without opponents. The only way to do this is manually. If the two players without opponents are seeded 2 and 3 then the pairings will be changed so that 2 plays 3 and the two missing players who may be 56 and 57 each end up getting a half point bye.

  How do I know? - I've made a script in Perl to calculate the pairings
  for the first round in a Swiss-system, but the output is different
  from the reality

I'm an FA so I don't need to write a Perl script to check the pairings but as a player I have several times looked at the results from the previous round and calculated who I should be playing in the next round because the pairings are slow coming out. On one occasion the published pairings agreed with my calculations but were changed the next morning when I came to play and on several others they did not correspond. I ended up paired against somebody completely different! It has also happened to me in large, prestigious events where I do not expect such things to happen. How could this be?

Well, it is actually very simple. Take a very large tournament in a very small place with few local players like Iceland or Isle of Man. Most of the local players will be entered. This is their big chance to play new people without having to travel. With all these other players from distant and often exotic locations they really don't want to miss out and play their clubmate who they play several times a year, if not month.

If it is not a high level tournament like a norm event then it is reasonable to approach the arbiter (ideally before the event starts) and say "I don't want to play other islanders. Please don't pair me against them". This is reasonable and understandable and in every case where the pairings don't match my calculations I have found that such a thing explains the difference.

In the case where the pairings were changed on me I suspect that an initial error was made and a "forbidden pairing" which had been requested hadn't been entered correctly and players who had requested not to be paired against each other had this happen, noticed and then asked the arbiter to correct this.

  Is it possible to know if they "cheated" from the .TUNX Swiss-Manager
  file and possibly report this case to the national chess federation?

In the case of a norm event then, yes, it should be possible and was done for the big Gibraltar tournament a few years ago when Hou Yifan complained that she was paired against too many women. (Spoiler alert: she was wrong) However for smaller tournaments this is not really possible unless you have all the information including bye requests, late bye requests, missed bye requests and requested forbidden pairings.

As an aside I did play in a tournament a few years ago where they openly cheated on the pairings and the prizes! They even announced before the first round that they were going to do this. It wasn't FIDE rated and it wasn't nationally graded and all I could do was complain to them loudly and vow never to play in one of their tournaments again.


Refutation of the Blackmar-Diemer gambit?

The simplest refutation is 2...e6, the french defense, one of the most stable openings for black.
It is also fine to accept  the gambit  2... dxe4, but you have to know some specific traps....


What types or kinds of chess players are there?

There are two broad-brush categories of players: positional and tactical.  Positional players' styles tend to lead them to play moves that choke out their opponents.  They are patient and bide their time.  There's no better proponent of this type of play than Tigran Petrosian. He's recognized as one of the hardest players to defeat.  A more recent example would be Anatoly Karpov, another player that was just so hard to defeat. Positional players keep taking their opponents' good moves away until nothing is left but bad moves.  Aron Nimzowitch was the father of this type of play, though he did not invent it - he described and defined the style in publications such as My System.

There are more tactical players.  These include pretty much all the darlings of chess - the ones scoring points with fireworks.  They tend towards open positions with lots of complexity, relying upon their tactical skills to force an error onto their opponents.  Examples include Rudolf Spielmann, a player from another age who made Tal look tame.  Mikhail Tal is the more modern archetype - a player able to conjure devastating attacks from seemingly nothing at all.  Then there is Kasparov, Fischer, etc the list is rather endless.

In short, tactical players do it to you.  Positional players make you do it to yourself.

At any semi-professional level of play, both styles of player can uncork combinational fu.  So this isn't to say that a positional player avoids combinations and sacrifices.  You won't normally find one player who plays both styles; it is a philosophy sort of thing.  They believe one way is best and sharpen their skills to this belief.


Well, let's take Random House off the table right away, as RHM Press was a division of RHM Associates of Delaware, Inc. which lists Sydney Fried as Publisher. The California Secretary of State system lists an RHM Publishing as a "Doing Business As" name for RHM Associates.

Unfortunately, No list of officers.

There's a blurb in the beginning of San Antonio 1972 (the first book RHM published) that talks a little bit about the venture, but no details. Since the most likely RHM Associates of Delaware I can find is an investment firm, I lean towards the idea the RHM name came from the folks that supplied the money to start it.


I think it is the "Silent-Tiger variation of the Scotch Gambit"!

From Wikipedia:

  After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4, the most important continuations
  are:

    4.Nxd4 (Main line)

      4...Bc5 (Classical Variation)

      4...Nf6 (Schmidt Variation)

      4...Qh4!? (Steinitz Variation)

      4...Qf6

      4...Nxd4?!

      4...Bb4+?!

    4.Bc4 (Scotch Gambit)

    4.c3 (Göring Gambit)

    4.Bb5


Is the number of possible chess games infinite?

The maximum number of moves in a chess game is not infinite, it's 11797 plies = 5898 moves and a half. This is due to the fifty-move rule.

So no, the number of possible chess games is not infinite.

The maximum number of legal moves in a position is 218. So a crude upper bound for the number of possible chess games is 218^11797 = 10^27586

Wait, actually after fifty moves without any capture or pawn movement the players can also continue playing without claiming the draw...

Article 9.3 of FIDE Laws of Chess states that:

  9.3

  The game is drawn, upon a correct claim by a player having the move,
  if:

  he writes his move, which cannot be changed, on his scoresheet and declares to the arbiter his intention to make this move which will
  result in the last 50 moves by each player having been made without
  the movement of any pawn and without any capture, or
  the last 50 moves by each playerhave been completed without the movement of any pawn and without any capture.

So I guess the number of possible chess games could be considered as infinite then...

But if you're not interested with the previous theoretical numbers:
The average number of legal moves in a position is around 35, and the average length of a chess game is around 40 moves = 80 plies, so an estimate of the number of "rational" chess games is 35^80 = 10^123
As for the total number of legal positions, it's somewhere between 10^40 and 10^50.


Big Database is a large (6.8 million) collection of unannotated games. Opening Encyclopedia has slightly fewer games (probably games of lower quality are left out), but also contains 6000 opening surveys, 85 000 annotated games, and opening articles from older issues of ChessBase Magazine.
It seems Opening Encyclopedia comes with ChessBase Reader 2013 included. This lets you access the whole content of the Opening Encyclopedia, but it doesn't have the full functionality of ChessBase 14. With the Reader you cannot modify the bases or add your own games and analysis.
All the products you mention are available to buy and download from ChessBase Shop.


What are the characteristics of a good chess board?

home - 3.75" king on 2.25" squares. Travel - no opinion. But the USCF used to sell a chess board 'wallet' that would fold up (with the pieces) and go in your pocket. Perhaps they still do.
3.75" King for me. No more, no less.
Any hardwood.  I like maple and walnut.
House of Staunton, but you'll pay top dollar. While you are there, check out their Reykjavic II chess set.  Ah, the board and set combo (with a box!) is on sale. I prefer boxwood and ebony, but boxwood and ebonized boxwood works for me too.
It is unnecessary.
A vinyl board just rolls up - easy to store, easy to take to the club. Another option is to make your own. Here's one I made.  And here's another, with the steps I took.


Where does the expression "checkmate" come from?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, checkmate comes from the Middle English chekmaten, which is derived from the Anglo-French eschec mat. And this came from the Persian shāh māt through the Arabic language.
The Persian word shāh means king. (With a definite article, it becomes as-shāh, the king.)
But I found two different interpretations for māt:

unable to escape (Merriam-Webster)
dead (Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, Treasure of the French Language)

So, as-shāh māt -> checkmate = the king is dead!


Is a piece hanging if it is defended by a higher value piece?

This would still be called a hanging piece. If the piece can be taken with impunity, it is a hanging piece. It is irrelevant how many attackers there are on the piece, how many defenders there are on the piece, or the point value of the attackers/defenders.


In the Giuoco Piano, why is 4.0-0 currently so popular at top level?

I see two reasons why to prefer castling over c3. First reason why I would go for 4.0-0 is that I would like to postpone playing c3 to make lines with d5 riskier. Imagine Marshall Ruy-Lopez, if the pawn was on c2, white would have very easy life, no weakness on d3, Nc3 possibility. And you can always play the c3 later if you like. The second thing may be desire to avoid playing c3 in early phase at all. White players tried to play a4 to create shelter for the bishop on a2, not minding exchange for opponent's bishop, avoiding classical Bb3-c2 plan.


It depends on your level. At the beginner level, most people recommend not resigning and instead playing until there is either checkmate or a stalemate. If you're a beginner playing against other beginners, blunders are so common that even being a queen behind doesn't guarantee losing.

Once you get past the beginner level, an easy way is to ask yourself if you know how you would force a win if you had the other side's pieces. If you do, then you would consider resigning.


Closed games (1.d4) and open games (1.e4) perform equally well at high levels.

It is usually recommended that less experienced players (say, under 2000 FIDE) play open games to learn, since tactics show up more often in them, and tactics is the most important aspect of the game to become fluent in.


Creating the current position having the rest of the game

Fascinating question! By definition, I can only come with a partial solution, or more accurately "elements" that will be part of the retro analysis. I know I'll be thinking about this more, but here are a few initial thoughts.

Just a few more 'factors' to add to your list:

We'd need a certain minimum number of moves (in the latter part of the game) to make any meaningful analysis.
If the game is played out (i.e.) ends in a mate, that would help in recreating the 'start' position.
If the starting square is given, then it will help immensely.
Knowing the move number would help. (Is it 19 Ne5 or 24 Ne5)
The idea of "candidate squares" for pieces. If Na1 was played, then the N must have been at b3 or c2. For a N to reach c2, it must have come from... In effect, we know there must have been a few moves to get the knight from b1 or g1.
Pawn moves give us 'definitive' information about the 'from' square (except for e2-e4 vs e3-e4 type double jumps) Bishop moves help because they stay in the same color.

We could infer more, but these is a start.

Alt. solution If you were allowed to "cheat" (lateral thinking):

you could feed the moves to a good-sized database and see if it can match up a game.
Chessbase has advanced search features which let you search for positions by pieces occupying squares, and also by a sequence of moves.

We could even do try this out with an actual snippet of a game. Publish, say the last 20 moves of a 50 move game, and try to recreate the position at move #30, without cheating or referring to a chessDB.


Is there a master list of FEN chess positions for advanced beginner/intermediate?

Do you have a smartphone or tablet? The Chessok (formerly Convekta) people have ported a number of their training programs to Android (and I'm guessing iOS), and they are much cheaper than the PC versions ($8 vs $15-20). Search for chess king in one of the app stores. This includes things like CT-ART, Elementary Chess Tactics I & II, Chess Tactics for Beginners, and others.

