The FEN consists of six parts (see definition of FEN here):

piece placement: at most 64 characters, one for each square plus 7 times "/" to delimit ranks = 71 characters
active color: one character ("w" or "b")
castling: at most 4 characters
en passant: one or two characters
half move clock
full move number

In addition there are 5 space characters between them.

So in total I count a maximum of: 71+1+1+1+4+1+2+1+x+1+y = 83 + x + y

x and y are the number of characters to represent half moves since the last capture/pawn move and the total number of moves respectively.

In most realistic games you'd have x=3 (after 50 moves = 100 half moves a draw can be claimed after 75 moves = 150 half moves it is a draw) and y=3 (allowing games up to 999 moves long. If you want to be on the safe side, taking x=3 (no pawn move or capture for 999 half moves max) and y=4 (games up to 9999 moves long).

This would leave you with a string of 90 characters, but read on...

Additional consideration 1 (en passant)

The first part of the FEN string can be 64+7 characters long. One possible position is:

b1q1k1n1/p1p1p1r1/1r1b1n1p/1p1p1p1P/1P1P1Pp1/P1P1P1P1/R1R1K1B1/N1Q1B1N1 w - f3 0 1

Note in particular, that it is possible to have en passant capture in such setup (thanks Fabian Fichter for pointing this out), i.e. to have a 2 characters en passant string and 64+7 characters for the piece placement.

Additional consideration 2 (castling)

Any of the four castlings is described by one character (to be compared with one character if no castling is possible).

In order for castling to be possible, neither king nor the respective rook can have moved. For queenside castling this does not create any problem, because e1 and a1 (e8 and a8) are squares of the same color and you can place pieces alternatingly similar to the example above.

However regarding kingside castling, if e1 and h1 (or e8 and h8) are occupied, this will break the structure and shorten the 1st part of the FEN string, by 1 for each color's kingside castling.

Additional consideration 3 (en passant and half move clock)

[Again due to Fabian Fichter]:

En passant is only possible if the last move was a pawn move. Any pawn move however resets the half move counter (5th part of FEN). If you compare one extra character for en passant (2 chars vs just "-") with two extra characters for the half move counter (3 digit number vs "0") the conclusion is, that in the longest FEN, en passant is not possible.

This reduces the string by 1.

Additional consideration 4 (50 or 75 move rule)

The game is drawn after 50 moves (if claimed) or at most 75 moves without a capture or pawn move. Captures shorten the 1st part of the FEN by 1 char, so clearly you don't gain anything with regard to the last part of the FEN string by extending the game via captures.

The maximum number of pawn moves (for a full board with 64+7 string for the first part of the FEN) should be 24, e.g. by moving every second pawn 1 square ahead and the other pawns two squares in two moves (=2*(4+8)=24). So the pawn moves can extend your game to 24*50=1200 or 24*75=1800 moves.

This shows that it is possible to have a 4 digit move counter without a forced draw and also that it is not possible to have 5 digit move numbers because the game would be drawn before. (even if captures are included you would only gain another 62*75=4650 moves, leaving you well below the limit of 9999 moves).

So the total maximum number should be 90 -
 2 (for castling) -1 (en passant vs half move counter) = 87 characters.

Note that all this holds for regular chess games. If you need to support any non-standard variants you might have to reconsider these numbers.


What other games or chess variants are useful to improve your chess skills?

I believe that studying Shogi added 50 points to my chess game.  They are related games and thus share some related concepts.  I believe Shogi showed me things about chess I had not understood before.


Can't understand a sentence from Nimzowitsch's Chess Praxis

After re-reading the chapter Centralization I think that Nimzowitsch meant the following:

First you restrict the opponent's pawns
Then you start impacting the opponent's center from the distance using long-range pieces (the so-called "long-range action")
Then you start closer-range actions against the opponent's center (i.e. "you draw the noose tighter"), e.g. by occupying some central square


Yes, it seems to be drawn. First consider the following variation, but in particular the position after 2.Kxh5 first:

[FEN "8/8/8/3k3p/3P3K/2P3R1/8/7r w - - 0 1"]

1.Rh3 Rg1 2.Kxh5 Rg8 3.Rf3 Kc4 4.Kh4 Kd5? 5.Rf5+!

Here we don't even need to consult an engine because there is a better oracle to be had. This 6-piece position is covered by existing endgame tablebases, and you can confirm with a query that this is drawn. So we know for a fact that going this 1.Rh3 route leads to a draw. (White could try delaying the pawn capture and making a more productive immediate move, but it doesn't help, and just leads to play like that coming after 1.Kg5, discussed at the end below.)

As to the idea behind Black's play from here, it is to keep the pawns at bay with the king, and as you intimated in your original post, to use the rook to cutoff the white king as much as possible. It's difficult to say much more about the exact drawing method here, because the play can be very complicated (one reason to love endgames, by the way). To give an idea, consider the position after 4.Kh4. 10 of Black's possible moves keep the draw (including those that simply move the rook along the g-file), but the perhaps seemingly harmless 4...Kd5?, putting the king back where it was, is suddenly a loss for Black in 41 moves, but only if White plays 5.Rf5+!, as all other fifth moves again draw. One way to get a good feel for the correct and incorrect play (and for the general notion of how impenetrable optimal play in technical endgames can be) is to toy around with moves at the link I gave above.

White's only other first move option is 1.Kg5, and it's not too surprising that this draws if winning the h-pawn immediately already draws. It's true that White avoids getting his king cut off on the h-file, but the cost of leaving Black with a distracting outside passed pawn is too high. The point is that the black king and rook can easily stop the pawns if the white king isn't helping out his rook. But now if the white king does try to get involved, say via ideas like Kf6-e6 and pushing the d-pawn, Black can keep things level because she has her own passed pawn to play with.


The Dutch has definitely a sound positional base, that is, with f5 you take under control the center (e4), prepare to develop your knight behind a pawn (which is usually good as the squares diagonally to the pawn are now defended twice. This is the reason you play c4 in the Queens Gambit and only after Nc3 btw) and aim for fast counterplay or a solid setup.

If you want a solid setup and play in a position where it's all about maneuvering, the Stonewall is the setup you desire. It is sound positionally speaking, though you have to take care of the hole you leave in e5. In order to equalize, black has to find a concrete plan and good implementation, as these lines always give a slim but almost perpetual advantage for white. If you want to go for dynamic positions, choose the Leningrad setup, but bear in mind that you are taking some risk because of the early weakening of the kignside. The counterplay many times arise from fianchettoing the dark squared bishop and looking for an attack on the kingside, which you have to be precise when making it as it leaves your king somewhat open and sometimes weaker than the opponents.

There are very powerful upsides to playing the Dutch, one of them being that the most challenging attack for white involves a kingside fianchetto, so the opening preparation becomes somewhat easier in the main lines. The downside is that with f5 so early on in the game, there are multiple gambit opportunities for white that, if accepted, lure black into positions where he must be able to defend precisely and for a long time before cashing in is material advantage (of course, there is always the option of declining the gambit, but some of them are as provocative as 2.g4).

Conclusion:

The Dutch is a sound positional opening. Wehther you want to play positional chess or tactical chess depends almost entirely on your (black) side: go for a Classical (half positional-half tactical), a Stonewall (highly positional) or a Leningrad (highly tactical). However, the player must know a fair amount of theory to be safe.

Edit: You may also look the Dutch as a flipped Sicilian, as the pawn structure is similar. This is also in favor of the Dutch being positionally sound. However, don't look further, as the plans and maneuvers in the openings are in general completely different.


What would happen if a game lasted for more than 24 hours?

Although replies by Brian Towers and StudentT are the right ones (both players would be disqualified) from a theoretical points of view it would be possible that a game has not ended in time for the next round to begin. I would even say that it's possible that it could actually happen in a tournament with 3 rounds per day.

I case it would happen I guess the game would be adjourned by the arbiters. The entire round would not be delayed/cancelled, but the result would be considered to be a draw for pairing purposes only. See General handling rules for Swiss Tournaments, point D.1, and Laws of Chess, point E.1.a.

From Laws of Chess

  If a game is not finished at the end of the time prescribed for play,
  the arbiter shall require the player having the move to ‘seal’ that
  move. The player must write his move in unambiguous notation on his
  scoresheet, put his scoresheet and that of his opponent in an
  envelope, seal the envelope and only then stop the chess clock. Until
  he has stopped the chess clock the player retains the right to change
  his sealed move. If, after being told by the arbiter to seal his move,
  the player makes a move on the chessboard he must write that same move
  on his scoresheet as his sealed move.

from General handling rules for Swiss Tournaments

  Adjourned games are considered draws for pairing purposes only.

Update: I've found a real example in a Catalan tournament (Masdenverge). You can read tournament rules here: http://www.escacsmasdenverge.com/. It was an U-2200 tournament (to allow a 60+30 time control) and three rounds per day were scheduled. See the note where this possible problem is mentioned:

  NOTA: Si una partida s'allargara en excés, superant l'hora prevista
  per a l'inici de la següent ronda, l'àrbitre principal podrà segons el
  seu criteri, emparellar amb el resultat provisional de taules, a
  l'efecte de que els altres participants puguen jugar la ronda següent.
  Quedaran ajornades les partides dels jugadors que estiguen jugant la
  ronda anterior i una vegada finalitzada, s'unixen a la ronda.

A free English translation:

  If a game lasts for too long, exceeding the scheduled time for the
  start of the next round, the main arbiter may at his discretion,
  proceed to the pairing with the interim result of a draw, to the
  effect that the other players can play the next round. Games of the
  player who are still playing the previous round will be delayed and
  once these games end they'll join the current round.

As you can see in this case the draw for pairing purposes rule is used, but games are not adjourned but the players will continue to the end, and then they'll join the next round.


Stockfish is a free project, people don't work for financial returns. Unfortunately, that would mean your request might never be honoured. As a programmer with technical skills, you are expected to compile the code yourself.

Sorry, this is how a free open source project work. They give you the code for free, so you just have to do some works.


Standard for receiving live chess broadcast

This is very common for live broadcast. What's simpler than just sending a PGN file format?

  downloading whole new pgn every second is just unimaginable for me.

Not really. While I don't claim myself a HTTP expert, your browser doesn't really need to do a new download. Good browser implementation should have a cache of your most recent PGN file. Only the HTTP response would need to be sent back. Please take a look:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20978189/how-304-not-modified-works


Anand - Carlsen WCC 2014 ( game 3 ) -> at which moments Black was able to equalize?

Analysing the whole game, not just the opening moves, the main problem with black's position was the dark squares. Despite having his dark squared bishop, once the pawn marched to c7 the dominance of Bf4 over Be7 was beyond any doubt. It is true that Carlsen made a few mistakes with several recaptures, but these moves were natural and probably every human would have made them in his position.

This is why my main suggestion is to play the line arising after 6... Nh4, getting rid of that annoying bishop and avoiding the pawn from ever reaching c7. The game may then steer into semi-Slav (if black plays c6) or Tarrasch (if black plays c5) pawn structures, where the choice is only yours.


My initial impression was that in a practical game, white would win.

If it were not for the plan that the computer found, my impression would be that Rb1-b7, and winning back one pawn, with the remaining weak pawns, white would then likely win back the second, and just be clearly better. White is also ahead in development, and has an incredibly strong bishop pair, as you mentioned. Lastly, if the black king went to f7, as soon as it did, if white could take on c7, the Rh8 will be forced to go to e8, and it will be hard to break that pin. This would be very bad. I had a position once as white that could have ended up in this dream scenario, but my opponent played differently, and I ultimately won tactically instead. That game definitely influenced my initial, and shallow, assessment of the position. My initial, cursory, assessment was wrong.

