Can it be proven that 11. 0-0-0+ is legal in this position?

Ok after playing around with a couple of lines, I finally found one line that shows it's still perfectly legal to play long castles for white at move 11, here it is:

[Title "possible 11.O-O-O+"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c4 Rb8 4.d4 exd4 5.Nxd4 Bc5 6.Nxc6 dxc6 (6... bxc6 7.Be3 d6 8.Bxc5 dxc5 9.Qxd8+ Kxd8 10.Nc3 Rxb2 11.O-O-O+) 7.Qxd8+ Kxd8 8.Be3 b6 9.Bxc5 bxc5 10.Nc3 Rxb2 11.O-O-O+

Added another continuation, taking on c6 with the b-pawn, same position results and same number of moves needed!

To conclude, because I reached the given position in exactly 11 moves, and did not play any redundant moves (e.g. Nf3 then back to Ng1 again), it means that all the played moves were necessary, their order can be different, but point is there was no spare move to use and destroy white's castling (e.g. an impossible scenario would be black exchanging queen on d1, Kxd1, then black plays Kxd8, and white goes back to e1, but that took up 2 more moves than the line I showed, so impossible to reach the position you're looking for in 11 moves after such line)

Long story short, castling is perfectly possible here, and in 11 moves black could not have done anything to prevent us from castling and still manage to reach the final position we want. Interesting post by the way, +1.

Alternatively one can also just look at the final position and count the necessary number of moves, that must take place for this position, I elaborate: have the final position in mind: let's take black's point of view: Pawn moves needed to obtain the final position:

e5
exd4 (why black has to take on d4 and not white on e5 is explained in the diagramm below)
bxc6 or dxc6
b6 or d6
bxc5 or dxc5,

Development moves:

Nc6 (to be captured on c6, otherwise there cannot be a pawn on c6 and not have knight on b8)
Bc5 (otherwise c5 pawn impossible)
Rb8 (otherwise Rxb2 never possible)

Remaining necessary moves: Queen d8 capture and pawn b2 capture:

Kxd8
Rxb2

And we find ourselves at the 11th move again, where all we did was just consider the most straighforward ways our pieces could end up where they are in the shown puzzle.

Let's see if we reach the same position via another path, showing why exd4 is the fastest way to reach the final position:

[Title "Why black must take on d4 and not white on e5:"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c4 Rb8 4.d4 Bc5 5.dxe5 Nxe5 6.Nxe5 d6 7.Nc6 bxc6 8.Be3 Rxb2 9.Bxc5 dxc5 10.Qxd8+ Kxd8 11.Nc3

Here we are at move 11 and we still have to play Nc3... clearly because we played 2 knight moves for black.

Finally let's demonstrate why in the fastest path to the final position, white has to be taking on d8 (queen exchange) and not the other way around:

[Title "A line white cannot castle but the final position cannot be reached within the 10 required moves (so impossible for our purposes)"]
[StartFlipped "0"]
[fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c4 Rb8 4.d4 exd4 5.Nxd4 Bc5 6.Nxc6 dxc6 7.Nc3 Qxd1+ 8.Kxd1 b6 9.Be3 Kd8 10.Bxc5 bxc5 11.Ke1 Rxb2

We lost 2 king moves(capture on d1 then back to e1) for white in this line, hence the Rxb2 only happening at the 11th move.

So it was shown that the only line leading up the the final position within 10 moves, is one where white still must be able to castle.

EDIT: A summary of the discussed elements in the comments:

The proof presented in this answer is purely deduction based, in the sense that the simple fact of having reached the position in exactly 11 moves without having made any redundant (or insensitive to the position) moves, implies that 11.O-O-O+ should be legal without exception.

What does redundant mean here? "Redundant moves": here, are defined as moves that do not bring us any closer to the final position, or would even deviate us from it. For example playing Nf3, then back to Ng1, would be redundant. Playing Be2 then back to Bf1 would be redundant, and so on.

Point being, in any variation, you may come up with, that would take away white's castling rights, will imperatively entail redundant moves, that will in turn delay reaching the final position by a couple of moves. (As an exercise, try some of your ideas, it is interesting, and see how many moves it takes you.)

Looking at such problem from a combinatorics point of view, may be possible, but would be too complicated as we're looking at a depth of moves(tree lines) resulting from 11 moves. Instead, like most chess puzzles, one has to look at it from a purely heuristic point of view, and find the right ideas that would go in the direction of proving the question at hand. Finally, in chess, one usually has an easier time looking for counter examples(proof by contradiction), which is why it is encouraged to look into some of the lines on your own.


How does engine strength scale with hardware?

Multicore is important for chess engines, but it doesn't scale forever.

Up to certain depth, no matter how much hardware you have, you just don't have enough computational power
Yes. Scaling is heavily implementation dependent. For example, a simple mutex would make multithread programming much easier (any decent programmer will agree here), but that'd also make the engine run much slower than another engine runs without mutex locking.
40 cores machine will play stronger than an 8-core machine, although it's hard to state how much. A 4000 core machine should also play stronger than a 40 core, but it's harder to justify the costs for smaller Elo improvement.


When is it possible to carry out the "En Passant" manoeuvre?

You can't take a pawn en passant if that pawn just made a discovered check to your King:

8/8/7k/8/2p5/8/3P4/2B1K3 w - - 0 1

1. d4+

After 1. d4+ Black is in check (their king is attacked by the White bishop on c1) so he has to move his King. 1...cxd3 is not allowed.

Also, it can't be carried out if your pawn is pinned to your king:

6k1/8/8/8/2p5/8/B2P4/4K3 w - - 0 1

1. d4

The Black pawn on c4 is pinned by the White Bishop on a2. If that Pawn moves, the White Bishop would be able to take the Black King. So after 1. d4 the move 1...cxd3 is not allowed.

I can't think of any other condition where this move can not be carried out.

And yes, en passant is allowed in tournaments of course. But when you take a pawn en passant, do not say "en passant" aloud (some low rated players do that, they also say "check" aloud when they put the other player's king in check) since it can break your opponent's concentration (and the concentration of the other players near you in the playing hall).

Wikipedia has a good article on the en passant rule.


How long does it take for Elo rating to reflect changes in player's strength?

The way FIDE rating (and rating change) is calculated is described in FIDE Rating Regulations effective from 1 July 2017. For an already rated player the calculations for working out the rating change are given in section 8.5.

From here it can be seen that how fast a rating changes for a given performance depende on the "k factor". This is defined in 8.56:

  8.56 K is the development coefficient.
  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.
  If the number of games (n) for a player on any list for a rating period multiplied by K (as defined above) exceeds 700, then K shall be the largest whole number such that K x n does not exceed 700.

Here are the relevant sections of 8.5 describing the calculations:

  8.5 Determining the rating change for a rated player

  8.51 For each game played against a rated player, determine the difference in rating between the player and his opponent, D.

  ...

  8.54 A difference in rating of more than 400 points shall be counted for rating purposes as though it were a difference of 400 points.

  8.55 (a) Use table 8.1(b) to determine the player’s score probability PD
  (b) ΔR = score – PD. For each game, the score is 1, 0.5 or 0.
  (c) ΣΔR x K = the Rating Change for a given tournament, or Rating period.

As to your question:

  How many games will it typically take for her rating to reach the
  level X+N, depending on N?

Table 8.1(b) is non-linear so as well as depending on the k factor the number of games also depends on N in a non linear fashion. So, you will have to perform separate calculations for different values of N.

Here is an example for N=100. How many games would a player require to draw against players on average 100 points higher to raise the rating by 100 points?

In that case, according to table 8.1(b), PD = 0.36. So, ΔR = 0.14 and the number of games required for a 100 point rating gain = 100 / 0.14 / k.

For k = 10 number of games = 72
For k = 20 number of games = 36
For k = 40 number of games = 18


The rules for becoming world champion have changed over the years and might very well change in the future.

With the current rules, in order to become chess world champion, you have to beat the reigning world champion in a match over 12 games and potentially (if the score is 6-6) additional tie-break games. The next match will be in 2018. Rules for this FIDE World Championship Match are found in the FIDE Handbook

In order to qualify for this match for the world championship you have to win the Candidates Tournament. The following qualify for the next Candidates Tournament according to the FIDE Rules and Regulations:

Sergey Karjakin (as runner-up of the previous WC match),
the first two of the FIDE World Cup 2017,
the first two of the FIDE Grand Prix 2017,
the two highest rated players who are not otherwise qualified and who have participated in the FIDE World Cup or FIDE Grand Prix
one player nominated by the organizer with a rating of at least 2725 in 2017

Some more detail regarding the Candidate tournament you can find in this question and answers

What is the quickest way to the Candidate tournament?

If you are just starting out with chess, it will take you many years to reach a level of 2725 (required for the organizer wildcard) or of being among the highest rated players not qualified otherwise (which would be in the 2800 range).

Qualification for the FIDE Grand Prix is also aimed at top level players. If you are interested you can read about it here

There are many ways to get to the FIDE World Cup (see here) including winning continental championships. If you are from a part of the world where chess is not all that popular, qualifying as IM is not impossible. In any case this seems to be the easiest route for getting to the Candidates Tournament.


This article about Chess Psychology might help you reduce the stress you are feeling when playing chess.

  Psychology is an integral element of chess. To win a game (tournament,
  match) one needs to be strong not only in chess, but in the
  psychological sense as well. Every chess player can recall moments
  when he/she could not recover from a terrible loss (or draw) and kept
  losing points in other rounds. Or were surprised by a twist of the
  game and could not adjust to it. The chess elite pay a special
  attention to psychological preparation. For example, in 2008 the
  participants of the FIDE Grand Prix have been asked: “How do you
  handle chess failures?”  I can relate to the views of Gashimov,
  Cheparinov, Bacrot, Jakovenko and Akopian.

  An improving chess player should not only study, practice, but also
  work on his psychology. Let’s consider two important aspects of chess
  psychology:

  Your state of mind during the tournament (match) in general
  Your state of mind during a certain game

  A regular tournament implies 1 or 2 games per day without any weekends
  or rest days. Therefore, if you have lost or failed to convert a
  totally won position and keep bugging yourself for it, there is a high
  chance you will end up in trouble again and waste a lot of nervous
  energy along the way. Your emotional discomfort may show in different
  ways. For example, if you are willing to strike back at all costs, you
  may easily forget about the objective evaluation of the position and
  start playing adventurously. Or you could get your mental batteries
  uncharged by worrying and lose due to lack of energy. Thus, it is very
  important to know how to deal with losses. Try to get over it as soon
  as possible. Do a quick blunder check, fix your opening, and forget
  about it until the end of the event. Take a good rest and concentrate
  on the next game. Remember that each loss is just a lesson. If you
  treat losses this way, it will be easier to handle defeats. After the
  tournament, however, you should analyze your games carefully and
  determine your chess weaknesses so that to know on what to work in the
  future. This is absolutely critical for one’s chess improvement.

