Checkmate

[Cowboy]

Chess thread.

Good resources are

https://www.chess.com



Chess.com has a great interface, arguably best rating system, and a beautiful stream channel to tune in on.

http://en.lichess.org

Another well regarded host site

The chess subreddit is good.

Any number of chess tactics apps will do you well, chessgenius is supposed to be good

YouTube channel ChessNetwork is awesommeeeee

Chess.com has a great YouTube

This thread is for all things chess. Tactics sharing, good lines, opening tactics, etc.

I'm not all that great but it's so much fun and I'm gonna get better!

[Cowboy]

GM Hansen and GM Nakamura played an insane 8 hour series of 1 minute bullet games yesterday. I tuned in at around 7:30 central, and was shocked to see them still going at 2:30 in the morning. Over 200 games, with Nakamura blowing him out, as expected of the arguably best bullet blitz player in the world.

Nakamura has the U.S. Champs very soon so i guess this is some super stress training? Don't know how they kept at it that long it was bonkers

[ramdomthought]

who wants to play chess at work online with me one of these days




edit: can't read, apparently. you rule cowboy

[Cowboy]

My user is CowboyontheBebop on chess.com

Would love to play you random

Tournaments can also be set up and the like if anyone's interested. No harm in some good intellectual play

[alby]

would love to play some chess with people. I didn't know how to play chess until freshmen year of highschool. I was prompted to learn because my favorite band had an album cover with chess pieces on it. thanks brand new for stepping up my chess game.

[anshin]

can we talk go in here too? i used to play online at kgs all the time, but i sorta fell out of it. i've been thinking about going down to my local club and getting back into it tho. i'd be down to play against anyone one if you want.

[Cowboy]

Another good youtuber is Kingcrusher


Here's the official page for St.Louis

http://www.uschesschamps.com/2016-us-ch ... n/overview

Predictions do not state Nakamura winning the Saint Louis U.S. Champs, whic surprises me.

the prize money for this tournament is wacky high so people will most likely bring their A-game

[Cowboy]

I'll most likely be posting a daily tactic for this thread: to any unaware, a tactic is a board position that you must make a certain series of moves on to achieve the best result. Participation is easy, just place a rep comment with your notated series of moves.

SO I may as well explain chess notation, which is how all those scenes in the movies where the supervillain and the super genius play chess without a board and it's super intense and smart.

Here's the chessboard



As you can see it goes A-H 1-8

Chess notation as follows

Each side has a series of pieces ranging from the Pawn: which is notated only by which row it is placed on: the pawn on the H file is just H: or Harry or Harriet or Henrietta or Helmut Lang, etc etc.

Then there is the Rook on each end, notated by R: for Rick Owens

Knights: K or N: I've seen both: can't think of designers that have these primary letters so there you go.

Bishop: B: same as above

Queen: Q: same as above

King: K: same as above

When you make a move: it would go "Qa4" to signify "Queen has moved to a4"

Very simple

The complications are between piece interactions: have no fear, we have a chart.



So when you want to notate a take: it goes "Qxa4" as " Queen takes on A4"



SO, when I post a tactic, just toss in a string of moves and we can see who gets it right: answer is in the spoiler everytime

Also, a move is complete when both sides make a play: when white pushes a pawn and black takes, that is considered a full move, not just when white pushes a pawn.

[Cowboy]

Starting small!



Mate in 2

[Cowboy]

the problem there is white kicking it's rook back

[Cowboy]

I'll find a new app with notation tomorrow to make this easier because it's a little hard without them for most of us id guess

[Cowboy]

Tactics don't need to be mate, just a material gain.

This board is notated which is great, thanks chess.com once again

Thanks to germinal for the good suggestion, tactic answers will be posted the next day, along with reasons why any X person was mistaken.

[Cowboy]

I like this one



Yesterday tactic was answered correctly by RJB as 1. Bh2 2. Rd3 by taking advantage of the reverse pin on the queen and a very large tactical blunder by white.

This is advice that the International Master who runs the site gave in a video which is that it never hurts to have a rook opposing the queen.

[Cowboy]

Ah shucks.

Trying again tomorrow I thought the analysis was another variation :D

[Cowboy]

Yay

[Cowboy]

Answer to yesterday was 1.Rg7+ Kh8 2. Rh6+ (discovered check with the bishop) Rf5 3. Bf5++

The problem Ryan was that in your variation on move two the kin can move back to its original square after bishop check, which means it
Either becomes perpetual or you trade rooks and are probably going to draw



Two moves in this tactic, trying to see what is the best way to
Deal with the pin on your queen. Defensive

[rjbman]

How does the rook go from g7 to h6? that's diagonal

[Cowboy]

Meant g6 mobile keyboard sorry

[Cowboy]

Updates

Daily chess is dead w/out interest. Shame :/

The biggest chess tournament ever played online continues May 10 with a strong matchup. I watched the better part of Grischuk vs Aronian and Nakamura vs Harikrishna and both were very fun. The commentary from Robert Hess and Danny Rensch is very good, Danny is the best kind of corny imo. Probably gonna make a post on him.

More info here https://www.chess.com/article/view/anno ... ampionship

Yahoo finance posted an article on professional chess with Maurice Ashley, very very good, and fun. Maurice is the best. Big influence on young kids In Saint Louis

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-che ... 02738.html

Me Personally, seeing a lot of improvement in terms of my live chess. My ranking has risen considerably to about the 1200 you start at. My 3 minute chess is still stagnant, but it correlates strongly to higher time games.

[Cowboy]

https://www.chess.com/live/game/1604773858

Fuck me up flaxsisters how did I win this.

30 min each I won off time he missed at least 4 mate threats hahaha

[Cowboy]

Tigran Petrosian, the #22 blitz player in the world, played a 25 game series divided in 5, 3, and 1 min games (forgot increments) against Magnus Carlsen, World Champion, and it was absolutely destruction. 21-4 for Carlsen: mechanical, decisive, and that hint of Carlsen angst.

More here, with some highlights.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/carlsen ... match-5356

Winning Leuven was good.

Chesscenter this week goes well into Carlsen, worth the time investment.

[youtube]watch?v=XfXzcgFUg4w[/youtube]

[Cowboy]

Coming off from prior Magnus hype to talk of his loss in Bilbao yesterday

Nakamura-Carlsen! Always a good matchup

Record is now Nakamura-1 Carlsen-11 Draws-18

Destructive record but something has people raving over a small slip?

Some kind of rivalry? But clearly no rivalry?



Some suggestive funnies came from this title. Great video



Recommendation for your daily life: watch chess before bed! Having to focus on the moves makes you go from tired to too tired, only way I fall asleep at night. Glasses off and a stream from my guy Jan Gustaffson above will knock me out.

Jan's videos are splendid. From Chess24.com

[alby]

im so bad at chess man. there is this other intern I play with at my work sometimes, and I just get trashed over and over. today I had a game where I had a great opening, was up 2-3 power pieces and 1-2 pawns or something like that and got too aggressive and just got checkmated out of nowhere zzzzz

[Cowboy]

Magnus Carlsen beat the to-be world chess champ challenger Sergey Karkakin today in Bilbao, absolute crush, caught some after game analysis and it was a great game. Excited for Magnus to ruin him in the series for world champ.

In Cozumel right now, bought a board for decompression/sailing to dive site, played a guy on the side of the road. Hung a rook in a winning position, lost automatically, crushing blow to my poor state of mind. I'll get him next time.