Now, that I turn on the computer, it took the wind out of my idea immediately, and it is a likely draw for one reason: It is a positional standoff, and immediately, which white should force. With the Rb1 plan, which Stockfish 11 thought was best, black threatens to play Kd7 and Nc8, which defends everything. As soon as black plays Kd7, white needs to play Rd1 forcing the king back, and then can return to b1 with the same threat forcing a repetition. If black does not find that plan, white likely wins, but frankly, it would not be hard for a strong player to find. My initial thoughts were just from a quick glance.

White can try to move around, and induce a black mistake; but there are also many more pitfalls for white than black, and white could also make a mistake. You can never lose sight of the fact that you are two pawns down, and must be careful that there may be a defense that will leave you begging for a draw…if you are lucky.

The evaluation of the position is such:

Black has two pawns, and that is really the major redeeming quality of the position from black’s perspective. It helps that the weaknesses are close to home, which usually makes them more defendable, and the king is close enough to help with that. The white bishops are a bit unfortunately placed for a Bc5xa7 idea due to the move Ra8 winning, so it will take at least an extra move for that plan to work. Black has the possibility of Kd7 and Nc8 holding it together if Rb1 by white, and even with the potential loss of a7, black is up a pawn with a compact structure. White must be careful not to overplay his hand, or the extra pawns could become decisive. The Nc8 is the hero of black’s defense.

White has the two bishops, and a very weakened black queenside to go after. The Rd1 is more active for now, and the Rh8 is out-of-play for now, but might get out in time. The Kg1 is going to be the more active king. It is very important that the Pe4 takes the squares f5, and d5. especially, away from the black pieces. Black is, clearly, on the defensive.

With such a material imbalance, it comes down to very concrete calculation, which computers are particularly good at, and I believe the evaluation; however, there is room for both sides to play on, but to do so leaves the game on a razor’s edge. Black could slip up, and white’s activity could be decisive, but if white is not accurate, the material could have the last word, and from the lines below, this is the more-likely scenario.

The obvious plans for white are Rb1-b7, Bc5 and trying to capture on a7, and bringing the K to the center or queenside via d4 can c5 (it turns out that this is a fantasy though). Some of these might combine with a plan of Bb7-c6. Black’s plans are mostly reactionary to whatever white plays, but some are based on f5, securing the d5 square, or Nc8-d6 or b6.

After seeing the variations below, white easily has enough activity to compensate for the two-pawns deficit, but as the variations show, mostly due to the incredibly well-placed Ne7-c8, no more. To play for more is risking having to play a long defense for white.

In conclusion, I found many positions that white was either worse, or losing outright, but none that white was better. After analyzing this in depth, it is my opinion that with best play, white has absolutely nothing, and has a significantly higher risk of losing than black does, which I found counterintuitive and surprising.

After looking at the lines, as long as black sees the Kd7 and Nc8 plan in response to Rb1, which is fairly easy, he has no risk of losing. After looking at the lines, based on my years of experience, between two strong players, I did not see any moves that were particularly difficult for black to find. White should force the draw.

 [FEN "4k2r/p1p1n2p/B1p1bpp1/8/4PP2/B7/6PP/3R2K1 w k - 0 1"]

 1. Kf2 {It is the Kf2 plan that offers white the least losing chances.} (1. Bc5 {The Bc5 plan.} Kf7 $15 {For example.} 2. Rb1 Rd8 3. Kf2 (3. Rb7 $2 Rd1+ 4. Kf2 Rc1 5. Be3 (5. Bxe7 Kxe7 6. Rxc7+ Kd6 7. Rxh7 Ra1 8. Bf1 a5) 5... Rc2+ 6. Kf3 Bc8 7. Rxa7 Bxa6 8. Rxa6 Rc3 9. Ke2 f5 10. Kd2 (10. exf5 Nxf5 $17) 10... Rc4 11. exf5 Nxf5 12. Ra7 Ke6 13. Rxc7 h5 {And although equal, black is to be preferred.}) 3... f5 $1 4. Rb7 Rd7 5. e5 Nd5 6. g3 Nc3 7. Ke3 Nb5 8. Bxb5 cxb5 9. Rxa7 (9. Rxb5 $2 Rd5 $15) 9... c6= {But why would white want to play for this?}) (1. Bb7 $2 {The Bb7 plan immediately is just too slow.} Bc8 $1 (1... Kf7 {Is also good.} 2. Rc1 Bd7 3. Ba6 Re8 4. Bc5 f5 5. exf5 Nxf5 6. Bxa7 Ra8 7. Ra1 $1 Nd6 8. Bf2 Be6 $15) 2. Bxc8 Nxc8 3. Bb4 {Only move, and try to figure out why OTB.} Rg8 {Preparing to activate the rook, and black is better. There is no need to continue the analysis as it is clear that black is much better placed than at the beginning when white still had the two bishops, so white should have just forced the repetition.}) (1. Rb1 Kd7 2. Rd1+ {And white can force the repetition.} (2. Rb7 $6 {First, the Rb7 plan, which is trying to push too hard, and black is already at least equal.} Nc8 (2... Ra8 {Is also possible with the idea of Nc8-d6 or b6.} 3. Bc5 Nc8 4. Rb2 {And white is already forced to retreat or see the Rb7 get shut out of play, and maybe later, trapped.} Nb6 5. Rd2+ Ke8 6. Bb7 Rb8 7. Bxc6+ Bd7 8. Bxb6 Bxc6 9. Bxc7 Rb1+ 10. Kf2 Bxe4 $15) 3. Rb8 {Already having to bail out.} (3. Bc5 $4 Nd6 4. Bxd6 {Almost forced since e4 hangs.} (4. Rb4 Re8 {And black is winning now, and free. E4 is very weak.} 5. e5 fxe5 6. fxe5 Nf7 $19 {And d5 is now available for the Be6.}) 4... Kxd6 5. Rxa7 Rb8 6. Be2 Rb2 $17 {With a huge advantage that is almost winning.}) 3...Rd8 {Forcing white to bail out into the worse side of the draw, for example...} 4. Bxc8+ (4. Kf2 $2 Nb6 $17) 4... Rxc8 5. Rxc8 (5. Rb1 $2 Re8 {Again, aiming at e4.}) 5... Kxc8 6. Be7 f5 7. e5 Kd7 8. Bc5 a5 {Still equal, but why go for this when there is much easier?}) 2... Ke8 3. Rb1=) 1... Kf7 (1... Nc8 2. Rc1 Kd7 3. Rd1+ Ke8 (3... Nd6 $4 4. e5 $16) 4. Bb7 Bd7 5. Bc5 $2 Nd6 $1 6. Bxd6 cxd6 7. Rxd6 Ke7 8. Rd1 a5 9. Ra1 Rb8 10. Ba6 c5 $1 11. Rxa5 $4 Ra8 $19) 2. Rb1 (2. Bc5 $2 f5 3. exf5 Nxf5 $17 {And black has solved all his problems.}) 2...Rd8 3. Rb7 {There are too many lines to give them all, but black has no problems.} Rd7 4. Rxa7 f5 5. e5 Nd5 6. g3 Nc3 7. Bb4 Ne4+ {Or Nb5 or Nd5.} 8. Ke3 c5 9. Ba5 c6 10. Rxd7+ Bxd7=


Would an ensemble of chess engines beat the best one?

The answer is "No".
If you have a defined fixed set of resources - CPUs, memory, cache, etc. - and you allow one engine to have full use of them then that engine is going to be able to analyse to a greater depth than if you take the same set of resources and split them in some way between several different engines. Inevitably the single engine analysing to a greater depth is going to perform better than several engines analysing to a much lesser depth.


Is there any word on what will happen to the Candidates Tournament 2020 if one of the players tests positive for COVID-19 (coronavirus)?

Yeah, in fact, the tournament has been put on a pause with the current standings, because they are not able to continue: https://www.chess.com/news/view/2020-fide-candidates-tournament-postponed


Where to play with friend online with no need to register?

Lichess is great for that.

When you click the 'play with a friend' button, it allows you to create a custom game to invite someone with a link, the amazing thing is that if the game is unrated, you can invite anonymous players, and it works even if you are not logged in at all, thus you can do anon vs anon games.

I have some online friends that are very timid, and don't want anyone knowing who they are online in any manner, they love lichess because of this possibility of playing completely anonymous.


Why should black trade knights in this position?

Computers have complex reasons for their move choices, however, in this position there is a simple rationale for exchanging knights.
You need to think of two factors: are pieces moving to better (or worse) squares, and tempo (who is to move).
In this position, if you play Nxd2, White gets to play Bxd2. So, you keep the move and White improves his bishop slightly and opens C1 for the rook. If you move the knight to f6, then nobody improves, but you lose the move. Note that you cannot play Ng5 because of h4.
In this position losing tempo would be less desirable because White can use his move to play Ngf3 which stops you from playing e5! which is the key move in this position. If you keep tempo, then you can play 1...Nxd2 2. Bxd2 e5! This will improve your position by allowing you to challenge the center.
If you play Nf6 and White stops e5 by playing Ngf3, then White definitely has the advantage because of having more places to put his pieces by virtue of controlling the center. You could easily find yourself in a lost position if White continues to dominate the center.


What did Benjamin Franklin mean in this quote?

You hold yourself to a higher standard than your opponent, for politeness' sake.

So you let him play an alternative move after you kindly point out that it was perhaps not the best available, but you are acquiring a habit of caution by adhering strictly to the laws of the game for your own moves.

The point is to be moral, polite and extremely smug at the same time.


Precise skills connected with rating value

What I certainly agree with is that 2700+ vs 2600 is mostly openings, and everything under ~2000 is decided by blundering pieces e.g. simple tactics. Which, in turn, means that if one wants to reach 2000, the first task is to stop giving pieces away.


There are basically three possibilities:

Keeping the tension is often the best one: If your opponent resolves the tension by taking your pawn you can retake and centralise a piece and your remaining pawn often gives you a space advantage.
Taking is usually the least attractive option, but it can be good, if you are the first (or only one) to take advantage of vulnerable squares. So you might take on e5 if you can bring a knight to d5, possibly because the black c-pawn is already on c5, whereas your c-pawn can still control d4.
Pushing the pawn gives you a space advantage, but there is a big difference on which side of the board you get this space advantage! Pushing e5 gives you a space advantage on the king side. This can lead to an (piece-) attack against the king and is therefore a generally attractive option. It is not by random chance that against the French and against the Caro-Kann the e-pawn is often pushed to e5.
Pushing d5 gives you an advantage on the queenside and this is only attractive if you can follow it up with play on this side of the board. Therefore it is generally more often played if you already have a pawn on c4, which is ready to be pushed to c5. If you need too much time to get your queenside play going, there will be the counter lever f5, which gives black play on the kingside.


How do you browse games in a PGN file on Linux?

Scid vs. PC can do all of the above. It will take a while to load since ICOfY Base is rather large (upward of 4 mil games, I believe). Your best bet is probably to convert the PGN file to Scid format using the pgnscid command-line utility included with Scid vs. PC. That's what I've done in the past, but if I'm not mistaken, ICOfY Base is now available for download in Scid format.