  A chess game is a confrontation between two partners. The struggle is
  going on not only at the board, but between their identities. Mistakes
  are inevitable, and the one who manages to keep his cool has higher
  chances of winning.

  First of all, you should feel confident at the board. I mean real
  confidence, concentration, being sure you can play well, right
  posture, not some freaky “death stares” or “arm-wrestler’s
  handshakes”. If your opponent feels you are faking it, he will become
  more motivated to win.

  Secondly, never blame yourself for blunders (“ok, I’m a bit better
  now, but I would have won already had I played 25.Nf6…”) during the
  game. Otherwise you may become so obsessed with it you will make
  matters even worse. Take the game as it is, re-consider the evaluation
  of the position and try to play on calmly, as if nothing unexpected
  has happened.

  Thirdly, it’s a great idea to try to lure your opponent into the type
  of positions he likes least of all. He will both be irritated (and
  that increases the probability of making a mistake) and outplayed
  (since he generally doesn’t know how to handle such positions).

  Never resign too early and keep defending bitterly and tenaciously. A
  lot of totally lost positions have been saved even against world class
  players. When you are on the other side of this situation (i.e.
  winning), never relax until the game score sheet is signed in your
  favor. Otherwise you may see your lovely 1-0 turn into ½-½, or even
  into an ugly 0-1.

  These are the main rules of chess psychology, not to mention “the Dark
  Side” – how to suppress your opponent and make him lose comfort and
  confidence. Since I am neither practicing nor advocating the usage of
  such foul play, we won’t be discussing it in this article.


Do the top women players play professionally?

I think there is no doubt that the answer is "yes". The question is whether they are particularly successful at it, or not; and whether they have to supplement tournament winnings with other activities like teaching.

In addition, a common use of the term "professional" in sports is if someone gets paid, and the Grand Prix consists of four events with prizes in each ranging from 3,000 Euros to 20,000 Euros, and the overall prize standings at the end from 2,500 Euros to 15,000 Euros for the standings winner. So they do get paid, and thus, are professionals, at the very least, technically.

That said, I think that most may have their participation in tournaments and income supplemented beyond teaching, most probably by national federations, but organizers may also offer incentives to attract top women players. The Grand Prix pays the women's travel expenses, and lodging (Section 5.2), for example. Some may even pay modest appearance fees, but these would surely be few, and far between.

WGM Natalia Pogonina's manager, Peter Zhdanov, wrote here that "Saratov State Law Academy helps WGM Natalia Pogonina by paying for some of her chess trips". Again, it always seemed like she is, or was, one of the "professionals", but how successful was she? Based on what Peter Svidler told me about men a long time ago, I would guess that it is a rough life financially without some kind of outside sponsorship.

Things have changed for men, but around 20 years ago, Peter Svidler told me on ICC that with the exception of world championships (same for the women today as the recent women's world championship had a prize fund of 500,000 Euros), at that time, even the top 10 men only earned around $50,000 per year. Of course, at that level for men, you really cannot do it part-time, and supplement with lessons since it requires that much dedication. Judit Polgar, clearly, did nothing but chess, and in 2015, Hou Yifan only earned an estimated $265,000.

While it is relative, these women are at the same level as the men, meaning at the very top when competing against their own gender, and I cannot see how they would be doing it part-time any less than a man could in the top 10. Most of the women in the Lausanne Grand Prix are grandmasters, and to be a grandmaster, for most, is a full-time occupation at the "top".

Of course, this is all discussing being a professional primarily from tournament winnings. The Internet today makes it easier for anyone, even weak players, to start a Twitch channel, and develop a following, and earn a living if they are good at attracting an audience.

P.S. I found it very difficult to find hard sources with quotes about how top women chess players sustain their careers, but I did put what I could find, and the rest is just common-sense analysis from reading over the many years.


How would you determine that the player is cheating in online chess?

This is actually a very complex question, and not one which has been solved in a satisfying way, to my knowledge.  Essentially, we're asking for an algorithm to perform a kind of reverse Turing-test, to differentiate between human players and computers.

First, client-side checks will always have weaknesses, unless you are in complete control of the client environment.  Let's take the first idea - checking for switching between windows, it sounds good.  Unfortunately, it's trivially worked around by running a chess engine on a separate computer, or integrating my engine with the client so that no "window switching" takes place, or changing the client to report 0 changes in window, or...  There's no real way to be sure that it's your code running on the client, really.

What we're left with is physically tightly controlled client environments (which isn't going to happen for any online games), or server-side checking, i.e. looking at the actual moves that were played (and perhaps the time between the moves, as you say), and trying to deduce the computer or human aspect.

Server-side checking can also split a couple of ways.  You could probably try a "top-down" approach, which would be something along the lines of "from past games in history, only 2% of humans made that move, while 50% of computers make it".  This would actually be a pretty good way to do it, if we had enough data for "any given position".  The search space of chess is so large, however, that even very large data sets will not have a significant number of games matching your position, once you get past the early mid-game.

Assuming that we don't have any reliable statistics on the human side of the equation, you could still present the position to a number of chess engines (with a number of different time settings each), and see how closely the players' moves match that of a computer.  By itself, this would also lead to many false-positives, however, repeated positives for the same chess engine and time settings would make it more and more probable that the player was cheating.  To further enhance this, I would probably look into a "bottom-up" approach of analysing chess positions; in short, trying to figure out why humans and computers play differently.  E.g. humans tend to recognise common patterns.  In a game with "odd" patterns, or unlikely situations, a human would be less likely to be able to play very accurately.  None of these, by itself, are particularly damning, but given large numbers of games, it would highlight trends to administrators.

To add a few specifics to your list, I would go along the lines of how professors detect plagarism in papers - by detecting a sudden change.  In chess, this is extremely difficult to define, but a sudden change in play style or play strength may indicate cheating.  Specifically, I'd look for uncharacteristically aggressive moves which tend to just "work out", and have no downside for the player (too accurate).  Forced mates in 4+ moves from a player who normally puts knights on the edge of the board, etc (it's possible... just not likely).  How exactly this would work sounds like it could take up an entire book (or more), however.

EDIT:  There was an article about cheating and detection in top-level chess recently.


Is preventing an opponent from castling considered an advantage?

It'll depend on the rest of the position.

If it's relatively open, chances are you can keep the opponent's king in the center and launch an attack. This might well be a decisive advantage; preventing castling on both sides can be much harder than just one side or none at all. It's worth noting that 'artificial' castling (e.g. Ke8-f7, Rh8-e8 and Kf7-g8) takes three moves instead of one, though the rook might end up on a better file than after a regular kingside castling.

If the center is closed and stable, players often don't even castle at all. A king's move to the second row might be enough to connect the heavy pieces. In such a position, being unable to castle is no disadvantage at all.

As @user1583209 notes, in the endgame, the center is usually the place to be for the king, making castling an unattractive option. In general, the fewer pieces on the board, the less of a disadvantage it is not being able to castle.


Does an out of turn draw offer constitute an actionable distraction / time penalty?

According to my copy of US Chess Federation's Official Rules of Chess (5th Edition), rule 14B2 states:

  If a player offers a draw while the opponent's clock is running, the
  opponent may accept or reject the offer.  A player who offers a draw
  in this manner may be warned or penalized for annoying the opponent (20G).

Note that it says "may", not "must".  Rule 20G says that the director has discretion to say whether there was a violation and what the penalty, if any, should be.  So you could request, but you could not "demand", that the time be added.

Rule 1C2a says that two minutes added to your clock is the standard penalty if one is imposed.  1C2b, however, explicitly states that the director can vary from this.

Rule 21F says you indeed have the right to stop the clock to ask for a ruling from the director.  And you must do it right away; you ordinarily waive your rights if you don't notify the director promptly.


What is this opening/position called, and what is white’s best move?

It looks like you arrived at this position with the moves

[FEN ""]
[StartPly "10"]

1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. Qxd4 Nc6 4. Qd1 Nf6 5. Bg5 Bc5

White is already worse here because you're behind in development. There's no reason to have your queen chased around like that; therefore, it sees very little play and the position does not have a name. If you want to play aggressively, play 3. c3 instead (the Danish Gambit), and there are plenty of aggressive options after 2. Nf3 as well. This question lists more options you might be interested in.

Right now, you should concentrate on completing your development, e.g. with 6. Nc3. Playing aggressive moves in this very position will for sure lead to a quick defeat.


How to avoid an overly cluttered board in the opening?

I find that around moves 8-10 the centre of the board gets quite cluttered.

Typically (exceptions occur) around moves 8-10 you should have completed your development: you should have moved all or most minor pieces (i.e. ca 4-6 moves), should have moved a few pawns to occupy the center and to make space for developing the bishops (ca. 3-5 moves) and have castled (one move).

Yes, pieces and pawns tend to "clutter" in the center because it is an important part of the board and if you control the center you often have an advantage. This cluttering is not a bad thing and should affect both players equally.

  I have a hard time finding good places to put my pieces and improve my position, they get in one another's way, and I often find my opponent threatening my pieces with mere pawns, forcing me into awkward moves I don't want to make.

Because there is so much going on in the center, there are often tactics available, particularly in more open positions. So studying tactics is highly recommended for a beginner (and also advanced) player. Closed positions tend to be quieter and are better if you like slow, maneuvering kind of games.

In either case, if you have completed development, (which you should around move 8-10), it is time for the middlegame and you should come up with a plan on how to proceed and also consider the plans of your opponent and if necessary prevent them. Finding plans is not something easy to learn and requires time and experience. I would recommend to start with analyzing the position and to check:

Are any pieces (mine or opponent) attacked?
Are there obvious tactics available?
Which pieces are well placed (lots of space to move around and attack something) and which not (little space to move and don't attack anything)?
Is the king safe? Typically with many pieces on the board you want it behind pawns on either side after castling.
Are there any weaknesses in the position such as isolated pawns?
Who owns the center?
Are there open or half-open files which are occupied or can be occupied by rooks?
Is the position open or rather closed? Who would benefit from changing it?

