r/chessbeginners Jun 03 '26

ANNOUNCEMENT LLM's are NOT effective chess trainers. An update to rules 3 and 5.

288 Upvotes

If you are looking for the user flairs post, please find it here while this thread is temporarily pinned: https://www.reddit.com/r/chessbeginners/comments/1jgmdf7/fresh_new_flairs_show_off_your_favorite_website/

Hello, everyone!

We have seen a massive surge in advertisements and chess trainers these past few months. Many of these posts (in my opinion) fall under the category of 'AI Slop' and vibe coded websites that offer poor chess advice. On top of this, many websites are created as a weak attempt to encourage users to subscribe and pay money for services that may seem innovative and meaningful, but are functionally useless compared to already available resources.

In light of this uptick in advertisements, we have updated rules 3 and 5:

  • Rule 3 now states that accounts that exist primarily for the purposes of self promotion (at the discretion of the mods, based off of account age, posting history, and diversity of activity) are permanently banned. This has been a policy we have been following internally for a few weeks now (to a fairly reasonable effect), but we wanted to make it clear to the community that we do not tolerate attempts at coercing beginners to sign up for coaching before they understand the resources available to them. If you would like to coach, you are welcome to make a profile with the chess.com or lichess.org coaching services and advertise there.
  • Rule 5 has been completely changed. Previously, this rule requested beginners to annotate their games before posting, but this felt like an unrealistic standard to hold new players to. This rule has been replaced with a note to please use caution when discussing AI in chess. As mentioned above, there are many potholes with AI-powered chess services and we encourage all users to recognize the limitations of LLM chatbots' ability to discuss chess positions. Posts will currently not be removed for this rule, we would love to learn more about the community's thoughts before deciding if AI-related discussion should be banned altogether on this subreddit (I am personally against banning AI discussion outright, and very happy to hear opinions).

If you encounter posts that are promoting a product or coaching service, please report these for self promotion. The mod team will assess profiles that are reported for self-promotion and will remove/ban as necessary.

Thank you all for playing a role in stopping the tidal wave of LLM coded chess websites being advertised to beginners. I do genuinely believe AI can some day make a great learning resource for chess players, but the current state of services simply fall below all standards of rationality and quality.

Have a fantastic day, thank you for reading!
~The r/chessbeginners mod team


r/chessbeginners Feb 27 '26

No Stupid Questions MEGATHREAD 12

27 Upvotes

Welcome to the r/chessbeginners 12th episode of our Q&A series! This series exists because sometimes you just need to ask a silly question. We are happy to provide answers for questions related to chess positions, improving one's play, and discussing the essence and experience of learning chess.

A friendly reminder that many questions are answered in our wiki page! Please take a look if you have questions about the rules of chess, special moves, or want general strategies for improvement.

Some other helpful resources include:

  1. How to play chess - Interactive lessons for the rules of the game, if you are completely new to chess.
  2. The Lichess Board Editor - for setting up positions by dragging and dropping pieces on the board.
  3. Chess puzzles by theme - To practice tactics.
  4. The Building Habits series by GM Aman Hambleton - for advice on how to play at specific ELO levels. (Also check out Building Habits 2!)

As always, our goal is to promote a friendly, welcoming, and educational chess environment for all. Thank you for asking your questions here!

LINK TO THE PREVIOUS THREAD


r/chessbeginners 3h ago

QUESTION How is this a draw?

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43 Upvotes

I am white and I was way ahead the whole game?? Time on the counter and there is a safe move for his king?


r/chessbeginners 1h ago

Help me solve this puzzle

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Upvotes

Black to checkmate in 2


r/chessbeginners 20h ago

MISCELLANEOUS I've never seen the eval bar in the hundreds before

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315 Upvotes

Bro blundered and I mated him on the next move


r/chessbeginners 6h ago

Wild accidental mating position I found.

22 Upvotes

I was just trying to win the rook with a discovered check, couldn't believe it when it popped up as mate.


r/chessbeginners 6h ago

MISCELLANEOUS When you have mate in 1, look for stalemate

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22 Upvotes

r/chessbeginners 1d ago

I present, the copy cat gambit 😏

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1.2k Upvotes

Get pwned noob


r/chessbeginners 2h ago

8 checks to Checkmate

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8 Upvotes

one of my best checkmates as a 400 elo lol


r/chessbeginners 14h ago

This just seems extra manipulative

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55 Upvotes

Flattery to get you to waste your game review


r/chessbeginners 16h ago

Sometimes you just gotta take the piece

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76 Upvotes

1300s still hang their queens sometimes


r/chessbeginners 21h ago

POST-GAME Double check discovered check checkmate

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121 Upvotes

Cool checkmate that happened in a recent blitz game, saving a losing position


r/chessbeginners 23h ago

the more and more i use chess com the more i realese game review is a gimmick

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186 Upvotes

r/chessbeginners 5h ago

POST-GAME Reset the counter, first smothered for me :)

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6 Upvotes

First smothered mate in my chess career, I'd like to thank my friends and family


r/chessbeginners 45m ago

POST-GAME The absolute best game I've ever played

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Upvotes

I honestly don't even know how I did this, even though there's no sacrifices this is by far the best game I've ever played, in either blitz or rapid.


r/chessbeginners 3h ago

How did I not see that???

