How did your last game go?

>posting pics of your kids on Veeky Forums
You are a very stupid man, do you know that?

Enjoy your draws.

>Implying anyone here plays on the level where draw by opening is something you have to worry about.

At GM level, Petrov's Defense (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6) is a standard means of obtaining a draw, but sub-2000 players rarely have to worry about that.

GMs generally like to use openings that give a chance of a draw if so desired. Openings like King's Gambit don't allow much, if any chance of drawing--you either win or lose, so they're too dangerous to use.

I also think modern GMs are often too draw-happy and afraid to put up a fighting game.

Precisely. Hell, I'll give you either side of a Petrov if you want it, and I'll play to win.

>make account lichess
>lose fisrt game to a 1152? guy
Feels bad man

bump

>be grandmaster
>be alleged elite chess player
>they're all too chicken to play the King's Gambit

...

>Be grandmaster.
>Actually be good at the game
>Part of that involves not playing shit openings.

Why don't you have a seat over there?

You suck.

Spassky and Bronstein often played the King's Gambit.

Yeh but even Spassky didn't have big enough balls to use KG in a world championship match.

I told you--it's not so much about it being a weak opening as the fact that the King's Gambit rarely results in a drawn game and GMs prefer to play it safe and choose openings that allow the possibility of a draw.

Bronstein
chessgames.com/perl/explorer?pid=16521&side=white&node=21721&move=2&moves=e4.e5&nodes=21720.21721

Of 222 games as white with e4-e5, he played f4 in 44 of them, well behind the number of Ruy Lopez's. (131) And even less than the Ruy Closed, which is considered a seperate opening of the main Ruy (57 games) We will, of course, ignore the 383 games where he opened with d4, 51 games where he opened with c4, and 42 games where he opened with Nf3. Would you say that Bronstein often played the Reti? He played it almost as many times as the King's Gambit.

Spasky
chessgames.com/perl/explorer?pid=21136&side=white&node=21721&move=2&moves=e4.e5&nodes=21720.21721
Out of 223 games with e4-e5, we have 33 King's Gambits, compared to 124 Ruy Lopez normal, and 59 Ruy Lopez closed. We also have 397 d4 games, 21 c4 games, and 17 nf3 games.

They played it as a novelty, and not in serious games. The opening has a shit reputation because it's a shit opening, not because GM's are draw averse. Hell, you know who was probably the most play to win every game GM of the time? Fischer. You know how many games Fischer played the King's Gambit?, 19 out of 201 e4-e5 games. And he played e4 on a far higher percentage of his games than either of the aforementioned.

By the way, on the Master's Database here
365chess.com/opening.php?m=3&n=5&ms=e4.e5&ns=3.5
King's Gambit has a 41.3% draw rate, which is only barely behind the Sicilian's 45.8%, and you get a zillion sicilians; it gets even tighter when you go down different Sicilian variations, the closed Nc3 has a 43.3% draw rate, and is played about 6 times as frequently. It only "Has a low draw rate" because you have zillions of amateur games from the 19th century bringing down the average. It has a higher draw average than another unpopular opening, the Benoni defense, (39% draw rate among masters) and you don't see people claiming that it's not played because it's too decisive.

>Hell, you know who was probably the most play to win every game GM of the time? Fischer. You know how many games Fischer played the King's Gambit?

Fischer was known to not be a fan of KG though, he advocated 2...d6 as a counter to it (now known as the Fischer Defense).

max strength stockfish. what do you think? when i die and got to play chess with death, i hope i'll have my smartphone with me.
even if i'm sometimes able to remove all their special pieces, i also lose almost all mine and have four or more less pawns than them. then they overwhelm me through promotion.

I can tell you a shitty opening and that's the French Defense. Steinitz was right when he called it the dullest possible opening.

Bird's Opening is worse desu. With the King's Gambit, White at least prepares to castle quickly.

According to the graphs on chessgames.com, King's Gambit Accepted started to fall off in the late 19th century while King's Gambit Declined remained popular up to WWI.

That coincided with the rise in positional play, likely the KGD was considered more sound which is why it hung around among top-level players longer.

Actually, all e4 openings became unfashionable after WWI and the hypermoderns ridiculed them. Richard Reti said that the Sicilian and French Defense were the only acceptable answers to 1. e4. This changed somewhat after WWII, but even today, grandmasters seldom use 1. e4 openings other than Sicilian, French, and Ruy Lopez.