A new AI wins at go. Can a similar AI win at chess? Can it achieve pure self-training?

Well, well, well! DeepMind have published a paper in which they say they have programmed and trained a neural network computer to beat Stockfish.

With 1 minute thinking time per move their AlphaZero computer beat Stockfish by +25, =25, -0 with white and +3,=47,0- as black.

They "trained" 3 separate computers to play chess, shogi and Go and beat their silicon rivals convincingly.

Here is how the paper describes the training and evaluation -

  Self-play games are generated by using the latest parameters for this
  neural network, omitting the evaluation step and the selection of best
  player.

  AlphaGo Zero tuned the hyper-parameter of its search by Bayesian
  optimisation. In AlphaZero we reuse the same hyper-parameters for all
  games without game-specific tuning. The sole exception is the noise
  that is added to the prior policy to ensure exploration; this is
  scaled in proportion to the typical number of legal moves for that
  game type.

  Like AlphaGo Zero, the board state is encoded by spatial planes based
  only on the basic rules for each game. The actions are encoded by
  either spatial planes or a flat vector, again based only on the basic
  rules for each game (see Methods).

  We applied the AlphaZero algorithm to chess, shogi, and also Go.
  Unless otherwise specified, the same algorithm settings, network
  architecture, and hyper-parameters were used for all three games. We
  trained a separate instance of AlphaZero for each game. Training
  proceeded for 700,000 steps (mini-batches of size 4,096) starting from
  randomly initialised parameters, using 5,000 first-generation TPUs to
  generate self-play games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the
  neural networks. Further details of the training procedure are
  provided in the Methods.

  Figure 1 shows the performance of AlphaZero during self-play
  reinforcement learning, as a function of training steps, on an Elo
  scale (10). In chess, AlphaZero outperformed Stockfish after just 4
  hours (300k steps); in shogi, AlphaZero outperformed Elmo after less
  than 2 hours (110k steps); and in Go, AlphaZero outperformed AlphaGo
  Lee (29) after 8 hours (165k steps).

  We evaluated the fully trained instances of AlphaZero against
  Stockfish, Elmo and the previous version of AlphaGo Zero (trained for
  3 days) in chess, shogi and Go respectively, playing 100 game matches
  at tournament time controls of one minute per move. AlphaZero and the
  previous AlphaGo Zero used a single machine with 4 TPUs. Stockfish and
  Elmo played at their strongest skill level using 64 threads and a hash
  size of 1GB. AlphaZero convincingly defeated all opponents, losing
  zero games to Stockfish and eight games to Elmo (see Supplementary
  Material for several example games), as well as defeating the previous
  version of AlphaGo Zero (see Table 1).

Their computer used a new form of chip called a "TPU" (Tensor Processing Unit) developed by Google for machine learning tasks.

They also claim their Monte Carlo tree search algorithm is better and more "human like" than the traditional alpha-beta search algorithms -

  We also analysed the relative performance of AlphaZero’s MCTS search
  compared to the state-of-the-art alpha-beta search engines used by
  Stockfish and Elmo. AlphaZero searches just 80 thousand positions per
  second in chess and 40 thousand in shogi, compared to 70 million for
  Stockfish and 35 million for Elmo. AlphaZero compensates for the lower
  number of evaluations by using its deep neural network to focus much
  more selectively on the most promising variations – arguably a more
  “human-like” approach to search, as originally proposed by Shannon.
  Figure 2 shows the scalability of each player with respect to thinking
  time, measured on an Elo scale, relative to Stockfish or Elmo with
  40ms thinking time. AlphaZero’s MCTS scaled more effectively with
  thinking time than either Stockfish or Elmo, calling into question the
  widely held belief that alpha-beta search is inherently superior in
  these domains

Here are some of the games -

[FEN ""]
[White "Stockfish "]
[Black "AlphaZero"]

 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. d3 Bc5 5. Bxc6 dxc6
 6. O-O Nd7 7. Nbd2 O-O 8. Qe1 f6 9. Nc4 Rf7 10. a4 Bf8 11. Kh1 Nc5 12. a5 Ne6
 13. Ncxe5 fxe5 14. Nxe5 Rf6 15. Ng4 Rf7 16. Ne5 Re7 17. a6 c5 18. f4 Qe8
 19. axb7 Bxb7 20. Qa5 Nd4 21. Qc3 Re6 22. Be3 Rb6 23. Nc4 Rb4 24. b3 a5
 25. Rxa5 Rxa5 26. Nxa5 Ba6 27. Bxd4 Rxd4 28. Nc4 Rd8 29. g3 h6 30. Qa5 Bc8
 31. Qxc7 Bh3 32. Rg1 Rd7 33. Qe5 Qxe5 34. Nxe5 Ra7 35. Nc4 g5 36. Rc1 Bg7
 37. Ne5 Ra8 38. Nf3 Bb2 39. Rb1 Bc3 40. Ng1 Bd7 41. Ne2 Bd2 42. Rd1 Be3
 43. Kg2 Bg4 44. Re1 Bd2 45. Rf1 Ra2 46. h3 Bxe2 47. Rf2 Bxf4 48. Rxe2 Be5
 49. Rf2 Kg7 50. g4 Bd4 51. Re2 Kf6 52. e5+ Bxe5 53. Kf3 Ra1 54. Rf2 Re1
 55. Kg2+ Bf4 56. c3 Rc1 57. d4 Rxc3 58. dxc5 Rxc5 59. b4 Rc3 60. h4 Ke5
 61. hxg5 hxg5 62. Re2+ Kf6 63. Kf2 Be5 64. Ra2 Rc4 65. Ra6+ Ke7 66. Ra5 Ke6
 67. Ra6+ Bd6 0-1

Game

 [FEN ""]
 [White "Stockfish "]
 [Black "AlphaZero"]

 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. d3 Bc5 5. Bxc6 dxc6 6. O-O Nd7 7. c3 O-O
 8. d4 Bd6 9. Bg5 Qe8 10. Re1 f6 11. Bh4 Qf7 12. Nbd2 a5 13. Bg3 Re8 14. Qc2 Nf8 15. c4 c5 16. d5 b6 17. Nh4 g6 18. Nhf3 Bd7 19. Rad1 Re7 20. h3 Qg7 21. Qc3 Rae8 22. a3 h6 23. Bh4 Rf7 24. Bg3 Rfe7 25. Bh4 Rf7 26. Bg3 a4 27. Kh1 Rfe7 28. Bh4 Rf7 29. Bg3 Rfe7 30. Bh4 g5 31. Bg3 Ng6 32. Nf1 Rf7 33. Ne3 Ne7 34. Qd3 h5 35. h4 Nc8 36. Re2 g4 37. Nd2 Qh7 38. Kg1 Bf8 39. Nb1 Nd6 40. Nc3 Bh6 41. Rf1 Ra8 42. Kh2 Kf8 43. Kg1 Qg6 44. f4 gxf3 45. Rxf3 Bxe3+ 46. Rfxe3 Ke7 47. Be1 Qh7 48. Rg3 Rg7 49. Rxg7+ Qxg7 50. Re3 Rg8 51. Rg3 Qh8 52. Nb1 Rxg3 53. Bxg3 Qh6 54. Nd2 Bg4 55. Kh2 Kd7 56. b3 axb3 57. Nxb3 Qg6 58. Nd2 Bd1 59. Nf3 Ba4 60. Nd2 Ke7 61. Bf2 Qg4 62. Qf3 Bd1 63. Qxg4 Bxg4 64. a4 Nb7 65. Nb1 Na5 66. Be3 Nxc4 67. Bc1 Bd7 68. Nc3 c6 69. Kg1 cxd5 70. exd5 Bf5 71. Kf2 Nd6 72. Be3 Ne4+ 73. Nxe4 Bxe4 74. a5 bxa5 75. Bxc5+ Kd7 76. d6 Bf5 77. Ba3 Kc6 78. Ke1 Kd5 79. Kd2 Ke4 80. Bb2 Kf4 81. Bc1 Kg3 82. Ke2 a4 83. Kf1 Kxh4 84. Kf2 Kg4 85. Ba3 Bd7 86. Bc1 Kf5 87. Ke3 Ke6 0-1

White: AlphaZero Black: Stockfish

 [FEN ""]
 [White "AlphaZero "]
 [Black "Stockfish"]

 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 b6 3. d4 e6 4. g3 Ba6 5. Qc2 c5 6. d5 exd5 7. cxd5 Bb7 8. Bg2 Nxd5 9. O-O Nc6 10. Rd1 Be7 11. Qf5 Nf6 12. e4 g6 13. Qf4 O-O 14. e5 Nh5 15. Qg4 Re8 16. Nc3 Qb8 17. Nd5 Bf8 18. Bf4 Qc8 19. h3 Ne7 20. Ne3 Bc6 21. Rd6 Ng7 22. Rf6 Qb7 23. Bh6 Nd5 24. Nxd5 Bxd5 25. Rd1 Ne6 26. Bxf8 Rxf8 27. Qh4 Bc6 28. Qh6 Rae8 29. Rd6 Bxf3 30. Bxf3 Qa6 31. h4 Qa5 32. Rd1 c4 33. Rd5 Qe1+ 34. Kg2 c3 35. bxc3 Qxc3 36. h5 Re7 37. Bd1 Qe1 38. Bb3 Rd8 39. Rf3 Qe4 40. Qd2 Qg4 41. Bd1 Qe4 42. h6 Nc7 43. Rd6 Ne6 44. Bb3 Qxe5 45. Rd5 Qh8 46. Qb4 Nc5 47. Rxc5 bxc5 48. Qh4 Rde8 49. Rf6 Rf8 50. Qf4 a5 51. g4 d5 52. Bxd5 Rd7 53. Bc4 a4 54. g5 a3 55. Qf3 Rc7 56. Qxa3 Qxf6 57. gxf6 Rfc8 58. Qd3 Rf8 59. Qd6 Rfc8 60. a4 1-0


Does FIDE or USCF allow ICCF type numerical notation instead of the so called algebraic?

Neither appears to allow numerical notation.

FIDE requires algebraic notation.

  Article 8: The recording of the moves
  8.1.1

  In the course of play each player is required to record his own moves
  and those of his opponent in the correct manner, move after move, as
  clearly and legibly as possible, in the algebraic notation (Appendix
  C), on the ‘scoresheet’ prescribed for the competition.

The USCF prefers algebraic, but also permits descriptive or "computer notation".

  The Recording of Games15A. Manner of keeping score.In the course of play each player is required to record the game (both the player’s
  and the opponent’s moves), move after move, as clearly and legibly as
  possible, on the scoresheetprescribed for the competition. Algebraic
  notationis standard, but descriptive or computer notation is
  permitted.

I cannot find a definition for "computer notation" in their rules.


What makes game 5 of the World Championship a draw?

Computer engines are of little use in positions like this. Still it is a pretty obvious draw, because of:

equal (and very limited) material
pawns on the same side of the board
no weaknesses for either player
active and safe kings

In order to win this, one would have to win material or promote a pawn, neither of which can be forced.


Endgame study - how much time per exercise

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

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

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


Black is better here, but this is much more due to piece activity and coordination than to the pawn structure.