A quick search on Google found this as well:

http://tacticstime.com/tactics-time-download-page/


Why this move is good here but not few moves ago?

The main point is that 1...Nxf2 draws White's king out to the vulnerable f2-square; this allows Black to hold the balance. After 2.Kxf2 fxg4 3.Rg1, Black can give a perpetual with 3...Qh4+! 4.Ke3 (4.Rg3 can be met with 4...exf3, as Rxg7+ is impossible) 4...Qh6+ 5.Kf2 Qh4+.

Meanwhile, 1...fxg4? 2.Qxe4 gxf3 3.Rg1 (hitting the g7-pawn) 3...Rf7 4.0-0-0 gives White a serious initiative. His king is safe enough on the queenside, and his pieces are pointed at Black's king. Also, note that Qxc6 is threatened, winning a piece, since on ...dxc6 White has Rxd8+.


Can not determine the result of this endgame

The final position is a draw, and is a case of opposition/corresponding squares. Black simply waits along c7-d7-e7, and plays Kd6 whenever white plays Kd4. (Although for future reference, you may notice that white can gain the opposition by sacrificing his pawn with d6, and meeting Kxd6 with Kd4, but in this case it doesn't win as the b6 pawn covers the entry point on c5; it would work if all the queenside pawns were shifted one rank towards the white side.)

It is crucial to recognise this idea from black's perspective, because it means that once the pawn on c4 is taken and the pieces are exchanged, white cannot win, so you need not calculate specific lines once you realise this: in particular, playing 3.Bd5 or 3.d5 for white makes no difference.

Hence white cannot win after 1...c4. To be specific for black: play c4, leave the knight on d6 and wait with your king. You need not worry about losing in lines where white plays h5, because after gxh5 Bxh5, the f5 pawn is protected by the knight (so Bg6 is not a threat), and e5 can be covered by the king in the pawn ending (so g6 does not win for white either, and in fact might even lose, but that argument is completely irrelevant).

Black certainly cannot win at any point: his knight is almost completely dominated by the white bishop.


There is a checkbox for it:-

Options | Appearance | View tab | Material difference

You may need to make the opening classification panel taller and then use the splitter on its left to see the material difference panel.


Castling Rules-Does “The king & rook must be on the same rank.”="Only original rooks can do castling."?

No.  You got it right.

The King can only castle if the K and R is on its original square and each has never moved,  the king is not in check, and the king does not move through a check, and it is your move so you can move.

I remember that puzzle. Guy at worked showed me a mate in one.
Which was impossible.  I finally guessed he was a true patzer and thought you really could castle with a promoted rook on the king file.
So I did that and got the puzzle right.

It was hard to conceive of castling that way but the rules got fixed to make sure it would never happen.  As if it could happen in a real game and not a puzzle-problem.


What tools can I use to help me memorise my opening repertoire?

ChessTempo has an opening trainer where you can input your repertoire. Then it will throw you a random-ish position from it and let you continue.


Why is the move 4.Nc3 rare in Bird's defence?

While it is true that at the moment white is leading in development, the move Nc3 interferes directly with white's plans. This is why it is seldom played. From now on I will severely criticize this move, but it is by no means a losing one or one that offers any immediate advantage to black.

In every opening, but this is particularly important in the Ruy-Lopez, the two main goals are to control the center and develop your pieces (remember, a piece is developed when it's doing something useful in the square it is. Sometimes a piece is better left on its starting square if you don't see a good place for it). To do so, a normal plan after Bb5 is to play c3 preparing d4, when white will achieve the perfect center (namely a pawn on d4 and another on e4) even if black captures on d4, as he will be able to recapture with a pawn. So, even if your knight is "developed" (my next point will be that the knight is probably not specially useful here), it prevents the pawn from reaching c3 and interferes with one of the two main goals of an opening.

The move has also a number of drawbacks that are conceptually maybe not so important as this one, but that also put people back from playing it. The most common is that after black plays d6, the natural square for his light squared bishop is g4 pinning the knight. If white is able to play Nbd2, he defends the pin and the queen is free to move without compromising the pawn structure, but if his knight is already on c3 the pin can be quite annoying. Another important one is that if the bishop is chased away via a6 and b5, sometimes he can hugely benefit from being placed on c2, defending the e4 pawn and having attacking prospects on the kingside if the pawn ever moves.

Finally, in this particular position, with this move you are giving up the bishop pair. It is true that you gain a temporary initiative, but with so few developed pìeces it is hard to get an attack going, specially when black is only a couple of moves away from castling. I do not think this initiative is something special, whereas the two bishops will bring a lot of pain after c6 and d5 (not necessarily right away, but that is a plan), opening up the position.

Summing up, while you are developing a piece, a considerable number of small concessions are being made, and this adds up to something that you may do not want out of the opening: you have poor coordination from the start, you may have lost the bishop pair and not even have any structural advantages for it (as in the Exchange Ruy-Lopez) and you must look for a new non-standard plan as you have blocked your c pawn.


The Chess Arbiters Association, which you can join as an associate member, keeps records of the laws going back, in the case of FIDE, to the first set of FIDE laws in French in 1928 and in general the laws back as far as the 1617 version in Italian by Carrera.


Why do grandmasters wear suits at tournaments?

The pictures you posted are of the top GMs in the world (Anand, Carlsen, Aronian, Caruana). These GMs almost exclusively play in elite invitational tournaments, normally with around 8-10ish players. As a result, these tournaments likely have a strict dress code because the organizers want to maintain the high prestige of the event.

For example, the Bilbao tournament is a double round robin with 4-6 of the top players in the world. It's regarded as a very strong tournament, solely based off these 4-6 players. So, imagine if the players showed up wearing casual clothes, like shorts and t-shirts. The players may be regarded by fans as "less professional", which will severely damage the reputation of the tournament.

Another reason top GMs dress in suits is that they are being endorsed, or want to be endorsed (look at Carlsen's shirt in the photo you posted -- he's advertising for Arctic Securities). If a company was looking for a chess player to advertise their brand, they'll prefer the player that looks better/more professional.

Conversely, most average GMs in open tournaments do not dress in suits. This is due to the 2 reasons mentioned above, except flipped. The prestige of open tournaments do not depend on how a select few players dress, since open tournaments have hundreds of players. Also, average GMs are not going to be endorsed by big companies, so they have no incentive to dress up (unless they want to).


Can a player move before his opponent hits the clock?

There is no requirement to wait until the opponent has pressed the clock before making your move. However issues can arise with getting the increment to which the player is entitled for every move made if the clock is not pressed and this is spelled out in the FIDE Laws of Chess:

  6.2.1 During the game each player, having made his move on the chessboard, shall stop his own clock and start his opponent’s clock
  (that is to say, he shall press his clock). This “completes” the move.
  A move is also completed if:

  6.2.1.1   the move ends the game (see Articles 5.1.1, 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 9.6.1 and 9.6.2), or

  6.2.1.2 the player has made his next move, when his previous move was not completed.

  6.2.2 A player must be allowed to stop his clock after making his move, even after the opponent has made his next move. The time between
  making the move on the chessboard and pressing the clock is regarded
  as part of the time allotted to the player.

From 6.2.1.2 it is clear that is fine for player B to make his move before player A has pressed the clock to complete his previous move.

From 6.2.2 it is clear that in that case player A is entitled to press the clock for that move even after player B has made a quick move.

The act of pressing the clock fulfils two functions:

It "completes" the move. This is important because an illegal move is
not punishable and can be retracted without penalty if the move
hasn't been completed.
It is the action which gives the player the increment to which he is entitled.


Is there any obvious disadvantage of not castling in a game?

The purpose of castling is to make the king safe. How important castling is in any particular game depends almost entirely on how safe the king is in the center. If the center is completely open (say all four central pawns have been exchanged) and many pieces are still on the board then it is very dangerous to leave the king in the center. If the center is completely closed, however, then the king may be much safer in the center.
On the other hand there are openings (Berlin Defence to the Ruy Lopez for example) where the queens come off very quickly and one side having an uncastled king is fine and confers no disadvantage.
Time controls have nothing to do with this. Having an unsafe king while your opponent's king is safe just makes your opponent's game much easier regardless of time control. You could even argue that the shorter the time control the less time you have to make plans so the easier it is for the player with the safe king because all they have to do is attack the opponent's unsafe king.


This isn't necessarily an answer; it's some amusing searches and information that might help others get a "real" answer.  (It just seemed too much for a comment.)

I'm not familiar with this setup, so I resorted to "Google-fu".

A quick Google search found A10 English, Anglo-Dutch defense.  Following forward with 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. d4 e5 shows only a single game (but see below): Haring vs. Freiberger, at the Werther 2000.  One game is not going to give you much theory to go on...

My search was simply "1. c4 f5", for those wishing to play along at home.  Hopefully those 365chess.com links work for people without accounts; it's free, but they sometimes hide things behind log in screens...

I've found that 365Chess.com's game database isn't the most robust, so I did some more searching, and found this pdf claiming this is the Rittenhouse gambit, with 5 games played (all with dates between 1972 and 2001, inclusive).

Unfortunately, that's where my trail led dry... I'm finding several links online of people calling this the Rittenhouse gambit, but no real information ON the Rittenhouse gambit.

Good luck!