Check all of these items for both sides (you and your opponent). Based on the outcome of this evaluation you should come up with a plan. I ordered the questions in order of importance (exceptions occur), e.g. usually you want to deal with attacked pieces (if you lose/win material) first, before thinking of anything else.

  I realise that part of this comes down to choice of opening, and perhaps I haven't read enough and played enough to get a better sense for which openings/defences lead to more open or closed games
   is a cluttered board, or a feeling of being cramped also a sign I am trying to develop too many pieces too quickly, or that I am being too hesitant to exchange pawns and pieces in the opening, or even just of a lack of imagination on my part, or anything else along these lines?

I don't think your problem is really related to open/closed  positions but rather to a lack of experience of what is possible and knowledge of tactical motives.

For a beginner I would not recommend to worry to much about concrete openings and to study these. Instead I would play openings from general opening principles (occupy the center, develop pieces, ...) and focus on tactics and learning other themes like good bishop/bad bishop, open files (and what to do with them), undermining a closed center, etc.


If you accept to give up the use of a graphical interface, you can analyze your games with python-chess-annotator:

https://github.com/rpdelaney/python-chess-annotator

It is a python script that uses an UCI engine to analyze a game in a pgn file. It will give you in output a pgn file with the annotations. It works with every chess variant supported by python-chess, and Crazyhouse is supported. You can use Stockfish Crazyhouse to analyze.


Although it isn't chessbase 13, https://www.chessable.com/ is a site, designed to help you learn chess, that works in a similar manner to that described in the question.

The student gets books (usually openings, but there are some endgames) and learns variations - but the default learning pattern is to be shown random positions from those variations, and "guess the move".  (This isn't really a "guess," since you learned the variation, but still...)

The base part of the site is free (and a number of books are free); there are other learning elements that are only available to paid members.  The "library" is growing, including works by several FMs, IMs, and even a few GMs.

TL;DR: It's the same idea as the question, just not on as wide a database.  (One could argue this allows the student to focus on an area; one could also argue it's not as powerful.)

For full disclosure, I have nothing to do with the site itself, though I am a paying member: I've just had such luck with it I'm like a walking billboard.


You may want to use the echecsemail website. You can create round-robin tournaments for up to 9 players. For bigger player-pools, you'll have to split them in groups (or maybe talk to the admins).

They also offer the possibility of choosing an alternative starting position (for opening practice purposes mainly)

I hope those kids speak French, though!


The first thing I would suggest is going to an old book site, like Abebooks.com and putting in chess titles or keywords that come to mind.  They show covers with the old books they have for sale.  A key thing you left out, soft cover or hard back?

Check "Comprehensive Chess Course series" of books by Lev Alburt and his coauthor Palatnik, Sam.  They comment in one of them about rules for the "pawn game". He apparently references the Soviet Chess Program or schools as the source of the game.  One Title of the series: The King in Jeopardy: The Best Techniques for Attack and Defense (Comprehensive Chess Course Series)
Alburt, Lev, Palatnik,Sam.

I have seen the cover you are describing in my searches for books but I do not remember who it was I was searching.  I commonly look for Chernev and Botvinik so it may be one of theirs.  I will keep looking.  I too have a favorite book I learned from "Fireside Book of Chess" by Reinfeld.


In Damanovic-Fischer, 1970, wasn't 66. Ke3 better?

This was played almost at Fischer’s height of strength, so he almost surely would have won anyway after 66.Ke3 also. I think that white thought two things by playing 66.ba. First, that it reduced the number of pawns, which is almost always good when you are in a worse, or losing, endgame. Second, that the bishop might be able to defend a2 along the a2-g8 diagonal.

After 66.Ke3, white will fall into zugzwang due to his bad bishop, or at least, he believed he would. If that happens, the black knight can do some pretty fancy high stepping. This is what I found, but it turns out there actually is a miracle draw, but it is doubtful that any human would have put his B on a4 (to stop Nc4; bc b3 queening).

So, I guess, considering that miracle possibility, the answer is a firm "yes, it would have been better".

[FEN "8/8/5n1p/1k2pBpP/pp2P1P1/1P1K4/P7/8 w - - 0 66"]

1. Ke3 a3 2. Kd3 Kc5 3. Ke3 Ne8 4. Kd3 (4. Bd7 Nd6 5. Ba4) 4... Nd6 5. Bd7 Nc4 6. Be8 Nb2+-+

At the end of the line, the N either gets Nd1-c3-a2 or the Kc5 gets to d4. In either case, winning easily.


Chessbase 13 for automatic game analysis

The company ChessBase sells a series of engine GUIs (Fritz, Houdini, Komodo, Rybka) that blundercheck or do full game annotation. The ChessBase program lets you run an engine while you go through a game, or can add games with a similar opening, but it won't do an automatic full game analysis the way that the engine GUIs do.


Can it be useful for a player block with a hanging piece in a back rank mate situation?

[FEN "R5k1/5ppp/8/2r5/1b6/8/5PPP/6K1 b - - 0 1"]

1... Rc8 2. Rxc8+ Bf8

This is an example of what Tim Krabbé calls an 'unguarded guard' - a linepiece checks, and a piece interposes on an unguarded square. That page mentions Topalov - Polgar, Novgorod 1996 (see below); while not a true back rank mate, it comes close. Here are some endgame studies with other types of Unguarded Guards.

[FEN ""]
[Event "Novgorod"]
[Date "1996-07-27"]
[White "Veselin Topalov"]
[Black "Judit Polgar"]
[StartPly "92"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Be3 a6 7.Bd3
b5 8.Nxc6 Qxc6 9.O-O Bb7 10.a3 Nf6 11.Re1 Be7 12.Qf3 d6 13.Qh3
h5 14.Bg5 Qc5 15.Be3 Qc6 16.f3 g5 17.a4 b4 18.Na2 g4 19.fxg4
d5 20.c3 bxc3 21.bxc3 Nxg4 22.Bd4 Bc5 23.Be2 Nf6 24.e5 Ne4
25.Nb4 Bxd4+ 26.cxd4 Qb6 27.Nc2 Rc8 28.Rab1 Qa7 29.Bd3 Rg8
30.a5 Bc6 31.Rb6 Bb5 32.Bxe4 dxe4 33.Rxe6+ Kf8 34.Qa3+ Kg7
35.Re7 Rc7 36.Rxc7 Qxc7 37.Ne3 Kh8 38.Rc1 Qd8 39.d5 Qg5 40.Qc3
Kh7 41.Qd4 Bd3 42.d6 h4 43.Rc7 Rb8 44.Rxf7+ Kg8 45.e6 Qxe3+
46.Qxe3 Rb1+ 47.Qc1 Rxc1+ 48.Kf2 Rc6 49.Rd7 Bb5 50.Ke3 Rc2
51.Rc7 Re2+ 52.Kf4 Rf2+ 53.Kxe4 Re2+ 54.Kf5 Rf2+ 55.Ke5 Re2+
56.Kf6 Rf2+ 57.Ke7 Re2 58.d7 Bxd7 59.Kxd7 Rd2+ 60.Ke8 1-0


When playing chess online, what does 1-1 mean?

As your question isn't very clear, but by what you have mentioned about your opponent saying 1-1, i can say there are 2 possibilities.

He either means it as the score between you 2 such as, you guys have played 2 games and both ended in draw, considering half point to each player per draw, it's 1-1, or both player has lost 1 and won another so 1-1 again.

Or he might be saying it regarding time control of a game. 1-1 meaning 1 minute per player and 1 second increment per move for the whole game.

More examples for time controls are such as : 2-1, 5-2, 10-0, 15-10, etc. Where the first number indicates the time in minutes per player for the whole game and the second digit indicates the increment time in seconds per move per player till the end of the game.


Yes, white is better in this position, because it controls more space. The black position is somewhat cramped, particularly the queenside pieces (Bd7, Nb8, Ra8) are difficult to develop.

The queenside pawns are blocked so the play is going to happen on the kingside. (there might be some tactical ideas for white in the far future related to a piece sacrifice on a6 or c6 creating a strong passed pawn on b6; but for the time being nothing is going to happen on the queenside.)

Typical plans for white in this position:

quickly move pieces to the kingside before black can develop any counterplay
potentially exchange the active black pieces (such as Bg5).
create a pawn break/pawn storm with f4-f5 at some point

Typical plans for black:

develop queenside pieces
create some kind of counterplay (perhaps playing f6 at some point later on, without weakening the e6 pawn or kingside pawn structure; having played h6 already is rather bad in this case)

Without giving any concrete lines it seems to me that the white plan is much easier to achieve than black's


What are the first moves chosen (White), by brute force chess engines?

Houdini 1.5 on my old machine (1.8 G 2 cpu) slows down a lot around 20 ply (10 moves).

At 20 ply, it seems to slightly favor a four knights queen pawn game, starting with d4 or Nf3 over the Four Knights (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6)

it switches at 22 ply to the Ruy Lopez Berlin (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Be7).

at ply 23, it switches back to d-pawn four knights, but starting with 1.Nf3


Why are these weak squares important in this situation?

The final position is a very typical position of weak bishop against strong knight.

The knight has good outposts on d5 and b5, where it is supported/protected by white pawns and cannot be challenged by any black pieces unless black sacrifices an exchange (rook for knight). Also the white knight is very mobile and can basically go wherever it wants.

In contrast, black's bishop is very passive and bound to the protection of the d6 pawn. It is hindered in activity by its own pawns and cannot attack any white pawn (because most all of them and all relevant ones are on light squares).

Furthermore black has very weak pawns which are relatively easy to attack/win. Of course care needs to be taken, because black occupies the only open file, but other than that only white has winning chances.

  My question is, why are these two squares so important? Specially b5 is quite far from both sides' kings.

The kings are both relatively safe and don't matter in this position. Basically to repeat what I wrote above: b5 and d5 are important because:

white can put a protected knight there which can not be challenged (unless black sacrifices material
if there is a knight on d5 or b5 it not only covers lots of squares, but also attacks the weak pawns (b6, d6, f4)
thanks to the knight and white pawns on c4 and e4, black cannot exchange his weak pawns on b6 and d6
the knight on b5 or d5 is very mobile and can easily move in case it is needed somewhere else

So the point/plan for white as stated in the video is to leave black with his weakest minor piece and conserve a white knight to take advantage of these weak squares.

Similar ideas appear in some lines of the Sicilian Najdorf, where white sometimes manages to exchange a dark squared bishop on f6 for a black knight, thereby reducing the number of black pieces that can cover the typical Najdorf hole (weak square on d5), while remaining with two knights and a light squared bishop all of which can take advantage of the weak light squares.


