Hobbies The Chess Thread

[cityscapes]

im a bad beginning player who has never really learned any openings (like I feel like if I'm honest I know 1 part of the mainlines of queen's gambit for white+how to avoid the fried liver w black, and nothing else. like sure, I "know" the move order for some lines of the italian game, but being real I should not really be going for the italian game at my level).

How do you learn openings? and what openings do you recommend for black? I'm kind of too dumb to ever become actually good at chess, so mainly looking for lines that lead to favorable end games or at least clear end game plans. Like, how did you come to understand an opening beyond just memorizing some move orders? I just feel so lost trying to understand the positions im trying to get w openings and what types of plans I have in those positions.

Is there a certain lichess.com study or free youtube video that was particularly helpful for you to finally understand what types of positions to play for from a certain opening? repost it at me if possible plz.

hi im 1900 on lichess so am still not qualified to give advice but i'll do my best anyway

i pretty much never memorized move orders. with basically every good opening you have a wide assortment of cool developing moves and ideas and it's just a matter of picking the one that makes the most sense. for example in the sicilian do i go for d6 g6 or e6 a6? when do i develop the queen's knight? depends on what the opponent is up to.

opening traps do exist, but since they're in the opening they're pretty simple to remember and adapt against. you know how to beat the scholar's mate? you know how to beat the fried liver? it's pretty much that except opening specific.

memorizing move orders without the necessary exp/understanding typically doesn't help you that much anyway. i watched this video on the smith-morra and memorized like 10 moves, got one of them wrong, and lost my queen (to be fair my opponent was getting ghosted by the resident smith-morra tryhard at the club)

gothamchess's opening playlist is your best bet for learning the main ideas of openings fast. i remember the first time i went to my irl chess club, i whipped out the grand prix prep against my arch-nemesis dylan and got an awesome position that i went on to win.

chess coach andras is the best chess channel on youtube imo. where his videos differ from other instructional content is that he just really enjoys the game, and his videos are geared towards not only helping you get better but making you enjoy the game as well. here's the stuff i've taken to heart from his vids:

• play both e4 and d4 as white, regardless of your temperament as a player. neither opening is particularly offensive or defensive. if you can beat someone with e4 you can also beat them with d4, and vice versa. (edit: im proof of this. for months i was an e4 only player, then i started playing d4 c4 type stuff and did fine with it)
• focusing on results -> "but what if i lose :(" -> negative. focusing on game shape -> "i wonder what will happen in this opening!" -> positive. remember why you play chess.
• don't be scared of theory, your opponent won't know any either
• the sicilian is awesome once you learn how to not do stupid things in it

once i was super tilted and played the medusa gambit against some dude and randomly won in 15 moves. another time i was in call with lumi arguing over which moves to play and won that too. this game is a complete scam and is best with a healthy dose of screwing around. stockfish is out to ruin our fun. even if you make an unsound sacrifice you probably have a 50% chance of winning.

 

[bruno]

im a bad beginning player who has never really learned any openings (like I feel like if I'm honest I know 1 part of the mainlines of queen's gambit for white+how to avoid the fried liver w black, and nothing else. like sure, I "know" the move order for some lines of the italian game, but being real I should not really be going for the italian game at my level).

How do you learn openings? and what openings do you recommend for black? I'm kind of too dumb to ever become actually good at chess, so mainly looking for lines that lead to favorable end games or at least clear end game plans. Like, how did you come to understand an opening beyond just memorizing some move orders? I just feel so lost trying to understand the positions im trying to get w openings and what types of plans I have in those positions.

Is there a certain lichess.com study or free youtube video that was particularly helpful for you to finally understand what types of positions to play for from a certain opening? repost it at me if possible plz.

I saw you say u're 1500 rapid(i assume in chess.com) and since im 1600 im not sure how much im helping here honestly, but i have some tips that could probably make you better than me since you struggle with opening part of the game while im more of a "chokes good/equal positions middle game because of wrong pawn movement/stupid knight move/doesnt notice fork" kind of a guy

My way of learning openings is: I pick whatever im curious to learn or think i'd do good with and look it up on gothamchess' channel. He can be kind of annoying sometimes but his opening videos are honestly amazing and give you all the basic tools you need, you just need to practice like 20 games with the opening or so and you should be good to go. Something i've also noticed is that the more opening videos i watch the better i am at dealing with those later, so it's kind of nice to do even if i end up not using the opening at all.