A certain game with a knight promotion checkmate

Due to prior knowledge, I scoured these three chessgames.com collections that I knew of. I found two games that match.
They do fit the bill of having the promoted knight protecting a rook. However, they're quite longer than 20 moves, are in the endgame, and have different material balances from what you think. It does help that they are recent games, relatively speaking, I'd say. So while they are similar, they may not be what you are looking for.
[Title "Gawain Jones-Danny Raznikov, Isle of Man Masters, Douglas Isle of Man, 10/12/2014"]
[FEN ""]
[startply "136"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 Ng4 7. Bg5 h6 8. Bh4 g5 9. Bg3 Bg7 10. Be2 h5 11. h4 gxh4 12. Bxh4 Nc6 13. Nb3 Be6 14. Qd2 Qb6 15. Nd5 Bxd5 16. exd5 Nce5 17. c3 Ng6 18. Bf3 Rc8 19. Bg5 N6e5 20. Bxg4 hxg4 21. Rxh8+ Bxh8 22. O-O-O Kd7 23. Qc2 Rg8 24. Qf5+ Kd8 25. Be3 Qb5 26. Bd4 Qd7 27. Qh7 Rf8 28. f4 gxf3 29. gxf3 Bf6 30. Qe4 Rh8 31. f4 Qg4 32. Nc5 dxc5 33. Bxe5 Bxe5 34. Qxe5 Rh4 35. Rf1 f6 36. Qe4 Qd7 37. Qg2 Kc7 38. Qf2 Qb5 39. Re1 Rh7 40. Qg3 Kb6 41. b3 Ka7 42. Qf2 Ka8 43. Qc2 Rg7 44. Kb2 Qd7 45. Qe4 Qg4 46. Ka3 Qd7 47. Rh1 Ka7 48. Rh2 Qd6 49. Re2 Rg4 50. Qxe7 Qxe7 51. Rxe7 Rxf4 52. Rc7 Kb6 53. Rc8 Rf3 54. Kb2 Rd3 55. c4 f5 56. Kc2 Rh3 57. b4 cxb4 58. d6 Rh7 59. Kb3 Ka5 60. Rc7 Rh3+ 61. Kc2 Rh2+ 62. Kd3 Kb6 63. c5+ Kb5 64. d7 Rh1 65. Ke2 Rh2+ 66. Ke3 Rh3+ 67. Kd4 Rh1 68. Rxb7+ Kc6 69. d8=N#

[Title "Martyn Kravtsiv-Ding Liren, World Cup, Tbilisi Georgia, 9/8/2018"]
[FEN ""]
[startply "219"]

1. c4 Nf6 2. Nc3 e6 3. d4 Bb4 4. e3 O-O 5. Bd3 d5 6. Nf3 dxc4 7. Bxc4 c5 8. O-O cxd4 9. exd4 b6 10. Qe2 Bb7 11. Rd1 Bxc3 12. bxc3 Qc7 13. Ne5 Nbd7 14. Nxd7 Qxd7 15. Bd2 Ne4 16. f3 Nxd2 17. Qxd2 Rac8 18. Bb3 Bd5 19. Qd3 Qc6 20. Rac1 Bc4 21. Bxc4 Qxc4 22. Rc2 Rfd8 23. Kf2 h5 24. Qxc4 Rxc4 25. Ke2 b5 26. f4 f6 27. Kd3 e5 28. fxe5 fxe5 29. Rb1 a6 30. Rbb2 exd4 31. cxd4 Rdxd4+ 32. Ke3 Re4+ 33. Kf3 Rf4+ 34. Ke3 Kh7 35. g3 Rfe4+ 36. Kf3 Rxc2 37. Rxc2 Ra4 38. h4 Kg6 39. Rc6+ Kf7 40. Rc7+ Kf6 41. Rc6+ Ke5 42. Rc5+ Kf6 43. Rc6+ Kf7 44. Rc7+ Kg6 45. Rc6+ Kh7 46. Rc2 g6 47. Ke3 Kg7 48. Rc7+ Kf6 49. Rc6+ Kf5 50. Rc5+ Ke6 51. Rc6+ Ke5 52. Rxg6 Ra3+ 53. Kd2 Rxa2+ 54. Kc3 Ke4 55. Rg5 Kf3 56. Rxh5 Kxg3 57. Rh8 Ra4 58. h5 Kg4 59. Kb3 Kg5 60. Kb2 Rh4 61. Ra8 Rb4+ 62. Kc3 Rc4+ 63. Kb3 Rc6 64. Rh8 Rh6 65. Rd8 Kxh5 66. Rd5+ Kg4 67. Kb4 Kf4 68. Rd1 Ke3 69. Kc5 Ke2 70. Rd4 Rh1 71. Rd6 Ra1 72. Rh6 Kd3 73. Kb4 Rb1+ 74. Ka5 Ra1+ 75. Kb4 Kd4 76. Rh4+ Ke5 77. Rh5+ Kf6 78. Rh6+ Kg5 79. Rd6 Ra4+ 80. Kb3 Kf5 81. Rh6 Ke5 82. Rg6 Kd5 83. Rf6 Kc5 84. Rh6 Ra1 85. Kb2 Ra4 86. Kb3 Rb4+ 87. Ka3 a5 88. Rh5+ Kd6 89. Rh6+ Ke5 90. Rh5+ Kf6 91. Rh6+ Kg5 92. Ra6 Ra4+ 93. Kb3 Kf5 94. Rh6 Rg4 95. Rb6 a4+ 96. Ka2 Rb4 97. Rh6 Rb3 98. Rh4 Ke5 99. Rg4 Kd5 100. Rh4 Kc5 101. Rh5+ Kb4 102. Rh4+ Ka5 103. Rh5 Rf3 104. Rg5 a3 105. Rg4 b4 106. Rh4 Rf2+ 107. Kb3 Rb2+ 108. Kc4 a2 109. Rh8 Rc2+ 110. Kb3 a1=N#


What is the name or origin of this opening for Black?

There is no name that I can find. However, I can identify some factors of this opening.

White has a Samisch setup

Black has played a type of Gurgendize modern defence.

Perhaps this opening is a move order in the Samisch where Black delays ...Nf6 and ...e5.


In both diagrams, the bishop is better on e7, because the d-file is likely to become an open file, and the bishop would block the rook's activity.

The first example has the future activity of the bishop to consider.  As the bishop isn't going to exchange on f4 or needed to protect an e5 push, its activity will have to come after moving to f6.  Here it will exert pressure on white's queen side.

The second example has breaking the pin as a consideration.  Without the bishop on e7, the queen would be tied to the defense of the f6-knight.  If the pin remained, Ne5 would be a strong move as the capture is now more dangerous--providing another attacker upon f6.

As a general rule, the more squares the bishop can attack on the opponent's half of the board, the more active it becomes.  However, especially as black, the more passively placed king's bishop is needed for other reasons, mostly defensive needs.


In the Schliemann defense, who does Schliemann refer to?

According to the section of the Wikipedia page on the Ruy Lopez, it's named after a German lawyer, Adolf Karl Wilhelm Schliemann (1817-1872), although it doesn't say why his name is attached to it.

However, the German Wikipedia page on Adolph Schliemann (English translation), indicates he was a strong master who contributed to the early theory of the line.


Tactical challenge #2 - Attacking the kingside

1. Ng5 threatening Qh7#
 1... hxg5 2.Rh3
 1... g6 2. Qxg6


How do I respond to an arrogant beginner?

A much better way of handling it -

  Beginner: I'm going to beat you easily!

  Bad_Bishop: Of course you are.

  Beginner: I'll take white. They always win!

  Bad_Bishop: [Emphatically] Always! [pause, then with a note of doubt in your voice] Even when you are black?

  Beginner: [After being checkmated] OK, you won, but I took 2 pawns and a knight!

  Bad_Bishop: You were just so, so unlucky. [As you push the black pieces over to his side and start setting up the white pieces on your
  side] My turn as white.


Why don't we use this scoring system: 2 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 point for a lose?

Because it's a long-established convention and changing it at this point would be much more trouble than it's worth.

In the words of Gerald Weinberg

  Things are the way they are because they got that way


Assessing an early c4 against white's Stonewall structure

Good question! The positional priorities in this position do not really lie in whose bishop has more prospects, but rather in the emerging pawn structure, potential pawn breaks, and either side's ability to create targets and holes in opponent's camp.

In short, c4 here is an extremely committal move which should only be played if it can be backed by very strong concrete ideas, which do not exist in this position. Why does the fact that it's committal makes it into a poor choice? It's simply because it resolves white's strategy into something immediate and concrete, namely: to undermine black's pawn chain and create a weak pawn out of c4, and to this end, the almost immediate e4 pawn break is perfectly playable for white without any drawbacks and black has nearly no means of preventing it. So in hindsight, moves such as c4 and similar ones in analogous positions, are only good if you are sure you can stop your opponent's relevant pawn breaks. Otherwise you're creating overly advanced pawns that will eventually turn into weaknesses that you cannot easily parry.
Remember, a pawn is considered to be weak if (all 3 must be met simultaneously):

it cannot move
it is isolated (not defensible by pawns)
it can be attacked.

To summarise: with the unavoidable e4 by white and a4 in reply to b5, the c4 pawn is bound to become a weakness as it meets all 3 said conditions.
Gained tempi and temporarily blocked out bishops are secondary in such positions, unless you have an actual threat following your pawn push (such as, an imminent knight jump to d3!)

More concretely, let's take a look at a few possible continuations as illustrated in the following diagrams:

Left: Early e4 by white  |  mid: early b5 attempt  |  right: e4 blockade attempt

Left: Immediately undermining c4's defense after Qe2, Nbd2, if black takes, c4 is dropping soon and both knights will be well established centrally. And if black tries to sit still, e4-e5 is a threat, leaving black's kingside heavily undefended and white's pawn push is quite straightforward, black will lack space and the ability to create a counter-attack.
Mid: Black prepares for the immediate b5 (with Qc7) in order to reinforce c4 which leads to: Qe2, Qc7, Nbd2, e6, e4, b5, f5! and soon followed by a4. Notice how white's perfectly undermining the entire pawn backbone (e6, d5, b5) of c4.
Right: Black simply tries to stop e4 by blockading it with a knight, but since it cannot really be followed up by f5 (as shown in the diagram), it will easily be challenged with Nbd2 after which black either has to take on d2 which revives e4 again, or lets white take on e4 leaving a ton of light square weaknesses behind along with a permanent knight post on e5. Note that in this structure, black has no prospect for ever landing a knight on d3, leaving the light square control that the overly advanced pawns have secured virtually unusable. Finally, notice that in neither of these cases, black's left with any form of initiative or targets in white's structure to allow for any counter-attack.

Lastly, by not playing c4, you can still entertain a timely resolution of the central pawns in order to either simplify or create weak points in white's centre. And to connect with our discussions, by holding still with the pawn on c5 you are actually stopping white's e4 push as after, say, e6, Nbd2, Be7, e4 you can simply take both on e4 and d4 not allowing white any central control (unlike the case of c4 where white always had clear spatial advantage), and your structure is devoid of weaknesses. If anything, white will be the only side with potential dark square weaknesses. And if white recaptures on d4 with the pawn, then it's a comfortable IQP structure with easy play for black.


Specific for Lasker during 1904 Cambridge Springs tournament

From 1902 to 1907 Emanuel Lasker was living in the USA and concentrating more on algebra than on chess. His paper Zur Theorie der Moduln und Ideale was published in March 1905 in Mathematische Annalen and will lead to the famous Noether-Lasker theorem.

It seems he also worked on some papers in the field of philosophy, but I know less about it.

Chess was not his main preoccupation during those years, and his participation in Cambridge Springs tournament in 1904 was a short chess parenthesis in his mathematical works.

