Is it true that many average chess players

Is this the Veeky Forums equivalent of /v/'s "MUH GOOKCLICKERS"?

Social skills?

>tfw too skilled to win

Was just reading up on the Queen's Gambit and it seems that the classic QGD with 2...e6 is hardly ever seen anymore among elite players.

chess? more like chizz, more like jizz amirite

Is there anyone who's going to come close to beating him anytime soon?

I know he dropped a game in the last championship, but still won most of them.

Seen 1000-ish ELO schmuck win over Grandmaster once, so you never know.

AYY LMAO
Well said brah

Real talk. Chess is a very difficult game and high-level players are extremely talented and impressive. But chess does not nearly translate one to one into tactical skill like bad movies would have you belive.

chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1054890

Take this 123 move epic. On paper, White had the game won by move 78 (two minor pieces+pawn vs lone rook in practice is always a win) but Black stubbornly resisted for almost 50 more moves. He made several blunders and almost lost, but White failed to capitalize on it and let him back into the game (not unexpected when you've been playing probably 12 hours without a break). Also it's interesting just because endings with two bishops are pretty rare.

>hey magnus, do you know that one thing you inherited from me that you're really, really good at?
>yeah, the one that I let you spread throughout the rest of the legiones astartes and that is a vital infrastructural component of my empire
>don't ever do it again
>no, I won't tell you why, but if you ever do that thing that you and I used to do together and that I will continue to do, I will send your brother to murder you

Reti Opening? That shit's way way too subtle and positional for anyone under 2400.

>greater tactical understanding than Magnus
That's not a very high bar to clear.

More like
>Emperor/Malcador/Valdor sent Russ to just tell Magnus that the Big E is angry at him
>Russ thinks MAKE SURE MAGNUS KNOWS HE FUCKED UP is actually FUCK MAGNUS UP
>Lose an entire legion to Chaos because Russ couldn't keep his murderboner down

It seems that d4 openings have fallen out of favor lately, the 2016 World Championship match had only three d4 openings in 16 games and no Indian Defenses anywhere to be seen.

They come and go in cycles. For example, in the 1920s-30s everyone played d4 openings, then in the 50s-60s it was all e4, then d4 again in the 70s-80s. It's been kind of a little of both since the 90s.

Now compare those Karpov/Korchnoi/Kasparov world championship matches from the 70s-80s when it was nothing but Indian Defenses.

Also I should add that Karpov did mostly use e4 openings in the 70s, he switched to d4 by the mid-80s. Two games in the 81 world championship also featured Italian Games.

>Chess is a very difficult game and
Endgames are the hardest phase of the game. Openings are easy if you book up enough but endgames require a huge amount of calculation to win.

Magnus Carslen would probably lose if he played Bill Wall.

Looks like a Petrov's Defense in the picture.

Most elite GMs use the Petrov's Defense as a drawing weapon although the chessgames.com database lists 36 Carlsen Petrov games and only 12 were draws.

He's been dropping games lately, so...

So this guy's supposedly the greatest chess player in the world.

If we played a game, what strategies does he have that would stop me from slapping the pieces off the board then beating him up? What tactics or positional knowledge would prevent me from dunking this manlet on his head?

None? I thought so. Checkmate, literally.

The main advantage GMs have over amateurs is their vastly superior strategic/positional knowledge, they can see possibilities in a given position that normies can't.

chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1799349

And Stockfish completely failed to find the coup-de-grace rook sacrifice on move 22. All of which proves that computers still can't top a human player. :^)

It seems from my experience that computer engines aren't that good at finding sac combinations.

chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1721829&kpage=1

Longest decisive tournament game with 210 moves, a ridiculous rook vs rook/knight grindfest. Doesn't Bogdanovich know it's not nice to torture old people like this?

I'm in my 20s and I wouldn't want to play a game that long, let alone be 50 like his opponent was.

chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1237282

Finally drawn on move 157 after the 50 move draw rule was reached.