What are the latest ideas for Black against the Samisch King's Indian Defense?

According to the Game Database of ChessTempo, after 6.Be3, there are 3 main variations:

6....e5: 1970 games
6....Nc6: 1651 games
6....c5: 1335 games

After 6....e5 white's main moves are 7.d5 and 7.Nge2. After 7.d5 black has two options: 7....c6 (counterplay on the queen side) or 7....Nh5 8.Qd2 f5 (counterplay on the king side). After 7.Nge2 black's most common move is 7....c6.

After 6....Nc6 the most popular move is 7.Nge2. After 7.Qd2 black often plays 7....a6 (the very best move in my opinion), and black seems to have excellent results after 8.0-0-0 (simply too dangerous in my opinion) with 8....b5 or 8....Rb8. The main line 8.Nge2 Rb8 actually transposes to 7.Nge2 a6 8.Qd2 Rb8, leading to a complicated position, where black has 2 plans: b5 or e5.

After 6....c5 black should be ready to play

the pawn sacrifice after 7.dxc5. The statistics in the database suggest that black has enough compensation for the pawn.
the Benoni positions that arise after 7.d5 or 7.Nge2 Nc6 8.d5.

In order to make a choice between these 3 options, you can search some games of strong players to see which type of positions suits your playing style the most.

      [FEN ""]
      [StartPly "11"]

      1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.f3 O-O 6.Be3 Nc6 (6...c5 (7.dxc5)(7.d5) 7.Nge2 Nc6 8.d5) (6...e5 7.d5 (7.Nge2 c6) 7...Nh5 (7...c6) 8.Qd2 f5) 7.Qd2 (7.Nge2 a6 8.Qd2 Rb8) 7...a6 8.O-O-O (8.Nge2 Rb8) 8...b5 (8...Rb8)


100 Endgames You Must Know - What's the difference between 3rd & 4th Eds?

De la Villa's "100 Endgames you must know", though apparently a good book seems to have been plagued by an abundance of typos and mistakes as detailed in this blogpost.

So although the culprit in this case has been the 2nd edition, maybe it does make sense to go for the latest edition. Here you can look at the errata page which presumably contains errors that have now been corrected, although as I mentioned some of these corrections probably already happened in the third edition.


At what handicap are humans as good as computer?

No scientific studies on this that I know of, but chess.com has hosted some online matches between super GMs (like Nakamura) and top engines in the world (esp. Komodo if I recall correctly).

In these matches, the human GM is given one of the following odds from the starting position:

An extra exchange (so rook for knight).
The engine, playing Black, is missing its f7-pawn.
White gets two extra moves on top of his additional right to go first (I think).

Each of these are approximately +2 for White. So it seems that at the top level for humans and engines, a +2 advantage is needed to ensure rough equality.

Pretty humbling if you think about it. Wait until they perfect machine learning with engines...


How do I respond to 8. g3?! in the 4. e3 Slav?

I see no reason to ?! mark. 8. g3 is good book move and standard way to limit opponent's play with open h-file. The most flexible move by far is 8...Nbd7 after it. After 9.Bg2 dxc4 should be good. But again, 4...Bf5 is no refutation of slow Slav and 5...Bg6 is in my opinion less challenging than 5...Be4, while there's nothing wrong with 8.g3. Don't expect you have guaranteed equality in this line. Once I played the NN vs. BB game in similar line and it is suffer, even if computer says it is OK. I was always somewhat worried about 4...Bf5 as white, but as black, I played 4...Bg4 every single time :-)


What is the most efficient way to calculate attack squares in a chess engine?

It may help to keep a list of each piece and the squares it attacks for the position.

Then when a move occurs, you can reduce the work calculating for the pieces that don't move. Non-moving kings, knights, and pawns will attack the same squares as before. Non-moving queens, bishops, and rooks only need to be recalculated if a piece moved to or away from a square they attacked.

Then you can update the attack squares of the pieces that actually moved.


chess win expectancy by material difference table or calculator

There is no such calculator, that's why you couldn't find any.

About Houdini: It's not a fact. They are saying roughly, Houdini evaluation is correlated with win expectancy against the same engine same hardware, in blitz time control. It doesn't have to be the same for other engines, and it's not the same for humans of course.


Improving your chess without access to OTB tournaments

Overall, I like your plan. Addressing them, not in order though, and adding some thoughts along the way:

How much training per day do you recommend? I plan on working between
1-2h every day on chess and playing long games regularly.

Let's face it, the more time, the better in terms of really getting better. Spending two hours per day is a lot for a non-professional, and is a great commitment.

Should I set up a real board while playing online to recreate the OTB
experience?

I love this idea because I think that playing online, even at slower controls, leads to the click-first-then-think mentality. I see this mentality a lot with the chess.com daily puzzle and many weak players saying "easy" when they "solve" a super-hard study. They got through it, but they clicked until the puzzle accepted the move, rather than truly seeing the solution and then clicking it in.

Have you tried improving mainly via online chess and can share your
experiences? If not, do you know anyone who has done that?
What do you think is the best time control to play online to improve?

I really cannot say that I have because most of my improvement took place long before the advent of the Internet, but I did use an old standby: Face-to-face training games with a friend, who was rated similarly at the time. I do not see why you cannot find a player online, who is interested in doing this with you.
As part of this, I want suggest that you use a long time control (like 40/2 60/1) so you have time to really train your thought process. You should even use notes regarding things that you want to make sure you want to address in your thought-process training. I am not talking about notes regarding specific moves, but notes about the things you want to train as part of your practice.
For example, as I have been getting back into OTB play, here is a list of things that I want to look for. My list might help you, but you should add your own items to it.

Pay more attention to leads in development, and open the position when I am ahead in development. Pay attention to tempi, and not just in the opening.
Every few moves, or after a major change, look at every move for both sides.
Think more about the pluses and minuses of each piece, and how well they are, or are not, placed. What squares do they deny the opponent’s pieces?
What square do I want for my piece, and how do I conquer it?
When beginning to calculate, ask “what is hanging?”  Also ask if there are any double attacks or pieces that can be drawn into a double attack by a sac.
When I find a good move, just look at the other moves to make sure there is not a better one.
Look for pieces in a line so a pin might win.
When calculating a tactical sequence, make sure that you properly evaluate the final position, and that there is no extra counterplay left. Before making the final move, think about all his possible moves as in number one above.
Think more about going after the opponent’s King.
Think more about how to gain space by pushing pawns on either flank, that is play on both sides of the board, if possible.
Ask what is my worst piece, and where is its best square, and move it there.
Ask what pieces should I trade? What is my weak piece and what is his strong piece?
When lacking space, think more about trading.
Ask myself, “what is his moving trying to accomplish?” and “what can he do after I move? (look at all his possible moves as in the mate-in-two problems)” “What is his plan if I were he?”
What structure am I playing for?
When accepting or changing a structure, see if the pieces are misplaced on either side with regards to helping the structure, and enforcing or containing pawn breaks.
When the opponent’s pieces are misplaced, open the position.
Look more at opening the position when I have the two Bs.
In conjunction with asking “where is my pawn break?”, look more at pushing my pawn majorities when I have them.
Think more about dynamic play when I have static deficiencies, or am worse.
Think more about resulting endgames.


This is very broad, but what is winning is very related to your strength. I have seen plenty of beginners, who could not win even up a full queen.

For example, a beginner might need a queen, or more, to be able to win a position. I have been a "regular" Master for more than 30 years, so it might just one pawn, but the right pawn. :)

By comparison, I used to read Garry Kasparov's notes to his games in the Informants, and he would use the symbol +- (winning) in positions that looked barely better to me. His sense of winning, of course, was correct, but it was much more refined than mine.

All of this still means only so much in practice because as they say, "the hardest thing to do in chess is win a won position".

Understanding when your position is good or won simply comes with time, study, and practice. It is too open a subject to be more specific.


In general, it's very hard to trap a queen like that. After Qxa8 Nc6, the white queen can't escape immediately but it's not hard to devise an escape plan; with Bb5 White threatens to exchange the only defender of the a7 pawn, and at the same time winning another pawn on c6. So my conclusion is that Black's last move was a blunder.


Is this line of the Grunfeld playable for White?

The problem with this line is that this is exactly what Black is hoping for.

You give the center to "win a pawn", but Black has several compensation : first of all the black bishop on ...Bg7 is now very strong. Also with ...Qc7 follow by ...Rd8 black will win the d-file. If Black want then they can easily win back the pawn by the following plan : ...e5, ...Bf8 and ...Bxc5.


Website to practise thematic games [blitz]?

Lichess has what you are looking for:

But you may have to check out when a specific opening theme may be scheduled in their tournament table. Also Lichess has a feature to start your own thematic tournament at any time of the day, but attracting players to the custom tournaments typically does not work.


What is black’s compensation in the main line of the Caro Kann?

At a basic level, what we want from an opening and a defense, is: we want to be fighting for the center squares (1), we're trying to develop our pieces and get good squares for them (2), and thirdly, we want to have a safe king (3). This is as modest a expectation as one can have for a good opening.

Now roughly speaking, there are two types of defenses (say e.g. against 1.e4): First type: we attack the pawn on e4, like the Scandinavian, the French, and the Caro-Kann,..., in other words, any defense where we immediately set out to immediately attack the pawn on e4 is the first type of defense. The second type of defense is to leave the e4 pawn alone and basically, black's saying I'll go and take my fair share of the center, typical example is the Sicilian (1...c5 first dark-square claim).

In diagram you've posted, we see a typical Caro-Kann structure where black's trumps are:

we have successfully managed to exchange one of white's central pawns (e4), which was the primary goal of our defense.
There's definite prospect for challenging white's 2nd central pawn (d4) with a timely c5 or e5 advance in the middlegame. And the d5 square is a nice post for a knight.
In case white aims for c4 to control d5, then d4 being in a semi-open file, becomes a bit of a soft spot which black can target, and the extra expansion on the queenside by white means their queenside castling is less likely or at least less safe.

