Search found 2156 matches

by Alan
Mon Sep 07, 2020 6:10 am
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

Spent some time playing Blitz and one Rapid game today. I think I need to play more time control game and do “Blitz tactics” on Chess Tempo because my brain freezes up when I need to come up with a move under time pressure.
by Alan
Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:52 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

I actually missed forced Mate in 2 on move 22 (22. exf7 Kxf7 23. Qg7#), and instead played 22. Ng5 which was instead forced Mate in 4 :lol: Having my Knight on g5 seemed good to me but was totally unnecessary. Luckily there was no significant counter-play but moves like that against stronger opponen...
by Alan
Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:48 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

And finally, I played my best game . Troubadour15.gif Move 8 gave me a nice tactic to win a pawn: Troubadour15 position 1.png Their d5 pawn is defended twice (e6 pawn and the Queen) while I am attacking it twice (c4 pawn and c3 Knight), but the e6 pawn is overloaded, defending both the d5 pawn and t...
by Alan
Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:27 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

I also had my first draw . There was a huge opportunity I missed on move 19. Mihalyic position.png I got tunnel vision, worrying too much about his advanced g pawn and did not look for counterplay. 19. Rf6 would have set up a more or less unstoppable attack for me. Instead I found myself under attac...
by Alan
Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:16 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

After a huge series of trades we went into a pretty even endgame. With accurate play it would have ended in a draw, but I blundered on move 47 by trading off my Bishop for their Knight, which allowed a passed pawn. I couldn't see how to hold both sides of the board at that point and resigned. I prob...
by Alan
Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:14 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

I lost my first daily game after winning my first 5. My opponent was clearly a pretty strong player; they created their account on 8/9 and as of today have won their first 35 daily games in a row. I played them pretty evenly actually. Here I missed an opportunity to gain a positional advantage: Tale...
by Alan
Wed Aug 12, 2020 11:38 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

I won my second daily game as White; my opponent chose what is apparently called Alekhine's Defense . Despite not having seen it before I tried to stick to standard opening principles which led me to a pretty strong position. It helped that my opponent (despite picking this opening) apparently devia...
by Alan
Mon Aug 10, 2020 10:51 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

Finished my first Daily (Correspondence) game. I won with Black, playing the Sicilian. It was a pretty tight game until my opponent failed to notice that 17. ...e4 had two purposes: 1) defending the Rook on d3 but also 2) unveiling a discovered attack by my g7 Bishop on his a1 Rook. On move 20, when...
by Alan
Mon Aug 10, 2020 12:54 am
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

I decided to try my hand at some games against real people instead of the engine. It's been a while since I've played a live game. There are a bunch of different time controls. Classical chess is 90 minutes for each player for the first 40 moves, then you both get an additional 30 minutes after that...
by Alan
Thu Aug 06, 2020 1:44 am
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

Step 3: Evaluate possible moves My Queen and Bishop are positioned to attack the King, Queen, or take away escape squares. CT diagonals.png And what about Qxc3, which was my initial instinct? Unfortunately, the first move I thought of doesn’t pan out. With each move you make, you need to think of t...
by Alan
Thu Aug 06, 2020 1:43 am
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

I think it was probably not quite correct to say that I was approaching puzzles in the wrong way before. I think you probably need to do a bunch of puzzles in whatever way you can do them to start building your pattern recognition before you can take a more methodical approach to them. I think it's ...
by Alan
Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:58 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

And before playing the first move, you also have to realize a couple things: 1. Your king is in check, so your first move has to bring you out of check. 2. The obvious move is to take White's Queen with yours, but you should also look at what would happen in other lines before realizing that the obv...
by Alan
Thu Jul 30, 2020 5:31 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

Here's a good illustration of some of the points above: https://chesstempo.com/chess-tactics/77505 chess tempo example.jpg With Black to move, there is an obvious line that wins a Pawn and a Rook for a Bishop (along with a Queen trade), with: 1. ...Qxf3 2. gxf3 Bxf1 If all that mattered was to make ...
by Alan
Thu Jul 30, 2020 4:56 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

We would probably still have a good game. I still make plenty of blunders in actual games. For puzzle improvement I found that it was important to change my mental approach. Up until my previous update the way I approached puzzles was to look for a theme (like a pin, skewer, or fork), and if I didn'...
by Alan
Thu Jul 23, 2020 11:54 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

Still playing! AJ accidentally cleared my puzzle history so it reset my rating to 400. I took that as an opportunity to start using a site I'd been seeing pop up a lot in the content I consume (podcasts, YouTube videos, articles) called Chessable. Chessable is a site that uses learning theories like...
by Alan
Fri May 22, 2020 5:15 am
Forum: Games
Topic: Artifact
Replies: 160
Views: 34010

Re: Artifact

Me too.
by Alan
Mon Apr 20, 2020 11:16 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

Part of the stumbling block for me has always been the openings. I hate to memorize stuff like that, just like build orders in Starcraft, which makes me noncompetitive. Yeah, that's exactly the misconception about openings (theory vs principles) that is one of the reasons people never try to learn ...
by Alan
Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:01 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Re: Chess

I should mention that I do really enjoy chess now though!
by Alan
Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:50 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Chess
Replies: 39
Views: 11636

Chess

Does anyone play? Back in December during AJ's winter break, I took the week off. The McDonald's that Maggie's mom used to take the kids to pre-Covid had touchscreen games at some of the tables, and AJ's favorite game on it was this 3-person tic tac toe game, which he wanted to play with me, but sin...
by Alan
Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:37 pm
Forum: Games
Topic: Artifact
Replies: 160
Views: 34010

Re: Artifact

Would be nice if they let you trade in your cards for credit towards whatever it is they’re going to sell in the future.

I guess I’ll try this when I get access.