>can't hold up the knights' and rooks' forward progress along a three-hundred mile front for months because the pawns blend in with the civilian population and can't be immediately dealt with
>can't get your budget tightened because your queen fleet is way too expensive and underutilized to be worth the capital invested
>can't place economic sanctions on the opponent for committing war crimes in one of your allies' civilian population centers with his bishops
Honestly, it was a Persian battle simulator game meant to train and hone generals' minds for times of war. They didn't even conceive of things such as airstrikes and non-state actors and the military-industrial complex. It's like Old Snake said: War has changed. Proxy shadow conflicts play out every day across ethernet cables and trading hub tickers as much as they do in sandy outcrops and jungle brush. There are no more war lines to draw. It's all war, all the time. It's just a matter of who's got better funding and PR.

I could never get into chess because I don't understand the whole "think three moves ahead" concept.
Say there are 20 possible moves my opponent COULD possibly make at turn N, a low estimate. Then say there are 20 possible moves I could make at turn N+1 in response to each of those, making 400 possible board states. Yeah, some of those are obviously pointless, but I have to imagine them before I can tell they're pointless. It fucks me up because there's no real order to any of this like going down a checklist, I forget which board states I thought about and which I didn't.
Worst of all, I can't predict which moves at turn N+1 would be advantageous without thinking about turn N+2, and I can't predict that without thinking about turn N+3, and it's infinite. How the fuck do I know what move my opponent will make two turns from now if I don't even know which move I myself will take next turn, but which move I take depends on predicting future moves? I'm stuck in a loop of ignorance. It's impossible for me to narrow down all the potential moves to a most likely few because that would require extrapolating the entire match in my head a billion times.
>hurr git gud
I want the non-meme answer.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to pawn structures; they're what determines the course of a game. Philidor proposed this back in the XVIII century, although Steinitz was the first to prove it.

People like to say that Steinitz invented positional chess and before his time everyone just played crazy King's/Evans Gambit sacrificial attack games, but it's not really true. Actually, positional chess and d4 openings were more common in the Romantic era than is generally believed and one thing to remember is that a lot of the really wild games played by Morphy, Anderssen, et al were against scrub opponents. When elite players faced each other, they tended to use a more positional playing style. As an example, if you look at the games played in the London 1851 tournament, there's quite a few closed games and d4 openings and a distinct absence of King's Gambits.

The thing is that chess books habitually reprint the more wild games played by Romantic players, like the Immortal Game and the Opera House Game, which gives the misleading idea that all games from that time were like this.

IIRC Morphy made it a requirement for matches that at least half the games be e4 e5 openings. He also had a loathing of the Sicilian Defense. I guess like most every player, he had a couple of pet openings he liked and understood--generally the King's Gambit and Italian Game as White, and the Dutch Defense/Philidor Defense as Black.

Chess theory in the Romantic era was really, really underdeveloped and most of the openings those guys used like King's Gambit, Giuoco Piano, and Philidor Defense are not used outside the amateur level at all today. Morphy never faced an Indian Defense or a Slav Defense in his life. There were few chess books in those days, and what did exist was expensive. Most players just winged it and played variations that are seen as a joke now.

Two games in the '16 world championship used the Italian Game. It's not at all dubious like the King's Gambit, but it doesn't have a lot of punch compared with the Ruy Lopez and the more aggressive Evans Gambit is too dangerous to attempt in serious matches.

The King's Gambit has never been refuted, but no GM is foolhardy enough to play it. Why? Because in serious tourney play, you want to be able to draw the game if desired, and the King's Gambit rarely ever produces a draw, you either win or lose. It's part of the business side of professional chess.

Openings like the Sicilian Defense are preferred because they offer the same chance for aggressive gameplay and are easier to steer into a draw if desired.

I mean, Kasparov shocked everyone when he used the Scotch Game in the '91 world championship match.

Yeh some long extinct openings like the Scotch Game, Four Knights, and even the Bishop's Opening were resurrected in the 90s, but the King's Gambit has yet to make a comeback outside amateur chess.

Slightly serious question, why do people still try so hard at chess when AI is better then they'll ever be every time?

