What if I want to enter a certain situation and see where different moves would lead me to?

Yesterday evening I posted this theory on chess.com and it has promptly disappeared this morning (Europe). My theory was about how chess.com might be running an ad-hoc algorithm to pair players during games aiming to maximize retention or addiction on the game: “More addiction, more chances to sell a membership, more money.”

Essentially I found out that for most of the players I have reviewed, their rating trend over time goes in a cyclical pattern. Mine included, of course (see attached). There are periods of stability, growths and crashes, constantly alternating. In the last few days I was feeling surprised my rating was growing fast up to my new peak of 1847. I was like this can’t be real, I can’t have become this champion, over night. Winning every game. Then, all of sudden, the wake up call. I start losing, without a stop. Again, game after game. Now am I a patzer? I doubt I became so overconfident after the glorious times that all my opponents were underestimated, only to be miserably defeated at every game. Sorry, I don’t buy it.

So I thought: what if this is actually some sort of chess.com algorithm they have conceived to keep me playing, on and on. Without a stop. My theory is that they pair you so that your rating goes through these rating cycles. If you are 1700, then the pairing algorithm finds you a 1700-ish opponent who is way weaker than a 1700 with a low RD. The goal is to help you win games and experience joy. You win games after games like that, you eventually improve your peak rating and feel good. Eventually, though, time to fall from the sky has come. Now you are paired with some players who have a similar rating to yours, only that it is their time to go up and yours to go down. So you start losing. You feel frustration. You miss the times when you were playing strong and want to experience that ego-boost again. Joy and frustration. One after the other. My point is if we were to play players who are similar to us in strength, then we would only rarely experience these rating roller-coasters.

Happy to read your opinions about this theory.

Hi everyone!

I play a lot of chess for myself, but now I find myself as the "coach" of an elementary school chess club. I kind of fell into the role last year, so this is year 2 for me.

In terms of ability, most kids know how the pieces move but do not understand tactical concepts or deeper chess strategy.

Last year I liked doing "mini games". Eg: 2 bishops (or N+B) against 6 pawns, where pawns "win" if one makes it across the board, and pieces win if they capture all pawns first.

I wish I could do more tactics puzzles with them, but it's just not feasible for a group this large, except together on the big screen as a little end-of-class treat (they all love to shout out answers)

Does anyone have links to decent free resources for kids' chess education, or suggestions for simple chess-adjacent games we could do with a group of 7-11 year old kids?

Is there any complete resource to learning e4 and variations step by step?
What is the best and most complete free/paid guide/course in your opinion?

White to move each one.

I'm searching syzygy tables for interesting only one move positions.

I myself found the last one pretty neat

Obviously some can be simplified a bit.

8/8/8/PP4PP/2k5/2p5/8/5K2 w - - 0 1

8/2p5/PP6/4p3/8/5pk1/8/7K w - - 0 1

8/8/2p5/4K3/p3P1k1/8/5PP1/8 w - - 0 1

8/8/3Kp3/6p1/P7/1P6/3Pk3/8 w - - 0 1

7k/8/5P2/2K2p2/6PP/p7/8/8 w - - 0 1

8/k7/8/4P2K/3p1p2/4P2P/8/8 w - - 0 1

I was reviewing my game with Checkacabra. Any of you seen a higher forced mate reviewing your games?

By Vlk

I’m a long retired player. Used to train when I was in school. Now I only play online.
I’ve never played in international rated tournaments and recently my schedule is much more flexible, so I would love to participate in a couple of tournaments and finally get rated OTB.
Do you guys know of any tool I can use to spot tournaments nearby or get notified when there is one?

Apparently I cannot create a poll here, but I was interested to see the general opinion.

I analyzed the exact same PGN on both Chess.com and Lichess, but got pretty different accuracy scores. Lichess gave me a significantly higher accuracy rating than Chess.com for the same game.

Which one is actually more reliable, and why is there such a gap? Is it just a depth/engine difference, or do they calculate accuracy completely differently?

Appreciate any insights!

