Short and long term plans in a closed game in the Sicilian Defense

Before we talk planning, you can see from the diagram arrows that the tactical line 12.Nxd3 followed by c4 is available.   A trade of c&b pawns for Whites e&d pawns = the center is Blacks; not to mention the monster on b7 is unopposed.

On to abstract thinking:

  "I considered moving a knight to g4 with the idea of exchanging with
  the dark-coloured bishop but such exchange would only give a pawn on
  e3 which would challenge the control of the dark squares."

This line of thinking is extremely flawed!

Trading a knight for a bishop is rarely a bad idea.  Doubling the opponents pawns is also rarely a bad idea.
In this particular case it is a good idea!  Remember, doubled pawns have difficulty with mobility, and are therefore inherently weak.  What do you think controls more dark squares, the Bishop on e3 or a pawn on e3?

Now, in general when the center is fluid, you need to be thinking about the center.   "He who controls the spice controls the universe." and he who controls the center drives the battle.

So apart from the tactics available your planning should be around finishing development with an eye to conquering the center.

This position is so dynamic and full of tactics that it requires more concrete calculation than a long-term plan.

Edit due to comments -- more on fxe3 doubled pawns:
With resulting pawns on e3, e4, d3; yes the pawn on e3 controls f4 nicely, but look at the cluster -- it can't move!

The e4 pawn is attacked twice (so the d3 pawn is stuck) and it's advance is suicide.  Therefore the e3 pawn isn't going anywhere either.

So now black can make long-term plans.  Piling up behind the c-pawn to play c5-c4 can result in White getting double-isolated-pawns on the efile.   Or setting up a battery of Bb6 and Qa7 hitting the weak e3 pawn...  There are various ways for Black to attack due to Whites weakened structure.  Now what can White do?  Looks like just defend.  His knights have no active squares and his remaining Bishop is thwarted.  White is clearly worse here.


4…e4 should actually be the least attractive option for black. But you should probably know a bit about it:

[Title "Falkbeer Countergambit"]
[fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 3. exd5 e4 4. d3 Nf6 5. dxe4 Nxe4 6. Nf3 Bc5 7.Qe2! Bf2
8. Kd1 Qxd5 9.Nfd2!

The checks 7…Bf2 and 8…Qd5 look threatening, but now white is going to win material because of the threat Nc3.

[Title "Falkbeer Countergambit"]
[fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]

1. e4 e5 2. f4 d5 3. exd5 e4 4. d3 Nf6 5. dxe4 Nxe4 6. Nf3 Bc5 7.Qe2! O-O
8. Qxe4 Re8 9.Ne5 f6 10.d6

10.d6 is actually not the strongest continuation, but the threat to pick up the bishop with Qc4+ or to play Bc4+ is quite tricky to meet in a blitz game. Lots of ways to win quickly with white (for example 10…cd is already losing).

The general idea of 7.Qe2 is to neutralise the Bc5 with Be3 (i.e. 7…Bf5 8.Nc3 Qe7 9.Be3 or 7…Qe7 8.Be3), which usually leads to a better endgame for white.

And if you play somebody who knows his theory: The offbeat way to play against the Falkbeer would be 6.Be3 with a nice exchange sac as mainline: 6.Be3 Qh4 7.g3 Nxg3 8.Nf3 Qh5 9.hxg3 Qxh1


Plans for black when White castles short in the Sicilian dragon

Pretty much any open Sicilian when both sides have castled King-side Black can seek counter-play against the center by undermining the Knight on c3 with b5-b4 ideas or if allowed Rxc3 exchange sacs.

Also thematic is trying to play d5.   Bent Larsen said something to the effect that the Sicilian was a positional trick where you trade a wing-pawn for a center pawn, then with 2 center pawns vs one you will be able to eventually take over the center.

I haven't seen games where Black has prospects of a king-side attack in a Dragon where White castled King-side.  Usually White is trying to attack there with f2-f4 etc.


Which side has the advantage in an Armageddon tiebreak game?

Armageddon Chess is a fair tie-break system only if the two players bid for how much time Black should have.

Foolishly most times I see Armageddon specified there is no bidding. Instead the Tournament Organizer gazes into his magic oracle which tells him the exactly correct fair amount of time to give to Black (the T.O. is careful to never let us see the oracle for ourselves). This no-bid foolishness amazes me.


Must a player play tactical openings to learn tactics?

My chess instructor told me:

Tactics
Tactics
Tactics

I think you can win a lot of games at the sub-2000 level with raw tactical skill.  Thereafter, positional considerations start becoming important.

Regarding the opening, I don't think it much matters.  Play the type of opening that makes you happy.


What are pros and cons around banning castling?

It would certainly allow for more attacks due to kings being stuck in the center, but fundamentally changing the game, which in a way dumbs it down, is not good. It would be less complex.

I also do not want to think that I spent 40 years of my life studying something only to have it changed. I do not want the rug pulled out from under me like that.


What's the oldest age at which a grandmaster played their first rated game?

This isn't an answer to the exact question posed, but it may nonetheless help.
Lajos Portisch learnt to play aged 12.
Akiba Rubinstein learnt at 14 or 16. (Sources vary.)
Harry Pillsbury learnt at 16.


Does anyone have the 1996 correspondence game between De Groot-Simmelink?

This question seems to have been answered by TD in ChessPub Forum. I post the answer below:

[fen ""]
[Date "1996"]
[Round "?"]
[White "De Groot, Adrianus Dingeman"]
[Black "Simmelink, Joop Theo"]
[Source "ChessBase"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 Nc6 3. Nc3 e5 4. d5 Ne7 5. h4 Neg8 6. a3 a6 7. Nf3 Ng4 8. Ng5 f5 9. Qc2 Bc5 10. e3 Ne7 11. Be2 Nf6 12. b4 Ba7 13. Bb2 h6 14. Nf3 d6 15. c5 e4 16. cxd6 Qxd6 17. Nd2 O-O 18. Rd1 b5 19. Bxb5 axb5 20. Nxb5 Qd7 21. Nxc7 Rb8 22. d6 Nc6 23. Nc4 f4 24. Bxf6 fxe3 25. fxe3 Qg4 26. Nd5 Be6 27. Ne7+ Nxe7 28. dxe7 Qg3+ 29. Qf2 Qxf2+ 30. Kxf2 Rxf6+ 31. Ke1 Kf7 32. Ne5+ Ke8 33. Nc6 Bd7 34. Nxb8 Bxb8 35. Rd4 Ra6 36. Rf1 Bg3+ 37. Kd2 Bc6 38. Rc1 Bb7 39. Rc5 Kxe7 40. Ra5 Rxa5 41. bxa5 Bc7 42. a6 Bxa6 43. Rxe4+ Kf6 44. Rd4 1/2-1/2


Does everybody has a different natural ability to improve in chess?

Different people have different abilities for chess, just like for any other activity. Some people are "gifted", others aren't. Your chances also diminish with age, but almost every human can make it past 1560 (or 2000 for that matter)
That being said, you won't improve much in just one month. Consistency is much more important than intensity. Try making a reasonable amount of puzzles every week rather than doing thousands of them one month only to burn out for the next.
Also note that tactics skills are the most important aspect you need to train, but not the only one. Have you tried contancting a coach? Even if you can't afford it on a regular basis, it may be good for you to book a season and define a training plan.


Knowing that AlphaZero beat Stockfish 8 (28 wins, 0 losses, and 72 draws), what would AlphaZero's rating be?

Here's an online calculator for this. 28 wins, 0 losses, and 72 draws is an elo difference of exactly 100.

Do remember that this score +28 =72 -0 score was against a handicapped version of Stockfish. In the full paper, AlphaZero scored +155 =839 -6, which is an elo difference of 52.


According to the online manual for the app,

  After each engine's move, the output [d/s]eval indicates a search depth d, a selective search depth s, and an evaluation in centipawns eval from white's perspective. For instance, the output [4/8]-103 indicates that the engine searched 4 plies ahead, with some variations even 8 plies ahead, and thinks that black is ahead by about a pawn.


How would you play this opening as black?

Well, Black has some weaknesses, is a little behind in development, and is down a pawn. The position isn't great, but things aren't hopeless.
The first thing I'd do is play Nxc4. I assume the knight was placed on a5 to do just that. White gets some doubled isolated pawns and loses a potential attacker in the bishop. It seems like a no-brainer.
Next, I'd develop the bishops with Bb7 and probably Bc5.
We probably need to deal with the pawn on e5 before very long. It's hard to develop the g8 knight with that pawn there. While playing fxe5 is possible, I don't like inviting the White knight to e5. It may be better to play d6 instead to attack the pawn from the other side, depending on how the game goes.
Black also needs to decide where to castle - the middle is too open to leave the king there for long. Both sides have their pros and cons. The movement of the f-pawn has weakened the kingside and White will likely put their remaining bishop on b2 to attack the kingside, but the queenside has a half-open b-file and it wouldn't take much for the c4 pawn to go to c5 to try and crack Black's queenside. Overall, I'd probably pick the kingside. An opened f-file might even be good for the rook after castling.
Obviously, any plan may need to be adjusted based on how White plays.


Game engine versus engine from a given position

It’s also possible within Chessbase’s Fritz UI, you just save the desired sequence of moves as a database and then define that database as the opening database for the engine match.


This reddit page has a ton of information, coming from a strong player.

Excerpts (z means "crazyhouse") :

  Opening
  The standard rules apply: develop your pieces, control the center, and get your king to safety. But there are some opening ideas uniquely emphasized in z:

  Flank pawns should usually be kept where they stand in the opening. Openings like the Bird or Dutch exposing this square are extremely dubious. Even openings like the English and Sicilian aren't to be recommended as they weaken the c2/c7 square respectively. Diagonal pieces can be dropped to exploit the weakened color complex.
  Guard the tender f2/f7 square from sacs so that your king isn't drawn out early.
  Pawn gambits, especially those in which you delay the recapture, are almost without exception a bad idea; your opponent can accept and then simply drop the extra pawn to stabilize.
  Note that getting your king to safety does not always mean castling: sometimes it means keeping it in the center and fortifying the tender points of egress.

  Middlegame
  The middlegame is almost always where the game is won or lost. This is where you should look to start exchanging pieces, breaking with your pawns, building up pressure on vulnerable squares, or cracking open your opponent's defenses with careful pawn drops or piece sacs. The midgame is rapidly achieved in crazyhouse, so be ready to join battle straight away!

  Strategy Pointers and other midgame motifs

  On both offense and defense, be aware of positional sacrifices: knights and bishops or even major pieces can often be sac'd to expose the king in a manner which might be considered unsound in chess but which in z is very powerful. Similarly, a few points of material can be sacrificed to gain a foothold in enemy territory.
  Scan for weaknesses: holes where pawns can be dropped, pieces vulnerable to a fork, weakly defended kingside squares, overloaded defensive pieces. Identify a weakness and then concentrate all your drops on that weakness.
  If you identify a weakness but your pocket is empty, look to force exchanges. If your own position is weak, avoid exchanges until you're more solid.
  Defend pawn drops on your kingside: know how to react to p@h3/h6. The knight is an excellent defensive piece in this scenario. [...]
  Knights should be kept on hand until you can drop them to attack weak squares around the enemy's king, place extra pressure on a pin, or drop into a fork.
  A knight and a queen is the most powerful complementary attacking combination because they each cover squares the other doesn't. Knights can be used to place un-blockable checks, and queens can be used to drop into mates.
  (and a ton more)

  Common Mating Patterns
  [...]