I had a time period where i struggled with black as well. I generally play the accelerated dragon against e4 and then king's indian against basically anything else. After noticing i lost a lot against d4 i started to realize how much i dislike the king's indian against d4, because every game just feels extremely annoying and too many people play it so it feels like all my opps know how to get a comfy spot out of it while im out here fighting for my life. After looking at a few options i actually started playing the englund gambit and got a lot of free wins while not getting the worst position ever even if my opp knows the theory of it(which is like, super short to learn). I know its not actually a great idea to play this opening as it's just getting bad positions if played right but for now im enjoying it and getting in a lot of interesting positions.

So my reccomendation would be: Look at what white openings you're struggling the most with and try other stuff. Once you find something you're at least enjoying playing stick to it and get good at it and it should pay off. And it really doesn't have to do with how smart you are imo, its just more about practicing(like just knowing the first like 7 moves or so) and watching a good vid/reading about it. Analyzing what you're doing wrong is also huge obv. I can't reccomend gotham's stuff enough when it comes to openings, he makes it really easy for you to understand.

As for video reccomendations to learn in general i'd highly reccomend naroditsky's speedrun over anybody else by far. Just skip to the speedrun videos closer to your rating. Trust me his videos are actually golden lessons for intermediate playing.

 

[TrRizzo09]

I just realized the existence of this threat.
Well, I'm not a good player but sometimes I do some clever moves in order to win complicated matches (Often it's just luck lol).The fact is that I don't have a solid theory about the game, that's why I'm searching where can I find the openings and the explanations. Do you know any yt channel or a website that explain all the openings and variations?

 

[Bughouse]

Openings really are the sort of thing where if you want to have a large repertoire you either need to have just played for years or devote a lot of time to specifically studying openings AND then in either case you still need to have an exceptional memory or at least exceptional general feel for the game/spider sense.

you can advance though with a very limited repertoire. I’m a d4 player so I inherently know most things I can play as black against d4 as well. I came to decide on d4 over e4 or c4 because I felt it gave the most relative control to white over what lines you get into. As an e4 player I feel like you need to know viable responses to dozens of responses. D4 set ups can tend to be much more similar against almost anything black plays.

I don’t know most things with white as e4, but it doesn’t hurt me too much as black because my preferred response is the French defense (I also played the caro Kann for a hot second years ago) which really only requires me to know a few particular setups to get into a playable middle game. Generally the exchange French is just comfortable, the advance usually plays out similarly and so is pretty easy to learn, and against nc3 or nd2 you have a few options and black kinda gets to drive which one they want to play.

Bb4 goes into the winawer which I’ve never preferred because it requires knowing more theory I don’t have time for.
Nf6 cedes the choice to white to some extent of Bg5 vs e5. I used to play this at one point but while I liked the positions I’d get with the mccutcheon vs bg5 I hated playing against e5.
Finally there’s dxe4, the Rubinstein, where in my opinion black is dictating what position they want to get into, with white really unable to generate sufficient immediate threats to stop black’s preferred next few moves. The main line rubinstein used to be my go to but now I prefer the Fort Knox.

of course this doesn’t mean you HAVE to play the French. It’s not for everyone. I just wanted to illustrate that if you want to learn a more minimal opening repertoire and just get yourself into middle games, you should try to pick a white and black repertoire that overlap nicely and don’t require you to need to know any more than you have to.

my lichess playing stats lol i have no variety:

with white move 1:

with black move 1 against e4:

how i score playing the fort knox as black... no advantage to white:

 

[TrRizzo09]

Openings really are the sort of thing where if you want to have a large repertoire you either need to have just played for years or devote a lot of time to specifically studying openings AND then in either case you still need to have an exceptional memory or at least exceptional general feel for the game/spider sense.

you can advance though with a very limited repertoire. I’m a d4 player so I inherently know most things I can play as black against d4 as well. I came to decide on d4 over e4 or c4 because I felt it gave the most relative control to white over what lines you get into. As an e4 player I feel like you need to know viable responses to dozens of responses. D4 set ups can tend to be much more similar against almost anything black plays.

I don’t know most things with white as e4, but it doesn’t hurt me too much as black because my preferred response is the French defense (I also played the caro Kann for a hot second years ago) which really only requires me to know a few particular setups to get into a playable middle game. Generally the exchange French is just comfortable, the advance usually plays out similarly and so is pretty easy to learn, and against nc3 or nd2 you have a few options and black kinda gets to drive which one they want to play.

