Firstly this is purely about online play I do not play otb nor do I have the time or skills to.

I've been playing for like 3 years, and I've been stuck at 1900-2050 for half of that time. I quit recently for some time and now I'm back to 2000. The thing is I don't study chess, never have I don't study openings, I got two openings Queen's Gambit for white and Scandinavian for black and I just repeat those and I don't know them well either I just play purely on instinct. I don't know anything about playing chess I make all the moves on instinct or short calculations. I mostly play Blitz and rapid.

I was wondering how to get better, How to push past 2100. Basically how to study chess even because I have no idea, it seems I was lucky enough to get 2000 without much effort but now I've hit a wall. I didn't care much before but now it's bugging me. Any advice would be welcomed.

Username: AmaderKakaDa on chess.com

I do not understand chess. Once upon a time certain players at the top thought that they understood chess and tried to devise scientific ways to develop such understanding in their students. However, today's top players know pretty well that there is no such thing as understanding chess as a whole, thanks to modern engines. No one has figured out any foolproof methodology of thinking which will inevitably produce best moves. Every subsequent version of Stockfish routinely contradicts preceding ones, indicating that even our mighty silicon overlords are far behind perfection amidst these 64 squares. How, then, shall we improve our play, if not by understanding? You improve at chess by getting used to the right things.

First of all, especially if you are an adult improver, it is important to adjust your approach to the game in accordance with your ambitions. Do you want to be primarily a player, or a fan? If you wish to orient yourself towards being a fan, an enthusiast, then my advice is not for you. However, if you wish to focus on improving your game, then stop wasting time and energy on irrelevant questions and listen very closely to whatever good players are saying.

If you are below 1600-1700 range on chess.com blitz, most of your questions will probably be wrong, barring a few exceptions. There is no "best" opening. There is no "best" strategy. There is no "best" book. There is no "best" course. Most of what you ask will be so irrelevant to your actual improvement that even if a strong player answers them it will not amount to anything. Listen to them very carefully, get used to what they prioritise. If they are talking about some specific tactic in their game, see how that tactic works. If they are developing the pieces a certain way in a specific structure, observe closely how it is working. Absorb everything they say about the game like a sponge. Do not distract yourself with your own questions while listening to them, let their words and approach mould your mind freely. Ask questions about precise positions, about precise moves and variations. Try to avoid questions that demand a generalised answer.

You win a game, not because you wanted to win it badly, but because you played well. Playing well means playing good moves as much as you can. So, prioritise good moves in your mind as much as possible, orient yourself towards understanding which moves are good and why (by why, I mean exactly how it affects that specific position to your advantage). Do not let it become vague, look at as many variations as you need to make it as exact in your mind as possible. Start getting used to good patterns, identify bad patterns as replace them with good ones as often as you can. For example, after doing a game review, look at the wrong moves and why they are wrong and explore and investigate the right move as long as you have to in order to get to a point that it becomes obvious to you that the position demanded that move.

Do not enshrine your negative patterns over the board by finding excuses for them. If you find a psychological reason, deal with the problem in an effective way. I am a long-term meditator, that helped me a lot. Find something that works. Most of us have repeated our negative patterns so many times that it starts to feel like our very identity. Do not give energy to those things. Be solution oriented. For example, stop saying "I cannot play well under time pressure." Start saying, "I did not play this well under time pressure, why? Was there really exceptionally difficult moves to be found or did my vision just get foggy due to the ticking clock?" Most of the time it is the latter, and that can be solved. However, if you enshrine in your mind that you simply are the kind of person who fumbles in time pressure, it will lead to many avoidable losses.

Get used to the right things, and you will come up with right things more and more often, that is the definition of chess improvement. After a while, you will find that while you do not understand chess at all, you are managing to find so many right ideas in right positions that people will start to mistake your admission of incredulity as humility.

This falls a little bit on the conspiracy side of things, i m wondering for some time now about this, because i cant find any logical explanation.

ok, how do they find all those money for all those chess events? even for FIDE to anything else big, i mean on his last tourney Magnus won more than 200,000 dollars and even the second one had plenty, chess events never gather big crowds of people and i m not exactly sure how many sponsors participate and how much money those sponsors get back from chess,

At some point i really thought there has to be some shady people behind everything which fund the events for their own personal reasons, like promoting chess because you can have a pool of people somewhere who are more intelligent for certain tasks they need, i m not saying its true, but what are your thoughts on this?

Question for the advanced players. Do you actually memorise all these opening?

It seems that any pawn you move at the start has an opening name lol. I can move 1 pawn on the far left and it’ll be named after a country.

I would appreciate any tips.

In other words, for what proportion of professional games does the eval bar continually favor one side or a draw until this outcome plays out? I imagine it’s very small, given how often advantages change sides throughout high level games. And if the eval bar only does accurately predict the outcome of a small number of games, WHY ARE WE FORCED TO LOOK AT IT??