  My Opening Systems
  (see this answer for an excerpt)


XiangQi (Chinese chess) textbook or video tutorial

The book I learned from is Chinese Chess: An Introduction to China's Ancient Game of Strategy by H. T. Lau.

The book is mostly examples and exercises. There could have been more explanatory text.


Is exchanging a knight for a bishop and open the game a good strategy for beginners?

No, it is not a good strategy (in any situation).

Each game is different and it is not a good idea to follow a strict strategy like this. Even in open positions there are situations where knights can become very strong. Take for instance the following position which is inspired by the Sicilian Najdorf (so would satisfy your semi-open requirement). The knight is very strong and cannot easily be removed from its dominant position. The black bishop on the other hand is stuck defending the pawn on d6 and does not have many options in general.

r2q1rk1/1p2bppp/p2p4/3Np3/4P3/8/PPP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 w - - 1 13

It is not possible to generalize that bishops are always stronger. You really need to analyze the position you have and base your strategy on this. A few things to look for:

badly placed pieces - which you could improve
weaknesses in the pawn structure - which could be attacked
open files - which you could occupy
more space - which you could take advantage of
better development - which you could take advantage of (typically by opening up the position)
insecure king - which you could attack

And of course you should analyze this for both sides in order to be aware of possible plans of your opponent.


A 50-move-rule claim turned out to be incorrect - can the arbiter punish me?

Yes
According to the FIDE Laws of Chess

9.5.3 If the claim is found to be incorrect, the arbiter shall add two minutes to the opponent’s remaining thinking time. Then the game shall continue. If the claim was based on an intended move, this move must be made in accordance with Articles 3 and 4


How often do hash collisions occur in modern chess engines?

Generally the answer is, that there has been a patch from some developer of the community in the past, which happened to be an improvement over the status quo after tight statistically sound testing and this is usually accepted without questions, even if the change appears illogical to some.
It is known that a high collision rate must not be detremial for a chess engine. Bob Hyatt (author of "crafty") had written a paper about it a long time ago (https://craftychess.com/hyatt/collisions.html).
Stockfish uses a variable sized hash table (cluster granularity) with clusters of 32 bytes having 3 entries of size 10 byte each(https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/src/tt.h#L68). Each cluster entry stores only 16 bit of the original zobrist key (https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/src/tt.h#L51).
Another similar point is, that stockfish uses no locks to access the table, technically that means it is racy, that means 100% undefined behaviour. Every entry is carefully validated before use instead and given that a racy access simply returns an potential erroneus value, this would work even if every hash table access would return random numbers, at least this is the idea. As a side note, if there is some pedagocical language lawyer around reading this, please don't tell us stockfish could format our hard drives, we know it and are awaiting it with composure.
The first one to show this technique was AFAIK again Hyatt (https://craftychess.com/hyatt/hashing.html).
We see that wrong hash values are absolutely no problem for stockfish, all that matters is what happens most of the time. All entries are reevaluated fully at the next iteration and can only cost search time.


Computer endgame strength without tablebases

First, I'm not convinced that engines are necessarily weak without their books.  Without an opening book, modern engines might not play the most testing lines, or lines that would get them into a position where they thrive, but any top engine will still crush any human GM without an opening book.

As an interesting aside, if you leave your engine on for a while, it usually finds the Spanish Four Knights as the best line from the starting position, but I digress...

In the endgame, it totally depends on the engine and the position.  Without tablebases, engines might not know that a rook pawn and wrong bishop is only a draw.  If the programmers added that exception, then they'll figure it out, but otherwise, they might trade down thinking that they'll win with an extra bishop and pawn only to draw via the 50 move rule.

In more elementary endgames, like KBNvK, the stronger side will almost always win.  The longest mating sequence is 33 moves if my memory serves.  Most engines will stumble onto a forced mate in that time because their heuristics will have them make good moves that get closer to mate (and they can probably see 15-20 moves deep).

In terms of KQvKR, the stronger side will almost always win against a human.  Humans are pretty bad at defending this position, and the computer will instantly see ways to pick off a loose rook.  Against another computer, it's a little bit harder, but as Wes says in his answer, it is still likely that the stronger side would win (the Philidor maneuver is only ~5 moves long, plenty short enough for the engine to see it) given enough time.


Are blindfold players allowed to look at the list of moves?

They memorize the position on each table; In this kind of event, they simply don't have the time to spend to much time on each position. Also trying to re-create the position like this is not practical when you play blindfold chess

If you want to know (almost) everything on blindfold play, check out this great book on
http://www.blindfoldchess.net/

Cheers!


If your rating is 1900, this game must have been quite disappointing. But it also seems to me that Black played well above 1600-level.

7...c6 is a rare move, but not so bad that you should look for an immediate refutation. 8.Qc2, intending to open the center with e2-e4 (either fast or after b3-Bb2) is indeed very logical. If Black goes for d6-d5, he is one whole tempo down compared to the Stonewall with Be7 (which is already considered a bit passive for Black); then your plan could be Rb1,b4-b5, Bf4, Rfc1 with initiative on the Q-side. If Black refrains from d6-d5, you open the e-file with e2-e4, build pressure on e6 and fianchetto your dark squared bishop. Black only plan to finish development seems to be Na6-c7 and Bd7, but then he still have problems to solve: his queen has no great square and d6 is unprotected (can be targeted by Ba3, for instance).
I don't think 9.c5 would have acheved much more than what you got in the game. After 9...e4 the most plausible scenario is a complete swap of c- and d-pawns, after which your space advantage has vanished. 9.Qc2, 9.b3 or 9.e4 would be my main candidate moves here: you still have to complete development.
I don't believe in 10.Bh3. Sure, exchanging light-squared bishops is formally good, but it wastes time (Bg2 moves again and Bc8 has not used any tempo), weakens your king (because you've played g3, Black's eventual kingside attack with f5-f4 can be very dangerous even without a ...Bc8xh3 idea) and Black doesn't even have to allow it (he can also defend f5 with g6 and develop slowly, either with Na6-c7, Bd7 or Nh5-g7, Nd7-f6).
If I was Black, I would have given some thoughts to the pawn sac 10...f4 11.gf4 Nh5 12.fe5 Bg4, but White is clearly on top after 12.f5!
After 15 moves the position is almost equal, the bishop pair doesn't mean much with a closed center and you lack a knight to post on e4. 16.b4?! and 16.f4?! are both hurrying too much, you should slowly build some pressure with a3-b4-Rb1-Be3 with a slow, manoeuvering game.
Black should absolutely take 16...cb4 17.Qb4 Na6 and 18...Nc5, catching up in development and with the same excellent knight he got later. Similarly, after his erroneous 16..b6?, 17.bc5 is very tempting when he has to take back with a pawn. 17...dc5 would be good if the knight could reach d6, but it is just bad because you will target Pe5 and Pb6 (with a4-a5) long before. After the correct 17...bc5 18.Rb1, you have good chances of exploiting your lead in development, either with Qa5-c7 or f2-f4.
17...cb4 18.Qb4 Na6 19.Qb2 Nc5 20.a5! is less clear than one move before, but it's still better for Black than what he did.
After 17...Na6? you should absolutely go for it with 18.b5! Nc7 (18...Nb4 is a not-totally-convincing pawn sac after 19.Qb3) 19.a5! Bd7 (or Rb8 20.ab6 ab6 21.Ra7) 20.Ra2, etc... Note how bad Black's Nc7 and Bd7 are compared to his Nc5 and Bf5 in the game. 18.bc5? is maybe your worst move in this game.
20.f4 is the typical pseudo-active move we all play when we feel something has gone wrong. But here I've nothing much better to suggest, maybe doubling on the a-file was more stubborn ?
I feel like after 20...Bd3!? Black will end up picking Pc4, say after 21.fe5 Qe5 22.Rf8 Rf8 23.Qe5 de5 24.ab6 ab6. Then you will possibly save a draw thanks to his own weak pawns (much like in the game). But compared to the game, you each have gained a passed pawn in the process, which makes the game sharper. Moreover, 20...ef4 is probably very imprecise because...
...Was 22.ab6! possible ? Looks like your passed pawn on the Q-side will turn the table.
The draw on move 28 would have been a fair result.
30.Bd4 avoids Black's small combination and preserve your bishop pair. After 30.Kf2? you're in serious danger.
Was 36...Nxd5! possible ? With the extra pawn it looks like Black is winning.
The Bishop vs knight endgame with 2 vs 1 looks indeed drawn. You are a bit lucky at the end: in case of 41...Nf6 42.Bd3 Ne8 43.Bb5 Nc7 (attacking d5 and blocking b5 for the wK), you have just two squares to wait with the bishop, so that there is no zugzwang and your king can stay on d4: 44.Bc6 Kf4 45.Bb7 Kf5 46.Bc6, you never allow ...Ke5, draw.

(Comments without engine, since I believe that's what you are looking for. But there may be some tactical flaws in the lines above...)


How to handle Black's Bc5 in Bird's Leningrad?

Objectively ...Bc5 is not a great move in this line, the main reason being the reply d4, especially if you haven't played d3 yet. The stonewall with a Bg2-fianchetto is not the most aggressive set-up, but with one or two extra tempi it is worth going for it and follow-up with c4, Nc3, and then either prepare e4 or Ne5.

In any case, if you choose a move order with 0-0 before d3, your opponent will be less tempted to throw in Bc5. He might be afraid of d2-d4 or e2-e3, have already put a pawn on c5, or played Be7 and not want to lose more tempi.

Assuming he plays Bc5 anyway and you don't want to go d4, you just sidestep with Kh1, keep an eye for ...Ng4 tricks (most often countered by Na3-c2, Qe1, or, well, d4, but sometimes you might want to stop it altogether with h3), and then play the standard Leningrad moves c3 and a4. If Black doesn't react you will grab queenside space with b4, possibly even trapping the bishop.

If Black goes a7-a5 to stop that, the manoeuvre Na3-c2 covers e3 and add control on b4 and d4. Bc1 is usually developped to d2. Your main plan afterwards should be e2-e4: without a pawn on c5, Black is in danger of getting pawnrolled in the center.

An eventual d5-d4 by Black, without a pawn on c5, is not very frightening. Don't take on d4 unless it wins a pawn. Instead of Nc2, Nc4 becomes another possibility. Same plans: e2-e4 (but don't forget about en passant captures - most often it is no problem because of the sequence: e2-e4 dxe3ep d3-d4 Bc5 moves, Bxe3), Ne5 invasions, h3-g4 expansion followed by Qe1-g3/h4 and possibly f5...

If Bc5 is played before you castle, well, there is always d4. But even without d4, if you are in a hurry to castle, a pawn chain d2-e3 will do. I suppose the most accurate is to continue your Leningrad plans before castling nor touching the central panws: c3, a4, b4 if allowed, Na3-c2, keping your options in the center: either d4, or d2-e3, or d3-e4, depending on Black's set-up.