Once upon a time (i.e. a century ago), it was thought that such structures gave a big advantage in endgames for the camp with 3 pawns on the queenside - because in the long term they can create an outer passed pawn. However, this has been debunked in practice since the times of Alekhine (who would enter such endgames on either side as long as he had more activity) and in theory at least since the works of Shereshevsky (who notably analysed endgames by Capablanca and Alekhine). Many examples in (online available) chapter V of this book by Srodovsky. In a 2001 book, Glenn Flear showed that even in pawn endgames the queenside argument is not void but generally not the most important.

Here Black controls the only open file, enjoys centralised and coordinated minor pieces, is on move and has no pawn weaknesses while a2, f2 and e4 might become useful targets. wNa3 is offside, wBf3 is unprotected and restricted by its own pawn on e4, and white rooks are undeveloped.

After, say 1...Rd8 2.Rad1 Ne5 3.Be2 (or 3.Rxd6 Nxf3+ 4.Kg2 Nh4+ 5.gh4 Rxd6 -/+) Rd2, Black is clearly for choice. 1...Rd2 2.Rfd1 Ne5 3.Bg2 Rfd8 is similar.


Professional Databases and Historical Games

Have you looked at https://chess-db.com/public/index.jsp

This website has historical players like: Morphy, Marshall, Steinitz, Bird. You can download all their games.


Do you say "good game" after a game in which your opponent played poorly?

Why not just:

  Thanks for the game.

You wanted to play a game, and your opponent gave you a game. Played well or not, you could thank him for giving you the opportunity to play.


Does any country have as many GM's per capita as Armenia?

It's from 2010 but you might look at

http://pogonina.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154

where as expected Iceland is number 1, and Armenia is number 3. Number 2 might surprise you!


After 9.0-0, 9....dxc3 is indeed too dangerous. After 10.Bc4! black cannot finish his development as white's threats Qd5/Qh5/Bxf7+ are too strong.

However, 9....c6 seems to be a good move. White's strongest reply is probably 10.Bc4, as both 10.Ba4 Ba6 and 10.Be2 dxc3 are fine for black.
After 10.Bc4, black can play 10....Ne7 and continue his development with 0-0 and d5. For instance, 11.cxd4 0-0 and black shouldn't be afraid to sacrifice a pawn after 12.Ba3 d5! 13.exd5 cxd5 14.Bxe7?! Qxe7 15.Bxd5 Rb8 because black's bishop pair and development are more important than the weak pawn on d4. Instead, white should play 14.Bd3 and after 14....Re8, the position is more or less equal.

  [StartPly "17"]

  [FEN ""]
  1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4 Bxb4 5.c3 Ba5 6.d4 b5 7.Bxb5 Nxd4 8.Nxd4 exd4 9.O-O c6 (9...dxc3 10.Bc4!) 10.Bc4 (10.Ba4 Ba6) (10.Be2 dxc3) 10...Ne7 11.cxd4 O-O 12.Ba3 d5! 13.exd5 cxd5 14.Bd3 (14.Bxe7?! Qxe7 15.Bxd5 Rb8) 14...Re8


How do you apply schematic thinking to one's own chess games?

There is an excellent book by GM Jonathan Hawkins called "Amateur to IM" which deals with this. There are a number of stages you need to go through.

First of all when looking at a mini plan you need to consider a) will it work, or can my opponent easily stop it and b) if it does work will it actually do what I want it to do - give me a winning position, say.

So, for instance, if you can force an exchange into a BPKvK endgame you might think you have an easy win, but if the pawn is a rook's pawn on the wrong side of the board then you will be disappointed. You can only know the mini plan was a bad one if you can properly evaluate the final position.

Hawkins aims to do two things in the book. First to help you to think the right way about endgame positions so that you evaluate mini plans and quickly eliminate those that aren't going to do the job and not waste any more time on them. Second to help you build the knowledge of endgame structures that will enable you to correctly evaluate the final positions of your mini plans.

Hawkins points out that the big advantage that stronger players have in the endgame is not their ability to calculate much longer variations much quicker (generally speaking they don't have this!) but their ability to quickly and correctly evaluate candidate positions that they are aiming for. They are not high speed calculators. They are very good evaluators who don't waste time calculating mini plans which they know in advance are not going to work, so saving time and making it look like they are high speed calculators!


Finding a mating net in a RRN vs RRN endgame

This is really a concrete-calculation question, to which you should find an answer yourself by either going through the obvious candidate lines or playing it out with the help of an engine. Your calculation techniques will benefit far more from that process, even if you don't find the answer, than asking for the direct answer.

In any case, clearly black is doing terribly poorly: there's no initiative, the rooks are completely out of play and stand defensively, and the king is quite isolated on g6, and even in the worst case scenario the passed a pawn is not hard to defend against. On the other hand, white's able to easily coordinate all 3 pieces for an attack on the king, either forcing material loss or checkmate.
So the game's really lost even if you fail to find the mate, simplest being to mount an attack on the defense-free king on g6 well caged thanks to the monster knight on d6. Focus on winning material first and then convert if the mate does not appear to be a trivial one. That said, the only way black can delay the imminent mate threat is to bring the knight into the defense, namely, Nf6 which at least stops a rook landing on h7 and secures some space for the king. As far as I see, even if black ignored the threat and just pushed the a pawn after Rah2, the cage around the king may be enough to force mate but it may easily be a case of mate in 12-15 moves1, which means, it's far simpler to grab material first and simplify the task before calculating for such forced lines.

Here's one line (among the various ways this can unfold) where black attempts a defense by bringing the knight, to which white can reply with a e3-e4 pawn push in order to advance a pawn to e5 forcing the knight away from its "ideal" defensive post on f6.

 [FEN "8/2rn4/2pN2k1/r1Pp2p1/p2P4/3KPP2/R7/7R w - - 4 42"]

 1.Rah2 Nf6 2.Rh6+ {The immediate e4 may allow Rh7 for black, forcing the trade of a pair of rooks} Kg7 3.e4 {e5 is unavoidable, best black can do is to take once to at least free up the g4 square for the knight.} a3 {ignoring white's threat just to see what the mating net looks like} 4.e5 Ng8 5.Rh7+ Kf8 6.Rxc7  {Mate on f7 next} Ne7 7.Rxe7 Kxe7  {at this point, even if you don't see the mating pattern, you can simply win the a pawn first and then convert the game.} 8.Rh8 a2 9.Re8+ Kd7 10.e6+ Kc7 11.Rc8#

1: This is far too deep to calculate mentally, what players (at any level really) do in such a case, they simply go with the first few obvious moves (checks), moves they know cannot be possibly wrong, and after a while if it appears to have simplified then you can sit down and calculate a forced mate (assuming there's time) else you just have to be practical and go with the first best line you see, specially in such case where the position is trivially winning for white anyway.


Who revitalized 5. Bf4 vs the Queen's Gambit Declined?

One of the possible reasons why 5.Bf4 has gained popularity at the very top-level, is because white seems to have difficulties obtaining an advantage after 5.Bg5.

The critical variation is 5....h6 6.Bh4 O-O 7.e3 Nbd7 8.Rc1 c5 9.dxc5 Nxc5 10.cxd5 g5!, which occured for the first time in Wojtaszek-Kramnik (2015).
Moreover, black can also play 9....dxc4, which happened in another famous Kramnik game: Matlakov-Kramnik (2015).
After 8....c5, white's main alternative is 9.cxd5. In this line too, there is an impressive Kramnik win: Salem-Kramnik (2014).

To answer the question "Who revitalized 5.Bf4?": Kramnik, by posing some questions as black in the 5.Bg5 line.

      [StartPly "8"]

      [FEN ""]
      1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 Be7 5.Bg5 (5.Bf4) h6 6.Bh4 O-O 7.e3 Nbd7 8.Rc1 c5 9.dxc5 (9.cxd5) Nxc5 (9...dxc4) 10.cxd5 g5


Why does FIDE recommends using German numbers and piece names for blind and visually impaired?

Not sure but maybe it is because International Braille Chess Association headquarters are in Germany, also as far as I know ( My knowledge is on the basis of Chess Base India's videos ) players are free to announce their moves in any language as long as both of them agree, German names are used only if the players are not able to reach any mutual agreement.


Which pairing programs have been authorized by FIDE for use in FIDE rated tournaments?

FIDE publish a list of such programs here.
Currently there are 8 programs on the list varying in price from completely free (STOP), free on Linux (Vega), partially free (ChessManager) to 150 euros (Swiss Manager).
Program - Author
Vega - Luigi Forlano (ITA)
SwissSys - Thad Suits (USA)
SwissMaster - Royal Dutch Chess Federation (NED)
Swiss-Manager - Heinz Herzog (AUT)
Swiss-Chess - Franz-Josef Weber (GER)
UTU Swiss - Neil Hayward (UK)
ChessManager - Tomasz Żyźniewski (POL)
STOP - Alexander Lenhard (GER)
The landing experience also varies widely. Most are excellent, giving you useful information about provided functionality and limitations upfront, but some are appalling.


There is not opening that usually paves the way for a queen trade. There are plenty of specific lines that allow for it, but it takes cooperation from your opponent.

The first line that comes to mind is hugely popular at the GM level: The Berlin in the Ruy Lopez.

 [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

Another one, but that is only particularly popular at club level is the King's Indian Exchange Variation.

 [FEN ""]

 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Nf3 O-O 6. Be2 e5 7. dxe5 dxe5 8. Qxd8 Rxd8

GM Edmar Mednis wrote a book called "From the Opening into the Endgame", which covers a lot of early transitions to the endgame, including quite a few lines that were popular, and lead to an early queen trade, but again, you cannot force your opponent to allow the queens to come off.

Here are a few of the lines covered.

The Grunfeld

 [FEN ""]

 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5 4. cxd5 Nxd5 5. e4 Nxc3 6. bxc3 c5 7. Nf3 Bg7 8. Be3 Qa5 9. Qd2 {Can lead to an early exchange of queens on d2.}

This line in the English was hugely popular in the 1980's.

 [FEN ""]

 1. c4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3. cxd5 Nxd5 4. Nf3 g6 5. e4 Nxc3 6. dxc3 Qxd1+ 7. Kxd1

Another Ruy Lopez Exchange line that was popular in the 1980's.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 dxc6 5. O-O f6 6. d4 exd4 7. Nxd4 c5 8. Nb3 Qxd1 9. Rxd1

The French Tarrasch Variation.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 c5 4. exd5 exd5 5. Bb5+ Bd7 6. Qe2+ Qe7 7. Bxd7+ Nxd7 8. dxc5 Qxe2+ 9. Nxe2

The Modern.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 g6 2. d4 Bg7 3. c4 d6 4. Nc3 e5 5. dxe5 dxe5 6. Qxd8+ Kxd8

It is not impossible to trade in the Pirc, but it leads to a position that white has a 75% winning percentage, and it not in the spirit of the type of position that black wants when playing the Pirc.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. Be2 O-O 6. O-O e5 $6 7. dxe5 dxe5 8. Qxd8 Rxd8 9. Bg5

And one last one, first played by the great Capablanca as black.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 Bf5 4. Bd3 Bxd3 5. Qxd3 Qa5+ 6. c3 Qa6 7. Qxa6 {Avoiding the exchange of queens makes it difficult to develop.} Nxa6

The Petrov.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. Qe2 Qe7 6. d3 Nf6 7. Bg5 Qxe2+ 8. Bxe2 Be7


Paul Morphy vs Henry Bird missing games.