So it's fair to say expectation (1) is ticked off. Now onto (2):

Black is clearly behind in development: white has 5 developed pieces (pawns and nonpawns), black has 3, moreover, white's ready to castle kingside and 1 tempo away from queenside castling whereas black's kingside castle is at least 3 tempi away.
However, thanks to our successful neutralisation of the e4 pawn, the central struggle has quieted down, and our path to finishing development is rather clear (and resolved for the most part), namely: e6-Nf6-Be7-O-O.
It's not just that we are finishing development, but we are in fact achieving decent piece activity: most importantly, the knight on f6 which plays both a very important defensive role for the king, and provides good central control. The d5 square could in certain cases be a good outpost for either the knight or even sometimes the queen. In case of the former, then f6 square becomes free for our d7 knight to jump to.
The knight on d7 is not poorly placed as it is ideally placed to eye both c5 and e5, the two pawn advances black will be aiming for next in order to challenge white's d4 pawn (dark-square control).
Same holds for the bishop, which more importantly, is not hemmed-in inside our own structure.

These points tick off expectation (2). Now onto (3):

As said, we have no trouble in castling kingside, where the king will be well protected by our minor pieces (knight on f6, bishop e7 and knight on d7 which can go to f8 if need be).
Thanks to white's over-advancement of the h pawn all the way to h5, their prospect of exploiting our hook h6 on the kingside is not so easy anymore. Ideally, to exploit the h6 advance when pushing against the king, is to have the h4-g4 setup. All to say, tempo-wise, white is sufficiently away from amassing a major threat on our kingside.
Last but not least, white has no means of decoying our minor piece defense on the kingside, and the somewhat weakened light squares are less of a concern since the respective bishops have been traded off.

These points all suggest that we have in fact a solid structure and our kingside castling remains safe, so (3) is ticked off as well.

In conclusion, we have seen why the structures that emerge from Caro-Kann (in particular for the posted variation) are solid and more importantly, we see that black's opening has successfully achieved our 3 basic expectations, so we can give ourselves a tap on the back and claim to have played a successful defense.

Extra bonus aspects about the position:

The queen can easily swing over to the queenside b6 or a5 and create threats, in general you want to be inducing additional pawn advances from white on the queenside to make it more difficult for them to castle safely on the queenside. So manoeuvres like Qa5 and Qb6 are much needed!
The d-file is semi-open for black, which gives us a pressure point and rook activity.
The c5 advance (and sometimes e5) should be a part of your middlegame strategy in order to neutralise white's remaining central pawn and dark square control.
The h5 pawn can sometimes be a real weakness, that you can easily target.
A queenside expansion is almost always perfectly valid.
Last but not least, I highly encourage you to study Caro-Kann games for inspiration. For example, look into the games of Vassily Ivanchuk, Jovanka Houska, Yasser Seirawan or Aleksandra Goryachkina, who've produced many instructive Caro-Kann games.


White threatens mate on g7, but

   1. ... Ne1 pins the queen (and threatens Rf1#; Qxe4 won't stop that) 2. Rxe1 Qxe1+ 3. Qg1 Rf1 wins the queen

and the remaining endgame is easily won for Black.


When is it right to start learning strategy after tactics

Improving positional understanding is a longterm project. You do it by playing, by analysing, by going through well annotated master games and by working through books on the subject. But contrary to tactical exercises these things often don't have an immediate effect. Personally I also misapplied a lot of positional concepts that I had read about. Positional understanding will only help you if it is complete on some level. As soon as that happens there often is a sudden rise in strength.

Given that successfully applying positional concept depends a lot on accurate calculation, the right time to get really serious about training positional understanding is probably when you start getting diminishing returns from your tactical training. It's unlikely that you are at that point yet.

But if you have fun doing the things I mentioned at the beginning, there is no reason not to do them. Just remember that you will probably misapply ideas and not necessarily see immediate benefits. And try to not be too dogmatic about the things some authors tell you. The main thing is the discovery of amazing ideas and possibilities in chess.

Nimzowitsch: My System, a classic, it was definitely revelatory to me and also a lot of fun to read because of the evocative prose. (I don't know about the english translations though.)
The Yusupov-Series: Very systematic training of all aspects of the game. If you hit a wall in pure tactics training, the orange books might take you to the next level.
John Nunn's Move by Move: Just one example of many well commented game collections. This one literally explains every move, making it more suitable for relative beginners.


Following the moves from the black’s point of view

I would recommend using chess eye, here's a video about it, it will help you memorize the board, difficult but fun!

EDIT

I don't think this is the answer you're looking for, but I'm answering anyway since there's no other answer and since my initial answer didn't help much, i feel that i must improve my answer even if it won't help you. Here's how i visualize, I don't follow from black perspective nor white. I see them as a list, such as this.

I memorized only the A rank, especially a1 and a8 and worked my way through the board using maths, not memorization, i think maths helps more, if you calculate it, it makes sense to you. For example if you tell me to memorize how to derive an equation, I'll never understand it and I will find it hard to remember, if you tell me the idea behind it and tell me why i am doing it, i will understand and do it fast.

I'm not a fan of memorization and i know that modern chess is all about memorization, criticize me all you want.

I just remember that a1 is black, therefore a4 has to be white, a8 has to be white as well, count them on your fingers.

b1 is directly above a1 so it's the opposite color, b1 is white, b4 has to be black, b8 has to be black.

A pattern is visible here

x1 color is different than x8
x4 = x8
x8 = y1

Not only that a1 and c1 are black, because there's always x black followed by y white, you can say that all the odd rank numbers starts with black ends with white, and vise versa for the even rank numbers

a is an odd rank since it's the first letter and the first rank, a1 is black
b is even b1 is white.

So a1 is black, what about h1? well a8 is white, and h is the 8th ranks, its number 8, got to be white. Want to count from h to a? lets do it,

h1 is white, and so is is g8, g1 is black and h8 is black of course, i want you to imagine it, not just to read it, forget about the letters, just imagine that you're counting from 1 to 8, each number has a color, and when you get to 8, you start again, 1 has the same color as 8.

one last rank is the d rank, it's number 4, a1 is black, a4 is white, d is rank number 4, which is white! that's what i do, a list, white, black doesn't matter, might help you with blindfolded chess or if you're playing against an engine, no GUI.


Good job on the first tactic: indeed e5 is not really hanging in that line due to Na4.

As for the d4 pawn, although even in the line you suggest (with the exchange of queens) white stands a tad better, the d4 pawn is in fact tactically defended! Considering that you do not mention any computer evaluations and have tried to tackle the problem on your own (which is excellent!), I reckon you're more interested in not just seeing the solution but to also see how to get there, so let's walk through it together.

To recognise the combination, take note of black's weakpoints around the king:

king stuck in the center,
the dark the square holes around black's king,
the bishop taking away the e7-d8 squares, and the potential of a smothered type of mate were the knight to land on c7,
the open d-file (thanks to Qxd4) and the fact that the d7 knight is only defended once by the king (therefore vulnerable to direct tactics).

With these in mind, now try to find forcing moves (captures, checks, threats of mate or gain of material, etc.) that exploit these weaknesses and see if you can make them work concretely.

The first move that comes to mind, challenging all the aforementioned weaknesses at once, is Nb5, with the double threat of attacking the queen and mating on c7. Rather interestingly, Nb5 works out beautifully: if black doesn't capture on b5, then they lose on the spot due to dark square weaknesses. And if they do capture the knight, then they end up further opening the position (as cxb5-Bxb5 open the critical a4-e8 diagonal towards the king) and lose due to the compromised king position and lack of defenders (in turn caused by lack of development).

Let's see how all this pans out concretely: (no time to cross check the lines with a computer, I leave that up to you!)

 [title "Lines after 12...Qxd4"]
 [fen "r3kb1r/pp1n1pp1/1qp1p1b1/4PnBp/2BP3P/2N3N1/PP3PP1/2RQ1RK1 b kq - 2 12"]
 [startflipped "0"]

 1...Qxd4 2. Nb5 cxb5 (2...Qxd1 3. Nc7#) (2...Qb6 3. Nxf5 exf5 {loses on the spot as it allows e6 opening the e-file} (3...Bxf5 4. Nd6+ Bxd6 5. Bxe6 {A real blow to black's position! Note Qxd6 at once doesn't work due to Qc5} fxe6 (5...Bxe6 6. Qxd6 {now Qxd6 works as the c5 square is guarded by the rook on c1}) 6. Qxd6 {only way to avoid mate without losing the queen is to make a run for it via f7} Kf7 7. Qxd7+ Kg8 {and white's clearly winning thanks to the domination of the bishop and queen, e.g. after Rcd1 Kh7 Qf7 wins the e6 pawn}) 4. e6 Nf6 5. exf7+ Bxf7 6. Re1+ Ne4 7. Nd6+ Bxd6 8. Qxd6 {and black has to sacrifice their queen to avoid mate}) 3. Bxb5 a6 (3...Qxd1 4. Rfxd1 f6 5. exf6 gxf6 6. Rxd7 a6 {threatening to win the rook after Ba4 b5} 7. Ne4 {Nf6 threatened with mate} Be7 8. Rxe7+ Kxe7 9. Bxf6+ Kf7 10. Rc7+ Kf8 11. Bxh8 axb5 12. a3 {and white's completely winning, being up a healthy pawn, better piece coordination, while black's king remains exposed and the 3 isolated pawn islands are useless offering no prospect of counter-play.}) 4. Qxd4 Nxd4 5. Bxd7+ Kxd7 6. Rfd1 f6 7. Rxd4+ Ke8 8. exf6 gxf6 9. Bxf6 Rh7 10. Re1 Rc7 {baiting white to take on e6 with Rxe6+ Kf7 and white's rook defending the bishop will be easily overloaded} 11. Bg5 {calmly side-stepping the double attack with Kf7} Bf7 12. Ne4 {and white's advantage is once again decisive: clear pawn up, all 4 pieces perfectly coordinated against black's king stuck in the center, meanwhile all of black pieces are bound defensively, and both the e6 and h5 pawns are extremely weak and will fall soon with slow technical play.}

What a beautiful tactical adventure! This makes for excellent practice of both tactics and calculations.

It's worth noting that in some of the lines discussed above, black is not necessarily getting checkmated or even being necessarily a piece down, instead, the position becomes heavily damaged and black ends up at least a clear pawn down, all of which is more than enough of an edge to win considering the caliber of players we are talking about.

Finally, Artemiev need not necessarily have calculated all the above lines to realise d4 is not in fact hanging. Instead and particularly for players of such strength, they either have seen it before in a game or in preparation, or based on their strong intuition they simply smell the overwhelming dangers that could arise if they went pawn hunting with their king stuck in the center.

Last but not least, calculating very forcing lines (such as the above) is in fact the easiest type of calculations due to their inherent nature of being forcing (their branch outs are limited and the remaining lines are very concrete thus requiring less positional judgement). Meaning that e.g., performing all the above calculations over the board is quite feasible for strong players, and somewhat even trivial for super GMs.