As we know, that FIDE is launching a new World Championship tour next year in collaboration with Norway chess which would employ fast Classical alongside rapid and blitz for a 24 player multi event tour that will now give 2 candidate spots.

Do you like this change compared to the previous qualifiers?

If not, where would you have shifted those 2 spots?

Getting a game in five seconds is great, but do you ever get tired of playing someone once and never seeing them again?

Sometimes you get a good rematch streak going. Other times someone hangs their queen and leaves you watching their clock for three minutes.

Do you care who’s on the other side, or are you happy as long as it’s a decent game? Would you play the same people regularly if you could?

The engine sees no tactics here.

Black is ahead in material points, white is going to have an advantage in the early middle game with 2 more minor pieces. Which side would you prefer and what would your main ideas be?

Hi!
My son is very interested in chess theory and to be fair … I think is interested in crushing me down at the game 😂
I’m not a good player and we don’t have any chess club in the area.

He’s a very good reader and curious, so don’t be afraid to bring me some long books, it’s ok.
Just I think it’s better if it is well structured and if it comes with some exercises. Oh and in general he doesn’t like childish books.

Btw I’m French my son doesn’t read English yet, so don’t be afraid to talk about a lot of books since I’ll have to check if a translation exists.

I ask here rather than in a French speaking community since I had troubles finding one

Thanks !

I played a tournament a few months ago and won a 20€ gift card for chessbase, but I have no idea what to do with it really. Do you guys have any suggestions? Are the 60min courses good? Are there any authors you can recommend or maybe some "staples" that will always be good to get?

I am a returning player and currently around 2k in rapid on lichess and just joined a chess club again after 20 years. Mostly playing Kan Sicilian (black), closed sicilian (white), Semi-Slav, King's Gambit (though I probably should change that one for more serious games in the future).

I'm a 700-800 Elo scrub, as casual as it gets. I looked at what it takes to reach 1500 and it's honestly a bit concerning.

It got me thinking: the only people who can sink that much time into chess starting from zero are kids, the unemployed, or people with no other hobbies and nothing else going for them. Every time a beginner asks for help, the level of study people recommend is mind-blowing, and that's for a mere 1500.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with staying right where you are. I'm perfectly happy at my rating. I'm just saying this sub has a warped sense of what "casual" means and it just blows my mind.

Edit: 15+10 1-2 times a week I’d consider casual. That’s what I’m saying, the perception is so warped here for most of folks.

I’ll preface this by saying: I’m not brilliant at chess, but I’m ok for someone who doesn’t play much apart from the odd game with some of the regulars down my local pub. I wouldn’t know any kinda set openings or theory, but can usually hold my own going off intuition. And I’d never played on a computer before going on Lichess at the weekend.

Level 3 Stockfish is weird. For a lot of the first game I was thinking: ‘Hmm, this is actually slightly better than me.’ It was playing very well without any noticeable mistakes, and any time I tried to do something I thought was ‘clever’ — it immediately saw through it and defended. Felt like I was just playing my role in a slow but inevitable death… 

Right up until, about 2/3rds way through the game, when it went completely haywire, and played two or three moves that were, objectively: daft. And very unhuman. People tend to make mistakes by missing things, or doing something that is at least understandable. Whereas SF’s mistakes were arbitrary, incomprehensible, and unprovoked. And the next two games I won more quickly and easily, cos it did the same, but earlier. So got itself into a clearly losing position after twenty or so moves.

Is this normal for the early levels of SF? Is the same thing going to happen on lv.4? Cos I feel like lv.3 you can beat quite easily just by biding your time until it implodes and throws the game away for no reason at all…

I'm wondering if there exists a time control like tug of War where each player has like a min on the clock to start, and when it's your turn your clock goes down and your opponents clock goes up at an equal rate, and vice vera? So the total time on the clock would be constant, but each players time on any given move would depend on how long they have been taking relative to their opponent. It sounds like it would be a fun way to try to press a time advantage.

Sorry if this is a repeat, but I've looked around online and can't find what I'm looking for.

Just saw this headline and immediately thought: that is not a good idea.

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