There is no indication that Lasker was playing with any handicap in that tournament, beside lack of practice and training, and this seems very unplausible to me.

A few years later, Lasker will go back to "wasting his wonderful mind" on chess, according to a famous Einstein's quote that may be less apocryphical than most Einstein's quotes.


How can I play Colle System against Kingside Fianchetto?

If it conforms to your style of play, one possibility is to switch to a stonewall setup, which generally leads to a king-side pawn storm where the g6 pawn acts as a very convenient lever for opening up your opponent's king. It must be said, though, that an early king-side fianchetto followed by ...c5 to undermine the white center is probably one of the best and most aggressive ways to meet the Colle system, so if you're not prepared to vary your approach, you shouldn't be surprised if black achieves easy equality immediately out of the opening.


What openings provide "mini-objectives" in the early game?

I think this question divides into two parts:

Openings with "mini objectives" early in the game.
Openings that go for a layout instead of a sequence.

The second part is easier to tackle: There are a lot of openings, usually called "systems", that go for a certain structure without bothering too much with what the opponent is doing. Some examples:

The London System
The Colle-Zukertort
The Stonewall-Dutch
The Stonewall with white

Also in many sicilian lines (most notably the dragon) white just castles long and starts to march his kingside pawns --> sac,sac,mate as Bobby Fischer famously said. But these are much more dependent on move order issues and concrete tactics.
You could interpret "long castles" as a mini-objective for white in the English attack, which is almost always achieved by playing f3, Be3, Qd2.

Mini-objective vary from variation to variation, but I think there is one mini-objective that is almost always relevant, especially when playing black: pawn levers.

For example if you play the black side of a QGA, you might go for the pawn lever c5. In a King's Indian black prepares the pawn lever f5, and sometimes c6 (whereas white goes for c5). In a Benoni he goes for b5 and sometimes f5. In a Meran you will always play c5 or e5 at some point, while white usually plays e4, in a Italian or Spanish game white prepares e4, in a French black goes c5 and white hopes for f5 … they are all over the place!

So my advice would be to look out for pawn levers in the openings you play. They should very often provide the mini-objective that gets you from the opening into the middlegame.


Am I allowed to do a checkmate and win the game in this situation?

No, it is not checkmate, because your opponent can capture your queen with either the knight on c6 or the king on e8.

Checkmate occurs when you give a check to your opponent and your opponent cannot either move the king out of check or capture the piece that is giving the check or block the check my interposing another piece between the checking piece and the king.

So, in this case -

[FEN "r1b1kb1r/ppQp1ppp/2n2n2/8/1q6/4P3/P1PP1PPP/RNB1KBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

1.Qd8+ Kxd8 (1...Nxd8)

There is no checkmate.

Consider this hypothetical position. In this case, it would be a checkmate -

[FEN "r1b1kb1r/1pQp1ppp/pB3n2n2/8/1q6/4P3/P1PP1PPP/RN2KBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

1. Qd8#

Here, the enemy king cannot move out of check. The piece that is giving the check (i.e. the queen) cannot be captured by the black king, because it is supported by the bishop on b6. There is also no way to interpose a piece between the queen and the king because they are right next to each other.


You're right: a counter-gambit is an opening in which one side plays a gambit, and the other side rejects the gambit with another gambit (i.e. "gambits" the gambit). A popular counter-gambit is the Albin Countergambit:

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

1. d4 d5 2. c4 e5

  Under a different move order 1.e4 e5 2.f4 it is called King's gambit.

This is also a King's gambit but due to the order it is also cosidered a countergambit

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

1. f4 e5 2. e4


King's Indian defense follows to strange pawn wall

Having the kings indian as my main opening in response for 1.d4 I see nothing immediately loosing (I might be wrong) and would personally be happy to play this position. The variations I have considered are hopefully inline with my argument that black is doing fine and If I have missed something obvious or have misrepresented white please let me know.
Variation 1.
r4rk1/1p1q1pb1/1n1p1npp/pPpPp3/P1P1PPb1/2NQ2P1/3N2BP/R1B2RK1 b Qq - 0 1

1... exf4 2. gxf4 Nh5 3. h3 Bd4+ 4. Kh1 Qe7 5.hxg4 Qh4+

From here you will at least get a rook for two minor pieces after white blocks and knight g3+. More importantly we can note that white has not done anything in the last 4 moves that could be considered active, so I would think the tempo gained for the bishop is worth it.
Well, white took black's bishop with the h-pawn... perhaps another move is possible, say going after the monster bishop on d4. (note in the following that giving up the rook on a1 i.e moving the knight on c3 to attack d4 is horrible for white);
Variation 2.
    r4rk1/1p1q1pb1/1n1p1npp/pPpPp3/P1P1PPb1/2NQ2P1/3N2BP/R1B2RK1 b Qq - 0 1

1... exf4 2. gxf4 Nh5 3. h3 Bd4+ 4. Kh1 Qe7 5.Nb3 Qh4 6. Nxd4 cxd4

Here black is looking to be an exchange up with Ng3+ which is made possible by the knight on c3 being under attack. I would say white was better in variation 1 then here.
A major flaw in the above variations have been kh1 as it has set up the main Ng3+ ending for black which have reduced material inequality. So what about kh2:
Variation 3.
r4rk1/1p1q1pb1/1n1p1npp/pPpPp3/P1P1PPb1/2NQ2P1/3N2BP/R1B2RK1 b Qq - 0 1

1... exf4 2. gxf4 Nh5 3. h3 Bd4+ 4. Kh2 Nxf4 5. Rxf4 Be5 6. hxg4 Bxf4+ 7. Kg1 Qxg4

Here black is up a rook and two pawns and some tempo for two minor pieces. A drawback is of course having only two active pieces, so f5 must probably be played soon if black is to win/draw.
Now the question arises if 2. gxf4 is any good for white... perhaps instead 2. Rxf4:
Variation 4.
r4rk1/1p1q1pb1/1n1p1npp/pPpPp3/P1P1PPb1/2NQ2P1/3N2BP/R1B2RK1 b Qq - 0 1

1... exf4 2. Rxf4 Nh5 3. Rf1 Bd4+ 4. Kh1 f5 5.exf5? Bxf5

exf5 seems way to dubious for white as it just improves the bishop for black and the two open files are easier occupied by black's rooks.

Variation 5.
r4rk1/1p1q1pb1/1n1p1npp/pPpPp3/P1P1PPb1/2NQ2P1/3N2BP/R1B2RK1 b Qq - 0 1

1... exf4 2. Rxf4 Nh5 3. Rf1 Bd4+ 4. Kh1 f5 5.h3 f4 6. hxg4 Nxg3+

As @John Coleman points out in the comments I have been partial to h3. Therefore I am adding some more variations in which Nf3 is played to which I believe the key response is Bxf3;
Variation 6.
r4rk1/1p1q1pb1/1n1p1npp/pPpPp3/P1P1PPb1/2NQ2P1/3N2BP/R1B2RK1 b Qq - 0 1

1... exf4 2. gxf4 Nh5 3. Nf3 Bxf3 4. Bxf3 Qh3 5. Be3 f5

Variation 7.
r4rk1/1p1q1pb1/1n1p1npp/pPpPp3/P1P1PPb1/2NQ2P1/3N2BP/R1B2RK1 b Qq - 0 1

1... exf4 2. gxf4 Nh5 3. Nf3 Bxf3 4. Qxf3 Nxc4

Variation 8.
r4rk1/1p1q1pb1/1n1p1npp/pPpPp3/P1P1PPb1/2NQ2P1/3N2BP/R1B2RK1 b Qq - 0 1

1... exf4 2. gxf4 Nh5 3. Nf3 Bxf3 4. Rxf3 f5

Each of these variations need analysis in themselves. Variation 7 does not look appetizing at all for white and can probably be disregarded. In variation 6 it looks like black has trapped their own queen after say 1... Bg2 however 1..  Qxe3 2. Qxe3 Bd4! pins the queen to the king and all is good. Variation 6 and 8 looks decent for black with the clear goal of bringing the rook from a8 to e8. While white also has a decent position in those variations, there are some concerns with defending c4 with some piece other than the queen and getting the a1 rook into the game.


Data set of board representations at checkmate?

To get you started, here's one way you could do this on your own in Python with the python-chess module:

In the example we're loading a simple pgn-file for illustration (which you generalize to reading pgns from a loaded database using the same module) and extracting its final position as a bitboard.
Then we check if it's a checkmate position, if true, you can extract the pieces on the board as a Square Set.
From that, you can then transform the data in any form, e.g. as lists or arrays of the piece symbols and corresponding squares (shown below), or however else it suits your follow-up purposes best.

Here's the snippet for that:

import chess
import chess.pgn
import sys

arguments = sys.argv
pgnfilename = str(arguments[1])

#Read pgn file:
with open(pgnfilename) as f:
    game = chess.pgn.read_game(f)

#Go to the end of the game and create a chess.Board() from it:
game = game.end()
board = game.board()

if board.is_checkmate():
    print "checkmate found: "
    print board

    white_pieces = [(board.piece_at(sq),sq) for sq in chess.SquareSet(board.occupied_co[1])]
    black_pieces = [(board.piece_at(sq),sq) for sq in chess.SquareSet(board.occupied_co[0])]

    print "white pieces: "
    for el in white_pieces:
        print el[0].symbol(), " on ", chess.SQUARE_NAMES[el[1]]

    print "---------------------"
    print "black pieces: "
    for el in black_pieces:
        print el[0].symbol(), " on ", chess.SQUARE_NAMES[el[1]]

Which gives the following output for the downloaded PGN of this game between Alexander Alekhine vs Oscar Tenner:

r . . q . . . r
p p p . . B p p
. . . . . . . .
. . B . k R . n
. . . . P . . .
. . . P . . . .
P P P . . . P P
R . . b . . K .
white pieces:
R  on  a1
K  on  g1
P  on  a2
P  on  b2
P  on  c2
P  on  g2
P  on  h2
P  on  d3
P  on  e4
B  on  c5
R  on  f5
B  on  f7
---------------------
black pieces:
b  on  d1
k  on  e5
n  on  h5
p  on  a7
p  on  b7
p  on  c7
p  on  g7
p  on  h7
r  on  a8
q  on  d8
r  on  h8

Additional details and ways of extension:

Conventionally, capital and small symbols are used for white and black pieces respectively. For a better display of the board, you can use the Unicode symbols for chess pieces and encode them appropriately (depending on your python installation or possibly OS) for printing. In our example above, you could have immediately retained the Unicode of each piece instead of its symbol, board.piece_at(sq).unicode_symbol()
Given a PGN-formatted database (e.g., using TWIC PGNS), you can easily load it by reading it in python and extracting the starting/ending line indices of each game[*] in the database, and in a loop over all games, you pass each game as a PGN file to chess.pgn.read_game and the rest follows similarly as in the snippet above.

