Chess games

I've always been confused by some TT comments saying how they lost so many points etc. when the lowest I've ever got was +1, so yeah it seems chess.com have changed it so that you don't lose points provided you get the puzzle right, which I think is very good.

I don't even want to try improving at blitz; I'll leave that til uni. Wouldn't be able to stand playing such bad chess XD (I'm terrible when pressured for time).

That's pretty cool. I think having so much emphasis on time is still harsh, but at the end of the day there has to be some element of time in chess I guess.

Blitz is even worse over the board though lol. Having to hit the clock all the time.

I mean look at this rapid game I just played (getting my e4 and Ruy Lopez on lol, can be quite fun). Surely he did not want to sac the exchange, so he must have seen a tactic that was not there or misunderstood my threat, and he's not much lower rated than me. I also am not sure if his pawn sacrifice in the opening was intentional.. https://www.chess.com/live/game/1716580289

Incidentally this is, of the ones I have checked, though I doubt the others were candidates, my first game with no inaccuracies I believe. Not great play, with 10 average centipawn loss, with more "good" moves than you'd like, but whatever.

Honestly I'd love the rush of slamming the clock after every move XD. Can't wait to play OTB.

Really nice game there! Nice finish in particular. And yes, that pawn sacrifice was definitely unintentional, your opponent just chasing your LSB beginner-style and showing little understanding of the opening itself. You say that you don't play the Ruy much but from this game it looked like you were familiar with it and he had never seen it in his life XD.

It's more fun, but more stress, I suppose. And you'll tend to play worse, I think.

Yeah the last two moves are pretty funny ...h3 ...g4#. Maybe he figured it was okay because everyone "hangs" their pawns in lines of the Ruy. Not defending the e5 pawn again after Bb5 technically hangs it to Bxc6 Nxe5, early castling in the main line Berlin technically hangs e4 to Nxe4...only in those lines the pawn will be won back and possibly with interest. Here the pawn is never won back and the computer thinks he has pretty much no compensation at all, giving close to a pawn advantage. Weird from a 1600, especially as I've seen 1400 rapids play decent. But the exchange sac was even weirder, I dunno what he thought I was threatening. I'm familiar with the Ruy, but more so from other's games on it, and I used to play it more when first starting out. It's just that for most of the time playing chess I've primarily played d4, and when I've played e4 almost exclusively opted for the Scotch if hit with e5. Ruy theory can be somewhat daunting; you've got the fried liver, and its many crazy lines, and, as mentioned before, there's lots of "hanging" pawns and you need to know when things are tactically protected and when they aren't.

I think his Nge7 was pretty dodgy in itself, since it blocks the DSB, puts the g knight on an inferior square and allows an easy c3,d4 for White.
Yeah and I don't understand the exchange sac either, basically gave away the game.
Fried Liver isn't part of the Ruy, it's a line in the Italian Game? But yeah some lines of the Ruy can be ridiculously hard to play accurately just by 'working things out'. You really need to know theory to play it well (I don't know much theory but I still play it lol).
Might start trying the Scotch idk. Not entirely sure whether the Ruy is the best e4-e5 opening for me, but maybe I could learn some theory and then I'll be better at it.

It's been played before, but yeah it's weird. I presume the idea is to be ultra safe about the e5 pawn in case the bishop takes, but that is incongruous with hunting the bishop down.

Yeah lol Bc4 not Bb5 oops. Supposed I should have generalised to e4-e5.

Scotch is pretty simple because typically they take everything and you quickly get a nice queen on d4 (no knight to bother it right away) and pawn on e4 with no complicated pawn breaks or anything to worry about for the time being.

I think most people who play Nge7 have had bad experiences with Bxc6 followed by losing the pawn XD.

I've noticed that most weak players will just trade off and give you a great queen position in the Scotch, but when considering starting to play the opening I'm gonna assume they don't do that. I've seen that Kasparov likes the Scotch, so I'll watch some of his games for some insights.

Not trading seems rare.
Just played a 30|0 against a 1600s guy with a ****ing ridiculous opening, he played it really fast and it pissed me off because I knew it was terrible, so I played too fast. Ended up saccing a piece because he kept closing up every pawn break and he was pushing on the kingside despite his position being horrible and development being horrible; it rubbed me the wrong way. I don't think I was that much worse even after the sac but I let a simple fork in and was decidedly lost. I guess that was a psychological loss.

That happened to me a lot too, I'd just say be as patient as possible with terrible play; trying to punish it too quickly can backfire.

I played some guy on lichess recently and they played some terrible moves in the opening, castled queenside in a ridiculous position and I managed to play perfectly and attack the queenside with 0 inaccuracies until I'd worked my advantage up to +4.8 (and I wasn't even ahead in material). Nice space advantage, open b-file everything. Then I moved my queen again to b3 to make a stupid one-move checkmate threat - I was too lazy to consider his replies and realise that it was easy to defend - and after that I started to run out of ideas and such. Even when I'd completely run out of ideas my position was still completely winning but since I was so focused on winning on the queenside I didn't notice I could easily switch the play and crush him on the kingside.
Had I not played Qb3 and just developed my last minor piece (there was a great square for my DSB) and patiently connected my rooks, maybe double on the b-file it would have been an easy win.

So yeah, be patient; it's always better to miss good moves yourself than to allow your opponent good moves.