Bb4 goes into the winawer which I’ve never preferred because it requires knowing more theory I don’t have time for.
Nf6 cedes the choice to white to some extent of Bg5 vs e5. I used to play this at one point but while I liked the positions I’d get with the mccutcheon vs bg5 I hated playing against e5.
Finally there’s dxe4, the Rubinstein, where in my opinion black is dictating what position they want to get into, with white really unable to generate sufficient immediate threats to stop black’s preferred next few moves. The main line rubinstein used to be my go to but now I prefer the Fort Knox.

of course this doesn’t mean you HAVE to play the French. It’s not for everyone. I just wanted to illustrate that if you want to learn a more minimal opening repertoire and just get yourself into middle games, you should try to pick a white and black repertoire that overlap nicely and don’t require you to need to know any more than you have to.

my lichess playing stats lol i have no variety:

with white move 1:
View attachment 413783

with black move 1 against e4:
View attachment 413784

how i score playing the fort knox as black... no advantage to white:
View attachment 413785

Now I see that it's a lot of information, all my knowledge in early game is:
(white) start with e4 and then make short castling.
(black) pray.

That's because I always played with friends and usually pick white. I hope I'll be able to improve soon.

 

[Martin]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1583175494090256384

That's a lot of zeroes...

There's no way he wins this, right?

Also wtf does Hikaru have to do with anything? (Genuine question btw. Is there smth I don't know about or is he just being sued for reading articles about it on his stream?)

Edit: I wonder if the point of these numbers is with the end goal of a settlement out of court? Without knowing much about how things are valued in law I genuinely don't know why he thinks whatever damage this may have caused is valued at $400M+. Does he expect some of the counts to fail and want to cover his bases?

 

[Bughouse]

No this is not a winnable case in US courts. Under some European countries’ law maybe. Not US defamation law though.

 

[Garrett]

Chess definitely has improved with "adding money to the game" starting in the 1970s when Fischer demanded better pay for the World Championship. Whether there's close to half a billion dollars in all of chess is another story... well the answer's no.

Just want to point out a couple things:
0.) I'm neither a fan or a hater of Hans. Chess grandmasters are rarely telegenic individuals and they often dig their own shallow-to-deep grave by answering questions in the shortest of post-game interviews. Hans is particularly an idiot at answering basic questions.
1.) The full motion is here.
2.) As much as I want Niemann to have a fair trial despite past online cheating, the castigating essay we have in front of us has a ridiculous amount of detail discussing how FIDE is inept, chess.com is monopolizing the game and its professional circuits, and how important it is than Niemann is a "chess prodigy." While I hate both inept FIDE and chess.com, at a certain point you have to admit Niemann's legal representation is pulling a fast one:

This frame does them so dirty LMFAO

3.) There is a decent argument to be made that Hans' professional chess career has at least been partially stunted forever. Even stronger of a case is that Hans has been the surprise spotlight of unprecedented scrutiny and, unfortunately, significant hate. The US Championship has been certainly memorable this year.

That being said, the first action is $100,000,000 for "slander -- against all defendants." Magnus should have an easy time disclosing how much sponsorship money he received for wearing his last World Championship jacket, and then showing that it is at most a few percent of the total $100,000,000. Even if you were to extrapolate that Hans played out of his mind for the next decade or decade and a half, Hans was not making anywhere near this. No amount of slander could prevent him from getting this. Experts would probably say he's going to become something closer to a Giri or Aronian (than Prag or Alireza, real contenders for world champion-level money and careers).

The second action is libel for the same amount. Not happening.

The third action is claiming a heinous violation of the Sherman (Antitrust) Act, which is hilarious. Admittedly, it's a little sad to see chess.com getting intimate with FIDE and using its financial arm to keep FIDE close by (they've had USCF-rated tournaments forever, and even though they're no ICC, I do worry).

The fourth and fifth actions are "Tortious Interference with Contract and Business Expectancies" and "Civil Conspiracy." All this suit might do is stop Magnus from playing so many Titled Tuesdays on chess.com now.

 

[ACNT]

Hi, I'm looking for chess games
My fide is around 1700 but I haven't been playing chess seriously otb since a bunch of years. Online I'm > 2000 blitz / rapid on chess.com
If someone is interested, my dms are open. I'm mostly looking for USCF / FIDE rated players about my level or stronger

For openings, even if the discussion is a bit old: globally it is not far from being optional before a certain level, roughly before 2000F (so probably around 2200 CC online). The important thing is to have solid principles in the openings and to apply them, as well as good strategic bases. You can play almost anything (including OTB) before 2000 and probably even higher (2300-2400F) if you are gifted enough at the game (not my case)

I think the best thing is to not spread yourself too thin in your openings and to avoid playing too complex mainlines. For example, play small lines of known openings, with relatively simple plans to understand. I think it's better to work on endgames for one hour than spending three hours on an opening.