Feel free to ask in comments if you have any questions about the snippet and other ways of extending it.

[*]: All this depends on the database you're trying to work with, but once the formatting known, then you can e.g., parse games based on a keyword that occurs at the start of each game in the database, for instance in the TWIC ones, there's always a line with Event .. in the headers of the PGN, or even the empty lines between the games. However you go about it, once you know the starting and ending line indices of a game within the file, you can pass it to chess.pgn.read_game as a file-like object with cStringIO.StringIO in python. It's not the most efficient way necessarily, but it does the trick.


Can the bishops and knights triumph over the queen?

Theoretically yes, as a practical matter (for humans), no.

What is known is that a pawnless position cannot be won (barring unusual positional circumstances) if one side has an advantage of a bishop or knight, but it can be won if one side has the advantage of a rook (or a queen versus a rook).

The "old" wisdom is that three minor pieces are worth about a queen, so white has the advantage of one minor piece. As a matter of fact, three minor pieces may be worth more than a queen, pushing white's advantage closer to, say, queen versus rook.

The other thing is that with so many pieces and moving parts, White has "coordination" problems. That's why as a practical matter, human beings won't win with this kind of advantage. The advantage of a computer is that it can calculate its way around coordination problems. If the minor piece synergies indeed give the computer an advantage greater than a minor piece, the computer will find a way to bring this extra power to bear; a human being (other than a world champion caliber player), will not.


Playing chess on a Mac with Stockfish and some GUI

I wrote a long post on how to do this for latest Macs:

Chess analysis on Mac Os X Lion 10.7 using Stockfish and HiARCs engine


Mobialia chess free have some tactical puzzles.It is mainly used for connecting to icc and fics. The tactical puzzles are taken from real games. So although, there's only a limited no of puzzles(a few hundreds), doing them over and over can help one perfect the basics.It is mainly intended for players below 2100 fide rating.


Can you improve in chess subconsciously, over time?

First, saying you "feel" like you're better is does not appear to be very scientific, so keep that in mind when attempting to understand the events you're describing.

Also, I don't believe what you're experiencing is related to the subconscious development of your understanding of chess, but you experiencing the difference between cramming knowledge into your brain, and what's called the "Spacing Effect".

(Let me know if this answer addresses your questions, or if there's something I'm missing.)


Is there an effective attack as white after Nf3 with e5 response in Atomic chess?

There is a very interesting website with opening theory from the very first moves of atomic chess :
https://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~chess/atomic/

To answer your question, after :
1.Nf3 e5 ? 2.Cg5 f5 ! ( Qxg5 lose the queen and ...f6 3.Nf7 Qe7 4.Nd6+) 3.h4! (cover h4 square from the black queen) and then 3...c6 4.Nxh7! or 3....Bc5 4.d4 Bb6 5.Nf7 Qe7 6.Nd6 Kf8 7.Nxb7 both leads to massive destruction of Black camp.


You should check out books by GM Jonathan Rowson. As well as being a GM he is a philosopher. After his first degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University he spent a year at Harvard University before doing a PhD in Wisdom at Bristol University. He is currently director of the Social Brain Centre at the RSA (UK Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts). Most of his chess books have a strong philosophical and psychological content and bias.
You should check out:

The Seven Deadly Chess Sins
Chess for Zebras
The Moves That Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life


Calculation and visualisation exercises - do they work?

My performance rating was four to five hundred points above my actual rating in tournaments where I prepared primarily with calculation/visualization exercises; while tournaments without tactical training showed a performance rating closer to actual.
So, I would say these exercises definitely make you sharper.  There are permanent gains over time but I think you have to continue to use the ability or it will atrophy to some extent.


I did analyze the game and it's just time consuming to annotate the whole game about all the inaccuracies and blunders made by black or white as there are many of them. Instead i wanna be more straight forward and answer your actual question about whether your sacrifices were good enough.
So the main sacrifices which i assume you are talking about are 16.Bxh6 and 17.Rxd4.
After 16.Bxh6 with perfect play, white can only achieve a draw, obviously your opponent made a blunder by playing 16...Nd4 (this loses him right away, I'll tell which is the best continuation after this move in my next explanation about 17.Rxd4)
Why 16.Bxh6 is not the best?, because of
16...Ne8 (gets away from the queen attack of Qxf6 if after gxh6, also attacks your queen and threatens gxh6) 17.Qd2 (getting away from the knights attack and defending the h6 square, so now you are sacrificing your bishop for g and h pawn) 17...gxh6 18.Qxh6 (after this you are a piece down for 2 kingside pawns, which usually is good when you can complete the attack on kingside to gain an advantage, but here there is no other piece supporting the queen to attack the King to threaten a mate or gain any material or positional advantage, infact after this white has to settle for a draw with perpetual checking which is...) 18...d6 19.Qg5+ Kh7 20. Qh4+ kg8 21.Qg5+
1/2-1/2. (If white wants to continue playing the position instead of perpetual, Black will have a slight advantage of around -0.4 and you can still play on with) 18...d6 19.Nb5( attacking pawn on d6) 19...f6 20.Nxd6 Nxd6 21.Rxd6 ( and the game goes on, though you have 3 pawns for his knight, after the exchange of queens and the other pieces at the right time, black with an extra knight will fight for the win, and white should play for a draw and achieving it shouldn't be hard. So instead of Bxh6, you could have just continued to play the position with 16.Be3 or 16.f3, white will have a good positional advantage)
16...Nd4?? (I don't know why your opponent played this, it just weakens his e5 pawn and does nothing else to defend white's Bxh6., black has totally worsen his position after this)
17.Rxd4 ( this is not a bad sacrifice, white still has the advantage of space, open king, isolated black pawns, 2 extra pawns for the exchange down, after this the way you carried on to play is fine because the endgame results you in a win, yes even if black hadn't given you the opportunity to mate him as you are 3 pawns up for the exchange, you can create passed pawns and black can do nothing to prevent the loss. But the best continuation than 17.Rxd4 which helps you to see the win right away was...) 17.Bxg7 (Completely opening the kingside, also gets back the sacrificing bishop which you will see in couple of moves) 17...Kxg7 (the best black can do, but still hopeless) 18.Qxe5 ( attacking the d4 knight and also threatening Qg5+. White gains the sacrifice back with a huge advantage even if black plays 18...Nc6 by playing 19.Qg5+ and then 20.Qxf6) 18...Qxc6 ( has to give up the d4 knight to defend the f6 knight which is the only defender around his king) 19.Qg5+ Kh8 20.Rxd4 ( White has huge advantage of two extra pawns, open black king, active rooks, space advantage, and can go on to achieve the win easily)


I play the Najdorf with Black and would say that on move six White has tried almost everything: almost every legal move is a move and so are attempts like 6.h4, 6.a4 or the like.

That said, there are nevertheless basic principles and ideas that make some lines more sound (and played) than others. Historically the sharpest try to refute the Najdorf has been 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4, described in hundreds of chess monographs: however, the so-called Poisoned Pawn variation with 7...Qb6 8.Qd2 followed by either 8...Qxb2 or 8...Nc6 has somehow refuted the 6.Bg5 line as it has been worked out to a draw with correct play where White cannot really force the win.

Nowadays the current trends and sharpest tests go in the direction of the English attack (6.Be3 e5 7. Nb3 Be6 8.f3) or fianchetto lines (6.g3 or 6.h3, the Adam's attack) followed by a quick g4. Here the underlying idea is, no matter what line you choose, to long castle and play g4-g5 supported by the f or h pawns (in f3 or h3); meanwhile, Black is reacting with b5-b4-Rc8 almost all the times. This means that in order to play g4 White must support its pawn with either f3 or h3 (that are currently played as main lines, almost) to avoid any chance of tactics against the g4 pawn: in this respect h4 does not defend the g-pawn, nor does it attack any of Black's pieces, nor does it develop any (like 6.Be3 or 6.Be2 would, for instance). Nevertheless it is at the moment being tried at the GM level, the basic idea still being a pawn storm against the King side, but it is not yet a main line due to the fact that it does not pose any direct threat and gives Black the initiative with b5-b4 without the possibility of a quick g4-g5 (because White has wasted one move with 6.h4).


While this position is probably a dead draw, there is no way white could claim even the slightest advantage here.

Sure, there are pawns on both sides of the board, but the d4-pawn closes the juiciest diagonals for the bishop and is an eternal target for the black knight.

Even more important is the fact, that after black plays b5 the queenside is completely sealed. The white king cannot intrude and the bishop cannot attack anything. The same isn't true for the black knight … if white walks his king to the kingside he has to take possible counter play on the queenside into account.

Just playing g6 and putting the king on f7 should be enough to defend the kingside for black. But if ever black really starts to march on the kingside with king and pawns, this frees up the black knight not only for queenside counterplay but also for kingside defence. I don't see how that would ever result in a white breakthrough.

So to sum up: This just isn't a position where white can put any pressure on black. Of course in the game apparently black put a lot of pawns on black squares, turning them into targets for the white bishop, but even that wasn't enough to tip the scales.


John Cochrane is known for his dashing and creative playing style – liberally sacrificing pieces and always attacking. He played an early Bc4 against many openings including the Sicilian. Here are 3 examples against Howard Staunton, regarded as the world's strongest player from 1843 to 1851. These games may explain the origin of the name Sicilian Cochrane Attack.