I read an article about him where outright states he relies more on instinct and his gut rather than tried-and-true strategy. If something "feels right" to him he goes for it

No computer engine is perfect. See the example given earlier in this thread. I ran a game through Stockfish and it didn't find the game-winning rook sacrifice. In general, computer engines are bad at this sort of thing because they can't figure out that you could intentionally give up material to gain a positional advantage. They merely see something like "This move would result in loss of material with no compensation, which is bad."

Legions of fans and women madly attracted to him who would gladly kill an autistic neet trying to attack him

You're a worthless idiot. He's a superstar who fucks new bitches every day. Don't ever compare yourself to him

Why did I laugh so hard at this retarded post? Jesus I'm in tears

You should get some treatment for that megalomania of yours.

>If we played a game, what strategies does he have that would stop me from slapping the pieces off the board then beating him up?
You seriously think he can't afford to hire a few guys to beat the shit out of you while he fucks your mom?

You could ask the same about any videogame.

Joke's on you, I'm already fucking that user's mom. Magnus has to wait in line.

chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1134883

Another example--this Tal classic from 1969. Stockfish failed to find 11. Qh5 (very important since the queen is put into a firmly entrenched position that Black can't drive it away from) and 15. Nd4 (also important since it leads to the removal of the e pawn which is a main bulkwark of Black's defense).

It did find 20. Qxe5, but recommended that Black castle instead of taking the queen, which was obviously the fatal mistake that cost him the game (he resigned with mate in two).

Black should have castled when he had the chance.

That he should, especially when facing a dangerous tactical player like Tal.

What's up with his face?

Because players generally follow strategies based on the hierarchy of pieces. In the most broad of strokes it goes King>Queen>Rook>Bishop>Knight>Pawn. Bishop and Knight are pretty equal, and obviously the King is not a powerful piece but it must be protected. Once you understand that certain pieces are more important than others it becomes a lot easier to play and understand, but rarely is this explicitly taught, it's just assumed and inferred.

But it gets a lot more complicated when you take into account positioning and how freely a piece can move. Rooks are worse early game then Knights because it takes a lot of moves to get them out and the player can see what you're doing. Kings are very weak in the early game and can't do much, but late game the king's placement becomes very important. Pawns become extremely important in the late game too. But once you realise this general hierarchy you can reasonably predict what most players are thinking and more importantly, what they are capable of doing. A player will target a Queen over a Knight, a player will protect his Rook instead of his Knight etc. Once you've got that understanding down you can form strategies, and once you start forming strategies you are "thinking three moves ahead", but in more broad strokes instead of "this is literally the most likely board state 18 turns from now".

But I'm pretty amateur, no doubt a lot of it is visualizing hundreds of moves.

>Hey you know how you've got a liver that's really good at processing alcohol
>please practice safe drinking instead of binging and assuming you'll be fine

How do I get into chess?

Just read the rules and you'll already be doing well. Seriously, 60% of professional players don't actually know how the knight moves.

Security, you fucking idiot. He wouldn't even have to lift a finger, because you would be knocked out by security or his fans and then charged with assault.

No.
Positional game is the way humans get good positions while not being able to actually calculate deeply.
For example, I would avoid to double or isolate my pawns because I know they will be weaker, and maybe make me lose 30 moves from now. But there is no way I actually calculate lines of 30 moves, so we don´t call this tactics.

Positional game is fine tuning once you reached master tactic level, and if our tactics could improve more, positional game would be just useless.
Computers lack this positional way to judge the game, yet they are way better than humans, just with calculation.

Actually all chess is tactics.
Positioning and strategy are just a silly words human use for "things that usually work in long-term", and somehow compensates our inability to calculate deeply.

>Openings are easy if you book up enough
The red pill here is that endgame is exactly like openings, but easier to study because they don´t change.
The Sicilian Defense for example, has been evolving for decades and is still evolving, experts can´t guarantee what´s the best way to play it and probably you will never know exactly.
But a Rook&Pawn vs Rook endgame has been already studied to the limit. You learn it once and you will play it perfectly the rest of your life.

Middlegame is the real deal on chess.

>Until 1200~
Learn the rules, practice basic checkmates and tactics, and play a lot.

>Until 1400~
Opening: Care the centre, develop minor pieces first (knights&bishops), castle soon.
Middlegame: Checkmate and tactics in 2-3 moves
Endgame: Know how to win/draw King&something vs King alone positions

Pic related for mate in 1 and basic endgame.