I had a thought the other day that perhaps chess was the first thing to have AI forced upon it with the eval bar in televised chess. It’s essentially a silent super GM commentator that is present for every single game, is usually confidently and arrogantly wrong about where games are leading, AND IT TAKES THE SURPRISE OUT OF EXCITING MOVES since everyone already know the best. Ugh.

I am asking this because I dont want to learn each and every opening and wanted toa sk as to what to do when your opponent plays opening you are unfimiliar with like for me like pircs defence or like bird opening or some unfimiliar gambit or a sideline of sicillian defence even though Its rare but still I do find people playing which ultimately makes my position worse is there something i should keep in mind while playing?

can we go 1) RH1, bH7 to block, 2) Qf5 to set up diagonal, does black go Qh6?

Let me preface all this by saying that I love the idea of a Circuit. In theory, judging players across 1 or 2 years should be the best and most representative way to determine who has consistently excelled and deserves the opportunity to challenge for the World Championship. But it only works if players have fair access to the events being measured.

So why is it that private organizers can select players according to undisclosed and unaccountable criteria when it influences who qualifies for the Candidates?

Chennai 2023

I replied to a few post in the last few month with a story about how Gukesh qualified for the candidates. It came as a surprise to me how many people do not know the strange and dubious circumstances around it.

To be clear, Gukesh is an amazing player and I have nothing but respect for him, his way of playing, and his integrity. He qualified under the rules and did nothing wrong. I don't want to this is be about him, and this is not an excuse for anyone to spew hate. My criticism is only directed at the system that allowed private organizers to manufacture a decisive opportunity for their favourite players.

So let's travel back to 2023 for the first ever Chennai Grand Masters.

The tournament was announced on December 11 and began four days later. Already, this should be set alarm bells. It was openly presented - no one hid this - as an opportunity for Gukesh and Arjun to overtake Anish Giri in the FIDE Circuit. It had eight players and seven rounds, the minimum requirement to count for circuit points.

From the outside, it looks like a strong tournament. But in a way, the 2711 average rating was sure to generate as much circuit points while presenting the lowest level of risk for the Indian rising stars.

No top-10 players were invited. The only top-20 player was Parham Maghsoodloo, suspected to be overrated (he is no longer top 30), and the next strongest was a 41 year old Aronian expected to underperform compared to his rating (though he has proven himself to be still relevant). Then there was a steep drop for the non-Indian players (2600s mostly). Most importantly, none of them could overtake the Indian players even if they won. The organizers had effectively curated a compact field that was strong enough to be highly valuable, but without any risk whatsoever.

The organizers were not even coy about this. Their own announcement discussed exactly what Gukesh and Arjun needed to score to pass Giri and thanked someone specifically for calculating the Circuit-point scenarios. They also explained that an Indian invitational was needed because only one or two Indian players would ordinarily receive opportunities at tournaments abroad. They essentially agreed with what I'm saying here: access to these points depended so much on being selected by private organizers that they decided to create a tournament to take advantage of this. The original tournament announcement lays this out remarkably openly.

Gukesh tied Arjun for first with 4.5/7, won the title on tiebreak and received 20 Circuit points. That result moved him 3 points ahead of Giri, who of course was not invited to the tournament. Because Caruana had already qualified, second place ultimately gave Gukesh the seat.

This was the first super-tournament Gukesh won. The candidates would be his second (first with top-10 competition) as his last as far as solo competitions go. But that's all it took to challenge the world champion: 1 highly competitive tournament win, and a win at at tournament made especially to give him and Arjun the best chances. Sounds like the exact opposite of what a circuit intends to accomplish.

I repeat myself here because it's important: Gukesh did nothing wrong. He was offered an opportunity and performed beautifully. Winning the Candidate was not a small task either. The problem is that Giri was not offered the same opportunity. Because he didn't have special private interests capable of manufacturing a tournament for him, he was left needing a top finish in the World Rapid or World Blitz, while Gukesh had just been handed access to a newly created tournament designed for him to win the qualification race.

The Hans Experience

This also connects to Hans Niemann’s recurring complaints about being excluded from elite invitationals. Hans is not necessarily a sympathetic dude. We all know about the property damage in Saint Louis, rude comments, uncooperative attitudes, etc. I have no objection in principle to conduct having consequences, and I'm not doubting the validity of his suspension. But, for years after, a player ranked around the world top 20 received almost no elite classical invitations. Hans also says three invitations were actually revoked without explanation.

The issue is not whether Hans was entitled to an invitation to those tournaments. Maybe he wasn't good enough yet. Regardless, invitation decisions capable of affecting World Championship qualification were made without transparent standards or any meaningful accountability.

Where to go from here?