On the 2nd move

[Title "John Cochrane vs Howard Staunton, London m2 (1842)"]
[FEN ""]

1.e4 c5 2.Bc4 e5 3.f4 Nc6 4.Nf3 exf4 5.O-O g5 6.d4 cxd4 7.c3 Bc5 8.cxd4 Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qb6 10.Kh1 Bxd4 11.Nc3 Bxc3 12.bxc3 Ne7 13.g3 d5 14.Bxd5 Bh3 15.Qh5 Bxf1 16.Qxf7+ Kd8 17.Ba3 Re8 18.Rd1 Be2 19.Bc6+ Bxd1 20.Qxe8+ 1-0

On the 3rd move

[Title "John Cochrane vs Howard Staunton, London m2 (1842)"]
[FEN ""]

 1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.Bc4 e5 4.f4 Nc6 5.Nf3 Nf6 6.Qe2 Be7 7.O-O d6 8.Ng5 O-O 9.fxe5 dxe5 10.Qf3 h6 11.Nxf7 Rxf7 12.Qg3 Na5 13.Bxf7+ Kxf7 14.Qxe5 Nc4 15.Qh5+ Kg8 16.Qe2 Ne5 17.Bf4 d3 18.Qd2 Nxe4 19.Qe1 Bc5+ 20.Kh1 Qd4 21.Nc3 Bf5 22.Bxe5 Nf2+ 23.Rxf2 Qxf2 24.Qxf2 Bxf2 25.cxd3 Bxd3 26.Rd1 Re8 27.Rxd3 Rxe5 1/2-1/2

On the 4th move

[Title "John Cochrane vs Howard Staunton, London m2 (1842)"]
[FEN ""]

1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.Nf3 e5 4.Bc4 Nf6 5.Ng5 d5 6.exd5 h6 7.Nf3 Bg4 8.h3 Qc7 9.hxg4 Qxc4 10.Nxe5 Qxd5 11.O-O Bd6 12.Bf4 O-O 13.Re1 Re8 14.c4 Qa5 15.Bd2 Qc7 16.Nd3 Rxe1+ 17.Bxe1 Qxc4 18.Qf3 Nc6 19.Bd2 Re8 20.g5 hxg5 21.Bxg5 Nb4 22.Bf4 Bxf4 23.Nxf4 Qc1+ 24.Kh2 Qxb2 0-1


For long OTB games, what is the percentage of players who have a rating which is below X FIDE Elo?

You can get the FIDE rating list here. I used R statistical software to analyse the data for the latest OTB rating list (of 15th Sep. 2014). At the moment there are 383543 active FIDE players. Among them, slightly less than one third (107320 players) are rated.

As noted by others, the FIDE rating floor is 1000:

  "Players whose ratings drop below 1000 are listed on the next list as ‘delisted’. Thereafter, they are treated in the same manner as any other unrated player." (FIDE Rating Regulations effective from 1 July 2014, article 7.21).

From that I understand that players going below 1000 Elo are unrated at all effects. However, the list shows 14 people with a rating of 0 (I do not know what this means, though).

For rated players, please see the figure below. It shows the number of FIDE active rated players for different Elo intervals: 1000-1100, 1100-1200, etc. So, to answer your last three bullets, as of 15th Sep. 2014:

there are 31603 players with Elo higher than 2000, or 8.2% of the
total
there are 10220 players with Elo higher than 2200, or 2.7% of
the total
there are 768 players with Elo higher than 2500, or 0.2% of
the total


"A better move" recommended by chess.com but almost never played?

Chess.com listed this as an inaccuracy because the engine is running at a limited depth, only looking at each move for a few seconds.

When I put the position after 5...Bg4 into Stockfish, it gave an evaluation of +0.12 at 16 ply. But at 18 ply, the evaluation dropped to -0.38. Most likely if you had run the analysis at "maximum" (which I realize is locked for non-premium members) the engine would have analyzed enough to know that 5...Bg4 was not an inaccuracy.


What's the best way to get the top n engine moves?

Both approaches will work.

In the second approach, you will have better accuracy of your evaluations but you may miss an important move. For example, if 20...Rxc3 positional exchange sacrifice is a strong move, you will probably miss it with a 1-2s quick engine search.
In the first approach, you will lose accuracy but you won't miss a strong hidden resource like in the second approach.

Classical example of sensitivity vs false positives. The second approach is more sensitive but you trade it with higher false positive rate.
In Chessable engine analysis, I adopted the second approach. I gave about 10s for each legal move (there could be many!). Filter out only the top moves, then seek evaluation for each individual move. 1-2s is too little.
PS: MultiPV is causing lose in accuracy because the engine has to evaluate the moves before those moves are played on the board.


Is there a data file available (e.g. a .csv) containing every single rated game?

Is there a data file somewhere containing every single (FIDE) rated
game?

As an arbiter I can tell you definitively that the answer is "No". However you don't need to be an arbiter to know that. You just need to have played in a FIDE rated blitz tournament. Nobody is writing the moves down in those tournaments.
In FIDE rapid tournaments you do get a few players who start out recording but many of them stop when they get short of time and those games don't end up in databases.
Even when it comes to standard time control FIDE rated games only those games played in norm events have to be sent to FIDE (to make sure there is no cheating to get titles like GM and IM). So, all games played in norm events should be recorded and sent to FIDE. For each such tournament the games should be available for download from the FIDE site and those games will be picked up by the spiders / web-crawlers used by the big database providers.
However the large majority of FIDE rated standard games are not played in norm events and so there is no requirement for arbiters and organizers to send those games to FIDE. Doing so is hard (unpaid) work and so most arbiters and organizers are not going to do it.


Is it too late for me to get into competitive chess?

Sure why not! The important thing is to enjoy the game and learn whatever life lessons you can take from it along the journey. Chess offers tremendous companionship and fun and that is what is more important than focusing on results (which will inevitably follow as you keep improving learn from your mistakes).
Make sure you keep a database of the games --- especially your victories! --- you play on online using softwares like SCID, and then submit it to computer analysis (via Stockfish available on lichess).  Learn where you went wrong during the game. I have improved tremendously myself over the past few months by following this process (having returned to chess only 2 months ago).
Focusing on improving a specific precisely defined skill like chess, I feel instills a growth mindset and set of habits that permeate other areas of life automatically.
And speaking of becoming a top player at a "late age" (if by that you mean physical age rather than mental age) then there is precedence! https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-famous-chess-player-or-grandmaster-who-started-late-like-in-their-20s-or-30s
The important thing however I repeat is focusing on making sure that chess offers you enjoyment, a place to practice a growth mindset, companionship and a chance to make friends in both meatspace and cyberspace.
You might come across players online who have some sort of ego issues but these are precisley the players who only want to show off and will never improve past whatever miniscule talent they think they might have. It is one thing to be proud of your accomplishments but another thing to denigrate another person for playing worse chess. Stay away from people like these and build a healthy community of friends that you enjoy playing with and will help you improve.
Hope this helps!


According to this page on their site, "A new member starts with a rating of 1800 and after a rated game that number changes. The change depends on the result of the game and your opponent's strength."

I have no reason to assume this is incorrect or incomplete.  These are probably the only factors.


Top players have seconds to help them prepare. Do they also use engines looking to prepare lines for surprise value?

Seconds, and the players themselves, absolutely use engines to help them find moves, but you cannot just let an engine run and think that it will spit out useful things. There would be too much information, and most of it useless.

First, nowadays, more and more, elite players are resorting to using Leela and Fat Fritz (neural network type programs) since they tend to be better at finding better opening moves. Stockfish is still the king when it comes to brute-force analysis in the middlegame.

Second, if you assume that the game is relatively equal from the opening, just letting a computer run theoretically should not find anything except a lot of equal lines since it will only analyze best moves for both sides. You need human intervention.

That is where the second comes in. Most seconds are very strong GMs with a great depth of theoretical opening knowledge and understanding, and they look at a position, and come up with an idea that they want to test in the player's main lines, and they basically play "advanced chess", combining their great human understanding with the computer's immense analytical ability. Of course, it is not impossible that they will stumble upon a clearly winning line, but at that level, both sides have thoroughly checked their opening repertoire with computers, and the players have such a strong positional understanding, that it is highly unlikely they would play something that weak in the first place, computer-checked, or not. They are simply looking for new move that leads small advantages that lead to an uncomfortable game for the opponent...a game they can press for a long time, hoping that it will create an unforced error.


Does anyone know what happened to nowinchess.com?

They are rebuildin the site. You could find the tournaments in nowinchess.com/wp/live.

Probably you should write a comment to ask them to translate the site.
If you need help I can do it for you.


Josh Waitzkin on trading pieces ('the art of the trade')

Since you explicitely requested an answer...
I don't own that Waitzkin book, but merely judging from your excerpts his pedagogical talents are as doubtful as White's position here :P
First of all, Black might cement in his octopus on e3 with e5, f5, f4, after that an exchange on e3 makes White's plight only slightly better. Insofar your 1.Nc3 makes very much sense, since Black is a move short for the above plan now. But tactics always trumps strategy (which is what Waitzkin misses to highlight - also your other question, which you asked me to contribute on - maybe later :-) - is highly tactical in nature), and the critical line is of course 1...dxc3 2.Qxe3 Qd4. White won't exchange since a protected Pc3 would be a disaster in the endgame. So, 3.Qc1 a6 (Black wants to cement with b4 then) 4.a4 b5 5.cxb5 axb5 6.axb5 Rxa1 7.Qxa1 c2! 8.Qc1 Ra8!! 9.e3(!) Ra1!! 10.exd4 Rxc1+ 11.Kh2 Rh1+! 0-1. This line might have more holes than an Emmentaler as I calculated it even without a board (and 2350 was my ELO 30 years ago...), but it should show you the tactical dangers after 1.Nc3. It might thus well be that objectively White must grin and bear it and play Qc1,Nd2,Nf1 and play possum awaiting the incoming pawn storm at the kingside. a4,a5,axb6 exchanges a rook but then only Black invades the queenside (as long as the Ne3 is present, the Rf2 is factically out of play).
Lessons learned: If a GM says "play X", it might be he has subconsciously calculated a lot of Y that is quite as relevant as long-time positional considerations. And you rarely find those lines explicitely in a textbook. ("Hey, why should I axe trees for the lines after Y? It obviously loses after 10 moves!")
P.S. I wouldn't play White even if Waitzkin gave me five quids :-)


What are the specific setups to avoid perpetual checks(Queen)?

It would be very helpful if you would post a couple of those games you mentioned that you gave up perpetual check.

I would say, "no", there are no stock positions that are meant to avoid perpetual check (at least I cannot think of any now that I would call "common"). You just have to be careful, and be aware of king safety. Sometimes, you just cannot avoid it either as it is a valid component of defense.

I will say that one common setup in queen endings is the following type of position. White has managed to post the queen very centrally, and it can go either from the h1-a8 diagonal, as it is now, to prevent checks; or as it helps the a-pawn move forward, it can move to the g1-a7 diagonal to defend e3, and help advance the pawn from there. It is critical to note that with rooks on the board, the white king's lack of safety would probably prevent this, keeping a white rook passive on the first, and allow black to setup counterplay against the passer.

