Any Chess Fans Here

John_C_87

I do not understand chess can you help me?

What is the greater goal of a game chess capture the King or place pawns at the end of the board?

JulesKorngold

Argument Topic: Checkmate

@John_C_87
The goal of chess is to checkmate the opponent's king. Checkmate occurs when the king is in a position to be captured (in check) and cannot escape from capture. The game is won by the player who forces the opponent's king into checkmate. There are only three ways a king can get out of check: move out of the way (though he cannot castle!), block the check with another piece, or capture the piece threatening the king.

Nomenclature

@John_C_87

What is the greater goal of a game chess capture the King or place pawns at the end of the board?

The objective is to capture (or rather trap) the king, John. Everything else is a means to achieving that. By advancing a pawn to the end of the board you win the ability to exchange it for a more powerful piece, which makes it easier to achieve a checkmate (i.e. capture the king)

JulesKorngold

Argument Topic: Strategy

@John_C_87

Chess is a game of strategy that involves long-term planning and positioning of pieces to gain an advantage over the opponent. The best chess strategy involves a combination of principles, tactics, and openings that can help you achieve your goal of winning the game. Here are some of the best chess strategies that you can consider:

1. Principle of the least active piece: This is one of the most universal strategic rules in chess, which involves making sure that each piece on the board is as active as possible. This means that you should try to avoid moving the same piece multiple times or leaving a piece passive, as this could give your opponent an opportunity to gain an advantage.

2. Control the center: It is essential to control the center of the board, as it allows your pieces to move more freely and attack in any direction. A good chess strategy is to imagine the best possible position for each of your pieces and then try to bring them there [7].

3. Understanding piece value: Every piece on the board has a value, and understanding the value of each piece can help you assess whether it is worth exchanging one component for another.

4. Familiarity with openings: Chess openings are the first few moves of a game that set the stage for the rest of the game. Some of the best chess openings for beginners include the Italian Game, the Sicilian Defense, and the French Defense [8]. It is important to be familiar with various openings and understand the strengths and weaknesses of each opening.

5. Long-term planning: Chess strategy is not just about immediate gains, but it also involves long-term planning. It is important to anticipate future moves and position your pieces in a way that allows you to achieve your goals.

JulesKorngold

Argument Topic: Learning

@John_C_87

Learning chess can be a fun and rewarding experience. Here are some steps you can take to start learning chess:

1. Learn the rules: The first step to learning chess is to understand the rules. You can find many online resources that will explain the basic rules of the game.

2. Play the game: The best way to improve your chess skills is to play the game. You can play against other beginners or against a computer program. Start with the basic level, and gradually increase the difficulty as you improve.

3. Practice puzzles: Chess puzzles can help you improve your problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Start with easy puzzles, and gradually work your way up to more challenging ones.

4. Learn basic strategies: Chess has many different strategies that you can use to improve your game. Start by learning the basic opening strategies, and then move on to more advanced strategies as you progress.

5. Analyze your games: After each game, take some time to analyze what went well and what didn't. This can help you identify areas where you need to improve.

6. Read books or watch videos: There are many resources available to help you learn chess, including books, videos, and online courses. Look for resources that are targeted towards beginners.

Remember that learning chess takes time and practice. Be patient with yourself and don't get discouraged if you don't improve immediately. With practice, you will gradually improve and become a better player.

JulesKorngold

Argument Topic: Chess Books

@John_C_87

Here are some classic and highly recommended chess books:

1. "My System" by Aron Nimzowitsch - A classic book on chess strategy and positional play.

2. "The Art of Attack in Chess" by Vladimir Vukovic - A comprehensive guide to attacking play in chess.

3. "Pawn Structure Chess" by Andrew Soltis - A detailed analysis of how pawn structure affects the game of chess.

4. "Winning Chess Tactics" by Yasser Seirawan - A beginner-friendly guide to tactics and combinations in chess.

5. "Logical Chess: Move by Move" by Irving Chernev - A classic book that explains the thought process behind every move of 33 master games.

6. "The Complete 's Guide to Chess" by Patrick Wolff - A beginner-friendly guide that covers everything from the basic rules to advanced strategy.

7. "Silman's Complete Endgame Course" by Jeremy Silman - A comprehensive guide to endgame play, with explanations and examples.

8. "The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games" by Graham Burgess, John Nunn, and John Emms - A collection of 125 of the greatest chess games of all time, with detailed analysis and commentary.