The Scotch Game and Four Knights were resurrected in the 1990s, even the Two Knights Defense enjoyed a fad for a while, all of these openings had been almost extinct from top-level chess since WWI.

Garry Kasparov was largely responsible for re-popularizing the Scotch Game although I don't think he used it in major tournaments/matches that had a lot at stake. He did like to experiment a fair bit with openings, but when it came down to WC and other serious games, he mostly stuck with the handful of openings he trusted such as the Sicilian and Indian Defenses.

Yes, I know. But it knocks out a rather important pin of the argument: Even a notoriously 'play to win, I hate draws' super GM like Fischer hated the King's Gambit. It's dislike has nothing to do with how uncharacteristically decisive it is and GMs wanting to leave draw openings for themselves.

The King's Gambit is a risky opening because it affords the players very little room for error. One slight miscalculation and you lose. GMs aren't willing for the most part to risk important matches when they could play a safer opening like Queen's Gambit Declined that is more forgiving of mistakes.

You keep asserting this without actually demonstrating it. There are plenty of risky openings that are played. Half the lines in the slav defense are sharp as hell, and you see that in top level play all the time.

The reason the King's Gambit isn't played is because it's just fucking weak. It's one of a tiny, tiny minority of openings where you have a greater percentage of black wins than white wins. That's why it's not played, not because people are backing own from risk.

Karpov used the Giuoco Piano in games 8 and 10 of the 1981 World Championship match with Korchnoi. Games 1-6 all used QGD, Ruy Lopez, and Petrov's Defense. Probably at that point in the match, he decided it was necessary to switch up openings and do something out of left field (both games ended in a draw).

The curious thing is that Petrov's Defense is notorious for being a GM drawing tool, but Game 4 ended in Karpov winning.

>It's one of a tiny, tiny minority of openings where you have a greater percentage of black wins than white wins

A lot of GMs actually just try to draw when playing as Black, Bent Larsen was one of the few GMs who took pride in winning games with the Black pieces and he liked using openings like the Dutch Defense which give Black the initiative. He also spanked Karpov with a Scandinavian Defense once.

The match was played in Merano, Italy. It's rumored that Karpov used GP as a little tribute to the nation of Italy. But even there, he used the Giuoco Pianissimo which is the safest and most positional variant of the opening.

>Irrelevant non sequiteur
Are you completely retarded? e4-e5 is common. King's Gambits are not. It's white who decides, once it's an open game, whether to play a King's Gambit or to play something like a Ruy or an Italian or whatever. And a guy who is looking to draw for black isn't going to be particularly worried about a King's Gambit, see pic related; the win chance for white is only 0.6% higher. The reason people aren't playing King's Gambits is because of the risk of Black winning, which is not something you want to take when you have white and you should be having the advantage.

Giuoco Piano is a perfectly sound opening unlike King's Gambit, problem is that it's way too dull and doesn't give you any initiative unless you use the Evans Gambit, which nobody has done since the 19th century. In most cases, it's just a more boring Ruy Lopez.

For some reason, a lot of Chinese players really love using GP.

>e4-e5 is common

Yeh but the only e4 e5 opening you see much in high level chess is the Ruy Lopez, sometimes Petrov's Defense if Black is playing for a draw.

Ruy Lopez gives a complex, strategic midgame, most other e4 e5 openings don't.

Most e4 e5 openings are better for White because he calls the shots and Black must play along with him, while openings like Sicilian and Dutch Defense allow Black to seize the initiative.

>I will say things that are OBJECTIVELY WRONG because I have an IQ in the double digits!

Look at the pic. LOOK AT THE FUCKING PICTURE IN THIS POST Try to use that math they taught you in 4th grade or whenever to look at two numbers and realize which one is bigger. You have twice as many immediate Bc4s as King's Gambits. If you add in Italian games, you have almost 10 times as many. Those are not dull lines.

Evans Gambit is cool but it does require Black to cooperate. He could just as easily play 3...Nf6 or 3...Be7 and ruin your plans.

chessgames.com lists 10,937 Giuoco Piano games (Evans Gambit included). It lists 5,673 KGAs and 2,808 KGDs. That's a total of 8,241 KG games.

Alright fine, the disparity between the two openings is lower than I thought, still how many of those King's Gambit games are amateur players?

Kasparov once beat up Anand with an Evans Gambit. I bet when he moved 3. Bc4, Anand was probably expecting him to follow up with 4. c3 or 4. d3. The look on his face when Kasparov instead did 4. b4 must have been priceless.