 [FEN "8/5pk1/q5p1/P2Q3p/7P/6P1/5PK1/8 w - - 0 0"]

 1. Qd4+ Kh7 2. Qb6 {And the passer moves on}


How does a chess engine mimic an Elo rating

In strength reduction mode, Stockfish starts a multi-pv where the engine searches for more than one best move. When the engine needs to make a move, it looks for all the possibilities in the multi-pv moves and choose a move with the following algorithm:

Filter out a move if it's a gross blunder. It does that by comparing its score with another multi-pv score.
Generate a small random number and applied it to a multi-pv score
Pick the move if the transformed score is the best

It might sound complicated but it isn't, let's do an example.

Say, I exchanged my queen with yours. You could take my queen with your bishop or pawn. If you did it with your bishop, the position would have been equal. If you did with your pawn, your pawn position would have been ruined and lead to a slightly inferior position. If you did anything else, I would be a queen ahead.

A possible scoring would be:

BxQ -> 0.00
PxQ -> -0.34
Kh8 -> -9.99

Not taking back the queen is a gross blunder and should be avoided whenever possible. When applied to the algorithm:

Calculation

Engine considers BxQ

The best score is 0.00. Since this is the first move, there is nothing to do.

Engine considers PxQ

Notice that without giving the move PxQ a small random boost, it'd never would be chosen because the best score (0.00) is greater than the score for PxQ (-0.34).

Stockfish generates a small positive number and add it to PxQ. Now, there're two possibilities. If the random number is too small, say, 0.10, the added score (-0.34 + 0.10 = -0.24) is still too small compared to the best score (0.00), and it'd been discarded. If the generated random number is sufficient to push the PxQ score above the best score, for instance, 0.40. The new score for PxQ would have been 0.06 and it's greater than 0.00. Therefore, Stockfish would pick the PxQ.

Engine considers Kh8

Not taking back the queen is a gross blunder. The difference between it with the previous move is too big (-9.99 - -0.34). Stockfish wouldn't consider it, and discard it immediately.

Implication

The engine will not play random chess
The possibility of making an inferior move depends on the random generator. The generator usefulness also depends on the strength level. The weaker you ask Stockfish be, the more likely the generator will generate a bigger number.
Stupid blunders are avoided
The move Stockfish plays is unpredictable, simulating human's unpredictable behavior.
Stockfish doesn't mimic Elo rating. It only gives you 20 strength levels.

Edited

The poster was concern about a link to the Stockfish for iOS in the comments. Please note that the statement in the link "Set the strength of the engine on a 0 to 2500 scale. This scale roughly corresponds with the human ELO scale. 0 is absolutely terrible play, while 2500 is maximum strength." is misleading and simply wrong. To see why, the page wasn't written by a Stockfish engine developer. The writer misinterpreted the scaling reported in the app. In reality, if you give the app, say Elo 2000, the app maps it to one of the 20 strength levels. Whatever Elo rating that you see in the app means absolutely nothing, it's just an easy way for an end-user to adjust the levels. There is no direct relationship between a strength level to a Elo rating. Think like this, if I modify the source code and expand the range from 0,20 to 0,40. Now when you choose strength 30, what's the rating? I could tell you it's Elo 2400, or Elo 2500, or Elo 3500.

At the end of the day, Stockfish doesn't mimic Elo strength. The Elo labels that you see in the app are simply just beautiful labels that pretend there is a relationship.


How do chess openings officially get recognized?

There's no organization that officially names openings.  Generally, the first person to publish professional-level research for a sequence of moves gets to name it.

Many openings with modern names were first played 200 years ago.


Was this “caterpillar” strategy a good way to advance my pawns?

tl;dr: "Yes."

Discussion:
Technically, this position is governed by the basic concept of the "Outside Passed Pawn" and the winning method is to use that pawn to restrict the opposing king's ability to defend the other pawns on the board.

The purest expression of that concept is in David's answer, which is to just use the one pawn and leave the other as a Damoclean Sword dangling over the head of your opponent's king.

But, given the special case of this situation (you actually have two outside passed pawns, not just one) you could also decide play it strictly as a single g-pawn endgame, but with tempo move in hand. To do this, you would use the caterpillar's "head" (the lead g-pawn) along with your king to drive the opposing king backwards to the back rank. (While doing this, when your king moves beside your pawn, keep it to the center -- f file -- side of your g-pawn.) When that is accomplished (let's say your K reaches f3, the pawn g3 and your opponent's K goes to f1 to prevent your king from advancing in front of the pawn) you simply push the g-pawn forward to g2 and when he moves to g1 to block the advance of the pawn, then you move the rearmost g-pawn from g7 to g6, leaving your opponent the choice of getting out of the way of your lead g-pawn and letting it queen, or moving one of his other pawns and letting you create a queen from one of your other pawns.

I would probably have played it that way, simply because it seems the least complicated to me, but there are multiple winning ideas in this position, and none of them are objectively better than any other.


Openings that keep the king in the center on purpose?

There are many respectable opening lines where the king stays in the center. A popular opening at the highest level is the Berlin Defense:

[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. d4 Nd6 6. Bxc6 dxc6 7. dxe5 Nf5 8. Qxd8+ Kxd8


Queen's gambit declined: is it too late to counter-offer my c pawn if white pins my f-knight? Will this overload my f bishop?

There are a lot of different defenses to the Queen's Gambit Declined, but in most of them, you do not need to worry too much about white trying to take on c5, and holding it since it is very difficult to keep in most lines.

I am going to post some basic lines that lead to different variations, and some comments about each. This material will give you a very basic look at how you can play as black, and if you choose a line, I would gladly expound upon it, but the topic as a whole, can cover entire books. I mention the Ragozin with Bb4, for example, and I recently got a 351-page book on that one line alone.

There are a lot of notes to the moves, so make sure you read those as you go through this in the viewer.

 [FEN ""]

 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Bg5 c5 {If you play an early c5, then white might opt to give you an isolate pawn, and force you to play the Tarrasch Defense, which scores a sky-high 73.5% for white in the Mega 2020 database.} (4... Bb4+ {This is the Ragozin Defense, which also has drawbacks like giving up the bishop pair, or certain structural weaknesses, but in exchange for piece activity. Note that had white played the move order with 3.Nc3, white also has the option of Qa4+ since Bb4 is not check, thus it would force Nc6 blocking the c7 pawn.}) (4... Be7 {The traditional QGD, where black completes development, and only then is prepared to hit back in the center with c5, or play other lines with the freeing Ne4, or cxd4. In this line, you need to be prepared to play the Exchange Variation, which is very popular at the club level, and leads to the minority attack.} 5. cxd5 (5. e3 O-O 6. Nc3 Nbd7 7. Rc1 c6 8. Bd3 dxc4 9. Bxc4 Nd5 10. Bxe7 Qxe7 {Is one of the lines, for example.}) 5... exd5 6. Nc3 c6 7. Qc2 O-O 8. e3 Nbd7 9. Bd3 Re8 10. O-O Nf8 11. Rab1 {Preparing the "Minority Attack" (attacking the majority of pawns on the queenside with a lesser number) with b4-b5, weakening the black queenside.}) 5. Nc3 (5. cxd5 exd5 6. Nc3) 5... Nc6 (5... cxd4 $1 6. Nxd4 Be7 (6... e5 $1 {This is very active, and scores well for black with white winning only 42% of the time per the Mega 2020 Database. It would require learning a fair amount of theory though.}) 7. e3 O-O 8. cxd5 Nxd5 9. Bxe7 Nxe7 10. Be2 Nbc6 $14) 6. e3 Be7 7. dxc5 {This is a main line, but you do not need to capture back with the bishop right away.} Bxc5 {The line you gave.} (7... O-O $1 8. cxd5 (8. Qc2 $1) 8... exd5 9. Be2 (9. Bxf6 Bxf6 10. Nxd5 Bxb2 11. Rb1 Ba3 {And black will get back c5 with a good game, but white is still slightly better.} 12. Bd3 $1) 9... Be6 10. O-O Bxc5 11. Rc1 {With a typical Tarrasch.})

It was starting to get too deep for one board, so I put the answers to your edited question in this board. Again, make sure you look at the prose that is include with the various lines.

 [FEN ""]

 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Bg5 c5 {I feel like this is just too early for my solid style.} 5. e3 Be7 (5... Bd6 6. cxd5 exd5 7. Nc3 Be6 {And having moved the bishop twice is not that big a deal, but you have to be prepared to play the Tarrasch which requires good opening preparation due to the fact that you have the isolated pawn, and you need to know how to get the piece activity that is associated with it. I have a student at the high school club that I run, who plays this all the time, but I have been telling him lately to avoid it since it does not fit his style. If you are a player, who likes very complicated open positions and play 1.e4, the Tarrasch might be for you.}) (5... b6 $4 {A positional blunder since it wastes too much time, and weakens the light squares heading toward the king. It is almost losing since your king is not developed.} 6. cxd5 Qxd5 (6... exd5 7. Bxf6 Qxf6 8. Nc3 {And there is no good way to defend d already.} Be6 $2 9. Bb5+ {The light squares come into play.} Nd7 10. dxc5 (10. Bxd7+ Kxd7 11. dxc5 Bxc5 12. Nxd5 Bxd5 13. Qxd5+ Kc7 14. O-O $18) 10... bxc5 11. Nxd5 Qxb2 12. Rb1) 7. Bxf6 gxf6 8. Nc3 {With a winning position.}) 6. Nc3 O-O 7. Bxf6 $2 {Giving up the bishop pair since you cannot really win c5 is not good. Black will give it back, and you will have a huge weakness on c3 on an open file.} Bxf6 8. dxc5 $2 {This makes it worse.} Bxc3+ 9. bxc3 Qa5 10. Rc1 dxc4 11. Bxc4 Qxc5 12. Qd4 Qe7 13. O-O Nd7 14. Rfd1 Nc5 15. Ne5 b6 {With the slightly better position after Bb7, and the rooks coming to the center.}


"Wins by force" means that the move leads to a series of moves that makes it impossible for the losing side to defend the position. Here, the definition of "winning" can vary between annotators. Checkmate is the extreme case of winning. Having an advantage of two pawns without any compensation for the opponent is somewhere at the low end of a winning position. The whole term "by force" refers to the fact that the opponent is unable to avoid getting a worse / losing position. At what point does a position become winning? That can depend on the position and the players involved. Usually, higher rated players have higher expectations on them to win better positions. If a game is annotated as "this move wins by force" then it means that the annotators expects the player at the board to win the position that arises after the sequence of moves is completed.


How can I read an Chess Informant Monograph

In the very first pages of the book you will find code system. It is described in 5 world languages and Serbian.

This is important to know so you can see at the end of the line what is the final evaluation of the position, if there are any novelties or alternative moves and so on.

Then you can skip the pages all the way to the line you wish to investigate.