If white ever trades her rook for black's knight, the game is lost. The only move for her is thus 91.Rf8, which is answered by 92.Kg6 Rg8+ 93.Kf7 resulting in the following position:

[FEN "1r2n1RK/5k2/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 66 93 "]

1. Rg1 (1.Rxe8 Rxe8 2.Kh7 Re6 3.Kh8 Rh6#) (1.Rg7 Nxg7 2.Kh7 Rb6 3.Kh8 Rh6#) (1.Kh7 Nf6+) Nf6  2. Rg8 Rxg8#

and now any rook move loses to the discovered mate Nf6# or loses the rook entirely


Sure, that's normal.

Can you identify why you lost interest? Are you losing too much or not showing improvement? re-evaluate your studies.

If you are winning too much (boredom), find better opposition.

“A bad day of Chess is better than any good day at work” - Anonymous


Practicing against an engine vs practicing over the board?

Engines do not make tactical or blunt mistakes. However, their calculation range is given by their predefined strength.

People behave differently. In general, their game is rather stable. But they can make big mistakes, or on the contrary, excellent moves, when you don't expect it.

Also, when playing against people, there is a certain level when psychology comes into account. Stress is generally higher than against an engine, which won't feel any emotions when playing against you.

That's one beautilful part of the game too, emotions are confronted. Good players know how to keep control.


Position with the most (or many) distinct refutations?

EDIT: Here is another mate-in-two problem with five legal black moves leading to five different checkmates.

   [Event "Apprenti Sorcier, 1992"]
   [White "ACHBAR Selim"]
   [Black "mate in two"]
   [Result "1-0"]
   [SetUp "1"]
   [FEN "8/8/1R6/2p5/8/2Bk1NRN/3P4/K6B w - - 0 1"]

   1.Rb1! (1...Ke2 2.Nfg1#)(1...Ke4 2.Nh4#)(1...Kc2 2.Ne1#)(1...Kc4 2.Ne5#)(1...c4 2.Nd4#)

All five different mating moves are done with the same piece, which is very nice.

Just to get this started; here is a mate-in-two problem with three possible black moves and three different checkmates.

  [Event "Grand Rapids Herald 1932 (643)"]
  [White "WURZBURG Otto B."]
  [Black "mate in two"]
  [Result "1-0"]
  [SetUp "1"]
  [FEN "8/Q7/2kp4/8/8/1K6/3R4/5B2 w - - 0 1"]

  1.Re2! (1...Kb5 2.Rc2#) (1...d5 2.Re6#)(1...Kd5 2.Bg2#)


By how much does being told what piece to move improve one's Elo?

This chess variant is called hand and brain.

From watching many of these games, I can guess that the only boost achieved is that low rated players get advice on a piece which is hanging.  So given your example, the hand would appear to gain Elo (named after Arpad Elo) just for not leaving pieces en prise.  Another advantage, although not very useful, is that by restricting the number of moves from the usual 30 down to about 8 does increase the shear odds of guessing the correct move.

The downside of this game is that the tactics (which most consider to be 90-99% of chess) is severely restricted.  It's dangerous start a combination or even a simple attack unless the lower rated player understand.  It's also possible that a difference in playing style would adversely effect the choice of moves.  That is, an aggressive player always wants to push forward, and a positional player wants to suffocate to opponent, so each has a different view of the most correct move.

There currently isn't enough data to give a statistical answer, but I can guess about a curve.  A low rated player could play about 300 lower than the higher rated player with a limit around 1500.  As the lower rated player rating rises, this playing strength average around 100 points below the lower rated player.  As the lower rated player rating reaches the master level, the playing strength almost disappears.

EDIT:
Expanding answer to better explain and suggest research.
I've only seen about 50 hand and brain games, so my data is unofficial and sprace.
My first exposure to hand and brain chess was on twitch.tv watching Anna Rudolf(2200) and Alexandra Botez(2000) play, from their respective channels.
Two channels which often have a pair of players that have played are HashtagChess (2200 and 1800) and CurlyQueenn (both 1900).  (On of the members of CurlyQueen is getting her own channel, so they may stop streaming together.)
I've seen other channels play this game, but they don't play regularly enough to be suggestions.

The chatter shows that they often guess wrongly about what the brain move was.  But, since there is a chat box, you could ask them directly for their opinions.  You could note the games and have computer analyse and compare to their normal games.  (You can tell which site they are playing from and can see their user name, but I'm sure that they will be helpful if you just ask.)

NOTE:  I have some objections to the enforcement of twitch.tv policies, so I won't be able to get this information directly.


Lichess.org rating vs rating in real life

The largest problem with sites like LiChess and Chess.com is that the standard pools are not very reflective of Over The Board rating. Most people play chess online for the Blitz and Lightning games. Chess.com recently came out with some statistics that showed that their Blitz rating pool is roughly the same as USCF currently. I do not know how well that would translate for the Standard pools.

When I was 1900 playing G/30 games on Chess.com and ICC (Internet Chess Club), I was rating roughly 2100/2200 on both sites. This was years ago though, so again, not entirely sure how accurate they are.


How can I compare top chess players that were not scored using Elo?

Jeff Sonas at chessmetrics calculated ratings for players going way back, using the games we have available.  Gives a pretty good picture of players relative strength.

Note this is up to around 2005, so you won't see players like Carlsen on there.


Why in Four Knights, Italian variation the winning percentage favours black after the move 4...Bc5?

As fuxia noted, winning percentages depend on how strong the players are, not just the opening.

Think about someone likely to play the four knights as White. Since the opening is rather unambitious and fairly easy to learn, there's a good chance this player isn't very strong. I'm not trying to generalize all players here, I'm just talking about averages. Meanwhile, Black is just following the main line moves for 1...e5. This gives no indication of Black being a weaker player.

As an aside though, the 365chess database isn't the most accurate. There are way more than 3723 games played in 4...Bc5. A look at the MEGA database or TWIC would give you more reasonable stats.


Opening book series with "complete" explanations

I am looking for opening books, preferably a series that explain
  different openings, where the opening is explained with a complete
  view:

  strategic plans for main variants,
  main tactical ideas,
  usual pawn structures and how to play them (e.g. minority    attacks,...),
  usual endgames derived from the opening ( 2 pieces vs. Rook, ....) and how to play them,
  if there are, main opening tricks.

Of all the books I have read, the Starting Out series are the closest thing you can find that matches your conditions.

They give general information about main lines, informing the reader if they are theoretical or if you can get by with playing by general principles.

They also warn if knowledge of the certain pawn structure/typical endgame is required, giving general tips on how to play those, which is good enough to help the reader start to understand the topic, and to provide him with enough details so he can do his own research.

The format of the book is also beginner-friendly as they explain ideas in prose with illustrative games, rather than smothering the reader with reams of analysis.

The series cover lots of openings, and generally have a good critics and readers review.

Hopefully this answer will help you. If you have further questions leave a comment and I will reply.

Best regards and good luck!


Do chess engines store all of the previously analysed positions between moves

Programming chess engines is very complicated territory, so right up front I'll point you to the Chess Programming Wiki, which has a lot of great information on this topic.

Background

Chess calculations (and many similar things) are generally modeled and thought of as "game trees" or "decision trees". Broadly, this tree is a directed graph, with one node at the top (the current position), leading to a node for each possible move, each of which leads to more nodes for each possible next move, and so on.

In their most simplistic, brute-force form, Chess engines generate all positions on this tree down to some depth limit ("ply"), evaluating each resulting position based on some complex criteria1. Then it plays the move that seems to lead to the best result. Nowadays, a lot of really complicated techniques have been developed to limit the number of positions that the engine has to look at, but I'm going to ignore those for the purpose of this answer, because they don't change the real issue at hand.

Math Tangent

The basic reason that engines typically take about the same amount of time to consider each move is that the size of the decision tree increases exponentially with depth (k).

Consider the starting position. The top of the tree (k=0) is one node. There are twenty possible first moves for White, so there are twenty nodes at depth k=1. Then, Black also has twenty available moves for each of White's options: so at k=2, there are 20 * 20 = 400 possible positions! And it only gets worse as the players develop their pieces!

For example, let's pretend that there are always twenty possible moves for each player at any given time2. You instruct the computer to look ahead five moves for each player (ten ply).
Let's look at the size of the brute-force tree at each level. For fun, we'll also look at the total number of positions in the tree (from the top to the given level).

Ply |    Positions   |  Total Tree Size
----------------------------------------
 0  | 1              | 1
 1  | 20             | 21
 2  | 400            | 421
 3  | 8000           | 8421
 4  | 160000         | 168421
 5  | 3200000        | 3368421
 6  | 64000000       | 67368421
 7  | 1280000000     | 1347368421
 8  | 25600000000    | 26947368421
 9  | 512000000000   | 538947368421
10  | 10240000000000 | 10778947368421

The result of each level being exponentially larger than the previous level is that the size of the whole tree is dominated by the bottom level. Consider the example above: the last level alone contains ten trillion nodes. The entire rest of the tree only contains five hundred billion. The tenth ply contains about 95% of the nodes in the entire tree (this is actually true at each level). In practice, what this means is that all of the search time is spent evaluating the "last" move.

Answer

So how does this relate to your question? Well, let's say the computer is set to ten ply, as above, and further it "remembers" the results of its evaluations. It calculates a move, plays it, and then you make a move. Now two moves have been made, so it prunes all the positions from memory related to the moves that didn't happen, and is left with a tree that goes down the remaining eight moves that it already calculated: 26,947,368,421 positions!

All right! So we only need to calculate the last two ply! Using our 20-moves-at-each-depth estimate, the total number of moves we need to calculate here is still over ten trillion. The positions we already calculated only account for 2.5% of the possibilities! So even by caching last move's results, the best we can hope for is a 2.5% increase in speed! At heart, this is why even if your program caches previous results, you don't usually see a significant speedup between moves (excepting cases when the computer finds a forced mate or something, of course!).

Simplification Disclaimer

There is a lot of complexity involved in this question, which is why I linked to the programming wiki at the very top and only attempted to explain the answer in broad mathematical terms. In reality, programs do generally cache parts of the tree from move to move, and there are other reasons why that's insufficient on its own--some simple reasons (e.g. a certain line might look good out to eight moves, but ends with a back-rank mate on move nine!) and many highly complicated ones (generally related to various clever pruning methods). So the computer must keep looking further ahead in an attempt to avoid making bad assumptions based on the previous move's cut-off depth.