Sicilian Defense bores me probably because it's overused.

>I'd much rather sponsor edgy, weak openings for coolness value than try to play well. That's why I listen to Bill Wall instead of actual grandmasters.

4...a6 is known as the Morphy Defense and is the single most common Ruy Lopez variant. Usually White retreats the bishop to a4, unless the Exchange Variation (Bxc6). After that, Black normally follows with dxc6. It is entirely possible to do bxc6 instead, but capturing with the d pawn is considered better.

The idea behind the Exchange Variation is to give Black a weak doubled pawn, but in doing so, White ends up with a bishop and knight for two Black bishops, a disadvantage.

The fuck is a Bill Wall?

Steinitz notably disparaged the Morphy Defense, saying "It merely drives the bishop where it wants to go", but most people disagreed with him.

The problem with gambiteers is that they're like a Jim Jones cult--they'll lose game after game and still insist on the strength of their pet gambit opening, until at some point they down a sub-1000 opponent in a well-known opening trap which renews their faith in the thing.

A notorious troll on chessgames.com who made a specialty out of uploading hundreds of shitty

Steinitz was the guy who loved doing 3...d6 in Ruy Lopez games (known affectionately as the Steinitz Defense) but that variant was way too dull and passive which is why it died out after WWI along with the Berlin Defense (3...Nf6). The Berlin did come back in the 90s, with Kramnik being its leading exponent.

What exactly constitutes an edgy, weak opening?

>ANOTHER IRRELEVANT NON-SEQUITEUR
Seriously, does your brain just not connect to your fingers? White controls whether or not a king's gambit is played after e5 is selected.
Master level players select other sharp lines far in preference of the King's Gambit. That they select less sharp lines in excess of both doesn't change that calculation. If I want to risk a greater chances of loss for a greater chances of win in an open game, I'm WAY better off selecting something like the Italian than something like the King's Gambit, which is why e4 players do those instead.

Stuff like King's Gambit, Bird's Opening, Elephant Gambit, Latvian Gambit, Center Game, Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, etc.

Your opening doesn't lift and posts goth poetry on Livejournal.

For starters, any opening where master level play yields more black wins than white wins. But I suppose the full definition would have to be couched in a calculation as to what openings yield the best chance of winning against equally strong players, and then intentionally not playing those openings out of some sort of value derived from not trying to maximize your wins over draws and losses and draws over losses.

What about the Ponziani Opening?

You forgot the Grob attack.

Ponziani Opening is just dull, but not edgy. It doesn't harm anything but it doesn't give White anything either. Kind of like the Vienna Game--it's just kind of...there.

Evans Gambit

>That's why I listen to Bill Wall instead of actual grandmasters

Then again, Kasparov said that amateur players are best off staying with e4 e5 openings and shouldn't try to attempt queen side pawn openings--those require a higher level of skill.

Nice false equivalence there. We're talking about the King's Gambit as opposed to other, e4 attacking lines.

I cheated.

Popped open a lichess game against hardest AI on my phone, did my opponent's moves there and the AI's moves against my opponent.

Did it out of curiosity more than anything, but felt like shit just the same.

Is it normal to have 1600+ elo in problems an less than 1300 in actual games?

Yes. Puzzle strength bears very little correlation to overall strength. It essentially measures how well you can see a tactical solution when you know there's something to be looking for. A lot of real game tactics involves knowing when to spend the sort of time and energy actually calculating the sort of oddball variations that is the hallmark of puzzle skill.

Wha...you're saying the Center Game or Latvian Gambit are solid?

A lot of people claim Fischer is overrated...but I think Karpov and Kasparov might be put under a magnifying glass more. Keep in mind that they rose to the top at a time when the talent pool for competitive chess was thin. Fischer's rise during the 60s happened when Bronstein, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, and Smyslov were at their zenith. By the time Karpov was world champion, all of these guys had passed their peak and were starting to slow down.

The postwar years were a period of some incredibly strong players, which is why there were five world champions from Botvinnik to Spassky and the title changed hands every few years, while K&K were able to hold onto it for years and years.

bump

My opponent won the pawn but lost the game.

I beat everyone at my office on our office chess game. Its sad. When they lose their Queen its over. You can bully them around the board. Its boring at this point.

Offtopic; does Veeky Forums ever have Go threads?

>tfw no office chess games
>tfw everyone just fucks around on their phones or watches the news on their lunch break

Haven't seen any. Feel free to do one.