This is a vague concept that’s been thrown around a lot by good players for as long as I’ve been watching top level chess. The art of converting a winning position is what I see it as and I don’t know how to train it. It isn’t flashy tactics you see in puzzles and I haven’t read or encountered any books on it.

It's a forced sacrifice

5 secs left on the clock. I luckily got it, can you find it?

https://preview.redd.it/97jj3gisbkxd1.png?width=1139&format=png&auto=webp&s=efb01c937e5116bdf4ca611e1454fafc32fb64ec

-quick games

-midgame is the whole game

-aggressive play is rewarded

-smothered mates are frequent

-Tempo is god

-What even are book moves here

Yet only a handful of players at a time on chess.com. Highly recommend

didn't need to find mate in 9 as buddy gave me a easier mate in 3 but still try it out if you want

So I (casual chess player / spectator) was following the Levy vs Anna match today on the new Take Take Take app, and my experience was quite mixed...

On the positive side, it was a good way to keep up with the game without having a YouTube stream going in the background. I could check on what's going on whenever I had a minute, and it was easier to go through the past couple of moves rather then zooming through a livestream. The first big chess event I was following was last year's World Championship, and with classical games it was always a hassle to get an overview of what happened in the last 1-2 hours. The commentary provided was okay, far from as fascinating as the live commentators, but usually better than just "Kxe4".

On the other hand, the app was very buggy, I constantly got network errors, positions not loading, no updates for minutes, etc. This definitely needs to be worked on, especially if they're covering faster time controls, as in classical you have at least a decent amount of time to wait for the next move. The way the commentary was working was kind of weird too: my impression is that once a player moves, the "virtual commentator" first writes a quick description (e.g. "Levy moved his knight to e3"), and then edits the description with something more substantial (e.g. "Levy moved his knight to e3, preparing for a check next turn. Anna needs to be cautious as there's a mate in 4 if she moves her king."). I can see how the commentary can't be spontaneous, but this created situations -especially if a few moves are played back to back- where I needed to scroll back and look if any of the move descriptions have changed. Also I missed the truly in-depth analysis that live commentators give, but probably that's just me wanting some thing the app wasn't made for.

All in all, I quite like the concept of the app for following games that I don't wan to actively watch, but there's quite a few kinks to iron out before this becomes a truly viable option.

Did you watch the game on the app? What are your thoughts / experiences?

I don't think it's "deflection/distraction." I can't think of a good word to categorize it

https://preview.redd.it/bg60wz6kqjxd1.png?width=1137&format=png&auto=webp&s=e0ef0e02a739b21e24c740de4f7a046177777149

I'm currently 1500 on both Rapid and Bullet but am trying to get there on blitz too and finding it wayyyy more difficult.

On rapid you have so much time to think and if you play solidly enough your opponent will eventually blunder. Bullet is sort of the opposite, much more about speed than accuracy, and you can get away with incredibly many mistakes as long as you keep up the tempo and don’t freeze. Gonna have to up my game quite a bit to reach the same rating in blitz. Imo it's the most difficult out of the three

So I’m thinking of 1 out of these 4 • Silmans complete endgame course • How to reassess your chess (also by silman) • Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual • The Soviet Chess Primer

If anyone has some suggestions they would be great as well thanks !

So I recently got into chess because my IRL friends 3d printed a chess board. I hopped onto lichess to kill time on the weekend and next thing I know I'm semi-addicated.

I started at 800-850 rating and made it a goal to reach 1000 rating because its a good, round, base 100 number. Each battle was hard-fought. Every loss stung. But to reach rating 1000 fueled me.

35 in-game hours later and I attain +5 rating to go from 996 to 1001 because my foe blundered his queen. I finally went to my lichess profile to gather my stats and I saw this:

my lichess rating

Bottom 11%. 😢😭. I expected to be at the bottom 30-35% or something. Damn. 35 whole hours and only bottom 11%. Feelsbadman.

https://www.chess.com/events/2024-battle-of-generations/01/Rozman_Levy-Cramling_Pia

Levi had a better position, but took 25 minutes on one move and from there he just slowly worsened his position, and Pia capitalised, and just won in the end game.

Well done Pia!

So on chess.com I recently broke 2000 for the first time in rapid playing exclusively 10min games. This is definitely my perefed and best time format and for the last 5 months or so all I played.

Having less of a clear goal on mind now I decided to play some blitz (mainly 3 +2) and I'm pretty frustrated by how much worse I play. Currently I'm getting beaten up by anyone over 1350. In most all aspects of the game, and it's not just my rating but I find myself making blunders I would just never make otherswise. I expected to be worse at blitz as I play it less but it as if I forget how to play chess when the time is quicker. And it's strange as in my 10min games I am usually pretty good and outplay my elo in time scrambles at the end. And moves I make quickly more on intuition in 10min games rarely turn out to be bad ones. But it's Almost like every intuitional move I make in 3 +2 is a blunder and I have to be careful about calculating everything (which then eats into my clock). It's as if a mental barrier stopping me playing better chess.

If anyone's ever experienced anything similar or has any tips would be much appreciated.

any girlies on here who want to be chess buddies?

While, I can believe that technically bishops are stronger, in my practice knight is a much more dangerous piece.

I can't count how many blitz games I've lost because of an unexpected fork. From the other side, if I'm behind in material, I'd much prefer to have, say, knight with rook against two rooks, rather than bishop and rook, for the same reason.

Knights are also more powerful in closed positions. And knight and queen is a really powerful combination in the middle of game. Queen and bishop though... not so much.

Overall, knights moves are much less predictable. I believe that computers values bishops more, because they never make blunders. Probably that also relates to GMs. For average and weaker players though, the situation is different. I find myself wishing to have knight for a bishop most of the time.

Hey everyone!

Some colleagues are working on a new chess puzzle website designed to make searching for specific puzzles easier and more intuitive, and they are looking for feedback.

The link is Chess Puzzle Hub. I thought it might be of interest to the community, and wanted to help them attract more people to it. Apparently, it works better on desktop for now.

https://preview.redd.it/kywko8ahdjxd1.png?width=1870&format=png&auto=webp&s=bb84cdca787404308fe7fe667529c0f00b98b174

Hi,

I made a tool that will answer the following:

1. Does my opening recommend two different moves from the exact same position?
2. How well does my opening cover the likely moves I’ll see?
3. What move in  a game did not follow my opening?

If that would be helpful, go to revchess.com.   Send feedback, problem reports and suggestions for improvements/new features to info@revchess.com

No signups, no fees.  Just made this to help myself and others manage complex opening files.

Regards,

info@revchess.

I'm 1450 rapid, and after analysis chess.com give a review so called "rating of the game " Does this mean I've played like 2150 and my opponent played like 2000?

How would you rate Mark Dvoretsky and Yusupov's book Opening Preparation?and please guide me on how to get the most out of the book.

Just wondering if anyone else has been experiencing this. I will get random challenges to play daily correspondence chess on chess.com. I accept the challenge, but more often than not, the person will not move at all and the game gets aborted. Often the account that sends me the challenge is new. What is this? Are these scammers trying to get data from profile? What is the end goal?

I want to see games played in open tournaments. Just like we can see everygame played by someone on chess.com just by viewing their profile ,Cant we see similary for official tournaments of lower level?