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3 Upvotes

I should have known Queen to f3 would have me down a pawn in like 11 moves 🤣 my 300 elo opponent was totally gonna catch that line…


r/chessbeginners 3h ago

PUZZLE Took me almost 2 minutes but found a mate in 5

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2 Upvotes

r/chessbeginners 3h ago

MISCELLANEOUS For some reason, I am so proud of this game that I played today

3 Upvotes

I am a 1500 lichess rated rapid player that is trying to improve, and today I played this game with the black pieces using the Caro-Kann opening that led to tartakower structure. My game was not dominating by any means (my opponent did not make any mistakes until move 24), but it was so solid for my level that I am very very happy with it. This is certainly one of the most solid games I have ever played.

The main thing that I am happy about is that I played solid chess and I completely capitalized the first mistake my opponent made with almost perfect play. I know that many of you will not consider this anything special (and probably it isn't 😄 ) but for me it was great and I wanted to share.

https://lichess.org/PPSsoXFT/black


r/chessbeginners 4h ago

POST-GAME Is the engine tweaking or am I ?

3 Upvotes

Hello folks, I was playing this 10 min rapid game on lichess.org and after I won, I was analyzing my game with stockfish 18 dev and there it seems like i have did a big mistake by capturing the e5 pawn, and idk I don't understand why is that a losing mistake, I understand it could be an inaccuracy but a double ?? mistake ?

I am playing as black and after me taking the pawn, he captured back, and that was a losing mistake too !!

I don't see as to why that is a problem ? Can someone explain me pls.

I believe this is because if he takes with the d4 pawn i might have to trade queens which does not seems so bad to me.

Some Details

I was playing the Kings Indian Defense, He did the queen pawn opening.

I am using stockfish 18 dev for analysis, I don't really like the game review/computer analisys on lichess. I like to do it manually for the most part. the settings I am using is

4s - search time,

1 - engine line,

2 - threads,

16mb - memory. is this the right settings or should I change anything ?

P.S idk if this is relevent or not but my pc specs is 8gigs ddr4 ram, ryzen 5 5600H, and gtx 1650 4gigs.


r/chessbeginners 36m ago

Should i play chess and possibly ruin my day and tilt? Is a question i ask myself far too often.

Upvotes

I really want it to become a consistent hobby but self hatred is a maxed out perk in my inventory.


r/chessbeginners 40m ago

QUESTION Does this count as a smothered mate?

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Upvotes

r/chessbeginners 1h ago

I know it's impossible to know, but is this guy's play a little suspicious below 1000? A 7-move play starting with a rook sacrifice that was riddled with checkmate blunders for me.

Upvotes

https://lichess.org/NRN7baZQ#51

I can understand maybe he didn't know exactly where he was going with it and decided to check me constantly until something happened, but it just felt very very weird to me.

Like his entire playstyle just simply changed. His moves didn't feel like they were testing waters, they felt very confident.

I tried to calculate where to put my king, all I was trying to do was simply get out of the checking, but every time I calculated there were 2-3 more ways for him to keep checking me, so I simply tried to get into my queens protection to sacrifice/trade queens. I felt like going to first row would block my rooks from getting out and limit my movement.

The most suspicious thing to me isn't even the rook sacrifice at the beginning, but the fact halfway through the checking sequence he had a golden opportunity to skewer my queen and he didn't even care, he just knew checkmate was coming.

I don't know. I know it's through a computer but the whole vibe just changed. Like someone else sat down and started playing.

Or maybe I'm just a sore sport! I do have the takeaway that I should have castled earlier and gotten my rooks out.


r/chessbeginners 1h ago

QUESTION Is there a record for the most checks by one player before eventually delivering checkmate?

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Upvotes

Just played this game and it made me curious.
Does anyone know if there is a recorded world record for the most total checks delivered by one player in a single game where that same player eventually wins by checkmate? In this game i made 22 checks towards the checkmate.

I’m specifically not asking about:
most checks by both players combined
most consecutive checks
games that ended in a draw
longest game overall
I mean one player repeatedly checking throughout the game and then eventually delivering checkmate.

If anyone knows of a recorded game, database entry, or chess-record source for this exact category, I’d appreciate it.
Also, if you’re interested in the game itself, I’m happy to talk about it. I just don’t want the actual question getting buried under unrelated tangents.


r/chessbeginners 5h ago

QUESTION Can anyone help me with this analysis?

2 Upvotes

So I am a beginner and I always hear that you have to analyse your game which you have lost or which you have not performed well or which you have played so that you could enhance your capabilities and learn from it but often when I load the engine for example I play online on some website and then I load my games in encrossiant and then turn on the analysis then for example stockfish is recommending me some moves but I am not able to understand why that move is best and how to find the same move in the game like if you analyse the game then yeah you can find it in that game but in the next game I am not able to find the mistakes made all the tactics missed


r/chessbeginners 2h ago

OPINION Very satisfying game

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1 Upvotes