1I'm not going to get into heuristic functions here, because that's its own incredibly complex area, but there are frequently some gains that can be achieved via position caching schemes here as well.

2An average branching factor of 20 is probably much too low.


Did Bobby Fischer castle with a pawn promoted to a rook?

There was a time when the FIDE rules didn't specify that a king and rook
need to be on the same rank in order to castle.  This meant that, assuming
the other requirements for castling were met, it was legal for White to
castle with a rook on e8 (or Black with a rook on e1), provided that rook
had never moved (which could only happen if it was a promoted pawn).
This interpretation was never intended, of course, and the wording has since
been fixed.

I've never heard of Fischer (or any other player) taking advantage of
this glitch in the rules, but it was used in at least one chess problem.


Does deliberately knocking the king over end the game?

Yes, players often tip their king over to indicate that they are resigning.


I would not go so far as to call it a "blunder", but White is getting lots of compensation for the pawn. They get a big lead in development and Black's queen can be attacked.
Here's one way it could go:
[FEN ""]

1. e4 e5 2. d4 Qh4 3. Nf3 Qxe4+ 4. Be2 exd4 5. O-O Nc6 6. Re1 Be7 7. Na3 Nf6 (7... a6 8. Bxa6) 8. Nb5 O-O 9. Nxc7 Rb8 10. Bb5 Qg6 11. Bxc6 Bd8 12. Ne5 Qf5 13. Bf3 Bxc7 14. g4 Nxg4 (14... Qe6 15. Ng6) 15. Bxg4 Qf6 16. Nd3 *

It's also worth pointing out that White can keep things nice and simple if they choose, and not give up the pawn:
[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. d4 Qh4 3. dxe5 Qxe4+ 4. Qe2

Furthermore, if black makes the mistake to move 3.g3

The computer is never going to care about what happens if your opponent makes a mistake - it always assumes your opponent will play the best move.


How do you play if both sides get a queen?

considering my 41.75 per cent winning chance, how do I have to play in order to defeat my opponent if he/she and I both get a queen?

First of all you need to understand what is meant by "41.75% winning chance". It does NOT mean that your chances of winning are 41.75%. What it means is that in 41.75% of the games considered the game ended in a win and in the other 58.25% it ended in a draw.
Before heading for such an endgame you should first calculate what the result will be because it is pretty hard and fast unless one side blunders.
Basically (provided no blunders) it is always a draw unless one of two conditions apply:

The side on move has a forced sequence of moves leading to checkmate
The side on move has a forced sequence of moves leading to win of the opponent's queen

The problem is that if the side on move is not in check then they usually have the possibility of an almost endless series of checks on the opponent's king.
Here black is in check and can force an immediate draw by blocking the check with the queen and simultaneously giving check with Qb7+.
However even if black played Kb6 there is no forced checkmate for white and provided black doesn't blunder (by putting the king on the a8-h1 diagonal, the back rank or the h file allowing a skewer check) there is no chance of losing the queen. So it is going to be a draw.


Solving a problem from a Jan Prezewoznik book

The nature of the problem that this position presents is first this: to correctly assess the situation on the board, and in particular to recognize the immediate and impending problems White is facing. As this answer will show, there is a lot of concrete analyzing one can do from this position, but the point I want to stress is that just answering that first question (and with only simple calculating) goes a very long way toward narrowing down what moves are even reasonable to consider, and can ultimately lead to 1.Rxf7+ as mentioned in Dag's comment above. What follows is one rough path of thought that one might take when facing this position in a game, and some analysis follows below.

Obviously White's queen is attacked, and something must be done about that, so that already cuts down our options considerably. There is a free rook on offer via 1.Qxh8, so what happens if we just take it? The thing to note there is that after the direct 1...Rb5, all three of Black's pieces are bearing down on the white king, while the four white pieces are all unable to help defend. It turns out that to stave off mate there, White would need to shed a losing amount of material. Once one sees this 1...Rb5 threat at all, it's pretty clear that any of 1.Qh2/Qg3/Qf4 leave the queen similarly out of play such that White is unable to defend properly against 1...Rb5.

1.Qe5 is a different case, as it can potentially serve a defensive purpose (supporting Bd5 to nullify the black bishop) and has some bite to it by keeping the queen in the vicinity of the black king. In its favor, Black could no longer respond with 1...Rb5? without the tables turning (see analysis below). Since e5 was the only remaining safe square for the queen, we might feel satisfied with that choice.

But here we should do a little concrete calculating: instead of 1...Rb5?, the move 1...c4 unveils a new attack on the queen and threatens 1...c3; because of that, it's almost game over by that point. But 1.Qe5 seemed like the only place we could put the queen, so we might need to bite the bullet and answer 1...c4 best we can. There the options would be truly limited, and the only way to keep the game going at all from there would be avoiding ...c3 by stirring things up with the desperado sacrifice 2.Rxf7+. (As noted in the analysis, Black actually does need to take care in those complications, and so though this whole approach is objectively not the best from the starting position, it might be a decent practical play.)

With all that laid out, though, we could now at least ask ourselves, what if we try the same complicating idea from the start? The play will be similar to after 1.Qe5 c4 2.Rxf7+, and at this point the only way to decide between that path and 1.Rxf7+ is to bear down and try to calculate the consequences of each (as in the analysis tree below). But note that we're able to get down to these two basic options just by looking a couple of moves deep in combination with a general sense of danger (e.g. our pieces out of play while our opponent's pieces are all attacking). If all goes right in our calculations, we'll find that in fact 1.Rxf7+ gives at least a perpetual (which isn't trivial to work out in full from the start); but again, we're forced into the idea from more general considerations before even getting bogged down in variations.

[FEN "1Q5r/1p2kppp/1q2b3/r1p3P1/p2pB3/P2P3P/1PP1P3/1KR2R2 w - - 0 1"]

1.Rxf7+
    ( 1.Qe5 c4 2.Rxf7+ Kxf7 3.Rf1+ Ke8
        ( 3...Ke7 $2 4.Qxg7+ Kd6 5.Qxh8 c3 6.Qf8+ Kc7 7.Qe7+ Bd7 8.Qb4 $10
        )
    4.Qb8+ Qd8
        ( 4...Kd7 $2 5.Qxh8 c3 6.Qxg7+ Kd6 7.Qf8+ Kc7 8.Qe7+ Bd7 9.Qb4 $10
        )
    5.Qxb7 Qd6 {White has no perpetual, and ultimately the extra black
    rook will tell against the extra white pawns.} )
1...Bxf7
    ( 1...Kxf7 2.Rf1+ Ke7 3.Qxh8 Rb5 4.Qxg7+ Kd6 5.Qf8+ Kd7 6.Rf7+ Bxf7 7.
    Qxf7+ Kc8 8.Qe8+ Kc7 9.Qe7+ Kb8 10.Qe8+ Ka7 11.Ka1 Rxb2 12.Qxa4+ Kb8
    13.Qe8+ Ka7 $10 )
2.Qe5+ Qe6
    ( 2...Kd7 3.Bf5+ $16 )
    ( 2...Be6 3.Qxg7+ Kd6 4.Qxh8 Rb5 5.Qf8+ Kd7 6.Qg7+ $10 )
3.Qc7+ Ke8 4.Qb8+
    ( 4.Qxa5 Qa2# )
4...Kd7 5.Qxb7+ $10 *


What is the best chess site for strong players?

Honestly I believe that Chess.com is the best site for strong players and to gently and steadily climb up the ladder according to your rating. What I have witnessed in Chess.com is that there is a background algorithm which works for everyone and when you ask for a game it would exactly pair you up in a range which would be +400 & -400 rating points. You can even customize it according to your wish.

The benefit is if you are a 1800+ player, it would show up on the dashboard and other players would also be observing your game which is quite encouraging and you never get someone who would be too much below your rating.

Moreover, the site has infinite material resources about openings and middlegame understanding from top-level players, which makes it a great deal if you want serious progress. Even there are a lot of advertisements and strong players play there regularly, the UI is also superb.


Options for breaking the Giuoco Pianissimo wide open?

After 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc5 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. d3, you could continue with 4. ... Nf6 and aim to follow this up with an immediate 5. ... d5 if you want to open the center. For instance, play could proceed with 5. O-O d5 6. exd5 Nxd5 7. Nc3 Nxc3 8. bxc3 O-O, and you would have a rather open game.

But White need not allow this, and would likely instead play the natural 5. Nc3, bringing us into the Italian Four Knights, and stalling the idea of a ... d5 push by Black. The thing here is, White has concentrated a lot of attention on the d5 square precisely so that it is difficult for Black to play this freeing ... d5 move, which would immediately relieve Black of any hint of a cramped position. Black would now need to do some prep work in order to make this central advance happen, if that is what she wants. She might play e.g. O-O, d6, Be6 first, so that the move ... d5 is properly supported. Of course White will be playing his own moves in the meantime, and if he wants to keep things quiet for a while, he can often make it so that Black can only upset this at her own peril. But with the sort preparatory moves I've indicated, ultimately White cannot prevent you from getting ... d5 in and opening things up in a safe way.

I'm going to speak below to something more general that your question brings to mind, as it might be useful. Feel free to ignore if not, though.

One point worth making here is that some games just will be, to use your words, more "slow and boring" than others will. It's all well and good to prefer more open, dynamic, active games. But it can be a bad idea to insist upon a "faster" and more open game if doing so means recklessly putting oneself in danger, and it often can mean just that. An alternative approach (and one that will go far in leading you out of your beginner phase) is to try to see the slower, more closed phases of your games as not so boring after all, and realize that a lot can be going on "under the hood," so to speak. (Besides, the moves you play during "slower" phases are crucial to your success/failure once the position does open up.)

To illustrate this idea (very lightly), suppose our game proceeded, after 5. Nc3, by 5. ... h6 6. Be3 Bb6 7. O-O O-O 8. Nd5 d6 9. a4 Nxd5 10. Bxd5, and Black, desperate to open the game via an ... f5 push, plays 10. ... Kh8 in order to get out of the pin from the bishop on d5. White responds with 11. Qd2, and we have the following position:

So far, a pair of knights has been exchanged, but all the pawns (and everything else) are still on the board, and things have indeed been rather closed and quiet. This doesn't mean interesting things haven't been happening, and in particular, White has developed his pieces well so that it still isn't a good idea for Black to try and open the position without further preparation: 11. ... f5? is met harshly by 12. Bxh6, which wins a pawn because of 12. ... gxh6?? 13. Qxh6#. Instead, Black could play 11. ... Bxe3 12. fxe3 f5, and she has finally achieved the kind of opening of the position that she has been after.