The five games mentioned might be the only games between Morphy and Bird that are preserved. Collections that claim to include all known Morphy games, only contain those five between the two, see for instance The full Morphy. Also, written accounts seem to suggest that the games they played were not part of an official match, they just played some games while Morphy was waiting for a reply from Staunton (Link).


What is accepted and declined in chess moves?

A gambit is an opening where one player sacrifices a pawn (or more) to gain some other advantage. The opponent 'accepts' by taking the pawn, or 'declines' by not taking the pawn.

For example, in the Queen's gambit after 1.d4 d5 2.c4, black has at least these two options, 2...dxc4 or 2...e6. These variations are then called "Queen's Gambit Accepted" and "Queen's Gambit Declined" based on Black's choice.

Note that another common move, 2...c6, also declines the offer, but because the name "Queen's Gambit Declined" just happens to be the name of the variation 2...e6, this has a different name ("Slav Defense").

[fen ""]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 {White offers the undefended pawn on c4.} e6 {Black declines the offer.} (2...dxc4 {Black accepts the offer.})


I feel like you somewhat misunderstand the concept of a time control. The clock is a part of the game. If you are up a piece in a complicated position with five seconds left on the clock that may well be a losing position for you. Sure, the engine may show you +4, but the clock is an important part, especially in blitz.
Importantly, if you spent all your time getting a good position while the opponent played quickly to conserve their time, then they performed better, because they got to a still tricky position while using less thinking time.
If you don't like this flagging mechanic (I for one do not), increment exists for a reason. There is still some time management there, as playing on just the increment means you don't have time to think deeply. However, it allows you to keep playing instead of losing on time. If you play without increment, it is your decision, but then you have to be up to take the consequences.


Resources for annotated or commented games by level of audience

Hanging Pawns has quite a few videos that annotate GM games, and I'd say they're probably intermediate to maybe expert (using your format)
Agadmator has a ton of videos annotating GM games (often released mere hours after the game finishes!) I'd say probably beginner-intermediate on your scale.
Note that both of these channels annotate after the game, not during.


Which pieces do I have to keep on the board, to win my endgame?

Endgame D, after exchanging rooks AND minor pieces, is a trivial win.

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

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

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

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

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


Which are the ideas in the Van't Kruijs Opening?

White can transpose to the Stonewall or the Colle systems after 1...d5 or if 1...e5 attempt a reverse French.

Otherwise 1. e3 is a move which needs no attention or search for ideas, because there can be none.


What to put in a personal chess database?

For correspondence I keep a database of my personal opening book that I extend whenever I encounter a new move.  I include notes on things like why I chose a particular line and both numeric and verbal position assessment.  I also include select text from books or other databases that discuss that position.


Two knights can move to e7, but the move is only specified as Ne7

The c6 knight is pinned by the bishop on b5. Note that if the c6 knight were to move it would leave Black's king in check, which renders any such move illegal.

Therefore it is ok in this case to write "Ne7" instead of "Nge7", since the pin means that there is no ambiguity as to which knight moves.


Is this the correct way to analyze games before checking with engine?

Works for me. Review that game with a person, someone who'll tell you why you should do or not do things, for whom one-millionth of a pawn isn't an issue. For instance, getting the bishop to d3 in one step instead of two.  4. Nf3 and 5. Be2 are grandmasterly, not as simple.


Why is the g3 and Bg2 set up so strong vs the Dutch?

The g3 and Bg2 setup is strong defensively and strong offensively. White wants to play e4 to challenge the f5 pawn and Black's kingside white square complex. g3 and Bg2 is one of the best ways to support e4 with Nd2/c3 and Qc2 along with defending the king.


What is the minimum number of pieces needed in a chess set to account for all possible promoted pieces?

Let's count.
Starting set

2 rooks
2 bishops
2 knights
1 queen
1 king
(8 pawns)

Max promotions

8 rooks
8 bishops
8 knights
8 queens

Total
In total you would need 40 pieces and 8 pawns for each color, so 96 units for black and white together.
Edited to bullet format to "look" better.


How much time should be spent on learning an opening?

You're right about this being a very subjective question. I've read a few books (sorry, can't think of good references) that suggest choosing a very limited set of openings to begin with. Use this exhaustively in every situation you play, whether appropriate or not. As you attack and defend in a variety of situations you will begin to learn the merits of the position in greater depth than simply reading about them.

As for how long to stick with it, my best suggestion (and this is indeed subjective) is to stick with the opening until you stop being surprised. Once you feel you've "seen it all", you're ready to branch out.

When you begin to spread to other openings, you may find it easier to use openings that can be transposed to from the openings you already know. The similarities will help you adjust more quickly and give you greater flexibility over the board.


I believe Brian Towers and user58697 are correct, and the author wrote/meant pen instead of pin. The dictionary tells it's a small enclosure for animals, or an abbreviation for penitentiary, which seems more appropriate. Still, it's the first time I encounter this word in a chess setting, so it's not common and the confusion is understandable.

While @Bad_Bishop provides the general (and, AFAIK, only common) use of the term pin in chess, I believe the author of your quote meant something along the lines of

  Bishops are worth more than knights except when they are blocked by their own pawns.

(which matches your thoughts on the subject). Ironically, those bishops are often called bad bishops, like the white one in the diagram below:

[FEN "8/5pp1/3bp2p/1p1p4/1P1P4/2B1P2P/5PP1/8 w - - 0 1"]

One could argue that all pieces (including rooks and queens) have the same value when pinned (as in the common use of the word), but this is not entirely true; a pinned piece still prevents the opposing king from moving to certain fields, and a pinned bishop covers more squares than a pinned knight.


Sorry, not precisely a GM analysis of this line, but

I have found chessgames.com to be useful in this regard. Scroll down in the link, there may be some GM analysis in there. :)
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessopening?eco=b81

Also
http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1309987842/0


r2q1rk1/p3b1p1/2Q1p2p/2npp3/4P3/2PPBN1P/PP3PP1/R3R1K1 b - - 0 1

1... Rc8 2. Qb5 Rb8 3. Qc6 Rb6!

Now white's queen is trapped.
As @Joffan has pointed out in the comments and as many have probably seen, immediately trapping the queen is not the end to this game:
r2q1rk1/p3b1p1/2Q1p2p/2npp3/4P3/2PPBN1P/PP3PP1/R3R1K1 b - - 0 1

1... Rc8 2. Qb5 Rb8 3. Qc6 Rb6 4. Qxc5 Bxc5 5. Bxc5 Rxb2 6. Bxf8 Qxf8

A more convincing alternative seems to be sacrificing the rook for the knight.
 r2q1rk1/p3b1p1/2Q1p2p/2npp3/4P3/2PPBN1P/PP3PP1/R3R1K1 b - - 0 1

1... Rc8 2. Qb5 Rxf3 3. gxf3 Rb8 4. Qc6 Rb6 5. Qxc5 Bxc5 6. Bxc5 Rxb2


Can you help me with this serieshelpmate problem?

I found the solution by noting that

 the rook can cover either one column or row
 the knight already covers f6 and h6, so it's logical to let the rook take care of the g-file
 we need the other black pieces to block the king's escape (but not being able to interpose a check by the rook)

It turns out that this sequence works:

 1... Kg7 2... Rh1 3... Qh2 4... Qh8 5... Rh7 6. Rg2#

You can test it in the Replayer Sandbox; it supports null moves.


What is the best line in the Fried Liver

Recently, GM L'Ami made a DVD covering the Two Knights and the Fried Liver attack. According to the article, he suggests ideas for both white and black, so maybe he discusses 9.Bb3 (instead of 9.a3) and 11....Qh4 (instead of 11....Kd6).

Furthermore I'd like to add that, although it has been played by a couple of grandmasters, 5....Nxd5 is considered to be very risky for black.

The main line of the variation is 5....Na5. According to the Game Database of ChessTempo, it is by far the most popular response to 4.Ng5. After 6.Bb5+ c6 7.dxc6 bxc6, black is a pawn down, but is ahead in development. This position is one of the tabiyas of 1.e4 e5: has black sufficient compensation for the pawn or not?


It doesn't stand for anything at all, because it's not an acronym. It should be "Elo" rather than "ELO." The Elo rating system is named after the Hungarian-American physics professor (and 8-time state champion chess master) Arpad Elo, who originally devised his rating system around 1960.


Create a list of discs from PGN file with a lot of comments

Python has a pgn parser as part of its chess library.
https://python-chess.readthedocs.io/en/latest/


Is 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 e6 3. c4 d5 called Queen's Gambit Declined when there is no gambit offered, let alone declined?

Yes, it is still called the Queen's Gambit Declined. That's just the name of the system, regardless of the move order used to reach it. However, it is not the QGD before Black chooses to push 3...d5.


Are there any known examples of spurious strong chess openings, which have been determined to be dubious with the introduction of the first engines?

Pretty much any opening that is no longer played was "refuted" by an engine. You can check for example the 9. 0-0-0 Nxd4 line in the Sicilian Dragon.

Computer analysis has also found interesting ways for White to keep the advantage in the From's gambit, although this opening was never that popular (because of 1.f4 being a rarity)

About 25 years ago, Kasparov reintroduced the Evans gambit into elite chess. Despite initial success computer-assisted analysis forced it to step away again.

The list goes on and on, but sometimes it's just about a variation in a particular line being changed by another, rather than something like the Sicilian or the French being abandonned altogether


1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 c5 — Sicilian Defense to King's Gambit?

My initial reaction is that 3...c5 is very weak just by looking at it, which is why it is so rare. The ECO key that comes with ChessBase's Mega databases is very detailed, but even this does not even have its own specific sub-key.

There are 112 games in Mega 2020 database with 3...c5. The most popular response, played in 87 of the 112 games was 4.Bc4, which had a winning percentage of 64.9%, followed by 4.d4, which was played in 17 games and had a winning percentage of 61.8%). 4.d3 (6 games/33.3%) and 4.Nc3 (2 games/50.0%) were also played.

Obviously, 4.Bc4 and 4.d4 are the choices, but you also have to think about what to play stylistically: If you play the King's Gambit, you like open, tactical, positions, so it does not make sense to play the latter two moves at all unless they eventually become the natural move to finish development later. You still want to strive for the quick development of the kingside, and play down the f-file and open center.

3...c5 is weak, but as I looked through the games, the only plan that white needs to fear is the Be7 and g5 plan (possibly g5 first), holding the pawn. Black scored in the 40-50% range in most of those lines. That might bode well for the 4.d4, and early Bxf4 plan by white.

Now that I have discussed what humans play, I am going to see what Stockfish 11 says. After looking at many lines, a lot of which are below, but that is only a small fraction of what I actually looked at, I cannot say that Stockfish found any pure refutation, but I suspect that the you will do well following the main line because if black plays 3...c5, it is because black is a weak player to start with...deny black holding f4, and you will probably win most of the time as the human stats above show.

4.Bc4 and 4.d4 early on both come in with the same evals, but as the depth gets deeper (depth 33), 4.Bc4 is preferred by Stockfish, but they are both the typical minor pluses that computers typically give white in the opening, about +.5, but as I force in lines, and go deeper, everything levels out a lot. Here are some sample lines.

One last note about the play: The reason that white can play the early Bc4 in these lines, and not worry about g5, it that it seems tactically refuted if black tries to save it. White is playing a gambit line, so I was not really worried about trying to get the pawn back simply because we are down a pawn, but the computer might be; nevertheless, I was concerned because it gets in the way of developing the Bc1 and opening the f-file, so I did lean toward recovery.