Of course, this is all general ideas and many subtleties may happen depending on the precise move order. But the rule of thumb is: don't be afraid of Bc5.

One of those tricks:

[FEN ""]
1.f4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.g3 e6 4.Bg2 Nbd7 (4...Bc5 5.d4 (5.c3) (5.e3)) 5.O-O Bc5 6.Kh1 O-O 7.c3 a5 8.a4 c6 9.Na3 Qe7 10.d3 Ng4 (10...e5 11.fe5) 11.Nc2 (11.d4) (11.Qe1 {intending h3 or e4} Ne3? 12.Bxe3 Bxe3 13.d4 {and Na3-c2xe3 is a similar trap}) Nf2 (11...e5 12.fxe5 Ngxe5 13.Nxe5 Nxe5 14.d4) 12.Rxf2 Bxf2 13.e3 {and the Bf2 is trapped}


Get Fide-rated without revealing your birthday?

Yes it is.

Article 1.14 in Regulations for Registration & Licensing of Players (effective from July 1, 2015):

  All player's data are obligatory for online registration in FOA. For players registered by the National Rating Officers or the FIDE Rating Administrator, first name, last name, gender, date of birth, e-mail address and Federation are obligatory for a successful registration.


What happens when both players are out of time in Blitz?

https://www.fide.com/fide/handbook.html?id=171&view=article

6.11
a. If both flags have fallen and it is impossible to establish which flag fell first then:
the game shall continue if this occurs in any period of the game except the last period.

b. the game is drawn if this occurs in the period of a game in which all remaining moves must be completed.

The only ambiguity is when the claim was made.  If your flag fell after you claimed the win--assuming that you had a possible win--you should have won.  The standard, tactful action is to call the game a draw, but the rules suggest that one should be declared the winner.


If the black captures in return (there's not much choice for black), you either get an open vertical e or a nasty attack on the black King by Qh5+ and so on.

But don't worry. Bg5 is also not so bad move =)


Disclaimer: Every person has their own way of approaching these situations, but I think my experience is similar to the experience of most other (stronger) players.

In an implicit way everyone uses a checklist as you do. Weaker (or more unexperienced) players, maybe need to mentally go through all the points in order, whereas stronger (or more experienced) players are able to do so automatically at every move. When my opponent moves a piece, I automatically check which of my squares and pieces are now attacked and create a threat to me. Similarly I also check which squares are now less defended and if that opens an opportunity for me. Similarly I check for king's safety, tactical motives and other opportunities. This is however not explicitly checking if there is, for example, a fork attack pending, but more the realization that two pieces are in a position where a fork attack might happen (regardless if it is currently possible or not).

Nevertheless I sometimes take some time to evaluate the whole situation on the board. This includes tactical motives but rather focuses on strengths and weaknesses of my position and my opponent position, ideally leading to a plan that can later be executed. Here I often fall back to a checklist, looking for common features such as weak pawns, inactive pieces or open lines and diagonals.

As advice for you, there is no shame in trying to avoid blunders. If you have to look explicitly for tactical motives, then do it. With time you will get used to the most common patterns and find them more easily and quickly. Maybe you will also be able to find these patterns "by heart" (that is without having to look for them).  But even if not, your opponent will never know and your strength doesn't come from the way that you look for blunders, but how effectively you can identify them.


Unfortunately for you, there is no such opening.

You see, the problem with 1.d4 is that d pawn is protected from the very start, unlike his "colleague" e pawn. While it is possible to cut down on theory learning against 1.e4 by simply attacking the e pawn ( Alekhine's defense, Scandinavian defense, Petroff defense in a way ) thus forcing White's response, you can not use the same method against 1.d4 since the pawn is protected as I mentioned earlier.

So your only chance is to find an opening that has the least amount of theory to learn, but be warned--all good defenses against 1.d4 have lots of theory worked out to move 30 and sometimes beyond. Just because the number of branches is small does not mean that the sub-variations are short.

Yet another problem with 1.d4 and an important one--I use this all the time to quickly demolish opponents with weak opening knowledge--most of the good defenses to 1.d4 can be dodged by careful move order transposition!

Your problem is far more complex because of this. Currently Nimzo-Indian scores very well against 1.d4 but can be dodged if White plays 3.Nf3 instead of 3.Nc3. Then you are forced to adopt Queen's gambit declined or Queen's Indian defense and both of those openings give slight advantage to White, which severely reduces your chances to win.

King's Indian defense still holds but is prone to become "refuted" from time to time, only to be revived again with some great novelty. Still this defense, along with Queen's gambit declined does offer you one benefit other defenses do not:

White can not use transpositional tricks to kick you out of your opening!

You can play both openings against anything White throws at you, whether it is 1.c4/1.Nf3 or 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3/g3 or whatever. Still, if White is a weaker player he can exploit the King's Indian defense to exchange early and try to draw--he has good chances to fulfill this goal as things currently stand.

Queen's gambit declined is also immune to transpositions and has that benefit that its exchange variation is everything but a draw! It leads to some exciting positions and both opponents must know what they are doing. It is highly theoretical but the number of lines is fairly low. They are not razor-sharp but you need to know them or else you will be "smothered to death". Black usually parries White's threats first, and "shoots" later. Most of the time you get the king side attack but it usually draws. Queen's gambit declined lines without the exchange variation are also theoretical, but the number of lines is relatively small there as well.

If we compare King's Indian defense and Queen's gambit declined then KID gives you better winning chances compared to QGD, but you will benefit more as a player from playing QGD since its pawn structure can arise in many other openings ( Nimzo-Indian, Caro-Kann to name just a few ). Also, QGD lines have withstood the test of time while KID is always in some kind of crisis from time to time.

To make the choice between these two, you should see what type of pawn structures you play against 1.e4 and base your choice on that:

If you play Caro-Kann/French defense/Alekhine's defense... then go with the QGD, but if you play the Sicilian/Ruy Lopez/1...e5 in general then go for KID since the pawn structure is similar. That way you will shorten the amount of time you need to learn the opening and its middle-game.

A SMALL NOTE REGARDING YOUR EDIT:

[fen ""]

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nc6!? 3.g3!

and "bye bye" Chigorin! You will enter a Catalan if you are lucky or will get smashed by the pressure White's light squared bishop will exert on your center.

If you still need something on Chigorin defense seek games of A.Morozevich. I think he also wrote a book on the Chigorin defense as well-Google and you shall find it!

Still, be prepared to learn another opening as well just in case wHite "kicks you out" of Chigorin with the move order I posted above.

END OF NOTE

This is my Achilles heel as well, and this is what I did to solve it.

If you have questions leave a comment and I will reply.

Hopefully this answer will help you to solve your complex problem.


How to create your own opening book for your own chess engine?

It may depend a little on what your code can access, but either way you should read Ed Schröder's pages on this topic.  Schröder was the author of the Rebel Chess software until his retirement about a decade ago.  In the '90s Rebel was the strongest consumer/commercial chess software and the first such to beat a GM (Anand).  Since retiring he turned Rebel into ProDeo and released it for free on his website.

Start with this introduction, though you should already know all that, then have a look at this more in depth explanation.  Then check this page for details on adding Rebel/ProDeo books to any engine (will require compiling C code for each platform you want your engine to be able to work).  You should be able to add to the books from PGN records before compiling them.

EDIT: Not quite sure why this was voted down, but probably the mention of C when the OP states Java.  I should mention that most chess processing software is in C or C++ because it provides better processing capabilities; it compiles to assembly language or machine code, unlike Java, which requires the JVM to run and that makes Java less efficient.  Yes, it is possible to compile Java into machine code, but hardly anyone ever does it because then it is no longer platform independent (such as it is).  So the OP will be running into the C hurdle no matter what.

Beyond that, these sites on the chess programming wiki on opening books and opening suites may be of use.  You'll find a bunch of Ed Scröder's stuff there because he is one of the pioneers who made the shift from hardware electronic chess systems (e.g. Mephisto) to personal computing software.  With the added bonus that now he's giving his software and, more importantly, his knowledge away to whoever wants it.  If that's really not enough to immerse one's self in the subject then nothing is.


Has the position after 10....Kd6 occurred earlier in this game? If yes, the engine thinks it's a repetition and shows "0.00".

More information on the repetition issue can be found on this thread on TalkChess, a forum dedicated to computer chess.


Worrying inconsistency in playing strength

Don't worry you're not alone in this, I can assure you almost all chess players/enthusiasts go through such periods, not only at the start, but throughout their whole chess experience. Of course there are many elements involved here, that at the end of the day define your performance, but let's stick to those that are most common for all: (bear in mind these points are purely speculative as I cannot possibly know what may be truly causing your performance drop without actually knowing you!)

Learning curve: Basically whatever new we learn and try to incorporate with our chess knowledge, be it new tactics, new positional ideas, more opening varieties, weird endgame situations, etc. there's some minimum necessary time involved (different for everyone of course) to be able to put these new ideas into practical usecases and actually make them work. Why? well one immediate reason is that everyhting in chess requires some amount of experience until it comes closer to being understood. Prime example is when we all first learnt about different checkmating ideas, and then wanted to immediately apply them in every game we played, and of course instead we just end up losing because by giving such strong importance just to some checkmating pattern we become completely ignorant to the more basic ideas underlying each position (activity, safety, structure etc.). So I think you most probably had an immediate boost to your rating (reaching 1900) more by blind chance than anything else.
What you should retain from my first bullet point is: stay positive (i.e. care more about your play than rating, it's just a number after all...) and keep playing your usual chess, and whatever new you learn along the way, as you keep playing you will get more and more appropriate chances to putting them into good use, meaning you should let the occasions present themselves first and then try applying what you've learnt. By no means you should take this statement as equivalent to "not controlling the evolution of the game", after all that's the whole point of positional play(keeping a grip on the position and imposing its evolution on your opponent to the extent that you can), my point only concerned specific precise new things that you may learn, e.g. rook endings, or known theoretical drawn configurations etc. In this way you will slow by slow incorporate everything new that you learn much more naturally. Simply put by playing more you will discover more about the applicability of the things you've learnt.
Now one orthogonal reason to the previous two would be: ratings are always fluctuating, specially on online servers (we most often just play for fun and mess around hence may end up losing a lot of points suddenly-also bearing in mind that they're usually short time control games->hard to keep a consistent rating), so I think everyone experiences this at any level, what is more important is your average rating, say in the last 2 months, that says a lot more about your performance. I myself have always had drops of roughly -+200 rating points every now and then, same goes for most of my friends and people I play against. Chess is really a lot about struggling, because of the extremely rich dynamics of the game, in every game there are so many things that are completely different and unknown compared to our previous experience.
Another point you brought up was "chess focus": One's mind may very well be completely at ease before sitting down and playing a game of chess, but may still lose his/her focus easily during the game if not careful. At any stage of the game, it is extremely crucial to stay completely alert of at least the most important elements of the position (no need for examples here really). But how? well apart from the fact that everyone has different ways of getting hooked into a game (concentrating), there are general ways of staying focused: e.g. whether it's your turn to play or not, you should be continuously calculating relevant lines to your postions, and absolutely avoid saying to yourself "I'll just wait and see what he/she plays then I'll think about my move", instead you should always assume that there are more things to the position at hand that you see at first sight, so the more you try to calculate different variations (within the time you have) regardless of whether they're working lines, you will nonetheless discover more about the space of possibilities hidden in the position, and always assume your opponent is going to play the best move you can think of. All of this, as part of your general attitude towards chess-playing, will to some extent improve your focusing abilities.
Enough with speculations :) My last advice: just keep up your playing routines and don't allow for big gaps of inactivity in your playing as much as you can, don't be ignorant towards your losses, instead dig into them as much as you can and you'll have a lot more concrete improvements resulting from that than anything else. Hope this has been helpful!