My main point: sometimes one simply must be patient in chess, or else accept the consequences. Wanting to blast open the position only because, well, you always want to blast open the position, is going to lead you into a lot of trouble and missed opportunities. Sometimes you will find yourself in positions where it would be to your objective advantage to keep the position closed (maybe your opponent has a very cramped position that will ultimately prove fatal), but if you were to always blindly favor opening the game up, you would miss out on that kind of winning approach - or worse, you'll open yourself up to the kind of punishment illustrated above - and you will ultimately have worse results than you rightly should. Just something to keep in mind as you continue to explore the game.


Philidor Defence - White's attack on the center

The most popular (and arguably the most precise) move order for black to play the Philidor defence is 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5. Alternative move orders are, for example, 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 or 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nbd7 followed by 4....e5.

According to the Game Database of ChessTempo, the most popular continuation is 4.Nf3 Nbd7 5.Bc4 Be7 6.0-0 0-0. However, 3.f3, 4.dxe5, 4.Nge2 and 5.g4 are also interesting alternatives for white.

There are a couple of repertoire books on the Philidor, for instance by GM Bauer (2007) and IM Barksy (2010).
If you are interested in the Philidor from white's perspective, the book by GM Negi (2014) can be recommended.

      [FEN ""]
      [StartPly "1"]

      1.e4 d6 (1...e5 2.Nf3 d6) 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 (3.f3) e5 (3...Nbd7) 4.Nf3 (4.dxe5)(4.Nge2) Nbd7 5.Bc4 (5.g4) Be7 6.O-O O-O


Present
2nd Chess 960 World cup to be played on Feb 15th,2013. The winner qualified as World Championship Candidates.
This link shows the schedule for the 3rd and 4th Chess 960 World cup.

Chess960 news from the US CHess federation website. Talks of past and current events.

Past
Here is information about a past international FiNet Chess 960 open which was won by Alexander Grischuk of Russia.

Chess960 World Rapid Chess Championship
Nakamura simply won the first three games to become new World Champion – in a very convincing manner. Link also has games information and pictures as well. This is his website which has the blog and twitter account which can hopefully guide you to what events he participated in the past as well as plans to.

Chess960 World League 2012 by Chess.com
Team Armenia won this. Here is more information

Here is the Chess960 World League 2013 Information

Additionally searching on Chessbase.com would yield more news of past championships. chess960frc.blogspot.com is a specific blog on Chess960.


How does one prepare for a big chess tournament?

Eat your carbs, get up at a time such that you'll be most alert during the games, maybe play a few blitz games to go through your opening repertoire. Move around according to your level of physical activity, because you're going to be sedantary for a long time.

Playing long, proper games is exhausting if you're really focused throughout, so you don't want to play any extra games just before the event. Reading chess books at a time so close to a tournament has its parallels with cramming before an exam: it pays off if you're faced with something relevant, but could cost some precious mental energy.

Be rested and stop training long enough so that you feel ready on the day of the event. For some, one day is enough, others may need over a week.

On an indirect note, fatigue usually starts to set in after 4 rounds or so; physical endurance is actually important here. While it's a little too late to address this now, if you find yourself making incredibly careless mistakes in the later rounds, you'd want to consider adding a physical part to your regime if you're serious about the game.


When checkmate is impossible in a position

What you're asking goes by the name of "Dead Reckoning" in the domain of problems and retro problems.

(1) There isn't an algorithm I know of except the one mentioned by zaifrun: brute force. The reason is because you can find pretty amazing positions...

(2) Check out many problems relying on Dead Reckoning at Andrew Buchanan's website.
Also there are problem databases (like this one) where you can run a search for 'DR' in the stipulation.

A concrete example I recall is this one, which I reproduce here. By Andrew Buchanan, in StrateGems 2002. White to move; what was the last move in this position? (The position is dead but the last move made must have been from a legal and live position - so it's uniquely determinable.)

Bb1k1b2/bKp1p1p1/1pP1P1P1/1P6/p5P1/P7/8/8 w - - 0 1

(3) Even grandmasters have technically made moves in a dead position! See François Labelle's page for examples.


Black castling long in the Sicilian is a rare thing indeed. I can think of a few reasons:

Black castling long is very rare in chess in general, only a few slow going openings (Caro-Kann, Scandinavian) feature it in general. It takes longer to prepare for long castling than for short castling, the king is less safe on c8 than on g8, white moves first so it's even riskier for black than for white.
In the Sicilian, white generally gets quick development and an attack so it should be even more dangerous.
Black has moved 1...c5, making the queenside less fit as a home for a king.
Besides, one of the ideas of the Sicilian is to play along that c-file with a rook on c8, doesn't combine well with castling long.

So in general black only goes queenside if white has a full-force attack on the kingside and the center, and there is basically nowhere else to go.

I can think of one exception right now in the c3-Sicilian, where the queens are off the board and black can castle with check:

[FEN ""]

1.e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 4.d4 Nc6 5.Nf3 Bg4
6.Na3 e5!? 7.dxe5 Qxd1+ 8.Kxd1 O-O-O+ *

and lines similar to that.


Is this endgame position a theoretical win or draw?

I think that the position is a theoretical draw.

While Freeman's answer is quite good, but I think he has overlooked that 1. Qxd2 leads to a clearly drawn position because of Black's amazing response 1 ...Rb3!!

[FEN "8/3Q2pk/5p1p/5P2/5K1P/p3r3/b2n2P1/8 w - - 0 1"]

1. Qxd2 Rb3!! 2. Qxa2 Rb2!! 3. Qxa3 Rxg2

Now I don't see any way for White to win. Black has created an impenetrable fortress and white's queen can do nothing.

The 2400+ rated player Alexey Kuzmin missed the move 1... Rb3 in the game, playing instead 1... Re5? which gives a theoretically losing position. All the engines I tried also miss the sequence 1... Rb3 and 2... Rb2 and instead play a losing move.

I suggest that if there is a forced win for White then we must start looking at 1.Kxe3. This move doesn't win as much material as 1. Qxd2, but it leads to a more dynamic position. White can prevent Black from promoting thanks to black's wrong-colored bishop that is unable to protect the a1 square. White can also threaten to advance the g-pawn to attempt to disrupt Black's wall of pawns.

However a computer analysis of 1. Kxd3 seems to show that despite White's material advantage Black can still get a draw.

I'm no expert, so there may be a mistake in my analysis, so please correct me if I'm wrong.


Why did I lose on time with three pawns versus a knight? Shouldn't it be a draw?

Draw with insufficient material is covered in article 9.6:

  The game is drawn when a position is reached from which a checkmate cannot occur by any possible series of legal moves, even with the most unskilled play.

With a given material, it is possible to construct a checkmate (assuming your cooperation or horrible blunders), so it is not a draw.


Are there positions which cannot be properly analyzed by any computer?

8/3k4/2p5/p2p2p1/P2P2P1/2KB4/8/8 w - - 0 1

In this position the engine gives advantage of around +2.5, but as you can see, this position is a draw as there is no way for white king to enter into Black's side of the board to penetrate any of the black pawns as the black pawns control all the accessible squares which are b4, c4, e4, f4 and h4. Even though white has an extra bishop it can only attack 2 of black pawns which are on c6 and d5. Taking the d5 pawn is recaptured by c6 pawn or taking the c6 first can be defended by the black king.

This is just an example of a position where an engine can give unfair advantage to a particular side though it isn't such. Here I'm not supposed to say the engine is making a mistake because it is programmed in such a way that it sees an extra bishop and with limited depth which is below 50 it says white has the advantage of extra bishop with no strings attached, hence gives you +2.5, but if you let it think up to the depth of 50 from this particular position (for which engine might take long time), it then shows it's a draw (0.00) because of the 50 move rule which is programmed into the engines.

With many examples as such, a simple concept of long term strategy can differentiate human brains from engines. As said by @jknappan in the first answer- openings are very hard for engines to evaluate, because the engines are purely based on mathematical calculations and it does not have it's own opening repertoire and humans do have because of the long term strategy.
A queens gambit or Sicilian is studied for a long time by great chess players and they understand what kind of middlegame it will turn into and how then it can turn into a playable advantage in the endgame ( unlike the above position though by having an advantage of 2.5 and yet not able to achieve a win in the endgame). These kind of long term strategies is not thinkable by chess engines.
One more concept of bishop pair can be taken into consideration to explain the difference between human thinking and chess engines. A good chess player would not wanna give up his bishop pair in the opening unless it gives him a very good advantage. But a computer would suggest you to play and give up the bishop pair even when it's calculations gives the slightest of 0.01 worth more of marginal advantage from its second line!
These are some of the positional strategies chess engines might miss to analyze but human studies do not.


Does a chess position exists where one player has insufficient material, and at the same time has a forced mate in 2?

After white plays the first move in the forced sequence, black's best move (with USCF rules) would be to let the clock run out because it would be a draw.

No, it wouldn't be a draw if there was a forced mate and the losing side ran the clock out. Under USCF rule 14E:

The game is drawn even when a player exceeds the time limit if one of the following conditions exists as of the most recently determined legal move:

14E2. King and bishop or king and knight. Opponent has only king and bishop or king and knight, and does not have a forced win.

Since in your scenario the opponent does have a forced win, this does not apply, and the side that runs the clock down will lose.


Guide to understanding engine analysis output

I'm not sure what you're asking.
Chess analysis programs go through all possible moves for some number of (half-)moves starting from a given board position. They evaluate the static board position at the 'depth' to which they're set to analyze, and return a score for the position. This is not how any human plays the game, of course.
When the engine recommends a move, it is indicating that that move got the highest score among other moves possible from that position. Its static board evaluator might know about control of the center, or control of more space, or having two bishops, but it knows about them in terms of evaluating a single board position and scoring it, not in terms of deciding that that principle applies in a given situation and making moves on that basis. It's a subtle difference, I guess, but very real to the programmers.
Other than that, you get negative scores for Black advantage, positive for White, the numbers increase for more advantage.
In the end, about all you can do with the output of chess analysis is see the moves they regard as 'best' (and maybe 2nd and 3rd best) from any position and try to figure out how you would have known to make those moves and not some other moves. You can try other moves and figure out what would have happened, why they are worse.
If you have another question, can you make it more specific?


Version 3.5: Under the "List of Moves" Panel/TabControl there is a toolbar. The last component on the toolbar is the "Edit" button. The tooltip tells you when this button is down, the engines do not respond and you can enter your moves.