Please note that there are also extensive comments within these lines.

 [FEN ""]

 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 c5 4. Bc4 Nc6 5. d3 {This is Stockfish's favorite, and is indicative of trying to stop the early g5 plan. It still is not the most human move, which I will also cover.} (5. d4 cxd4 6. Bxf4 Nf6 7. O-O Nxe4 8. Bd5 $1 {This leads to mind-boggling complications.} (8. Re1 d5 $17) 8... Nf6 9. Ng5 Nxd5 10. Nxf7 Qf6 (10... Kxf7 11. Qh5+ Ke6 12. Nc3 {And the other rook comes in and wins...+8.}) 11. Bg5 Qg6 12. Qe1+ Be7 13. Bxe7 Ne3 14. Rf2 Nxe7 15. Nxh8) (5. O-O $6 {This is slow, but leads to typical positions.} g5 6. d4 cxd4 7. Bxf7+ (7. g3 $5) 7... Kxf7 8. Nxg5+ Qxg5 9. Bxf4 Qg6 10. Be5+ Ke8 11. Bxh8 b6 {With wild play that the computer likes barely for black, but I do not believe that a human will survive.}) 5... Bd6 $5 (5... g5 $2 6. h4 g4 7. Ng5 $18) (5... Be7 6. Bxf4 Nf6 7. Nc3 d6 8. O-O O-O 9. Qd2 $16) 6. O-O Nf6 (6...Nge7 $4 7. Ng5 O-O 8. Qh5 $18) 7. Nc3 (7. Qe1 $5) (7. e5 $2 {This does not work due to tactics and threats of smothered mate, and the Qd1 and Bc1 hanging if the queens get traded.} Nxe5 8. Re1 O-O 9. Nxe5 Bxe5 10. Rxe5 d5 11. Bb3 c4 12. dxc4 Ng4 13. Re2 dxc4 14. Qxd8 Rxd8 15. Nc3 cxb3 16. axb3 g5 $17) 7... O-O 8. Bd2 a6 9. a4 {And the computer thinks this is roughly equal, but white is more fun to play.}


Why is 15.cxd6 better than 15.cxb6 here?

There are a few ways White is at a disadvantage here that I found:

Black’s dominance in the center.
The active black knights.
White is left with 3 pawn islands, which is never considered good.

Look at White’s pieces here-no really good moves are available. The knight can't move up and come into play. The rooks are undeveloped/have no open files to dominate. The bishops don't have room to move freely, and the same goes for the queen.

    [Event "?"]
    [Site "?"]
    [Date "?"]
    [Round "?"]
    [White "?"]
    [Black "?"]
    [Result "?"]

    [FEN ""]
        1.Nf3 c5 2.c4 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.g3 Qb6 7.Nb3 Ne5 8.e4 Bb4 9.Qe2 d6 10.f4 Nc6 11.Be3 Bxc3+ 12.bxc3 Qc7 13.Bg2 e5 14.c5 b6 15. cxb6 axb6 16. O-O O-O

If you continue with this all hell breaks loose for White:

[Event "?"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "?"]
[Round "?"]
[White "?"]
[Black "?"]
[Result "?"]

[FEN ""]
1.Nf3 c5 2.c4 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.g3 Qb6 7.Nb3 Ne5 8.e4 Bb4 9.Qe2 d6 10.f4 Nc6 11.Be3 Bxc3+ 12.bxc3 Qc7 13.Bg2 e5 14.c5 b6 15. cxb6 axb6 16. O-O Ba6 17. c4 Nd4

Bxc4 is always coming, Ng4 is possible at some point, and Nc2 is a possibility. You can always bring the Queen to c2 to force an exchange of material. White's light squared bishop is still not helping much. Don't forget about the dominating  center pawns. If you play on you'll definitely find Black up by material.

I will not say "always take towards center,” but it does help you most of the time.


Why didn't Donald Byrne capture with the queen instead of pawn (against 13-year-old Bobby Fischer in the Game of the Century)?

What would be a more in-depth explanation of why capturing with the queen is a bad idea?

If White retakes with the Queen he loses a piece, and stays in horrible position that is 100% lost. Below is the illustration:
[Title "Capturing with the queen loses a piece in all lines"]
[fen "r2q1rk1/pp2ppbp/2p2np1/6B1/3PP1b1/Q1n2N2/PP3PPP/3RKB1R w - - 0 1"]

1.Qxc3 Nxe4 2.Qe3 (2.Qd3? Bxf3 3.gxf3 (3.Qxf3 Nxg5-+) 3...Nxg5-+) 2...Bxf3 3.gxf3 (3.Qxf3? Nxg5-+) 3...Qa5+! 4.Rd2 {Or any other move, it really doesn't matter, Black stays with extra piece with Nxg5} Nxg5 5.b4 Qd5-+

To conclude:
In order to defend the bishop on g5 from the knight fork (after retaking black knight on c3 with the queen), White must keep the queen on the c1-h6 diagonal. This is sufficiently well demonstrated in the above diagram.
Black wins by exchanging the bishop on g4 for white knight on f3 to loosen the defense of the white bishop on g5 after which he wins that piece with the queen's double attack via Qa5+.
The resulting position is just plain horrible for White, and practically 100% lost. Only drunk person would be able to squander such advantage with Black ( and they must be really really drunk). Even though at that time White was renowned GM, I think that a solid candidate master would win as Black easily in that position. That is why White decided to take with the pawn.


When is it a good idea to capture the fianchettoed bishop?

[FEN ""]
1. d4 c5 2. d5 g6 3. c4 Bg7 4. Nc3 d6 5. e4 Nf6 6. Bf4 O-O 7. Qd2 Re8 8. Be2 e6 9. Nf3 exd5 10. exd5 a6 11. O-O Bg4 12. h3 Bxf3 13. Bxf3 Qc7 14. a4 Nbd7 15. Rfe1 Bf8 16. Ne4 Nxe4 17. Rxe4 Rxe4 18. Bxe4 Re8 19. Re1 Bg7 20. b3 Be5 21. Bxe5 Rxe5 22. Bf3 Qd8 23. Rxe5 Nxe5 24. Bd1 Qf6 25. f4 Nd7 26. Qe3 Kf8 27. Bg4 Nb6 28. a5 Na8 29. Bc8 Qa1+ 30. Kh2 Qxa5 31. Bxb7 Nc7 32. Bc6 Qa1 33. Qf3 h5 34. f5 Qe5+ 35. Qg3 gxf5 36. Qxe5 dxe5 37. d6 Ne6 38. Kg3 e4 39. Kf2 Nd4 40. Ba4 f4 41. b4 cxb4 42. c5 b3 43. Bxb3 Nxb3 44. c6 Ke8 0-1

There are a few points here that make it a bad idea.

First and foremost, white's dark squared bishop in this pawn structure is his good bishop (and it's extremely active). While black's fianchetto'd bishop is also good, it isn't directly influencing the position until the knight on f6 moves (which you'll notice never happens in this game until his opponent mis-steps and trades knights).

Secondly, trading the kingside fianchetto'd bishop is usually good because it leaves black with dark squared weaknesses that white might be able to take advantage of and attack. Notice how Simon Williams calls Qd2 "an aggressive plan." He's already envisioning white trading bishops, and going for a kingside attack. However, in this position, white does not really have any pieces aimed towards the kingside that he can use to attack black's king. And the possible plan of h4-h5 to open up black's king falls flat in the Benoni when black is able to quickly open the center of the board with e6-exd5. If black had already played e5, then it would be entirely different.

Lastly, notice that when the pieces start to get traded off, BLACK offers to trade this bishop for white's (41:20ish). The reason here is that the position has transformed largely into an endgame, and Simon Williams discusses how he wants to get the classic good knight vs bad bishop endgame. All of white's pawns are stuck on light squares, impeding his minor piece's mobility. Whereas black has a few important dark squares his knight can jump to in the center of the board where it influences everything (e5 and d4 in particular, possibly c5 if white plays b4 cxb4).

Usually the fianchetto'd bishop is strong because the h8-a1 diagonal has a lot of juicy targets it can aim at from a distance. In this game, the diagonal never really meant anything.


What was the youngest age at which a prodigy could be considered to have been a master?

Let's just say a master is someone who crosses the 2200 USCF mark to get a rough idea. In that case, Abhimanyu Mishra and Liran Zhou both crossed the 2200 barrier around 9 years and 3 months. Christopher Yoo did the same thing in just under 10 years. Note that these chess players did not necessarily reach 2200 strength at those ages, it is likely they were weaker than 2200 but from stochasticity, achieved the crossing. Also note that USCF is the federation associated with United States and 2200 USCF corresponds to something like 2100 FIDE.


Why is the Alekhine Defense named after Alekhine?

You're right in that white seems to have a good game. But in reality, not much more than that. Black continues with 4. ...d6, and can go into many variations such as the optimistic, but shaky Four Pawns Attack with 5.f4, Exchange variation with 5.dxe6, where black can respond by taking with either pawn, and will usually follow up with a kingside fiancetto if he takes back with the c-pawn. Of course, there are other variations such as the Balogh, Two pawns attack, Two Knights variation, Scandinavian variation, Modern variation (perhaps the most challenging), etc. Look them up if you wish. Black's basic idea is to get white to over-extend his center, creating targets in the form of pawns and the weaknesses left in the pawns' wake, and then undermine those weaknesses with pieces. Again, white seems to have a good game because of the classic space advantage in the centre. BUT, that's black's plan - The Alekhine Defence is a hypermodern idea, so black voluntarily gives up the centre in the opening, just to challenge it later on from the sides.

According to chessgames.com, the Alekhine's Defence has a win rate of 33.4% for black, which is very, very respectable; especially when compared to other very highly respected openings such as the Caro Kann, French, Najdorf etc.

I don't know if Alekhine himself won tournaments using just this defence, but here are a few games where he successfully employed it against strong opponents: Bogoljubov, Maroczy, Mieses, and a lesser known, but still strong Sergeant. The last game is a famous positional crush featured in a book I have on the Alekhine Defence.

Besides Alekhine, many world champions have employed it throughout history, such as Capablanca, Euwe, Tal, Bronstein, Fischer (remember the famous Spassky vs.Fischer 1972 game?), Smyslov, Petrosian, Spassky, etc. Even Carlsen has employed it now and then as a surprise weapon. Check out Carlsen vs. Topalov.

To conclude, I don't think its possible for anyone to answer why Alekhine introduced this defence (if he did), and what merits he saw. However, he must have certainly judged it to be a playable opening that matched his style (aggressive). But as I've outlined, it has become a formidable surprise weapon over time, and is even used nowadays at the very top level in major tournaments.


Expected score in my first FIDE tournament

The FIDE Rating Regulations give details of how the system works. You should scroll down to section 8. The working of the FIDE Rating System
which describes the mathematical tables and formulae used for calculating ratings.

Note that a fudge factor called the "Development Coefficient" is used in calculating ratings which determines by how much new results affect your existing rating once you have one.

  K = 40 for a player new to the rating list until he has completed
  events with at least 30 games

  K = 20 as long as a player's rating remains under 2400.

  K = 10 once a player's published rating has reached 2400 and remains
  at that level subsequently, even if the rating drops below 2400.

  K = 40 for all players until their 18th birthday, as long as their
  rating remains under 2300.

As a new player you will have a high K which will mean that your rating will change rapidly if you have results which vary widely from your previous results.