JulesKorngold

Argument Topic: Where To Play

@John_C_87
Chess.com is a very popular and reputable online venue for playing chess. It has a large community of players from all over the world, ranging from beginners to grandmasters. Chess.com offers a variety of game modes, including casual games, rated games, tournaments, and puzzle challenges. It also has a range of training and instructional resources to help players improve their skills, such as video lessons, articles, and a tactics trainer. Additionally, Chess.com has a user-friendly interface and can be accessed on a variety of devices, including desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Overall, Chess.com is a great option for players looking to play chess online.

OakTownA

@JulesKorngold
Thanks for the book recommendations. I enjoy playing chess, but am not very good at it. I've been told that my game "isn't aggressive enough," but I'm not sure what that means. Probably that I rely on my pawns too much. LOL I will definitely check out the book on pawns, as I think they are an under rated piece.

Nomenclature

@JulesKorngold

Lichess is a much better site than Chess.com in my opinion.

Dee

@Nomenclature

I agree, and totally free. I was given a GO board game many years ago from a friend yet I've never gotten round to playing it, I remember a long time ago members of a club playing in a corner in a pub , the game looked most interesting , must give it's go.

Have you played it?

Nomenclature

@Dee

Hi Dee.

Nope, but I've heard great things about the game. It's supposed to rival chess in its complexity.

John_C_87

@Nomenclature

Again, so what is the real goal of chess?

John_C_87

@JulesKorngold

Chess is an overcomplicated game of checkers........
Checkers is an overcomplicated game of tick, tack, toe.........

Dee

@Nomenclature

I watched a GO championship on You Tube truly fascinating, Kasparov loves the game as do many chess players

OakTownA

@Dee
GO is often considered one of the most difficult games in the world. It's certainly one of the oldest! (Along with chess)

I think someone tried to teach me how to play when I was younger, but I don't really remember.

Dee

@OakTownA

The rules can be learned in minutes but it's reckoned it's way more difficult than chess

Nomenclature

Argument Topic: Don't want to blow my own trumpet but...

I'm cleaning house again. I'm like 20 games unbeaten.

Nomenclature

Argument Topic: Although in fairness....

I should have lost the game before last. I opened with a Vienna Gambit, which is something I haven't fully gotten the hang of yet. It looked like my opponent was about to punish me, then they inexplicably threw away their queen. I'm semi-convinced they did it on purpose because all the rest of their moves were strong. 

Nomenclature

And another one down, and another one down, another one bites the dust...

Nomenclature

Why do they always do this? 

This guy gave me a tough game too. Let himself down by rage quitting.

MayCaesar

Just returned from the USATE. I love chess and am getting back into playing it seriously, but the amount of time commitment and mental energy required to get a title and gain access to the events with strong players makes me hesitate. I can win an occasional game against a 2100-2200 player, but playing against the competitive folks is pretty pointless at this point. The first board player on my team who completely outclasses me was paired up against an IM yesterday and was wiped off the board, so what chance do I have against those guys...

I will say that while I love chess as a concept and it is the only game in existence at which I am somewhat decent, I prefer non-deterministic games. Considering multiple possible rolls and trying to choose the set of actions that has the highest benefit expectation drastically differs from finding an objectively sound plan in a game with perfect knowledge and executing it well. In chess I always know in what direction the game is going to proceed for the next few moves, while in something like MtG or D&D surprises are commonplace.

However, I always lacked the patience to study the convoluted systems of those games in detail. Studying chess is more straightforward, as you can always take any game apart and learn something from it: you never have those situations in chess when everything is fine and suddenly your opponent pulls out a trick and demolishes you, and you can always trace the outcome to the specific logical error(s) one of the players made.

I tried getting into Go once and was pretty bad at it. To me Go is a much more difficult game in that the intuition you need to play it well is quite disjointed from our everyday intuition. In chess you can often tell from a quick look at the board if one of the players has a substantial advantage, while in Go even the top engines struggle with evaluation.

Card games are harder still. MtG or Hearthstone, or even Poker, have not been cracked by machines, and the complexity of decision-making that goes into them is staggering. I have no idea how professional Hearthstone players' brains work, but they certainly do something completely different from what I do when coming up with a piece improvement plan in chess. I was not terrible at Hearthstone either, it was just that I did not know how to even approach trying to get better at that game and my skill level flattened pretty quickly. In chess I still, after playing it fairly consistently for some 20 years, can learn something new every day, while in Hearthstone my play stagnated after a month or so.

Nomenclature

Yet another rage quitter.