Strategy for next move in a crowded situation

The position you are having here is also quiet though I guess.
You can ask yourself first: What do I want to play for?
Then you can analyse the position as the following:
1.) Black has some kind of weakness in the g6 pawn, how can I attack that?
2.) The rook is placed good for opening the c-file, how do I achieve that?
3.) What are the ideas for black in the position?

Then you can search for answers for those questions.
1.) There is no direct way to attack that, but 1. h4 would fix the pawn structure for the moment, therefore it would fix the weakness.
Nevertheless, after 1... Bg7 your knight is not very stable on e5, so you probably have to move it away and there is no real way of keeping the pressure on g6, therefor the plan to go for the weakness doesn't really appeal to me.
2.) If you want to play c4 and you want to sidestep Bxb4, a5 ideas, 1. Ka1 could be a smart move. If you assume for a moment that you have to moves in a row, 1.Ka1 2. c4 would allow 2... Bxb4 but after 3. c5 Qa5 4. Bxb4 Qxb4 5. c6 you would have some initative.
3.) Black has several plans, like kicking the knight away from e5 with Bg7, placing the own knight on e4, making pressure on e3. However, placing the knight on e4 is not easy yet since Nf6 allows Nxg6. Therefore black needs to kick the knight away with Bg7 or Bd6 (the latter one allows c4 with threatening c5).

Now you can think of what happens if black tries any of them after 1. Ka1/h4 like 1... Bg7 2. Nd3 and so on, seeing which option seems to be the best objectively and so on improve your position.


Why is 7. f3 so ubiquitous in the Yugoslav Sicilian?

Objectively speaking, you're probably right: 7.Qd2 seems fine and after 7....Ng4 white can still hope for an advantage after 8.Bg5 Nc6 9.Nb3.

However, after 7.Qd2 Nc6, black does threaten Ng4. So, white should play 8.f3 anyway, also because it is part of his plan. As a result, we transposed to the main line of 7.f3.

Therefore, white doesn't gain anything by playing 7.Qd2 first. Actually, it only gives black an extra option: 7....Ng4.


Is the exchange of a rook for two minor pieces really worth it?

You say your opponent had a strong attack against your king and you had to "sacrifice" your rook for two minor pieces and went on to lose. I think you have it the wrong way round. It sounds like your opponent had a strong attack against your king and sacrificed two minor pieces for your rook, your one active piece by the sound of it.

In general a rook and a pawn are roughly equivalent to two minor pieces. However in the middlegame this is usually not a good trade for the player losing the two minor pieces because two minor pieces are two pieces which can attack/defend whereas one rook is only one piece which can attack/defend and the number of pieces participating in the attack or defence is generally more significant than their precise power.


What are good chess tournaments that are FIDE rated in China for foreigners?

FIDE's worldwide calendar of tournament events normally lists tournaments around the world, but for some reason no tournaments located in China appear. The Chinese Chess Federation has this website, which carries notices of future tournaments.


Is there an online chess evaluation engine with a REST API?

It is pointless to have a rest API for random position evals which have to be precomputed for near-instant response. In that case you might as well ask for an opening book. There are a few sites that with opening book querying tools, which are pretty close.


There are two main reasons to play Kb1(b8):

Prophylaxis - Kb1 does many things, xaisoft's answer touches on some of them.  On c1, the king is very exposed to checks on the c1-h6 diagonal.  This means that a queen could check on g5 and pick off a loose piece on h4.  Or similarly, if black plays ...Bh6, the white king will be checked, or worse, a piece could be pinned to the king.  In most openings where white plays O-O-O, the center and kingside pawns are being thrown forward to try and mate black, so avoiding diagonal checks is almost always useful.  Some other reasons that Kb1 is useful are:

Clearing c1 for a rook to help defend c2
Protecting the a2 pawn
Preparing to play c3 or b3 to blunt an attack along the c or b file (although c3 is almost always wrong once O-O-O has been played)

A Waiting Move - Since we have already established that Kb1 is useful, it is also important to note that there are very few drawbacks to the move.  Other moves might not be so good in the position though.  For example, in the Yugoslav Attack of the Dragon, in current theory white will play 12. Kb1 instead of 12. h4 because white is not yet sure how best to deploy the kingside pawns.  Frequently white will just play g4 and omit h4 to speed up the attack.


You could use Python and code it to sift through Capablanca or Kasparov games. When there is a position where the queens oppose in the center, make the program put it to the side. Then, you can look through the games until you find the one you want.
If you don't know how to use Python, you could get someone else to help you, or to get a program with the same function from online.


Can Black punish a provocative h-pawn push against fianchetto setups?

First off, I think you want to play 2...Bg7. As a general rule of thumb, you should always finish your fianchetto on the next move. It also protects the rook on h8 if the h-file opens. I don't think 2...c5 is a very good move because it locks up the pawn structure and is going to make counterplay in the center more difficult. (2...Nf6 and 2...e5 are probably playable too)
If white continues with h5 then 3...e5. Another rule of thumb: Counter wing attacks in the center. 4.hxg6, hxg6 6. Rxh8, Bxh8 is not a threat.
The h-pawn advance wastes a developing move and does nothing in the center. As long as you're developing and playing in the center you should be able to equalize. I would just say delay castling until the position clarifies itself. Since you're ahead in development you should be able to build an attack which may negate the need to castle. You might also want to castle queenside if white spends too much time on the kingside.


Why do Americans hail Fischer when he was anti-American and idolized Hitler?

Fischer had psychological problems. He was American and hated the US. He was jewish and hated Jews. He was clearly paranoid from a pretty early age, but it got much worse after he stopped playing.

It is hard to see an antisemitic Jew as evil. I think it is more reasonable to feel some empathy for his mental problems. And we can all count ourselves lucky that his mental health held up long enough for him to create a large number of chess masterpieces.


Being stuck at a certain level is not unusual and I would not worry about it.

Since you asked specifically about "precise calculation"...

You should be aware that solving tactics is not only about being able to calculate accruately many moves deep. It is also about recognizing certain patterns / tactical motifs that appear in every puzzle.

Particularly at your level it is much more likely that you fail some puzzles because you are not aware of a motif, rather than missing a defensive option many moves down the line that you did not calculate.

After you solved a puzzle or failed to do so, chesstempo shows you the motifs. Make sure you understand each of these motifs in the solution.


The position doesn't make any sense.
But the pieces spell out several letters.
Clockwise from the top left: o,t,o,r
Maybe that's helpful?


Given a legal chess position, is there an algorithm that gets a series of moves that lead to it?

The task you are considered is usually called a proof game, named such because the task is to prove that the position is legal.  As a genre of puzzles, there are various aesthetic constraints, most commonly that the resulting game be unique.  However, this is not necessary in general, and there is even a genre of counting the number of solutions.
There are several programs available that perform this task of solving proof games:

Natch is often considered the fastest.  You can see it in use in this answer to another question on this site: "Can it be proven that 11. 0-0-0+ is legal in this position?"

Euclide is apparently most useful when the sequence of moves is unique.

Popeye can solve many chess problems, including fairy chess problems.  Apparently it is not the most performant for proof games.

Jacobi is a program to solve (fairy) chess proof game problems.  It is written in JavaScript and run from browser, which makes it easy to try.

I have used Natch most successfully myself.


In addition to the other answers, lichess allows you to do this.

Select the menu (three stacked lines to the right of your profile name), select Preferences, select Game Display, and at the bottom turn on Blindfold Chess.


Short version:

I think that your best bet is probably option 2: "kah EE suh" (similar to the pronunciation of "naïve"). The phonemes match the spelling correctly (particularly the umlauted ï in "Caïssa" [ref. 1]), and it fits with the tonal stressing of multiple Thracian-related [ref. 2] languages.

Long version:

Historically, both Greek and and Turkish (largely Hittite and Assyrian influences, in Thracian times [ref.s 3 & 4]) would appear to have likely had the strongest early influences.

Satemization of the Thracian language [ref. 5] would indicate the initial “C” to typically be an “s” sound, though it seems that in the case of “Caïssa” it was more likely a “k” sound.

Given the remnants of the Thracian language available to us [ref. 6], there seem to be insufficient data to ensure “correct” pronunciation.  Thracian words seem [to me] to be equally likely to be most closely related to Latin, Greek, and several Balto-Slavic languages.

If Gottfried Schramm's derivation [ref. 7] is correct, then his Bessian-Albanian link would indicate that the “i” is indeed a “long e” (ï) sound [ref. 8].

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%C3%AFssa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Prehistory_of_Anatolia_and_Eastern_Thrace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum_and_satem_languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracian_language#Remnants_of_the_Thracian_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracian_language#cite_note-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_language#Vowels


In sicilian defence, why would white always exchange the c5 pawn. What harm would it do otherwise?

White doesn't always play d4.

Apart from the line you mention, there is also the King's Indian Attack and the Closed Sicilian, where white plays g3 and Bg2, the Grand Prix Attack, where white plays f4 and the Rossolimo, where white plays Bb5 (after Nc6 or d6).

In all those lines d3 is usually played instead of d4.

But 3.d4 is the most common line: It removes the influence of blacks c5-pawn on the centre and installs a knight on a very central square. This leads to a space advantage for white, which can often result in quick attacking victories. Black on the other hand has longterm trumps in his two central pawns and open c-file. This setup leads to strategically and tactically very rich positions, which explains part of the popularity.

Not playing 3.d4 doesn't lead to a worse position for white. It only arguably makes it easier for black to reach an equal position. Even the line you give, which really is unusual, doesn't guaranty black an advantage. He will probably just continue to develop with Nf6, Be7, 0-0 and maybe at one point expand on the queenside or play d5.


Probability of making a game-losing move as a function of Elo?

Coincidentally I already answered exactly this question in response to a similar question.

Edit: This similar question was about frequencies of blunders in games, which made the analysis somewhat misleading when directly applied to this question. Originally I looked for blunders from equal positions per game move, which made the results a bit confusing because there was the unknown variable of how many equal positions you actually get per game move. So I redid the analysis for blunders per equal position which is a lot more appropriate in this context.

I happen to have a dataset with 25000 games with stockfish evaluations after every move. This allows to actually look for blunders in equal positions, which is what I did.

Blunders from an equal position (-1.00 < eval < 1.00) are relatively rare, even among weaker players. That is not particularly surprising, because we tend to leave the equality region in little steps during the opening and the blunders come when we are under real pressure and low on time.