EDITED ( January 7th, 2014 ):

Based on the member shivsky's comments I have edited the entire solution.

  Does White have a win here, or is this a draw?

Yes it is won for White.

  So what should White's plan be in this position?

At first, I wanted to provide an answer with 1.a4 and simply force the win, but I do not have computer strong enough to analyze the variations I come up with, so my conclusions can not be 100% true.

I do not think that you can achieve much by creating the passed pawn immediately, at least my engine shows some convincing defensive lines.

And again you were right-even if you trade queen side pawns for his king side pawn, he might still draw.

My engine shows some lines where 1.a4 continuation allows you to get f7 pawn for your queen side pawns-giving White an advantage, but I strongly believe you can not win since all the pawns are at one side and Black's Knight can do a good job at defending and blocking.

Being strong endgame player, I must say that I do not like 1.a4 anyway.

ANSWER:

Your only chance is to deaden the position and to win by using your queen side pawns to distract his pieces from defending king side, when your pieces could invade there and get enough material to enforce queening. You need to start the action at the right moment.

1.Kf1 can achieve that, when you could freely maneuver into the favorable setup which will create passed pawn and win.

TO CLARIFY MY ANSWER:

I have tested this line with the engine to see if there is a valid defense, and engine could find none.

I have tried to find one myself and 1. ...Nh4 was the best try I could find.

It is the only way to prevent White from activating his king ( if Black allows that then its game over ) and the idea is to harass White's King side pawns so Black could play f6 + g5 + Nf5 hoping to achieve something like this:

[fen "8/8/p3kp2/5npp/PPN4P/3K2P1/5P2/8 w - - 0 1"]

1. hxg5 fxg5

This would give him some counter-play ( he threatens to queen with h4 ) and would provide him a chance to exchange all king side pawns.Then he could try to catch the queen side pawn ( a6 pawn will 100% be exchanged for the b5-White has to play it at some point ) or to sacrifice the Knight for a pawn ensuring the draw.

This is how I would try to save the game as Black, but White can refute this plan:

[fen "8/5pp1/p4k2/5n1p/1PN5/P7/5PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1"]

1.Kf1 Nh4 2.g3 Nf3 3.h4 Nh2+ 4.Ke2 Ng4 5.f3 Nh6 6.Ne3!

This move restricts the Knight completely refuting the above plan.Without the ability to create counter-play Black is simply lost-White creates the queen side passed pawn distracting one or both of Backs pieces and then wins by taking all of Blacks pawns on the king side.

HOW TO EXACTLY WIN THIS:

First rule of endgames-king is extremely powerful piece-use it!

Second rule-of all the available moves that can implement your plan always play those that make the least commitment. This gives you the flexibility to adapt when position changes in its character drastically.

The 1.a4 continuation breaks both rules, as it neglects the king and forces the matters-which unnecessarily sharpens the game and provides Black with counter-play based on his strong King.

In endgames you need to slow down the pace and see the whole picture. Raw calculation here is useless if you do not have a clear plan.

To create a plan, we always start with the analysis of the position. Yours is sufficiently good for a start so let us go from there:

  White has a queenside pawn majority, but Black's king is closer to the action, and its knight has the idea of Nd4-c2.

Third rule in endgames-in order to win, most of the time you will have to create at least two DISTANT weaknesses in the opponents camp ( if they are close then opponent might defend successfully ). Here we already have one-extra pawn on the queen side.

Our pawn structure is healthy-we have no pawn weaknesses on queen or king side ( doubled/isolated pawns... ).

The weakest piece in our setup is our king and that is our only weakness.

Our Knight is A MONSTER! This piece alone actually won this endgame! He is ideally posted-he can aid in creation of a passed pawn, he can attack on the queen side, he restricts the opposing Knight and King, he can harass the king side pawns if black king abandons them and he can defend our king side. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PIECE! A HERO!

Now let us see what Black has:

Black's king IS active as you have correctly noticed, but he is badly placed-he needs to be closer to the center to balance the lack of a pawn at queen side ( e6 would be nice )-and that is something you have missed.

Black's knight is OK, he is posted well, but is decentralized which limits his actions-he can only attack on the king side at the moment.

Black has no pawn weaknesses, but is a pawn down. He also has started to probe the king side since h-pawn has advanced and can be supported with he knight and a king. He should try to create counter-play there, since he has no time to attack the queen side.

Let us see the entire picture:

Black's pieces are misplaced ( you missed this fact and this is important to notice ), they need 1 or 2 moves to centralize them selves ( they must do this in order to hold queen side ), and will spend even more moves to organize a defense/create counter attack.

This will give White enough time to activate his king.

Now we see the first phase of our plan-improve the king's position.

The second part should be about creating the second weakness-this type of endgame is well known and the usual plan is to create passed pawn on the queen side to distract king/knight/both and then to use our extra pieces to break through on the king side.

You saw what happens when Black tries to generate counter-play on the king side, now let us see what happens when he tries to centralize his pieces so he can attack on the queen side:

 [fen "8/5pp1/p4k2/5n1p/1PN5/P7/5PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1"]

 1.Kf1 Nd4 2.Ke1 Ke6 3.Kd2 Kd5 4.Kd3

At this point Black is in zugzwang, and no matter what he plays, White will simply parry his threats and eventually play a4 fulfilling the plan described above. Let us just see one sample continuation so you "get the feel":

 [fen "8/5pp1/p4k2/5n1p/1PN5/P7/5PPP/6K1 w - - 0 1"]

 1.Kf1 Nd4 2.Ke1 Ke6 3.Kd2 Kd5 4.Kd3 Nc6 5.Ne3+ Ke5 6.Kc4 f5 7.a4 f4 8.Nd5 g5 9.Nc7 Nb8 10.b5 axb5+ 11.axb5 Kd6 12.b6 Kc6 13.Nd5 Nd7 14.Kd4 Nxb6 15.Nxb6 Kxb6 16.Ke5

And White wins. The queen side pawn majority did its job-it has distracted the knight, and eventually the king from defending the king side which was exploited with White's last move.

One thing I must mention is the usage of zugzwang. At certain point Black did manage to centralize his pieces, but so did White. At that moment everything boils down to small nuances and here it is White knight that saved the day-by restricting both king and knight he enabled the creation of zugzwang after which the creation of the passed pawn was easy.

Notice also, how the activity of the Black's pieces just wasn't good enough for a draw, since they were badly misplaced and notice how that gave White the time to improve his own king.

I think that this is enough for you to understand how to win this alone, so set up the position on your computer and try to win this time.

Good luck!

Best regards and a Happy New Year!


I see you looking at "forcing" moves such as checks and captures.  This is probably a good place to start.  One of the best features about "forcing" moves (especially checks) is that the opponent is limited in their possible responses. Both checks you have available, for example, allow only six possible responses; that's way easier to calculate than the 36 or so moves he'd otherwise have.  A capture allows for more possible responses than a check, but most of them are obviously bad if they don't regain the material, so that also limits the required calculations.

So, for each candidate move, go through each of their responses, one by one, and see if you have a good reply to it.  You've started this with a couple of moves; finish it for those moves, and if they don't appear to be correct, move on to the other forcing moves.  If you still cannot find it, look for other candidate moves (such as ones that create threats.)

(I'm not going to provide an actual hint because I see someone else already did, and you probably don't want two.)


An Interesting Idea: Pinned Pieces Stalemate

[FEN "b3r3/1R1p1p1q/1p1P1P1b/1Pk1BR2/1rN1K1Nq/p7/P1P1B1P1/1qn1q1nq w - - 0 1"]

Here is an (ugly) suggestion wth 29 units.

White is stalemated with 8 pins; removing any Black unit would break the stalemate. Black has promoted all of their four missing pawns (all into queens).

The three captures (white queen and 2 white pawns) ensure that this position is reachable. The three missing White pieces ensure that the position is legal and that Black could have promoted all four of their missing pawns.

The Black g-pawn captured the White h-pawn to produce doubled pawns that both promoted. The Black c-pawn captured the White queen to bypass the White pawn structure and promote. Finally, the White e-pawn was captured and then the Black e-pawn marched down and promoted.

This is optimal because 4 pawns must be promoted to create 8 pins, with requires a minimum of 3 units, thus leaving 29 left for the final position.


What strategies should I be thinking about at the beginning of the game?

There are a few regular things you should fight for out of the opening

Control of the center
Development of pieces
Early castle
Space

So basically you want to get as many pieces out as quickly as possible, while attempting to control the center (the four middle squares and to a lesser extent the next ring of 12 squares). While not all opening strategies revolve strictly around these principles, it is found in the majority of games and especially good rules to play by when starting out.

EDIT: Keep in mind these are not all rigid rules. I would also like to respectfully disagree with Tony. When starting out, memorizing openings is the very last thing you want to do. Feel free to look through an openings book (The first, and very amazing, book on openings that I read) or database. However do not seek just to memorize and spit out moves until you reach a position you haven't actually thought about.


I don't know the exact answer for the 10x8 board (used e.g. in Capablanca Chess, where your Janus is called the Archbishop), but I have something that could get you well along toward an exact answer, though with some effort on your part (see further below). On the 8x8 board the max DTM is 17 moves (as you may already know). My conjecture is that the 10x8 answer won't be far off from that, and I'd bet a small sum that it's no more than 19 moves. (After all, if the defending king starts in the center of the 10x8 board and you start corralling it, you're almost immediately into a situation in which, as you start pushing to an edge/corner, the rest of the mating sequence will be indistinguishable from how it would play out on the 8x8 board, as the rest of the board's real estate becomes simply irrelevant.) But as for getting an exact 10x8 answer ...

A few years ago, I was toying around with generating tablebases for Seirawan Chess, which is played on the standard 8x8 board, but features the same extra pieces as Capablanca Chess. In the Seirawan variant, the Janus/Archbishop piece goes by the name Hawk. I just now placed into a github repository my old C++ source code for generating a complete KHK (or, KJK in your terminology) tablebase on the 8x8 board, along with the output files, where e.g. KHK.0 is the set of all mate positions, and KHK.34 is the set of all positions where it is 34 ply until black is mated. It hasn't undergone tons of testing, but this and similar ones for e.g. KEK (king-and-elephant/chancellor vs. king) appeared to function correctly and agree with known results. For instance, the max DTM of 17 moves on the 8x8 board indicated by my KHK stuff is the same value given at the wikipedia page for the Princess piece (yet another name for this particular fairy chess piece).

My code would need to changed a bit in order to adapt to your 10x8 board question. In particular, my code makes full use of the symmetries of the 8x8 board in order to reduce the number of positions needing to be examined, and of course the 10x8 board is less symmetric; so that would need an alteration. Additionally, my somewhat crude representation/storage of positions in this simple program would need to be changed and accounted for (in terms of some hard-coded arithmetic that's performed, for instance) in order to adapt to the 10x8 board. You can see the sort of thing I mean in the following snippets:

// Constants to name the symmetries of the board.
const int sym_id = 1;
const int sym_x = 2; // reflect across x axis
const int sym_y = 3;
const int sym_d1 = 4; // reflect across a1-h8 diagonal
const int sym_d2 = 5;
const int sym_r90 = 6; // rotate 90 degrees clockwise
const int sym_r180 = 7;
const int sym_r270 = 8;

int Apply_Symmetry (int sym, int square)
{
    // Applies the specified symmetry of the board to the specified square
    //     (in 0x88 terms).

    if (sym == sym_d1) {
        return (square / 16) + ((square % 16) * 16);
    }

    else if (sym == sym_y) {
        return ((square / 16) * 16) + (7 - (square % 16));
    }

    else if (sym == sym_d2) {
        return (7 - (square / 16)) + ((7 - (square % 16)) * 16);
    }

    else if (sym == sym_x) {
        return (square % 16) + ((7 - (square / 16)) * 16);
    }

    else
        return 0;
}

But anyway, the structure and the functionality is there if you wanted to modify the code to produce an answer for the max DTM on the 10x8 board, and all told there's only a few hundred lines of code.