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Apologies for the petulance lol. You might enjoy this rook and bishop vs rook pair to rook vs rook end game. I rather like 37. ...c3! I missed 44. ...Rd1 winning instantly I believe, but oh well. In time trouble so loads of inaccuracies and ways to kill it off faster but whatever. https://www.chess.com/analysis-board-editor?diagram_id=3127570

Apologies for the petulance lol. You might enjoy this rook and bishop vs rook pair to rook vs rook end game. I rather like 37. ...c3! I missed 44. ...Rd1 winning instantly I believe, but oh well. In time trouble so loads of inaccuracies and ways to kill it off faster but whatever. https://www.chess.com/analysis-board-editor?diagram_id=3127570

Nah it's fine, I get angry at myself for playing bad chess all the time lol. Particularly when I'm winning and then straight up run out of ideas (basically I manage to refute every idea I have and I can find tonnes of good moves for my opponent).

Looked liked a reversed KID lol. I'm surprised he just completely missed an obvious fork, but again nice finish to the game; you seem to be good at finishing lol. 40. ...Rc3 would've been beautiful though.

Out of interest what board and pieces do you use? I use alpha pieces green board.

For a while I used blue board with classic pieces. Now I'm using dark wood with alpha pieces. Alpha and classic are both good, most of the others confuse me. Dark wood feels more authentic lol.
Been trying to solve a few of the tactics puzzles by setting my pieces up on an actual chess board to get more used to it..

Ah yeah I noticed you used alpha and dark wood from the link to your game. Dark wood looks nice, you're right; might start using that. And yeah besides alpha and classic they all look a bit weird, although chess.com does seem to like neo a lot.

I tried 3D earlier. Not as bad as you might think...

I struggle to contain my anger with myself over this one. What the actual **** am I thinking. How the hell can you lose this endgame. Jesus christ. Absolute retard. https://www.chess.com/live/game/1717631122 Two pawns up, or was it three? Absolutely no positional compensation for him originally. I should just accept I can't play chess at all with the absolute poverty of intuition and logic it takes to lose that.
And after an intelligently played middlegame as well. Lmao.

Woah that's gotta hurt. As for me I just played a terrible game that failed entirely because I was trying to make a stupid skewer which didn't even work, for some reason I didn't realise that the bishop blocking meant that I could not skewer him.

The reason I go for these kinds of rubbish tactics is because I want to win. If I don't do anything and play super solid moves for the whole game my position always fizzles out and dies. I actually have no idea how to play chess now. To win properly seems like you have to have an almost master level understanding of the game, winning at lower levels just seems like waiting for your opponent to make an outright tactical or strategic blunder; at this level no one can gradually build up a strong positional advantage and then convert it without messing up at some point. Honestly I'm struggling to see how I'm meant to play chess at this level.

I can take some satisfaction from basically outplaying someone 100 points higher in the middlegame, and for the early portion of the endgame as well (not that that was hard). According to the engine the final position in which I resigned was -0.06. I guess I need to look over rook and pawn vs rook endgames because I assumed I was just lost. In reality, it's very easy to figure out what went wrong - I allowed his king too much activity. That's basically it. There was also certainly a degree of complacency with the advantage. I am just trying to learn something I guess as however stupid I may be, I will not become less stupid unless I learn I guess..

I think the primary way of winning chess is what Silman has said in articles, creating targets. If your opponent has an isolated or backward pawn, this is easy. If your opponent has an obvious hole that would be perfect for a piece, it is easy. If there is a file that is ripe for the taking, this is easy. Failing that, perhaps push pawns and hope for the best...it sort of is a case of waiting for a tactical mistake, but these often come when you put someone under pressure (indeed, when you put someone under pressure they can hang a piece straight up, let alone miss a tactic).

I mean, this is something I did quite well in my last game, ignoring the ending. Once the c file opens up, I make it my business to occupy it with all my major pieces. I then attack the e7 bishop, but my real "target" is the f7 square. I bring my rook into the game, "pinning" the bishop to f7, while the rook is stuck defending the bishop, and the queen has no worthwhile squares. I'm tying them down to defending a target. Then I am in prime position to focus on the other weaknesses, a6 and d6, ultimately winning them.
There's also a common saying that you need two weaknesses to win a chess game (in this game the two + weaknesses I guess would be the sensitive f7 and the queenside pawns, although I lost it it was clearly winning from the middlegame..). If you just play solid and focus only on one, or, indeed, none, then your opponent has nothing to worry about, I guess.

I can take some satisfaction from basically outplaying someone 100 points higher in the middlegame, and for the early portion of the endgame as well (not that that was hard). According to the engine the final position in which I resigned was -0.06. I guess I need to look over rook and pawn vs rook endgames because I assumed I was just lost. In reality, it's very easy to figure out what went wrong - I allowed his king too much activity. That's basically it. There was also certainly a degree of complacency with the advantage. I am just trying to learn something I guess as however stupid I may be, I will not become less stupid unless I learn I guess..

I think the primary way of winning chess is what Silman has said in articles, creating targets. If your opponent has an isolated or backward pawn, this is easy. If your opponent has an obvious hole that would be perfect for a piece, it is easy. If there is a file that is ripe for the taking, this is easy. Failing that, perhaps push pawns and hope for the best...it sort of is a case of waiting for a tactical mistake, but these often come when you put someone under pressure (indeed, when you put someone under pressure they can hang a piece straight up, let alone miss a tactic).

I mean, this is something I did quite well in my last game, ignoring the ending. Once the c file opens up, I make it my business to occupy it with all my major pieces. I then attack the e7 bishop, but my real "target" is the f7 square. I bring my rook into the game, "pinning" the bishop to f7, while the rook is stuck defending the bishop, and the queen has no worthwhile squares. I'm tying them down to defending a target. Then I am in prime position to focus on the other weaknesses, a6 and d6, ultimately winning them.
There's also a common saying that you need two weaknesses to win a chess game (in this game the two + weaknesses I guess would be the sensitive f7 and the queenside pawns, although I lost it it was clearly winning from the middlegame..). If you just play solid and focus only on one, or, indeed, none, then your opponent has nothing to worry about, I guess.