I ran the analysis dependent on the strength of the opponent as well, to show that stronger opponents actually lead to more blunders even in equal positions. The stronger opponents in the analysis are more than 100 Elo points higher rated, the weaker 100 points lower rated. Players of all strength blunder more often against stronger opponents from equal positions than against weaker opponents.

Elo: 1500: 100cp Blunder every 26.4655172414 equal positions.
Elo: 1500: 100cp Blunder every 26.1266149871 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 1500: 100cp Blunder every 33.3684210526 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 1600: 100cp Blunder every 28.8888888889 equal positions.
Elo: 1600: 100cp Blunder every 28.3083832335 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 1600: 100cp Blunder every 37.12 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 1700: 100cp Blunder every 34.7788649706 equal positions.
Elo: 1700: 100cp Blunder every 34.0448933782 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 1700: 100cp Blunder every 39.7709923664 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 1800: 100cp Blunder every 34.9866156788 equal positions.
Elo: 1800: 100cp Blunder every 33.1406015038 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 1800: 100cp Blunder every 45.3865546218 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 1900: 100cp Blunder every 40.1570101725 equal positions.
Elo: 1900: 100cp Blunder every 38.315761729 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 1900: 100cp Blunder every 49.9418282548 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 2000: 100cp Blunder every 44.4308207705 equal positions.
Elo: 2000: 100cp Blunder every 41.5676238036 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 2000: 100cp Blunder every 56.3524305556 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 2100: 100cp Blunder every 52.5946657886 equal positions.
Elo: 2100: 100cp Blunder every 49.5823737821 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 2100: 100cp Blunder every 61.1668806162 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 2200: 100cp Blunder every 61.3163636364 equal positions.
Elo: 2200: 100cp Blunder every 56.0916284881 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 2200: 100cp Blunder every 75.2474916388 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 2300: 100cp Blunder every 69.6490486258 equal positions.
Elo: 2300: 100cp Blunder every 60.9148185484 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 2300: 100cp Blunder every 90.0941176471 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 2400: 100cp Blunder every 78.8800318852 equal positions.
Elo: 2400: 100cp Blunder every 67.7366828087 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 2400: 100cp Blunder every 100.431924883 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 2500: 100cp Blunder every 97.320568252 equal positions.
Elo: 2500: 100cp Blunder every 84.8542336549 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 2500: 100cp Blunder every 114.45814978 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 2600: 100cp Blunder every 110.2421875 equal positions.
Elo: 2600: 100cp Blunder every 97.9315068493 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 2600: 100cp Blunder every 127.470948012 equal positions against weaker players.

Elo: 2700: 100cp Blunder every 95.7817109145 equal positions.
Elo: 2700: 100cp Blunder every 78.6981818182 equal positions against stronger players.
Elo: 2700: 100cp Blunder every 167.296875 equal positions against weaker players.

So for a table of estimated probability of blunder on any given single move:

Elo 1500-1599:  0.0378
Elo 1600-1699:  0.0346
Elo 1700-1799:  0.0288
Elo 1800-1899:  0.0286
Elo 1900-1999:  0.0249
Elo 2000-2099:  0.0225
Elo 2100-2199:  0.0190
Elo 2200-2299:  0.0163
Elo 2300-2399:  0.0144
Elo 2400-2499:  0.0127
Elo 2500-2599:  0.0103
Elo 2600-2699:  0.0091
Elo 2700-2799:  0.0104

An approximation formula: p = (0.323 - 0.0850 * Elo / 1000) ^ 2


What is a good playstyle for players that are not good with deep calculations?

I have a rating of 2200, and I have similar difficulties with long calculations, but I have a good positional understanding.

My advice is:

Reduce your blunder rate by making a simple check to see whether you hang any pieces, walk into mate etc. Check out What is the most effective way of reducing blunders?
You don't need to calculate too far ahead. In my answer to How many steps can a grandmaster foresee?, I quote GM Soltis who argues that 2 1/2 moves ahead is fine for most positions
Play quiet and solid openings that don't have many forcing moves or tricky tactics. Try 1.d4, the slav-defense or the caro-kann.

This is a correspondence game I played on chess.com recently. My play was quite simple all told. I stuck to looking a few moves ahead and stuck to a plan of targeting white's isolated d-pawn:

[FEN ""]
[White ""]
[Black "Bad_Bishop"]

1. e4 c6 2. c4 d5 3. cxd5 cxd5 4. exd5 Nf6 5. Bb5+ Nbd7 6. Nc3 a6 7. Ba4? {White is out of opening theory now. Now I can focus on recovering my pawn.} b5 8. Bb3 Nb6 9. Qf3 Bb7 10. Nge2 Nbxd5 11. O-O Nxc3 {My plan from now on is to reduce material and target white's isolated d-pawn. This is quite a straightforward plan that doesn't need much calculation.} 12. Qxc3 Rc8 13. Qd4? {White should keep queens on the board, especially when my king is still in the middle. If queens were kept on, then I might have to deal with some tricky long variations.} Qxd4 14. Nxd4 Rd8 {Now I need to double rooks on the d-file to put pressure on the pawn.} 15. Nf5 e6 16. Ne3 Bc5 17. Rd1 Rd7 18. Bc2 Ke7 19. b3 Rhd8 20. d3 Bd4 21. Rb1 Nd5 {I saw an opportunity to trade minor pieces, seeing as the c3 square is weak.[%draw full,c3,red][%draw arrow,d5,c3,green]} 22. Nxd5+ Rxd5 23. Bb2 b4 {I wanted to add one more attacker onto d3, by playing ...b4, ...a5 and ...Ba6.} 24. Bxd4 Rxd4 25. Re1 a5 26. Rbd1 Ba6 27. Re3 R8d5 {I wanted to make sure that white could not start targeting my pawns with Re5.} 28. f3 f5 {If I could scare away the rook, then the d3 pawn is more likely to fall. Also, having my pawns on dark squares means white's light square bishop has no targets.} 29. Kf2 f4 30. Re4 e5 31. Rxd4 Rxd4 32. Ke2 h6 33. Kd2 g5 34. Re1 Ke6 35. Re4 Kd5 36. Ke2? {Because the d3 pawn is now pinned, I can trade rooks and invade with my king.} Rxe4+ 37. fxe4+ Kd4 38. Kd2 g4 39. Bd1? {White now cracks and loses the d3 pawn, and next the e4 pawn.} Bxd3 40. Bxg4 Bxe4  0-1


Anand - Gelfand 12th game in World Chess championship 2012

There are two levels at which this can be answered, I suppose: what were the personal motivations for offering/agreeing a draw, and what were the objective features of the position that grounded the decision? I think you're asking mostly after the second, but I've read many comments lately voicing frustration with agreed draws in this match, so I hope you don't mind me giving an answer that speaks to the first level as well.

First off, the position after 21 moves was as follows:

[fen "r2r4/4bkpp/5p2/p1Bbp3/7P/1P1P1N2/P4PP1/R1R3K1 w - - 0 1"]

1. Bxe7 1/2-1/2

Here Anand played 22. Bxe7 and offered a draw, despite being a pawn up in material and having a significant time advantage (with still 18 moves left to the time control after what would have been Gelfand's obligatory recapture 22... Kxe7).

In the post-game press conference, Anand was asked if he considered trying to play on his time advantage at the end, using it to hopefully induce errors on Gelfand's part. His reply:

  "After Bxe7 Kxe7, black's play is very easy. I didn't see any point in dragging it on from there."

In reply to a later question, Anand elaborated further on this and other agreed draws from the match:

  "We only draw when it's obvious, at least to us, that the game is going nowhere."

One journalist spoke up for the amateur spectators, in the spirit of your question, asking why the contestants couldn't play out some more moves for the benefit of those who don't see why this position is a draw. Gelfand fielded that question, answering:

  "First and foremost, here, we are competing in the match for the crown. We are not here purely to entertain spectators. Second thing, there are about a dozen professional, highly-qualified commentators, and with a little bit of effort they could explain to the thousands of spectators elsewhere the nuances of the game."

I think this is a fair point; his and Anand's job right now is to make chess decisions based on personal competitive interests, and not to explain the games either verbally afterward or by playing on in a position each recognizes as clearly equal, and offering no realistic prospects of an advantage for his side.

Which brings me to the second level of your question. I am not a highly-qualified professional, of course, but I think the concrete factors leading to Anand's draw offer are that, though he is a pawn up, it is a weak isolated pawn on d3, one which is hard to make use of, or to be rid of by advancing to d4. And his 2-to-1 pawn majority on the queenside is very immobile, with Gelfand's bishop and rooks having plenty of space and open lines to operate with and restrict Anand's pawns. Furthermore, Gelfand has not a single structural weakness in his position. In a nutshell, this is why Anand's extra pawn doesn't mean very much, and why Gelfand's play is easy enough in this position that Anand didn't consider the time factor to be terribly important.


Why don't people develop a annotation symbol for "best moves"?

Moves that are significantly worse than the best option are annotated with ?!. If the difference between the move in a game and the "best" move is not big enough, then it doesn't matter whether some engine gives one a 0.02 better evaluation than the other.
In some sense, you could argue that !, !! and no annotation at all already indicate that the move played was the best possible option (or in the latter case, just as good as it)


Why can white not mate in this position from Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (frame 73)?

The bishop on c2 can be moved to h7 to block the check.


Depth 19 refers to 19 plies, not 19 moves (which would be 2 plies each). So it's reasonable that Stockfish would only find the mate shortly after depth 19, since 10.Qh8# is the 19th ply from the starting position you posted.


How should I analyse my game to get better?

Opening

I feel that you are getting lost in the English Botvinnik system, seeing as you form the Botvinnik pawn triangle (c4-d3-e4) but then your piece placement is off (e.g. O-O-O instead of O-O). I suggest you visit my answer to Suggest a line for a player who does not want to be dragged into the Sicilian for more information.

Also, try not to move the same piece multiple times in the opening, as 6. Nb3 isn't constructive. I would try 6. Be2 and 7. O-O with a safe but cramped game.

Material

You concede the bishop pair (half a pawn) with 9. Qd2 instead of 9. Qc2.

The move 15. Qf4 is the start of your tactical woes. This square should set off alarm bells because of both the potential for a knight fork and pin (...Bg5 may become playable). I would have looked at 15. Kb1.

Tournament etiquette

Comfortably using notation and the clock comes with practice, but I don't understand why you carried on playing after 18...Nd3+.


When and why should I trade minor pieces?

Guidelines of when to trade

  First of all, you trade down when you're ahead in material. The more
  material that comes off, the bigger your advantage gets.
  Next, you trade off when you have a spatial disadvantage. If your
  opponent is crunching down on you, by trading off pieces, you
  relieve the pressure on your position.
  Third, you trade when an exchange will make one of your surviving
  pieces more powerful. For example, when trading bishop for knight,
  will leave you with a position with a very strong knight against a
  bad bishop of your opponent's.
  And fourth, you trade when you'll be getting rid of a very powerful
  piece of your opponent.

From Josh Waitzkin's Academy, presented in the Chessmaster program. Emphasis is mine.