Main line is written in bold font and the subvariations are given in normal font. This is the important part, and probably the one that confuses you:

If you see a number next to the move, something like ♘f319 this means that there are alternative moves. You can find them by searching for that number ( in our case 19 ) in the section that comes after the main lines end.

Below is the picture of what I am talking about:

You seek the number next to the move in the section marked with an arrow, at the bottom of the picture. Instead of playing ♘f3, from our example above, you play the move from that section.

That's it! If you have further questions leave me a comment ( for now there is nothing else I can do to help because your question is not specific enough ).

Hope this helps, good luck!


How has chess managed to remain a competitive sport despite engine dominance?

For the same reason the Tour de France is still a thing even if you could perform much better on a motorbike. Most chess enthusiasts didn't stop playing chess after noticing there's some other person whose rating is 1000 points higher than theirs, and won't stop because there's a machine 1000 stronger than that person.
A good amount of chess players don't care at all about computer chess and will only use engines as an assistence to analysis.


When and why should I move the pawns in front of a castled/non-castled King?

You should only make a move like a3 or h3 when the pin is so annoying that the loss of a tempo is a fair tradeoff.

Generally speaking, bishop pins are not that big of a deal.  The pin can be broken by moving a bishop (Be2 or Bd2), the knight can be defended by the other knight (Nbd2 or Nge2), or the pinned piece can move away (for white, frequently Qd3 will both break the pin and still defend the knight on f3).

If this isn't possible, then a3 or h3 can enter into consideration, but even still, the doubled pawns might not be such a big deal.  Especially for white, the move a3 is hardly ever played.  If black takes on c3, then the extra c pawn helps white far more than it hurts (additional control of the d4 square, half open b file, etc.).  h3 is far more common, especially in the Open game.  In this case, Bg4 is prevented, yes, but moves like Ng4 are also prevented, and someday white might expand with g4.

If the bishop is already on g4 or b4, then sometimes a3 or h3 are decent moves because they will win a tempo or force an exchange of bishop for knight.  Black will nearly always play h6 after white plays Bg5, for example.  The main reason is that the bishop has far less scope on h4 than it does on g5 (cannot return to e3 or d2, no queen battery is possible).  h3 is frequently played with a similar idea for white.

To summarize, a3 is almost always a weak move for white (a6 is a different story, it can be useful for black in many cases), and these pawn moves should only be played prophylactically when the pin is so bad that the loss of a tempo is more than offset by avoiding the pin.


Does “juicer” mean bishop?

This YouTube video of Hikaru playing the Beth Harmon bot gives some clues.
First, at 3:06 he says "I think I can just throw in a juicer check" and indicates a bishop check with arrows on the board. This suggests that juicer does mean bishop for him.
However at 3:33 he says "I don't understand. I'm just up a juicer, aren't I?" when he is up a knight.
Then at 3:50 he says "Let's block the juicer, no nonsense." as he blocks a pawn.
Finally at 7:00 he says "A juicer is just whatever you want it to be. The juice is the juice"


Can a piece pinned to my king put the opponent's king in check?

Yes. Besides making sense, it's also explicitly stated in the rules of the game:

3.9
The king is said to be 'in check' if it is attacked by one or more of the opponent's pieces, even if such pieces are constrained from moving to that square because they would then leave or place their own king in check. No piece can be moved that will either expose the king of the same colour to check or leave that king in check.

Source: Laws of Chess on the FIDE site


Why is black playing ...f6 to attack the e5 pawn a bad move in the King's Indian Attack?

You are right that e6 is your target and also that a winning plan is not trivial to find, that is because there is no clear win. The weak square e5 and the weak pawn e6 often do not guarantee a win, but usually white has a long-lasting slight advantage.
f7-f6 attacks a pawn chain (ok, this is not really a pawn chain, but it would be, if your pawns were on c3 and d4) from the front (the e5 pawn). c7-c5 (or b7-b5-b4) attacks it at the base (the d4 pawn, which is not on d4 in this example). c7-c5 is less weakening than f7-f6, because d4xc5 does not weaken the d5 pawn, but e5xf6 weakens the e6 pawn. Still, f7-f6 is often ok (this view has changed during chess history), when black gets dynamic counterplay. We see these ideas often in the French defense. Sometimes black manages to play e6-e5, completely freeing his game, though the then slightly weak d5 pawn is something black has to take care of.
So in this game you should have played calmly for control of the e5 stop square (see Kmoch:"Pawn Power in Chess", diagram 75), bring your bishop to h3, your knights to f3 and e5, and triple your heavy pieces on the e-file.
Once all your pieces are placed well, and his are bound to the e6 pawn, open a second front, for example with a2-a3 and b2-b4 or with c3-c4, or by pushing your pawns on the king side. This is according to Dworetzkys "Theory of the two weaknesses", which says that one weakness (e6 in this case) can be defended, but two or more weaknesses often can not.
Edit: And what you obviously should not do is resigning just because you have no idea what to do. In such a case, check out which of your pieces are not well-placed, and improve their position (Rowson: "Talk with your pieces"). For example, I would have played 12.Ng5! and on 12... e5 13.c4!, and if he plays 13...d4 then I have a beautiful square e4 for the knights. Looks won for white, at least in a human vs. human game. For example, the bishop c1 (and therefore Ra1) are bad pieces here, so play (the slightly unusual) 12.b3! in order to control d4 and e5 with the bishop b2.


Is FIDE still using the same logo for world championship final?

Are you sure? I don't remember seeing it, and googling I couldn't find a source from 2016 with that logo. Here's the one that I found:


Sicilian Scheveningen versus Najdorf: What are some of the characteristics that differentiate the two openings?

I just adore the Najdorf. So I cannot help favoring it over the Scheveningen. Yes, these two variations differ. They differ because white uses a bit different attacking strategies. The great thing about the Najdorf is that there are excellent ways of counter-attacking. Black does choose between e7-e6 and e7-e5 in the different lines. For example, here is a line where black chooses e7-e6

[FEN ""]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bc4 e6

I think that by looking at the main lines of each variation will answer your question in the best way. For Najdorf, I can say that the Nb8 usually goes to d7. Yet the exact placement of pieces and plans depends fully on the plan that white chooses. For example, white has the classical attack with Bg5, f4 and Qf3.

[FEN ""]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 h6 8.Bh4 Be7 9.Qf3 Qc7 10.O-O-O Nbd7

In general, the sharp variations lead to concrete positions, where the best options differ from position to position. If white chooses to be aggressive in either of the two variations (Scheveningen or Najdorf), you will get sharp and dynamic positions where a single error will be fatal. If white chooses more calm paths, I think the two variations are very similar in their piece placements and typical ideas (e.g. the exchange sacrifice Rc8xNc3). My advice is to get a solid overview of all the lines in the two variations and go through at least ten grandmaster games for every line.


I would recommend that you take a look at the Silver Openings Suite by Albert Silver. It's a hand-crafted set of 50 opening positions designed for balanced play, based on some non-trivial statistical analysis using ChessBase.

Cheers!


Why, or how, can GMs make mistakes in opening books?

In such a case, I would consider an editing blunder. Can you give the moves that lead to that  position ? I would not be surprised, for instance, if the comment was written with respect to the same line where ...Bb7 is played instead of ...Bb6.

r2qr1k1/1bp2pp1/p1n4p/1pbnp3/P7/1BPP1N2/1P3PPP/R1BQRNK1 w - - 0 14

In this position 14.axb5 leads to nothing but exchanges, but 14.d4 indeed looks very strong: 14...exd4 loses to 15.Rxe8 Qxe8 16.Bxd5, and if the Bc5 retreats then 15.dxe5 grabs a pawn with a discovered attack on the Nd5. White wins (at least) a good central pawn.

Writing a book is a long process: you study a variation, finally the variation won't enter the book because you found an improvement earlier, you analyse a position, then another one that's very similar but not identical, you check one with the software but maybe you forgot the check the second, then you have to send a draft of a chapter to your editor, meanwhile you are writing the next chapter, and the editor wants you to reduce the material by one fourth, so you come back to your text, cut this and rephrase that, and at the end you have a few days (at most!) to proof-read the final draft before it goes to print... Even for the most organized writers, errors will happen at some point.

Even without a computer, there is no doubt McDonald would find 14.axb5!+- in less than twenty seconds if given the diagram in the question. That's why I think this error is due to the production process rather than the chess process. It could be anything, from a comment meant for another section being copied-pasted to the wrong spot, to the typo Bb6/Bb7, or the wrong draft section sent to print.

It is sure pretty annoying for you reader when you meet such a mistake – at least, it keeps your 'scientific skeptical awareness' in alert when reading. But the author will be the most pissed off by such an accident: not only the message he wanted to pass about a variation is spoiled, moreover his name is associated to a 'ridiculous' assessment.


Are there any sources of massive transposition tables?

What you're talking about is basically opening books. If an engine has access to hard-set evaluations of common positions fairly early on in the game, then it can play better.

But having a pre-made transposition table/database of positions occurring far after the opening isn't useful, since the chance of reaching any particular position late in the game is extremely low. Unless this position is part of theory, in which case it would be in an opening book.


What is wrong with taking the e4 pawn in the Najdorf Sicilian after 6.Bc4?

This is not a gaping hole in opening theory. Looking through my reference database, White has an excellent score after 10.Re1.
Black needs to reply with 10...d5 not to be clearly worse, because of the weakness on e6(White can just crash through if Black is careless). After this there aren't many games, but White's score after 11.c4 is 73.3% in 15 games. The computer evaluates the position as approximately +0.20 for White, which indicates that White has full compensation for the pawn.

This isn't hard to imagine. White has a development lead, has a weakness on e6 to work on, open lines for bishops and rooks etc. It is essentially a very sound gambit. The only reason why the computer gives White just +0.20 eval is because computers do not tend to make mistakes that humans make. They can handle scary looking positions in another way than humans can, and they don't make tactical errors. If you look through the games played after 11.c4, you will notice that virtually every black player has played a game-losing move at move 13 in this line (after 11... bxc3 12.Nxc3, Nxc3 13.bxc3, Be7?? and now White obtains a winning advantage after 14.Nf5!).

This means that the position is too expensive for Black to enter just for a pawn. It's totally not worth the risk, in my opinion.


Changing UCI output to include piece names

With the EGN (from, to) you can simply do a check up on what piece exist on the from position.

Say the engine gives you a2a4 you then simply check what exists on a2 and then generate information based on that.

You can do this cause your GUI will always have the same chess board as the engine. It's the engine that recieves a FEN string from the GUI anyways.