I blundered my queen in this game too. 

Dee

@Nomenclature

Dreadful behaviour, if you get beat you take it like a man , everyone takes a beating now and then  

Nomenclature

@Dee

Absolutely 100 percent true. If it's over then you resign, proving you have both the intelligence to see what's coming and the guts to admit it. These games are anonymous for goodness sake. It's not like you lose anything by resigning, 

There's just something about chess that makes people far too emotionally invested in the outcome. It's exactly why I don't play rated, because too many players can't handle losing and so they use computer assistance to turn the tables when they get into a tight spot, in order to save their rating from taking a hit.

Nomenclature

@MayCaesar

You shouldn't really expect to win against IMs, because they're not people playing for fun. They're professional players. Some of those guys have been studying chess 12 hours a day since childhood. 

Winning is fun, but the reality is that you learn nothing from winning. Neither do you really learn much when someone wipes the floor with you. The fastest way to improve at chess is to consistently play someone (or a machine) who is just slightly better than you are. You'll find that after a while you can close the gap. 

Dee

@Nomenclature

I remember Gary Kasparov talking about how he crushed  people in chess and that he was actually  destroying the person mentally

A lot of top level chess players are I think mentally unbalanced as chess is the be all and  end-all oftheir lives. I knew a man over here who was an IM ,he lived in a tiny flat where every bit  ofavaiable space was covered with chess periodicals his wall space had old style computer monitors displaying matches from all over the world.

It was impossible to get him to talk for more than a  minute without his reverting  back to chess,

A lot of players online I think display varying forms of truly irrational behaviour and i think you're right it's a dread fear of losing ranking points

John_C_87

Perspective: As debate.

Chess is more psychological test of persons sanity then sport the difference being a sport has a varying field and players.

MayCaesar

OakTownA said:

@JulesKorngold
Thanks for the book recommendations. I enjoy playing chess, but am not very good at it. I've been told that my game "isn't aggressive enough," but I'm not sure what that means. Probably that I rely on my pawns too much. LOL I will definitely check out the book on pawns, as I think they are an under rated piece.

It is fairly common for less experienced people to overreact to threats. Say, your opponent develops his queen aggressively, and you start looking at the threats the move creates and passively defending against them, forgetting that you have to come up with your own plan and create threats against your opponent.

In chess psychological resilience is almost as important as the actual skill. Seeing a scary queen advice, shrugging and coolly analyzing your position, and being able to do it consistently throughout the game no matter what happens, alone will improve your game dramatically. My friend yesterday was defending a very hard position for 4 hours straight: most would have given up and cracked under the pressure quickly, but he kept going and in the end secured a very unlikely draw. It is amazing just how many resources one has in most positions: they only need to stay cool and constantly look out for them, even when the position looks completely hopeless. Of course, to a healthy extent: if you are down a rook and it does not look like you are even close to threatening your opponent with anything, then it is only decent to resign and move on.

On a high level most games result in a draw, because the amount of defensive resources those guys can extract from most positions generally far surpasses the amount of the attacking resources available. The games that either side wins generally contain some cunning idea that the opposing player missed and that the winner had to work extremely hard to dig out. In most cases either the game is fairly equal throughout, or one player is attacking the other player out of a better position, but just cannot crack through his endless defensive ideas and eventually runs out of steam.

John_C_87

Winning is fun, but the reality is that you learn nothing from winning. Neither do you really learn much when someone wipes the floor with you. The fastest way to improve at chess is to consistently play someone (or a machine) who is just slightly better than you are. You'll find that after a while you can close the gap. 

That is because the game is not really a contest it is a mathematical fix equation much like tic tac toe just way more complicated. Notice the English spelling of Tic.Tac.Toe. it is a hint, or it is presumed idea to mock our human blunders...

Point of Debate:

How much does the act of puzzle change when the board changes both length and width and the pieces of the puzzle remain in the same place?

Otis Redding - (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay

O.T. is R E,D,D, in G 

Lean on Me: The Best of Bill Withers ℗ 1972 Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

Nomenclature

@Dee

One of my favourite players of all time is Ivanchuk. An absolutely brilliant player who, when on form, has thrashed Kasparov. Trouble is he's absolutely barmy and is rarely ever on top form. You never know if he's going to win the game or eat the pieces.