>1600~
Openings: Start learning some theory (lines and branches), or a system (trying to reach a modelic position)
Middlegame: Keep the work on problem solving. Add some other chess related puzzles to sharp your mental skill: Chess variants, Troyis, Chess Light, Black Night, whatever you find.
Endgame: Deepen in Rook&Pawns and Pawn endgames, which are the ones you will reach more often.

>1800~
Openings: Actually work on your openings, with strong answers to 1.e4 and 1.d4 being black, and main openings against main defenses being white.
Middlegame: Start with positional concepts, go harder on tactics, always looking for patterns you didn´t know.

>2000+

Opening
Banish secondary or marginal ideas: hoping to surprise your oponents doesn´t work at this level. Even if they don´t know what you are doing, a weak game will be punished.
Working on main lines is harder, but it will make you play better, and actually understand the nature of chess. Study theory and master games to understand your openings.
- White Openings: Banish secondary or marginal ideas, look for lines that actually keep the intiative, make black fight hard to even the game.
- Black Defenses: Look for active and main defenses, trying to deprive white of any advantage from move 1.

Middle Game
Work on problems that make your head hurt, develop the discipline to keep thinking for several minutes even if you don´t have a clue. Analyze master games trying to guess their moves, and deeply analyze your own games.
Go hard on strategy, go berserker on tactics.

Endgame
Know all essential endgames (around the 100 more often reached), and the few most common fortress. Try to impose yourself over machines (3000+ elo) on hard to win endgames (Queen&King vs Rook&King; 2Knights&King vs King&TroitzkyPawn, etc).
Deepen on Rook endgames, with any number of pawns.

From this to master level, just repeat and persist, increasing complexity of your skills and withd of your knowledge as you improve.

TL;DR: A few studying, a lot playing, and infinite tactics of all kind.

Forgot pic. This is the kind of problem a computer will have a hard time solving, along with fortresses.
White to move and win in a number of moves, avoiding all the checkmate and drawn tricks from black.

What do you guys think about BJJ and how it is usually called "human chess"?

You sound like that one guy who said he could beat a gorilla in a fight

Thanks user!

Tricky position, but white can sacrifice a rook, fork the black king and rook with the pawn on b, then promote it always putting black in check. With the black rook on c8 gone, g7xh8Q (possibly with check depending on whether black moved their king to b8 or a7) removes the threat to white of checkmate in one.

With a rook against a queen, and one bishop and several pawns down, black might as well resign.

BJJ is a meme

I *think* I have this.

Ra7+,Kb8
Ra8+,Kxa8
b7+; if kb8
bxc8+,Kxc8
gxa8=Q++

If after b7+
...Ka7,
bxc8=N+, Ka6
gxh8=Q, many branches but I think they all lose due to the queen being able to cover any backrank threats.

Wait, wait, crap. No,

If gxh8=Q, black can draw with d4, Qxd4, Ra1+, Qxa1.

So instead, let's try gxh8=B, which protects against the immediate threat, but leaves a breathing hole if he tries the same rook trick, since h5 is no longer defended.

But now, Black can try to slip in with the rook. But I think you can cover all possible backrank squares with the bishop pair. If Rb3, bg6; Rd3, Ba4; Re3, e8=Q, and of course f3 and c3 are out.
... Rd3,

Penis size.

The last best Chess player was an explosionist Druid that hated Jews and Alienists and lived in a shack.

1.Ra7+ Kb8
2.Ra8+ Kxa8
3.b7+ Ka7
4.bxc8=N+ Ka6
5.gxh8=B is correct, but there is still work to do:

5... d4!
6.Bxd4 Rc3
7.?

Great job, though. That problem is not easy.

Oh come on, the hard part's over with.

If 6... Rc3
7. Be3 (covering the backrank square), Rxe3 loses to e8=R, if he goes to d3 or b3, you have the same bishop protections on h5/g4, and if he goes to a3, you can play h8 and give yourself another darksquare bishop.

Nice

Incidentally, I tried feeding the position to Stockfish, the one on Lichess.