Is there any software that will analyse games offline?

There are a number of options:

Paid:

Hiarcs Chess Explorer
ChessBase
ChessOK Aquarium
Fritz
Shredder

Free:

Lucas Chess
SCID
Arena

For all of the above, you should download the latest Stockfish and install it as an engine and use it for analysis, as it will likely be stronger than anything which comes by default.

I use HIARCS Chess Explorer, mainly due to the nice interface. I've heard Fritz can provide natural language analysis which could be useful for those new to chess engines.


Very related: Traxler Counterattack
The answer is effectively the same: White has roughly a +0.5 advantage in the starting position, and a shift of a few centipawns one way or another is acceptable, but if that advantage has grown to +1.5 there's a problem. Do note that the starting position of the KID, 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 is evaluated at about +0.5. If you are getting +1.5 book exit, you've gone into some dubious territory. It doesn't matter what human analysis thought of the line before the advent of computers - if you go into these lines today, and your opponents are armed with engines, you are asking for trouble.
That said, it's worth pointing out that the King's Indian is a difficult, unbalanced opening that even computers don't understand perfectly. That's why it is disproportionately represented in the opening book for engine tournaments - it gives great chances for one engine to outplay the other. But: even these engine tournaments do not usually start with book exit lines of +1.5. That's very likely going to lead to a 1-0, 1-0 game pair.
For illustration, here are some Stockfish evaluations of known bad lines:

e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5 d5 5. exd5 Nxd5?! (see TCEC Season 15 games 43/44): +0.8

d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 e6 4. Nc3 dxc4 5. Bg5 f6?! 6. Bd2 b5 (see TCEC Season 18 superfinal game 8): +0.74

e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qe6+? (Patzer variation): +1.1

Pawn odds (White starts without f2-pawn): -1.5

e4 e5 2. Nf3 f5? (Latvian): +1.7

e4 e5 2. Nf3 f6? (Damiano Defense): +1.9

e4 e5 2. Ke2? (Bongcloud): -2.1

As you can see, you have to play some pretty terrible lines to get > +1.5 book exit.
In short, if you are Black, interpret the book exit evals as:

eval < 0. Obviously the best, but will never happen without cooperation from White.
0 < eval < 0.5. The next-best, this is what you will usually be shooting for.
0.5 < eval < 1. Most commonly seen in engine tournaments where the aim is to see if the engine can defend the inferior position. Not recommended for actual tournament play.
1 < eval < 1.5. These lines come close to being busted. You could conceivably play them if you are after an adventurous game, or if it leads to complicated positions where you could hope to outplay inferior opposition, but it's a bad idea to take them up as a mainstay of your repertoire. A computer can still conceivably defend Black's position, but humans are going to suffer.
eval > 1.5. If you ever include these lines in the opening book of an engine tournament, be prepared for viewers to start talking about how you've chosen these lines to make the engine with Black lose.

Edit: since some people were unconvinced about the role book exit plays in opening selection, see this article by Jeroen Noomen (who selects the openings used in the Top Chess Engine Championship, the unofficial world computer chess championship):

The complexity of a position and the book exit evaluation are the most important selection criterions. Book exits have been checked with classical Stockfish (development version, contempt = 0) on a 16 core Ryzen system and Leela Chess Zero v0.26.0, with the net that played in the TCEC 18 superfinal. As mentioned above, book exits are significantly higher compared to season 16 and before, to keep the games interesting and avoid boring draws. Nevertheless, there are also some lines with a lower book exit, especially in the theoretically interesting lines.

Low book exits will lead to boring draws. High book exits can lead to wins, which of course bodes badly for the engine that has the worse position out of the opening. These openings might still be viable in human play, but the keyword here is "human play"; objectively they are subpar and against an opponent armed with engines you are asking for trouble.


How can I make my chess engine more efficient?

Generally, I would avoid using Python for chess programming altogether.
Consider converting to Cython or, better yet, use a modern system language such as. Rust, Zig, etc.


How should White continue after Nxb4 in the Evans Gambit?

4...Nxb4 directly transposes to the main line with 4...Bxb4 5. c3 Bc5.

In that line, white usually plays 6. d4 exd4 7. O-O!.

Black cannot take the pawn on c3 because of 8. Bxf7+! Kxf7 9. Qd5+ picking off the bishop on c5 with an overwhelming advantage.

[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4 Nxb4 (4... Bxb4 5. c3 Bc5) 5. c3 Nc6 6. d4 exd4 7. O-O $1 dxc3 $2 8. Bxf7+ $1 Kxf7 9. Qd5+


Winning percentages are quite useless not only because of novelties, but also because of general distribution of results. For example there is no meaningful average for line which is branching into (0,100,0) and (60, 0,40) later. I saw even more brutal examples like (55,0,45) branching on next black move into something like (100,0,0) and (0,20,80) which in original position seems like standard white advantage :D There is another problem that some lines are virtually always played by much weaker player. That can be reason why exchange Slav or 4 knights may in some books have positive score for black.

Engine evaluation / usage in corr games is in my opinion generally much closer to truth and count "N" can help you as well, even if this runs into novelty problem you pointed out. It has many drawbacks for evaluating human chess with many mistakes, but results graphs tells nothing of any value.


It doesn't matter if you spend more time than your opponent in a game. What matters is that you're spending the time effectively. The more complex the position the longer it's going to take to find the right move.
Where are your spending time time? And why? What is it you are thinking about? Are you double-checking, or triple checking your analysis? Or are you analysing as many moves as possible? Also look at the types of position you spend more time on: is it opening moves, is it positions right out of the opening, is it tactical positions, quiet strategic positions, unbalances positions, dynamic positions, or maybe positions you feel like you have a substantial advantage and you're trying to find a win?
The key is to bring discipline into your thinking, and train yourself to make a move quicker. First step is to figure out which position/moves the time is being spent. Then to figure out why. That why could lead you to identifying lack of knowledge/experience of a particular type of position -- maybe a weakness in your play. That means you can train yourself to get better at such positions, gain some confidence, and make it easier to find the right move quicker.
However, if you are spending the time double- and triple-checking your calculations, then it's a confidence issue. Something like Kotov's book "How to Think Like a Grandmaster" might help, to start training yourself to analysing a variation once, and only once, and to trust your calculation abilities. Perhaps calculation training is all you need.
If the reason for the time being spent is in the middle game trying to find a plan, then finding annotated games by grandmasters in the same or similar openings might be the solution, to give you more familiarity of the positions. That will help build an instinct as to the right kinds of moves and plans to play.
If you're spending a lot of time in the opening, then maybe spending time studying various opening systems you are playing to get a better understanding of them, e.g. playing through annotated master games.
And a steady diet of calculation, both tactics puzzles and endgame calculations. Chess is very much a pattern-recognition problem at the human level. And discovering patterns in study will help spot them in play. Building that instinct to the correct move, and then using calculation to verify your instinct is correct -- that's the Magnus Carlsen school of chess.


Why is Alex Dunne's book 'How to Be a Class A Player' so valuable?

Supply and Demand (Economics 101)

EDIT: Some additional clarification at the request of the OP.

Supply is pretty clear. It is fairly easy to measure although it can be a bit more tricky to get an accurate measure when it is very light.

Demand is a bit more nebulous. When there is enormous demand then it is also pretty clear. Where things become less clear is when demand becomes very light, when supply is also likely to be very light. Then you have actual, real demand and perceived or imagined demand.

Just as in chess between humans the clear logic of the situation can be distorted by emotion. It is not something you see in computer chess and you also see much less of it in big business. Suppose there is enormous demand for the latest Harry Potter book or Star Wars film. The companies controlling the product will try and match price and supply in a fairly mathematical way to maximize profit.

When supply and demand are very light then over emotional human beings make the decisions and things become a bit random.

Let me give some examples.

1) Cyril Northcote Parkinson, originator of Parkinson's Law, wrote an excellent book called "The Evolution of Political Thought". It has been out of print for decades. A few years ago somebody recommended it to me and I looked for it and found a cheap copy, < $5, from a bookseller via Amazon. Why was the price so much lower than for your chess book? Well, Parkinson was right wing and so not politically correct. A PC person trying to set a price is likely to automatically value it less in financial terms because they value it less politically. They will put a lower price on it, a more realistic price. And now I've checked on Amazon again and, lo and behold! a publisher called "Forgotten Books" brought out a new edition just 2 days ago so they must see or anticipate fresh demand.

2) In 1978 I found some old chess magazines scattered over a couple of shelves in a second hand bookshop priced at 10p each. As far as I could see they were all different issues of the same English magazine, "Chess". I approached the shopkeeper and asked for a price for the job lot. "£8" he said and I bought them. When I got them home and sorted them out I found I had the first 12 years complete from 1935 to 1946, importantly covering the war years when stuff like paper was in short supply. I've occasionally thought of selling them. But there are two questions I find difficult to answer. How much could I get? and How much would I want? You would think I should be able to get $1200, $100 per year. If a collector really wanted them he might pay me $12000, $1000 per year. But I certainly wouldn't sell for $1200 and nor for $12000. I would sell for $120,000 but I doubt there are any buyers at that price. I'm sure there is a lower figure, somewhere between $12,000 and $120,000 , which I would accept if offered but the offer is extremely unlikely. I could put them on the market for $50,000 but that would just be a more extreme version of your Alex Dunne chess book on offer for > $100.

You see where this is going? A big, professional business which bought the magazines for roughly $12 in 1978 would have no problem selling them for $1200 today. But I'm not a professional business. I'm a human being who is emotionally attached to these magazines. Supply is being distorted by emotion.

3) A large general store about 15 minutes walk from where I live has a charity table by the exit full of donated second hand books which you are encouraged to take in return for a suggested donation of 50p. A few months ago I came across the second part of John Masters' autobiography, The Road to Mandalay, which covers his progress during the second world war from lieutenant to colonel, and donated my 50p. I enjoyed it and so looked for parts 1 and 3 on Amazon. I found them, again for < $5. Despite John Masters' politics being middle of the road (he would be a Liberal Democrat in the UK today) and being the author of the book Bhowani Junction which was turned into a classic film, I suspect he is seen in modern eyes as old fashioned and not politically correct and this "value" is reflected in the low price asked.

I doubt very much if the actual demand for Alex Dunne's "How to be a Class A Player" is really so much higher than for my books by Parkinson and Masters but the emotional beings setting the price have no good way of accurately measuring it. Their judgement has been clouded. They are not behaving rationally and their stock will remain unsold ... unless you win the lottery :-)


Why is it acceptable to resign?

Chess has its origins as a war game. It was used to model war and perhaps to play a part in the training of generals. In war it is standard practice to surrender when it is clear that defeat is unavoidable. This is an obvious humane thing to do to minimize loss of life. Crossing over into chess as the model of war this translates into resignation.