Chess?

Post Reply New Topic

My abilities at chess are stronger than the average player. I've been beating all of my friends at school and my family can't beat me either. My strengths lie in my tactical resolution, while I tend to expose unusual strategic weaknesses.

At the moment, there is nobody to play chess with locally. The computer is too strong and most online players are quite hard to beat.

i play online at 2 places:

letsplaychess.com/chessclubs

chess.com

the latter one has better presentation facilities (you can annotate your own games), but lately they've installed an extremely annoying audio commercial on every page...

i used to be quite good at over-the-board play (i occasionally beat masters), & almost as good at speed chess. that was 30 years ago, though. these days i exclusively use irregular openings like 1.Na3 & 1.Nh3--& my results (alas) show it. but i only play for fun anyway...

m.

I'm a fairly decent player (roughly 1500 USCF, with performance ratings typically in the mid-1600s recently). Still working to get better. I hope to reach the Expert title someday.

Firefox and AdBlock Plus make chess.com usable.

That's probably how strong I was at my peak strength. But I haven't played seriously in years.

2000 blitz on ICC has to be better than Class C USCF. I know ICC's ratings are inflated, but they can't be that bad? My FICS blitz rating is something like 1300.

Chess is pretty cool, although I get wiped out a bit too much.

Anybody here enjoy any chess variants aside from just straight traditional chess? There's one I've been developing which really adds an extra level of strategy to the game. I call it Kirby Chess, after the Nintendo character. It's similar to Absorption Chess and PlunderChess, in that a capturing piece gains the movement abilities of the captured piece. Howver, unlike the other two variants, the captured piece also loses its original mode of mobility, and retains the captured piece's movements until it captures another piece. So, for example, a white rook capturing a black knight would then be restricted to the L-shaped paths of a knight-- and then, if it were to capture a black bishop, it would start moving diagonally, and so on. The only way for the rook to regain its original movements would be for it to capture one of the opposing rooks. However, regardless of what set of movements a piece absorbs, its original form is what determines the way an opponent's piece moves should the piece be captured (in other words, even if the white rook is restricted to a bishop's movements, if a black pawn were to capture it, the pawn would adopt the movements of a rook and not a bishop). It certainly changes the dynamic, because it makes pawns much more valuable (less desirable to capture, and anything captured by a pawn is a promotion), and strips away some of the queen's ability to attack (because anything captured the queen is a demotion).

I used to play chess when I was young. I still do but against the computer.

I'm at 1650 online. I play at Gameknot. I've gotten better at chess, because my brain developed more in the last 2 years I suppose. I was at 1450 for a long time. I'm hoping to get to 1700 soon. I played when I was a kid, but I never really stuck with it. Oh well.

I enjoy chess, when I was on ADHD medicine I would play it for 8+ hours some days when I should have been writing papers.

i like playing chess, but i usually only play on the Chess.com app on Igoogle

That's interesting, Chevand. I'm a fan of Shogi (Japanese Chess) and many of its variants. The motion of the game plays rather intuitively with drops and unusual moments throughout the battle.

Since so many of us suck at it and you seem to be good with it, here's something to post;

How can we improve our sense of strategy?

There is no reason for anyone below the rank of Master to worry about strategy. Just focus on tactics. Do you leave pieces hanging often? Do you leave pawns in vulnerable positions? Do you overlook mate in three?

I make all these mistakes and more. The only way to get better is to practice. chess.com has a tactics trainer (free members only get 3 problems a day). There are plenty of other resources out there as well for tactical training. If you can avoid hanging material or making other disastrous blunders, you can reach at the very least 1500 USCF.

i play chess, hit me up and we will play a game

I play chess. I'm terrible! Terrible as in really bad, not as in Ivan the Terrible.