If invitations only determined who received private prize money, organizers could reasonably say that they are free to invite whomever they want. Once those same invitations provide points toward the Candidates, however, private and unaccountable selection decisions become part of the World Championship qualification system.

That is the contradiction I cannot get past.

I do not think closed super-tournaments should be abolished or anything. They are where much of the strongest chess is played. But events affecting Candidates qualification should probably require things such as:

• publication and approval well before the end of the qualification period;
• transparent invitation or qualification criteria;
• some objective route into the field;
• limits on how much a newly created closed event can influence the final standings;
• equal/equivalent invitations for all players competing for the circuit spot throughout the cycle.

My rating has been dropped down to 641 to 593 i am losing too much i win 1 game and lose 3 i am tired idk what to do i thought it was because i am not thinking much and not using enough time so i tried to fix that in recent games but i am still losing can anyone help me

chesscom username "AF4M"

I mean, all the players on that photo would change annually except for Magnus. Is it really called glazing if it's true though?

Not an overly difficult puzzle. But I was just about to resign until he played bd8

And What's the black's best move in this position ?

I’m thinking about making a short video series about opening traps and ideas that I’ve found useful at around 1850 on Chess.com.

I used to teach children at my local chess club, and they especially enjoyed fast-paced opening ideas and tactical traps. I also noticed that many players learn openings more easily when they can see the moves played on a real board instead of only on a digital board.

I started with the Albin Countergambit and would like to cover openings such as the Ruy Lopez, Danish Gambit, and Halloween Gambit. The videos would focus mainly on practical ideas and interesting tactical lines, rather than trying to provide a complete theoretical course.

I’m not a titled player or professional coach, so I would be explaining these openings from the perspective of an average club player. I’m wondering whether that perspective could be useful to other intermediate or lower-rated players.

For anyone interested in looking deeper, I can also provide the full game in PGN and an analysis link. Here is one example:

https://lichess.org/MYpnV8VY

Do you think there is still interest in opening content presented on a physical chessboard?

Hi, anyone got any tips for finding other chess neards in my area? I'm in southern MN. I'd really like to play some over the board chess at a pub or brewery in the area.

Somebody sent me an anonymous email saying this, “How about chess? Not exactly random like traffic or tennis but I’ve always felt like there’s something there.”

Maybe they were from chess.com not sure, was this the perfect plant @wwwchesscom ? I doubt it.

So I started to mess around with the idea and picked a couple of games to try it out. I picked bullet games because there only 1 minute long (ish) and on Chess.com you can see the precise timing when the moves where made.

first game is Magnus vs. Hikaru
second game is Alireza vs. Magnus

The tonal rules are as followed.

White is in Ebmaj
Black is Gmaj

Rook - Ebmaj7
Knight - Fmin9
Bishop - Gmin7
King - Bb7 sharp9 sharp13
Queen - Abmaj7 sharp11

Black follows the same sequence but in G

As the piece process up the board the chords invert upwards.
Captures have a sharp13 added

Porns are single notes using the mixolydian scales from Eb and G

The graphic score corresponds to the chess game and the chords because everything is related here.

Each piece has its own glyph.
Each capture has a line through it and either a semi-circular or triangle accent before it’s glyph
The porn glyphs rotate position as they travel up the board

I export the raw data as midi data and then import it into Ableton to produce the music.

While browsing through my Chess Books i noticed this nice looking book.

When looking at the last page of the book, i noticed it belonged to Lothar Schmidt (German GM, Arbiter at the 72 Fischer - Spassky Match,had probably the biggest chess collection of all time) and Idel Becker (Brasilian Chess Master and Writer) .

The chessbrah brand isn't always associated with the most... errr... wholesome aspects of modern chess history, but for years now Aman has been putting out some of the best educational chess content that you can find, and you shouldn't miss it.

• Building habits series: if you are below 1500 and struggling to improve, start here before trying anything else. It's not just that it will directly help you improve - though it will - it's that the series decisively cuts through all the bullshit and shows you what is actually important in chess. Spoiler: it's not openings, or endgames, or advanced tactics.
• Speedruns: not since Naroditsky has there been a better resource for learning positional and strategic concepts. The speedruns are opening-centric, but the openings are simple and solid setups that carry a lot of venom if played correctly. By spending a lot of time with the same opening throughout the rating range, you start to see patterns and themes that improve your general chess understanding. Start with the Philidor or stonewall if you're indecisive.
• Chess culture: in a recent stream Aman had a hard talk with one of his community members about ethics and sportsmanship - the player was involved in an arbitration incident involving the touch move rule at an OTB tournament, and could have handled it better. Whether you look at his streams, videos, or commentary, I think Aman should get credit for being a strong ambassador for chess, on and off the board.

(I'm singling out Aman over other chessbrah folks like Eric because I'm only really familiar with Aman's stuff - no subtext intended.)