The remainder of this answer elaborates on points 3 and 4, i.e. you trade minor pieces when the resulting position is favourable to you, and the types of positions that favour the Knight or the Bishop are highlighted below.

When a Bishop is stronger than the Knight

  Bishop and knight are of approximately equal value, but in the endgame, situations favouring the the bishop are considerably more common than those favouring the knight.

Why is this? Firstly, Bishops are stronger in open games, and endgames, with a large reduction in material, are often open.

Secondly, if play is on both sides of the board, then the bishop can cover both sides better than a knight can.

Here is an example:

[FEN "8/8/1k3b2/1p3p1p/pPp2P2/P1P3P1/8/1N2K3 w - - 0 1"]
[Site ""]
[White "Onoprienko"]
[Black "Khasangatin"]

  1. Kd2            Kc6
  2. Ke2            Kd5
  3. Ke3            Bg7
  4. Kf3            Bh8
  5. Ke3            Bg7
  6. Kf3            Bf6
  7. Ke3            h4
  8. gxh4           Bxh4
  9. Kf3            Bf6
 10. Ke3            Ke6
 11. Kf3            Kf7
 12. Kg3            Kg6
 13. Kh3            Kh5
 14. Kg3            Be7
 15. Kh3            Bh4
 16. Nd2            Be1
 17. Nb1            Bf2
 18. Kg2            Be3
 19. Kf3            Bc1
 20. Kg3            Kg6
 0-1

Here we see that:

White's pawns were locked onto dark squares, hence were targets for the Bishop
The Knight was entirely passive, guarding the Queenside pawns
The Bishop was able to triangulate to lose a tempo when White was in zugzwang. A Knight cannot do the same
Play was on 2 sides of the board, which is to the Bishop's advantage

Source for quote and example: Understanding Chess Endgames by John Nunn.

When a Knight is stronger than the Bishop

  The Bishop doesn't always defeat the Knight. The Bishop's weakness, that it can only reach half the squares on the board, is exacerbated when it is a 'bad' bishop.

Let's take a look at an example:

[FEN "8/1p6/3p1k2/2pPp1p1/P1P1K1Pp/3N3P/3b4/8 w - - 0 1"]
[White "Nunn"]
[Black "Upton"]

  1. Kf3            Ba5
  2. Nf2            Bc7
  3. Ne4+           Kg6
  4. a5             Kh6
  5. Ke3            Kg6
  6. Kd3            Kg7
  7. Kc2            Kf8
  8. Kb3            Bxa5
  9. Nxd6           Bb6
 10. Ne4            Bd8
 11. Nxc5           b6
 12. Ne6+            1-0

Here we see that:

The position is closed, meaning White had time to maneuver the Knight to the ideal squares
The Bishop was hemmed in by it's own pawns and had no targets. It was effectively a spectator

Source for quotes and example: Understanding Chess Endgames by John Nunn.

The Bishop pair

  Two Bishops are often a powerful force in the endgame. They have the long-range power of a single Bishop, but without the lone Bishop's weakness of only being able to reach half the squares on the board.

In this example, we see 3 themes as to how the Bishop pair can beat tBishop and Knight:

The long range of the Bishops means that whenever the Knight moves or makes a threat, then the Knight can be easily harassed or the threat can be parried
White's pawns are soon placed onto dark squares, whereas Black has a dark square Bishop. Black is playing with a passive, purely defensive Bishop
In the final position, the a3 Bishop dominates the Knight in one direction, i.e. the Knight cannot move to c1, b2, b4 or c5. In general, a Bishop separated by 2 squares like this dominates the Knight:

[FEN "7k/7p/p7/5B2/2b5/Pn2B2P/8/7K b - - 0 1"]
[White "Ye Rongguang"]
[Black "Nunn"]
[StartFlipped "0"]

1. Kg7 Kg2
2. Bd5+   Kg3
3. Na5 Bd4+
4. Kg8 Kf4
5. Nc4 Bc5
6. Kg7 h4
7. Kg8 Kg5
8. Ne5 Kf6
9. Nf3 Bf2
10. Bb3 Bg4
11. Bd5 a4
12. Nd2 Be1
13. Nf3 Bg3
14. Nd2 a5
15. Bc4 Be1
16. Nb3 Bc3
17. Nc5 Ke5
18. Nb3 Kd6
19. Kf7 Bh5+
20. Kg8 Kc6
21. Kf8 Bb4+
22. Kg7 Kb6
23. Kf6 Bg4
24. Nc1 Bc8
25. Nd3 Ba3  1-0

Source for quotes and example: Understanding Chess Endgames by John Nunn.

The Exchange: Bishop vs Rook

  I must prepare you for the fact that we are not at all dealing with simple material here [on the material imbalance of the Exchange in the endgame]. There are preciously few general rules that can be formulated.

In the sections where I consider the exchange, it is important to think about whether a player would prefer to have Bishop vs. Rook or Knight vs. Rook. From the quote above, there are no guidelines per se. The positions require tactical analysis. However, a Bishop vs. Rook has better drawing chances than Knight vs. Rook. For example:

In this position White has built a fortress, and a draw is assured.

[FEN "8/8/p3kBp1/6P1/7r/1P6/1KP5/8 w - - 0 2"]
[White "Zuidema"]
[Black "Kostro"]

In this example of Knight vs. Rook, the outcome is a draw, but the Knight side has to work much harder for it.

[FEN "8/8/6R1/3k2P1/p2n4/2K1p3/8/8 b - - 0 1"]
[White "Smyslov"]
[Black "Fischer"]
[StartFlipped "0"]

1. a3             Ra6
2. Nb3            Rxa3
3. e2             Ra1  1/2-1/2

Source for quote and examples: Van Perlo's Endgame Tactics, 2e

The Exchange: Knight vs Rook

  A firmly defended Knight or Bishop in the centre is only slightly weaker than a rook.

Quote attributed to Grigory Levenfish.

In the example below, we see Black's c5 Bishop and e5 Knight are so centrally dominant that White has to come up with an interesting exchange sacrifice to generate attacking chances. If White could swap minor pieces for the Bishop and Knight, then the game would be about even, but that is impossible to do immediately in the starting position.

[FEN "r4rk1/1pqb1ppp/p2ppn2/2b1nP2/3NP2Q/2NBB2P/PPP3P1/R4R1K w - - 0 1"]
[White "Mitkov"]
[Black "Rublevsky"]

  1. Rf3            Nxf3
  2. gxf3           Kh8
  3. Rg1            Qd8
  4. e5             dxe5
  5. Rxg7           Kxg7
  6. Bh6+           Kh8
  7. Bg5            Be7
  8. fxe6            *

Source for quote and example: The Wisest Things Ever Said About Chess by Andy Soltis.

Miscellaneous ideas e.g. tactical considerations, outposts, Bishops of opposite colour etc.

Here I give a few examples of exchanging minor pieces under miscellaneous themes:

Tactical considerations

Of course, winning material, mating or converting into a won endgame take over all general considerations on when to swap minor pieces.

In this example, White enters a won King and Pawn endgame by creating some dangerous passers:

[FEN "8/1p3pp1/p1k1pn1p/P6P/2P3P1/2BK1P2/1P6/8 w - - 0 1"]

  1. Bxf6           gxf6
  2. f4             Kd6
  3. g5             fxg5
  4. fxg5           Ke7
  5. gxh6           Kf8
  6. b4              *

Removing a defender of an outpost

In this example, White eliminates the key defender of the d5 square, then pounds the backward pawn on d6:

[FEN "2rr2k1/p3q1b1/1p1pb1pp/4p3/2P5/1PN1Q1P1/P4PBP/2RR2K1 w - - 0 1"]

  1. Bd5            Kh7
  2. Bxe6           Qxe6
  3. Rd3            Rc7
  4. Rcd1           Rf7
  5. Ne4            Bf8
  6. Rd5             *

Bishops of opposite colour as a drawing resource

Here White is down 2 pawns, but by trading Bishop for Knight, a Bishop of opposite colour ending arises, which is usually a draw:

[FEN "8/4kp1p/Bp3np1/2p5/P2b4/8/3B2PP/5K2 w - - 0 1"]

  1. Bg5            Ke6
  2. Bxf6           Kxf6

Source for examples: Practical Chess Exercises by Ray Cheng.

Summary

The decision on whether to trade Bishop for Knight is complex, but it depends on:

Tactical considerations, such as mating, winning material or forcing a won endgame
The Pawn structure - closed structure favour Knights, open favour the Bishops. Moreover, consider whether a Bishop has targets, i.e. enemy pawns on the same coour complex to attack
Piece activity - centralised minor pieces are worth close to a Rook's value in some positions


How to improve my early endgame / late middlegame?

It sounds like you are looking for strategic guidelines in non-theoretical endgames. Then a modern classic is Endgame Strategy by Mikhail Shereshevsky. Strong players tend to like this book, which should tell us something, but I'm not sure exactly what (causation? correlation?).

Another decent choice is Practical Endgame Play - beyond the basics by Glenn Flear. It focuses on so-called NQEs (Not Quite Endgames) where each side has a couple of pieces each, not counting kings and pawns. The chapter on Rook and Bishop against Rook and Knight contains 50(!) fragments from real games with this material balance, the one in your example. At least it should give you plenty of study material.


Here are some lines. They seem to be the mainlines from the master database on Lichess. White is not winning, but the opening phase went White's way.
...Qd6
 [fen ""]
    1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd6 4. d4 Nf6 5. Nf3 (5...a6 6. g3 Bg4 7. Bg2 Nc6 8. O-O O-O-O
    9. h3 Bh5 10. Bf4) c6 6. Ne5 Nbd7 7. Nc4 Qc7 8. Qf3 {note that this move prevents ...b5!!} Nb6 9. Bf4 Qd8 10. Be5 (10. h3 Qxd4?! 11. Rd1 Qc5 12. Be3 {is very good for White}) Bg4 {if not played now, White will prevent it with h3 and then O-O-O} 11. Qg3 {Black has to defend his g4-bishop now, as it is hanging after Bxf6}

...Qa5
[fen ""]
1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qa5 4. d4 Nf6 5. Nf3 c6 6. Bc4 Bf5 7. Bd2 e6 8. Nd5 Qd8 9. Nxf6+ gxf6 (9...Qxf6 10. Qe2 {with O-O-O next}) 10. O-O

...Qd8
[fen ""]
1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd8 4. d4 Nf65. Nf3 Bg4 6. h3 Bxf3 (6...Bh5 7. g4 Bg6 8. Ne5 Nbd7 9. Nxg6 hxg6 10. g5 Nh5 11. d5 {with a huge clamp, Black has problems to make purposeful development}) 7. Qxf3 c6 8. Be3 e6 9. Bd3 Nbd7 10. O-O-O


Is there a name for this common online trap in the Modern Defence?

In online chess, this is commonly referred to as the 'Lefong' inspired by FM Lefong Hua of Canada.  Here is a clip with Magnus referencing it.