But if you really want to work on the openings: firstly I think you have to think about a coherent repertoire with black, for example which allows transpositions. The Caro-Kann and the Slav/Semi-Slav for example have a good synergy and potentially similar pawn structures. The same goes for the French and Orthodox. I'm obviously not saying that the plans are perfectly similar but there are connections between these openings. For the choice with white, it depends a bit on strengths and weaknesses. If you are strategically strong, d4 is probably the best choice. If it's more tactical/aggressive, e4. Obviously this is to keep it simple. The English and Reti are a bit different, they are openings that require a very good knowledge of transpositions and pawn structures for me, the English being probably the trickiest one. I find them globally very difficult to start with and you need to build a very solid experience before getting results with it. All the other first moves are for eccentric players with an unconventional playing style

Another question that may arise is what you want to do with your openings. If you plan to play only in bullet online or in tournaments with a slow OTB time control, it is not the same thing. The shorter the time control, the more you can afford aggressive or "exotic" openings. Finally, there are two ways of approaching openings I think at amateur level: play an opening that matches our strengths to get better results, or build up our repertoire to improve our skill in different aspects of the game. To make it clearer: experienced e4 players are likely to work more on tactics and attacking play, an English player is likely to be comfortable with pawn structures and the concept of transposition, Petrov or Berlin players are likely to be stronger on average than their opponents with equal elo in the endgame, etc. So we can also work on an opening to better understand an aspect of the game that we lack

Studying the openings in depth is quite long, and in my opinion, rather boring: a lot of work for relatively few results. A chess player who works mainly on his openings is like a pole vaulter who only works on the run-up and not on the jumping technique. So I think it's a good idea to decide on a repertoire and stick to it without changing it too much afterwards, even if the results aren't there at first. So you can focus on improving other aspects of your chess technique, and get better quickly. But that's only my own opinion

 

[Vid]

I have been playing chess for almost two years, and I honestly love it as it is so easy to play bullet or blitz games on your phone or a long-winded OTB game at my local chess club. With every chess game, I always learn something new, and it is one of the few games where it is "pure" skill with little to no luck involved. If I lose, it is because I made a mistake somewhere, and finding that mistake and learning from it is what makes chess so fun.

Currently, I am around 1400 Rapid and 1200 Blitz on chess.com and would love to play anyone around my level to play and analyze games to help both of us improve. I play better with more time as I often make careless mistakes, and more time allows me to think about my idea and think about the long-term consequences of it, while in Blitz, I find the shorter time format often forces me to make short-sighted attacks. As I found, when I play with someone around my level who wants to improve, I improve at a rapid rate which I have not been doing for the last six months since I have not stopped by my local chess club. Does anyone else go to chess clubs? I have been to five chess clubs and found the most enjoyable ones that encourage beginners to participate and play. The ones that take chess too seriously are the clubs I do not attend, as most people will not become grandmasters, so why not have fun and play some chess and maybe learn something new?

One book series that helped me rapidly improve was Playing Winning Chess by Yaseer Seirawan, as Seriawan presents information in a simple and precise manner that allows a beginner to understand the fundamentals of chess.

In terms of YouTube, I find most of them not helpful in drastically improving my chess since their primary purpose is to entertain. I enjoy GothamChess, Eric Rosen, and Hikaru, but I do not actively go to YouTube to learn chess.

In terms of openings, I am not a big fan of memorizing openings but rather learning specific structures and ideas. While it is fantastic to remember a "trap," it is much better to know why that "trap" works and is beneficial; I might be able to execute the ideas in a similar position. My favorite aggressive openings are the King's Gambit, Evans Gambit, Fried Fried Liver, etc. I often do not pay attention to the theory but rather try to play ideas that make sense, and if it doesn't work, I do not want to know the correct idea; I want to understand why my idea was incorrect and why the other idea is better so I can apply the knowledge universally.

If anyone wants to play chess, please let me know, as I am always looking forward to playing someone new, regardless of your level, so that we can improve.

 

[Bughouse]

I have been playing chess for almost two years, and I honestly love it as it is so easy to play bullet or blitz games on your phone or a long-winded OTB game at my local chess club. With every chess game, I always learn something new, and it is one of the few games where it is "pure" skill with little to no luck involved. If I lose, it is because I made a mistake somewhere, and finding that mistake and learning from it is what makes chess so fun.