Dee

@Nomenclature

He's my favourite player of all time a swashbuckling  creative genius but quiet mad. I also love watching  some of the hustlers on Chess cafe get a beating , Nakamura is at the cafe a lot I never saw him get beaten there but a Russian guy came close last year it ended in a draw

Nomenclature

@Dee

a swashbuckling  creative genius but quiet mad

Yup, spot on. Lol.

Nakamura is at the cafe a lot I never saw him get beaten there but a Russian guy came close last year it ended in a draw

Yes, Nakamura is like a machine. I've seen him win against some of the top engine bots, which is just ridiculous. Those things destroy me.

ZeusAres42

@MayCaesar

Awesome! Perhaps you and I can play Chess at some point? I love Chess. Kasparov and Fischer are still my favorites of all time!

ZeusAres42

And on that note, I just beat a guy with 0:02.9 secs on my clock with checkmate. Challenge me if you dare!

MayCaesar

ZeusAres42 said:

@MayCaesar

Awesome! Perhaps you and I can play Chess at some point? I love Chess. Kasparov and Fischer are still my favorites of all time!

Sure thing! We can definitely find the time to play a game or two. Do you play on chess.com, lichess or somewhere else?

Luigi7255

I wish I could play chess at a decent level, but I'd likely end up embarrassing myself with something like the Fool's Checkmate or getting checkmated by a long castle, so I'd end up at something like 400 ELO. I do like watching chess games though, it might improve my ability to play chess.

Nomenclature

This is how I roll.

Nomenclature

Gangsta

Dee

@Nomenclature

You're on fire

Nomenclature

Chess is weird. If you look at the two games above, I'm down a piece in the first game, and up a full queen and a rook in the second game. Despite that, the second game was much closer and more difficult. It was pretty much neck and neck until move 25, when my opponent went full kamikaze. The first game I sacrificed a knight and a pawn early on to get the opponent's king down to my end of the board, where it would be easier to checkmate.

Nomenclature

@Dee

Thanks Dee.

I was raging mad earlier because the first three games I played today my opponent left. I wasn't even winning. We were only 9 or 10 moves in and the annoying swines just kept leaving for no reason.

Dee

@Nomenclature

Absolutely infuriating, it's time I always feel that's totally wasted through no fault of your own 

Nomenclature

@Dee

Absolutely infuriating, it's time I always feel that's totally wasted through no fault of your own 

Exactly. So frustrating. Why would you begin a game if you don't intend to finish? Makes no sense to me.

My weakness at chess has always been the clock. I have to play classical because I run into time trouble way too easily. The clock is the most annoying aspect of the game in my opinion. It's so easy to make a mistake just because you feel rushed. I can't grasp how blitz players are able to play so quickly.

Nomenclature

This is how it's supposed to work. You play, you see you're about to get mated, and you resign. Kudos to this .

John_C_87

@Nomenclature
This is how it's supposed to work. You play, you see you're about to get mated, and you resign. Kudos to this .

How the game of Chess works is to suggest someone is smarter then another. It is a complicated argument to be made as the person who moves fist will always win unless they lose the game by making a mistake. It is just like Tic, Tac, Toe. I am not trying to take away the skill you have playing the game, as you are good, you are better than me at the game, Nomenclature. 

Nomenclature

@John_C_87

How the game of Chess works is to suggest someone is smarter then another. 

No, that isn't how chess works. That's how human psychology works. 

The reality is that chess tests only a very particular set of intellectual parameters. Intelligence itself is a much broader concept. 

Experience plays a factor in chess. People improve the more they play. 

Memory is also a factor, since the ability to remember openings and positions gives a player an advantage.

Dee

@John_C_87

 is just like Tic, Tac, Toe

John it's time for your meds

ZeusAres42

Dee said:

@Nomenclature

Absolutely infuriating, it's time I always feel that's totally wasted through no fault of your own 

@Dee

That is one thing that really annoys me. On chess .com though if ya premium you can just play another game while your opponent wastes his own time hehe.

ZeusAres42

MayCaesar said:

ZeusAres42 said:

@MayCaesar

Awesome! Perhaps you and I can play Chess at some point? I love Chess. Kasparov and Fischer are still my favorites of all time!

Sure thing! We can definitely find the time to play a game or two. Do you play on chess.com, lichess or somewhere else?

Chess.com @MayCaesar.

May choose other domains in the future though if I decide to play seriously enough again.

ZeusAres42

Oh, I also really like playing arrogant cocky people. I keep silent throughout until the end when I have the checkmate. Oh, that reminds me. I once beat a guy 10 times and he got really mad. But I think what really made him mad was when I said "I'm drunk too." xd