This github post has links to polyglot books; the Komodo book looks especially enticing to me: https://github.com/michaeldv/donna_opening_books

Direct link to Komodo downloads: http://komodochess.com/downloads.htm


There are definitely some, but they are, clearly, not the norm as most organizers want to get the most players they can, and thus, make the most money they can.

Here are a few links of places that have regular adult tournaments. Some of these tournaments have gone by, but if they did them before, they probably would do them again. There are surely more, but I am not going to try to track down every one of them.

Of course, and I am one now, there are also senior events for those over 50; so you have something to look forward to.

Starting a local club that does one game per week, and excluding kids, might also work for you.

I do feel your pain. I got whacked by the number one 8-year-old in the country a week ago. His behavior was totally fine, but kids are always so underrated.

Berkeley, California

Austin, Texas

New Jersey

Tucker, Georgia


Obviously, how much money book selling is a business secret. Nobody will tell you, you will never get the information.

But I do work with book publishers, they can comfortably pay my invoices with good profit margin. Furthermore I sell few database apps on the app store (www.smallchess.com), while I'm not a publisher I make non-trivial returns.

Selling chess books won't be make another Jeff Bezos, however, it's still a profitable business. In fact, selling books give better returns than being a 2700+ grandmaster. Unless you're like in the top 20 of the world, selling a good book (or running a business) makes more money.

Why? While the chess marker is much smaller than say football, the chess market is dominated by high-income earners. Chess books buyers have good purchasing power, because if they don't they would have better things to do than chess.

Well known book writers rely on commissions from their books for living.


This opening 1.d4 d5 2.d4 Nf6 is known as the Marshall Defense of the Queen's Gambit Declined.  White can get an advantage with 3.cxd5 resulting in an advantage, such as 3...Nxd5 4.Nf3 Bf5 5.Nbd2 Nf6 6.Qb3 Qc8 7.g3.

However a lot of those lines involve wide open tactical play, and you are looking for a quiet positional alternative. Therefore simply 3.Nc3 when Black can choose between several different openings.

The main line Queen's Gambit Declined with 3...e6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.Nf3.
The Slav with 3...c6 can get tactical, so maybe play 4.e3 Bf5 5.Nf3 e6 when 6.Nh4 is popular, to get the advantage of two Bishops.
The Queen's Gambit Accepted 3...dxc4 4.e3 or 4.e4 and you should easily regain the pawn.
The Grünfeld Defence 3...g6 can also get quite tactical. 4.Bf4 Bg7 5.e3 O-O 6.Rc1 is one way to steer the game away in a quieter direction.


Do strong players move their pieces with different relative frequencies than weak players?

Here is a quick an dirty analysis based on the "Million Base" PGN database.  I did this in a bit of a rush, so there may well be errors in my programming or logic.  Please don't use it for anything too serious.  Update - Note: Actually, I've just noticed I made a mistake with the data set, and limited it to the first 1 million records.  I'll post an update when I get some free time to run it again on the full thing.  In the meantime, these numbers should be interesting, nevertheless.

Obtaining the data:

I obtained the Million Base 1.74 file from this URL, since the top-5000.nl site seems to 404 when you actually try to download it.  The file contains just over 1 million games in PGN export format (that is to say, easy to parse).

Unfortunately, more than 60% of the games lacked any rating information (I was looking for "WhiteELO" and "BlackELO" tags), and even fewer had ratings for both players.  In the end, I decided to get as large a sample size as I could, and counted a player's moves if his or her rating was known, regardless of the other player's rating.

Process:

The games were parsed one by one, and if a player's rating was known, all of their moves for that game would be added to the aggregate for the player's rating group.  I chose to divide the ratings into groups of 100, so e.g. 1600 to 1699 was a single group.

Since the actual movetext in PGN is SAN, I used the following shortcut to count the moves:  Knight (N), Bishop (B), Rook (R), Queen (Q) and King (K) moves all begin with their piece's letter.  Castling (O-O and O-O-O) was counted separately, as a special case.  All remaining moves were counted as pawn moves without further examination.

No data cleanup was done.  There was no attempt to identify outliers and remove them (e.g. exceedingly short and long games, etc).  I kept, but did not include in the following analysis, the results from ratings below 1600 - the sample size for these games was well below 100, leading to large variations in results.  The raw data is provided at the end of this post.

Some shortcomings of the information:  at the moment, I've only collected very basic totals, and provided averages.  I am pretty sure that in general, the data is NOT normally distributed, but won't be able to say more without actually outputting the raw counts and running them through a statistical program.  I may do so, if there's interest.  For the moment, this means no confidence intervals, or other information about the distribution of the numbers that those averages represent.  I also haven't checked how many years the data set spans - if it represents many years, it may be beneficial to attempt to correct for the overall strength of the field.

Some Trends:

A word on player ratings - the most frequent rating groups encountered were, in order:  2400 to 2500, 2500 to 2600, and 2300 to 2400.  These rating groups provided 72% of the games counted.

Looking at the actual results, average game length was a bit of a surprise:

The sub-2000 rating groups all had significantly shorter games than the higher groups.  This may well be explained by the possibility that they were playing stronger opponents (see the average rating, above), and that they were defeated in fewer moves.  This seems to go against the slightly shorter games played by the top rating group, although that may be contributed to a smaller sample size.

The relatively large differences in average game length meant that providing the frequency of moving a certain piece, rather than the total number of times a piece is moved, is perhaps the more fair comparison.  Calculating the frequencies results in the following graph:

The following trends seem to be present:

The frequency of knight moves seems to trend slightly downwards with rating.
Bishop moves trend downwards until about 2000, then slowly trend upwards.
Rook moves trend sharply upward at roughly the same point, and stay more frequent than Bishop moves in high-level play.
Pawn moves seem to trend slightly downwards with increased rating.  A large exception is the top category, 2800 to 2900.  This brings us to the next point:
The top rating category provides outliers or counter-trends in quite a number of measurements.  This may be explained in a variety of ways - 1) the sample size is fairly low at 363, not tiny, but 10% of the next smallest sample size included.  2) Since they are at the top of the ratings groups, they never play "stronger" opponents than themselves.  3) Or simply at this level, their play style has transcended the levels below them.  My guess would be a combination of 1) and 2).
The differences in queen moves and castling moves is very small without any real trends, other than a tiny trend downwards in both cases.
The frequency of king moves has some of the largest differences.  No clear trend is visible, and it seems to change direction 3 or 4 times.

Further Analysis

Some ideas for future analysis:

Basic statistical fixes:  I feel that extremely short and long games should probably be excluded.  Also, the distribution of the actual counts might be very telling.
Splitting the analysis further up may also yield interesting results.  For example, I would be interested to know how the frequencies for black and white match up (Are they the same, or different?  Why?).
Categorisation by difference in rating might also be interesting, do players playing a much stronger opponent (say, 200 ratings above them) play with different move frequencies?  Unfortunately this requires both players' ELO to be known, which is rare in this data set.
Tendency to short vs. long-castle might also vary by rating.
Piece promotion statistics, some light structural analysis (e.g. incidence of doubled pawns, en passant, pins, forks, shown by rating) might be insightful.
"Heat-maps" of piece placement on the actual board, shown by rating might also be quite intersting.

Aggregate data in CSV format

For those who want to play with the data, feel free.

Rating Range,Sample Size,Average Game Length,Average Pawn Moves,Average Knight Moves,Average Bishop Moves,Average Rook Moves,Average Queen Moves,Average King Moves,Average Castling

1100 to 1200,4,28.500,7.000,4.000,4.000,6.500,3.750,2.750,0.500
1300 to 1400,16,34.125,9.250,6.813,5.000,4.438,4.563,3.188,0.875
1400 to 1500,35,33.800,9.400,6.114,5.514,4.514,4.057,3.400,0.800
1500 to 1600,61,33.607,8.705,7.459,4.984,4.443,4.033,3.148,0.836
1600 to 1700,163,33.153,9.227,6.485,5.110,4.699,3.969,2.816,0.847
1700 to 1800,301,31.811,8.894,6.223,5.402,4.468,3.734,2.296,0.794
1800 to 1900,307,34.251,9.537,6.642,5.577,4.889,4.039,2.759,0.808
1900 to 2000,450,35.551,9.731,6.778,5.451,5.444,4.442,2.871,0.833
2000 to 2100,3958,38.731,10.302,7.095,6.072,6.242,4.668,3.481,0.871
2100 to 2200,11217,38.905,10.501,7.116,6.086,6.245,4.629,3.445,0.884
2200 to 2300,50848,39.446,10.595,7.167,6.174,6.420,4.717,3.484,0.889
2300 to 2400,79322,39.248,10.551,7.141,6.141,6.469,4.653,3.402,0.891
2400 to 2500,111867,38.394,10.398,7.013,6.086,6.294,4.542,3.168,0.893
2500 to 2600,92225,38.308,10.396,6.972,6.082,6.344,4.515,3.104,0.896
2600 to 2700,33193,39.340,10.565,7.061,6.295,6.579,4.630,3.318,0.891
2700 to 2800,4805,40.938,10.945,7.221,6.725,6.930,4.726,3.494,0.895
2800 to 2900,363,38.865,11.311,6.879,6.284,6.160,4.391,2.983,0.857


How many matches have there been at the top level which have ended up with a tied score and a winner?

As @Remellion pointed out, the 1987 Kasparov - Karpov world championship match also finished in a tie, 12-12, with Kasparov retaining the title.

That chessgames.com link leads on to the 1910 Lasker vs Schlechter world championship match that finished 5-5 with Lasker retaining the title. The interesting story of the match is told here. With one game to play Schlechter was leading 5-4 and only needed a draw to become world champion. Instead of playing safe he played for the win but after a game lasting 11 hours spread over 3 days he lost and Lasker retained the title.

Another tied game which had a winner was the 1983 Smyslov - Hübner Candidates Quarterfinal Match which ended 5-5 and then was extended with 4 full length tie-break games (all draws) for a final score of 7-7.

The match was held in Velden, Austria, about 500 meters from the Casino Velden and so to decide the winner they used the roulette wheel. If the ball fell into a black number Hübner would be the winner and if red then Smyslov. The first spin saw the ball end up in zero (no colour) so a second spin was needed which landed in red, so Smyslov won the match.

Robert Byrne, reporting in the New York Times, thought this was very unfair and proposed that more rapid games should be used to break ties when the tie-break games at the regular time control failed to produce a winner. Perhaps this was the first time rapid games had been suggested as a tie-break mechanism?

So, that takes the total up to 6.


How many possible combinations for the number of pieces on the board?

It's :
numberOfPawnsPieces(=17) * numberOfRooksPieces(=5) * numberOfBishopsPieces(=5) * numberOfKnightsPieces(=5) * numberOfQueensPieces(=3) * numberOfKingsPieces(=1)
= 6375

I added one to each number of same piece in case there is no one of its kind(for queens for example, there may be two queens, one queen, or none), except for Kings where there always must be 2 kings on the board, so the number of combinations for kings number is only 1.