While it had a false start, going back to b7 to check the king again, after that, it solved the problem pretty quickly. When was this composed? I mean, this isn't exactly top of the line computer chess these days.

>Fagnus dindu nuttin

The early game will mostly involve skirmishes between minor pieces; the queen shouldn't move out before mid game or risk getting punted around/trapped. Rooks are typically the last pieces to become active which is why the rook endgame is the most common.

Beginners are too often tempted to charge the enemy castled position with the queen, while ignoring weaknesses in their own camp that can be exploited, and also forgetting that a successful assault on the enemy king will require at least three pieces.

The exact point where the mid game ends and the endgame begins is difficult to determine, but in general the endgame starts when the king becomes an active participant in the game instead of a passive spectator.

I have no idea, but I have another one equally mysterious and complex.
White to move and win.

Also for beginners, white to move and checkmate in one move. It´s a tricky one, I warn you.

Castling is also vital for your king's safety especially in e4 e5 openings. In some of the more closed openings, it may be possible to skip castling. If the queens get exchanged off the board early, then you also don't really need to castle that badly, the danger to the king drops considerably when the queens are gone.

There's no particular advantage to queen or king side castling, although the latter is more common simply because you can do it faster. Queen side castling places the rook in the center of the board, which is more aggressive, but it also leaves the a pawn exposed, and you will typically have to waste a move putting the king on b1/b8 to protect it.

Don't castle if the pawn structure on that side of the board is ripped up, or if a large concentration of enemy pieces are present there. When both sides castle on the same side of the board, it's more likely to lead to a closed game while castling on opposite sides more often leads to an open, tactical game.

Looks like it's from some old Fred Reinfeld book.

Good catch, yeah, if the black king goes to a7, the second pawn will have to be promoted to a bishop and not a queen.

I think you mean Rd3, Bh5 however. But yeah, all the squares can be covered.
If ... Rb3; Bg6 and Rd3 loses.
If ... Rd3; Bh5, Rb3; Bc2 and columns a-d are all covered so Re3; Bf6 Re3; and now it gets tricky again with Bc3.
If ..., Rxc3, black longer threatens checkmate and the pawn on e promotes to a queen and black goes checkmate no matter what.
And if Bc3, Rxe7; h8Q and white STILL got a second pawn promoted, black can no longer threaten checkmate and the whole thing implodes.

You seem to imply that people who play professional chess have sex. If you look at the history of the world's greatest players, they were generally /r9k/ personified.

This one doesn't seem as bad, it's got its own gimmick, which you don't see until you're a bit down the line, but it doesn't have those annoying "gotcha" careless traps that the first one did.

Bd2+, b4
Bxb4+,Kb5
Nd6+, Kb6
Ba5+, Kxa5 (If Qxa5, then Nc4+ and easily won pawn endgame)
Nc4+,Kb5

And now, amusingly, black is stuck. He can't move his king, and he can't move his queen, if it goes to either b7 or c8, you have Nd6+, winning it with the fork. If he pushes his c pawn, make sure to push your d pawn in response. So you can take your time marching your king over to the f file, secure the f pawn, and then push your own f pawn, as long as you're careful not to expose yourself to the black queen.

This one, on the other hand, is stumping me, which is kind of embarrassing. Is this some kind of joke puzzle? You've only got three moves that puts black in check, kind of a pre-requisite for mate. Na5+, Qxd5+, and Bd7+, none of which are mates in 1.

Capablanca was quite the romantic, but then he was Latin. Fischer and probably most Russian players never came anywhere near a vagina.

A lot of the best chess players in the world at the turn of the 19th-20th century died of syphilis. Far more World Champions have been married than not.

>And now, amusingly, black is stuck
You have also to keep an eye on h6:
1.Bd2+ b4
2.Bxb4+ Kb5
3.Nd6+ Kb6
4.Ba5+ Kxa5
5.Nc4+ Kb5
6.Rf4 c5
7.d5 f5
8.Kg5! f4
9.f3 And black has no moves.

>You've only got three moves that puts black in check
Try to think what could have been the last black move.

chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1268705

Of course the all-time record, this absurd 269 move game.