Currently, I am around 1400 Rapid and 1200 Blitz on chess.com and would love to play anyone around my level to play and analyze games to help both of us improve. I play better with more time as I often make careless mistakes, and more time allows me to think about my idea and think about the long-term consequences of it, while in Blitz, I find the shorter time format often forces me to make short-sighted attacks. As I found, when I play with someone around my level who wants to improve, I improve at a rapid rate which I have not been doing for the last six months since I have not stopped by my local chess club. Does anyone else go to chess clubs? I have been to five chess clubs and found the most enjoyable ones that encourage beginners to participate and play. The ones that take chess too seriously are the clubs I do not attend, as most people will not become grandmasters, so why not have fun and play some chess and maybe learn something new?

One book series that helped me rapidly improve was Playing Winning Chess by Yaseer Seirawan, as Seriawan presents information in a simple and precise manner that allows a beginner to understand the fundamentals of chess.

In terms of YouTube, I find most of them not helpful in drastically improving my chess since their primary purpose is to entertain. I enjoy GothamChess, Eric Rosen, and Hikaru, but I do not actively go to YouTube to learn chess.

In terms of openings, I am not a big fan of memorizing openings but rather learning specific structures and ideas. While it is fantastic to remember a "trap," it is much better to know why that "trap" works and is beneficial; I might be able to execute the ideas in a similar position. My favorite aggressive openings are the King's Gambit, Evans Gambit, Fried Fried Liver, etc. I often do not pay attention to the theory but rather try to play ideas that make sense, and if it doesn't work, I do not want to know the correct idea; I want to understand why my idea was incorrect and why the other idea is better so I can apply the knowledge universally.

If anyone wants to play chess, please let me know, as I am always looking forward to playing someone new, regardless of your level, so that we can improve.

that series by seirawan is indeed excellent. I used those a lot earlier in my chess career.

If you're looking for any more books, How to Reassess Your Chess by Silman was probably the single most impactful to my advancement. I also strongly recommend Silman's Complete Endgame Course.

Art of Attack in Chess by Vukovic and Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual are similarly useful books once you're at a higher level.

I also really love the Chess Training Pocket Book series by Lev Alburt.

 

[Kingler]

im a bad beginning player who has never really learned any openings (like I feel like if I'm honest I know 1 part of the mainlines of queen's gambit for white+how to avoid the fried liver w black, and nothing else. like sure, I "know" the move order for some lines of the italian game, but being real I should not really be going for the italian game at my level).

How do you learn openings? and what openings do you recommend for black? I'm kind of too dumb to ever become actually good at chess, so mainly looking for lines that lead to favorable end games or at least clear end game plans. Like, how did you come to understand an opening beyond just memorizing some move orders? I just feel so lost trying to understand the positions im trying to get w openings and what types of plans I have in those positions.

Is there a certain lichess.com study or free youtube video that was particularly helpful for you to finally understand what types of positions to play for from a certain opening? repost it at me if possible plz.





I am not a even a good chess player, but ime: Until you develop the mental aspect of your game to the point where you no longer think about/are affected by whether your opponent is weaker or stronger than you, you should try "pretending" that your lower rated opponents are actually higher rated and youre the underdog, possibly in addition to "pretending" that your stronger opponents are actually lower rated. I know it sounds crazy, but if you want this aspect of the mental game you may need to practice dumb mind tricks like this on yourself. I used to have a similar problem in a different sport and this is sort of like what I did to overcome it only applied to your case (my problem was that I went easier on my opponents when I was winning, so I would pretend my opponent's score was my score when I was winning so that I wouldn't 'let up').

cityscapes' post on this is pretty good but the main thing that caused me to jump a lot in rating was learning structures (pawn structures and piece placements). you should know the basics of openings but a lot of stuff you can't really memorize past move 10--there's too many sidelines and stuff and at higher levels being outprepped is pretty much gg if your opponent knows what they are doing. try sticking to something that does not require too much theory (like d4 openings for example will still require theory but are a lot more theoretical and structural than e4 openings, small missteps are less game-ending in the queen's gambit than the sicilian), learn to play with your pieces (position them better, maneuver, etc). if you can get to the middle game without losing you can win so many more games by just having more game intuition and knowledge, and this stuff you don't lose as much as the opening memorization that you will have to keep coming back to.

I have used a lot of chess resources when I got back into it and I think making significant improvement is hard without a lot of intentional effort, but you can always look at the st. louis chess club or chess24. i'd try going through free resources before something like chessable or what others have mentioned before me.

If you use lichess a lot look under "Learn -> Studies"; there's some inbuilt theory. I remember I used one of the Najdorf studies from some NM while prepping for an open tournament to brush up.

i'm always down to play as kingler12345 when i have time cuz i love the game so you can add me on there

edit: hikaru also has an excellent suggestion that doesnt require you to actually play a full game: improve your tactics