**

EDIT : In cas there is promotions of pawns

**
My idea to tackle this is to separate all possible cases, i.e. when there is promotion of 1 pawn, promotion of 2 pawns,...,promotion of 8 pawns. ( 8 pawns is the maximum number of possible promotions )
Generally speaking, when x pawns are promoted, we will proceed same as above, but the number of pawns will be in each case (16-x), plus an other group of 4 * x possibly created pieces. Finally we will sum all over the cases :

                17*5*5*5*3*1 + SUM[x=1-->16,(16-x+1)*5*5*5*3*(4*x)] = **1 230 375**

This is approximate, I may have forgotten some cases, or added some positions that are just impossible to happen in a chess game,...etc.


Variant in which two pieces can occupy a single square

Pierre-Françoys Brousseau found a similar variant on Guy T Shafer's blog “Insane Chess”.   It says:

  Crowded chess

  Requires standard chess set & board. Pieces setup, and capture as normal.

  Pieces move as normal, except any 2 non-pawn pieces of the same
  color may share the same square. Men cannot pass through an
  occupied square: pieces are blocked by men as usual. But you may
  pass your own piece in 2 turns (one to move onto the occupied
  square, another to move off that square). Pawns may never share a
  space with any piece.

This is a little different from our variation, in which pieces of opposite colors may share space, and pawns may share space.

Unfortunately there is no real discussion there.


I think you are looking for my Encyclopaedia of Chess Opening iOS app.

This app provides you the ECO openings, annoated games for each opening and lots of variation. There is an engine embedded for you to explore lines and positions.

However, this is not a free app but it costs less than a McDonald BigMac. Please consider if you are interested.


You are probably referring to online chess and I know this problem, because I've suffered from online chess adiction at least a year or so.
It helped me to realise that those imaginary rating points online are not worth anything and that playing at fast time controls does not improve your chess (too much bullet might even harm it).

Therefore, I suggest, you approach chess a bit more seriously over the board, so you have successes you can be proud of. This means that you don't need the kick of online chess anymore, or at least that was the case for me.

Try finding something that makes you happy when you do it. For me, it is, at least sometimes, to be productive in any kind of way (choose an area of your liking) or to simply relax or hang out with friends. Generally speaking, playing lots of online chess is one of the LEAST PRODUCTIVE things you can do and nothing that will propel your skill in any area. Hanging out with your friends for instance, is a much better way of spending your time.
I mean, I could go on about this, but those are my initial thoughts. If you have any specific questions about how I got rid of my online chess addiction, you may as well shoot me a message.


How does black break into the position? What is a good plan for black?

This position is still very far from having a definitive character that would dictate the nature of best play. That is still perhaps twenty moves away. If you are already thinking that you have an advantage and just need to find a way in, you will not be playing objectively. Your position is fine, you will be able to develop easily, you have two Bishops, but you have no point of attack, and you don't know yet what White plans to do.

There is an old saying that if you can't think of a good move, wait until your opponent makes a bad one. I think that may apply here, because White has not yet played badly enough to lose, but it does not mean that you can just play anything. Do not simply play the position as it is. What can you create? There is usually something, which is how Magnus creates wins out of sterile positions.

I rather like ..b6 to be followed by ..Ba6, ..c5 and ..Nc6. That puts a lot of new ideas on the board, and gives White more chance to go wrong.


What do advocates of the QGD exchange variation (from the white side) recommend against alternative move orders?

Indeed, the Exchange QGD and a system against the Queen's Indian do not blend very well.

In his famous repertoire series on 1.d4, GM Avrukh opts for the Catalan, using the move orders 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Nf3 and 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3. For more information, see Volume 1A (published in 2015) and Volume 1B (published in 2016).

Instead, the repertoire presented by GM Schandorff in "Playing 1.d4" (published in 2012) might be more to your taste. In the volume about the Queen's Gambit, he discusses the Exchange QGD. In the volume about the Indian Defences, the author recommends to play 4.e3 against the Nimzo-Indian.


Tournament Management and Conducting Web App

Did you already see lichess.org? This website has great tournament functionality. E.g. you can start a swiss tournament and add the participants by making them part of a team. Hence there will be no outsiders present.
Hope this helps :)


What was it that AlphaZero did that dazzled experts?

I could find nothing that would support that statement beyond that it taught itself in a day. This is speculation, but I believe it explains that line in the article.

After researching the author, I found that he is a technology writer, who got a Bachelor of Science from the University of Kent, and later a degree in journalism from University of the Arts London. He currently writes for "Wired", and previously wrote for the MIT Technology Review. Despite that, I could not find a FIDE rating from when he lived in Europe, nor a USCF rating now that he lives in Cambridge Massachusetts.

I get the sense that it could be a "civilian", meaning a guy, who likes chess, but plays chess very casually, who is trying to write an article, and not really understanding the subject fully. It is akin to watching people on TV try to sound like they know about chess.

I think he was simply using his own words to regurgitate the amazement that we chess players all felt when we heard that AlphaZero taught itself in a day, and already could beat the best program, Stockfish.


Why do professional chess players point at the pieces with a middle finger?

When they're analyzing at a rapid pace, they tend to only need the thumb and index finger to pick up pieces and move them. Using the middle finger as well doesn't really help. So since that finger is freed up, they can use it to point (especially because pointing with the 4th finger or pinkie is awkward).

Or they subconsciously despise each other.


What is the main idea of the Morozevich variation in the French vs. the Tarrasch?

3...Be7 is mainly an attempt to side-step some of the other well-known theoretical variations, while making white to first commit another developing move before deciding how to continue. For instance, the usual 3...Nf6 often leads to 4.e5 Nfd7 and black has already committed the knight to d7 while white has all three attractive options of Bd3, f4 (further discussed in the 2nd diagram) and Ngf3. Instead with 3...Be7 first, many more alternatives survive, such as:

All diagrams contain annotations.

 [title "3...Be7 possible follow-ups in Tarrasch variation"]
 [fen "rnbqk1nr/ppp1bppp/4p3/3p4/3PP3/8/PPPN1PPP/R1BQKBNR w KQkq - 2 4"]

 4.Ngf3 Nf6 5.e5 Nfd7 {You see by simply having delayed Nf6 by one move and kept an option such as Nh6 open, white's choice of 4.e5 5.f4 is already less attractive} (4.e5 Nh6 {taking advantage of the early Nd2 blinding the h6 square for white so the knight can now re-route via h6-f5. This maneuver is also often employed in f4 variations of the French.} 5.Bd3 c5) (4.Bd3 c5 5.c3 cxd4 6.cxd4 dxe4 7.Nxe4 Nf6) (4.Ngf3 Nf6 5.e5 Ne4)

So in the above side-lines not only has black kept some additional options open with 3...Be7 but it has also made a couple of key variations less attractive for white, such the usual f4 lines in the Tarrasch (which is also briefly touched upon on the wikipedia page of French Defense), for example:

 [title "classical 3...Nf6 and the f4 variation - compared to 3...Be7 :"]
 [fen "rnbqkbnr/ppp2ppp/4p3/3p4/3PP3/8/PPPN1PPP/R1BQKBNR b KQkq - 1 3"]

 3...Nf6 (3...Be7 4.e5 c5 5.c3 Nc6 {You see the difference now more clearly: 4.e5 is no longer with tempo, thus allowing black to start undermining the central pawn chain with c5 one move earlier, followed by Nc6, practically never allowing white an easy route towards the previously mentioned main variation.}) 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 {notice the knight's already on d7} c5 6.c3 {nothing really challenged white's f4 play}


There are many beautiful sacrificial games out there and if you look at composed position you will find even more sacrificial combinations leading to mate. This is one of the most famous games, Anderssen-Kieseritsky from 1851, called "The immortal game":

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4 Qh4+ 4.Kf1 b5 5.Bxb5 Nf6 6.Nf3 Qh6
7.d3 Nh5 8.Nh4 Qg5 9.Nf5 c6 10.g4 Nf6 11.Rg1 cxb5 12.h4 Qg6
13.h5 Qg5 14.Qf3 Ng8 15.Bxf4 Qf6 16.Nc3 Bc5 17.Nd5 Qxb2 18.Bd6
Bxg1 {It is from this move that Black's defeat stems. Wilhelm
Steinitz suggested in 1879 that a better move would be
18... Qxa1+; likely moves to follow are 19. Ke2 Qb2 20. Kd2
Bxg1.} 19. e5 Qxa1+ 20. Ke2 Na6 21.Nxg7+ Kd8 22.Qf6+ Nxf6
23.Be7# 1-0

There surely are games out there that concur even more exactly to your specifications, but generally sacrificing pieces to mate the enemy king is a normal occurrence in chess games.


What do 2600 level grandmasters do to earn a living?

I believe you meant a rating of 2600 not 1600, the most common way is Coaching. Coaching rates can be as high as 100 usd per session(1.5-2hrs) with a grandmaster of that level or as low as about 35-40 usd(each session).


Jin chess pieces, how to obtain higher resolution?

I found this link to Github which could be useful: https://github.com/lukasmonk/lucaschess/tree/master/Pieces/JinAlpha

They seem to have the pieces in SVG format.


How do I activate ChessBase 12 with a serial number? It keeps saying "SerialNumber already used"

I've had serial number issues in the past whe moving to new computer and after upgrading to a new version of windows without deactivating the serial number on the old computer. When that happens, I've contacted ChessBase support through the support form on their site.  http://en.chessbase.com/support

They have always responded within 24 hours and resolved the problem.

I'm pretty sure they have to resolve it on their end since they have to update it on their licensing server. Just explain that you are moving to a new computer and the issue you are having.


If I understand what you are asking how about this
[Event ""]
[Site ""]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round ""]
[White ""]
[Black ""]
[Result "*"]
[FEN "6k1/8/3p4/2bPp3/1p1bP3/1Pp3p1/2P3P1/6Kn w - - 0 1"]

1.Kxh1 *

Black's last move was Nf2-h1+


When you have a Rook & King vs Knight & King then in most cases the Game would be a draw if played with Best play . Now the Person who has got the Knight he is to make sure that the Knight does not get separated from its King . The Rook should try pushing the King either on the 1st or 8th Rank or a-file or h-file. The Opponent King should try centralize himself . If also the King reaches any of the four Corner ranks or files then the Knight should stay close with the King . The Knight always hinders the Checkmate pattern and comes between the Rook & King .

In this kind of play it is the focus & attention of the Knight Player that plays the role because he is to make sure that Knight does not go far from the King where sometimes it gets trapped and the Game gets Lost.


How can black exploit this lead in development?

I don't see why you should go for d5. Generally speaking opening lines is beneficial for the side with the rooks. And your pieces will get or already occupy nice active squares without d5. I'm not saying it is necessarily bad, but it strikes me as a plan that can definitely backfire. Just imagine you have an isolated pawn on e5 and white's rooks are lined up on the e-file ...

Right now you are up material and you have better development. I would just get my king back to safety with Kg8 and then proceed to develop my pieces (d6,Be6,Rf8, maybe Qe8-g6). My longterm plan would be to build an attack against the enemy king, because rooks are bad defenders and you will be able to have a more pieces in the attack than he can bring into the defence.

Going for an endgame entails a certain amount of risk, because in position where there aren't many pawns left, the rooks gain power. Right now you are significantly better, but if you would take two pieces and three pawns and maybe the queens away from the board for both sides, the fight would be much more even.