Chess Thread

[Llamarble]

I've put a lot of time into chess and am about as strong as Chesskid (I think he has maybe 20 rating points on me).
I haven't been playing as much lately, but I'm starting to study again and intend to get to master sometime in the next couple of years.

Advice:
Studying from books (with a board in front of me to look at things, unless it's a tactics book) is really really helpful to me.
Playing games and going over them (especially with opponents who often know relevant things) is crucial.
I also got some lessons after I reached about 1700.

I've mostly spent book time on openings and tactics, but I've also read some key books that were on more general topics like attack, defense, and the middlegame.
Endgame knowledge can kinda be picked up from various sources.

1000 Up till about 1400:
The Art of the Middle Game by Keres and Kotov taught me how to make a plan and showed me some chess concepts like attacking with pawns when kings castle on opposite sides.
I also read "My System" by Nimzovitch sometime during this period, which is another very good book to show you some objectives you should be playing for beyond exploiting blunders to win material.
Attacking with 1.e4 by Emms(?) was my first repertoire book. It's really good to have at least some idea what you're going to do in every opening situation.
Chess openings traps and zaps and other easier tactics books.

The 2 books that turned me into a very aggressive player and helped me improve so fast that I skipped the 1500s entirely on my rating supplements:
1001 ways to checkmate (Reinfeld) I solved every problem in this book multiple times. I am now very good at seeing checkmates.
The Art of Attack in Chess (Vukovic) I learned the ideas behind attacking and learned a lot of techniques / things to think about.

1700-2000
I studied a lot of openings and tactics during this time, some of it prepared material by my teacher with an emphasis on going through games.
I read a book on the classical sicilian.
And I read "King's Indian Battle Plans," a really awesome book that goes through a ton of KID games and discusses the interesting ideas in them.
1001 Chess Tactics (Reinfeld)
Mastering Chess Tactics (McDonald)

I've just started studying again, and my books of choice right now are a beating anti king's indians type book and a beating anti sicilians book.

[Llamarble]

To build on what Yaw said, memorizing openings is basically a waste of time. You want to have an idea of the opening, and the ability to analyze, but really, the opening's purpose is to get you to the middlegame as efficiently as possible. It's far better to spend time studying tactics and positioning if you want to get good. Understand what you're trying to do, how to get there, and how to stop your opponent from doing his thing. As they say, the middlegame is the soul of chess, and if you get good at it, you can generally make up for being somewhat weaker at openings and endgames.

Good opening books usually give moves and variations, explain why they make sense and what the goals are, and then give example games.
If I've studied a book on the opening that starts a game I play, I'll be more likely to get a middlegame position I like and more likely to know what the right approach is when I get there.
I'll also have seen a lot of the typical tactical ideas associated with the opening, so I'm less likely to miss opportunities and make blunders.

[Llamarble]

I visited the US (chess) Open in 2001 before I played in any chess tournaments because it was being held a few towns over and I liked chess.
I thought it was really cool and signed up for the USCF there with intent to play in some tournaments nearby, which I did.
GM Arthur Bisguier was giving a simul and I signed up, and I was black.
I played 1...e5 back then and he used the fried liver attack against me and I got crushed, but it was awesome.

Other than that I've never encountered the Fried Liver attack and I've never used it,
and right now my repertoire can't encounter it, so I don't really know much about it theory-wise.

Years later, in 2010 (I think) I played Bisguier in a local tournament and drew him. He's the only GM I've ever drawn.
And because of that I have drawn a guy who has beaten Bobby Fischer.
(Fischer was young when he lost to Bisguier and Bisguier was pretty old when we played our second game)

[Llamarble]

Right now I play the Bishop's Opening and get decent results with it, though I think once I've gotten through the anti-sicilians and anti-king's-indians books I'm working on now and an endgame encyclopedia, I'm going to start studying the Ruy Lopez so I can switch over to it.

I think black has a lot of options that avoid the fried liver that I'm not sure I'd want to deal with, but I'll definitely look into it when I'm picking a new way to deal with 1... e5

[Llamarble]

Any books / other materials on the Ruy you've found particularly awesome to learn from? I'll probably buy a Ruy book pretty soon.

[Llamarble]

I want to get better and cess and it's kne of my favorite games, but I often wonder to myself what the point of it all is...

Is it worth getting better at? After all, it's really domain specific and won't improve your capacities in other areas of life..

Actually chess is really strong on that front as games go.
Maybe not for specific skills, but the pure brain-training is great.
Memory, avoiding stupid errors, studying, will to win, visualization, strategy
And being able to play blindfolded (which a lot of tournament players can do after awhile) can be a pretty awesome parlor trick

As for using the king for attacking in the middlegame, that is definitely not something you normally want to be doing.
Most chess rules have exceptions though:

1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 g6 5.Bc4 Nb6 6.Bb3 Bg7 7.Qe2 Nc6 8.O-O O-O 9.h3 a5 10.a4 dxe5 11.dxe5 Nd4 12.Nxd4 Qxd4 13.Re1 e6 14.Nd2 Nd5 15.Nf3 Qc5 16.Qe4 Qb4 17.Bc4 Nb6 18.b3 Nxc4 19.bxc4 Re8 20.Rd1 Qc5 21.Qh4 b6 22.Be3 Qc6 23.Bh6 Bh8 24.Rd8 Bb7 25.Rad1 Bg7 26.R8d7 Rf8 27.Bxg7 Kxg7 28.R1d4 Rae8 29.Qf6+ Kg8 30.h4 h5 31.Kh2 Rc8 32.Kg3 Rce8 33.Kf4 Bc8 34.Kg5

[Llamarble]

That game was between Short and Timman, both of them very strong GMs.

You do want to use the king in the endgame though.
One way of deciding when you've reached the endgame is that it becomes safe for the kings to come out and take on an active role.

[Llamarble]

But...the mit encyclopedia of cognitive sciences...speaks of limitations on these benefits.

"For example, a chess expert displays advanced memory for arrangements of pieces on a chessboard but ordinary memory for digit strings."

I think (hypothesize that) this finding might likely extend to visualization, as well.

As for studying and will to win, I don't think these skills are developed so much by playing chess.

I'd love to study individual differences in 'stupid error' prevention, though. I do those a lot. But I'd bet that the metacognitive monitoring required to do this might also operate situationally. In other words, reduced instances of stupidity in chess games might also not equate to reduced stupid errors irl.

That sounds like the study is saying chess experts don't display the level of ridiculous memory they have for chess positions on digit strings, which is certainly true.
I'd bet there is at least a correlation between being an expert and strong memory though simply because it's easier to become an expert if you have a good memory.

It looks like whether chess will increase your overall processing power is a subject of much debate, but I do feel like some of the thinking-skills are pretty transferable.
Learning chess is an interesting study problem, and chess really satisfyingly rewards good studying so I think it can benefit study habits.
And playing tournaments where you invest a lot of time in one game taught me how important will-to-win is / how to sustain focus on a particular task.
I also tend to find it very easy to think far ahead in new games I try out. Visualization / minimaxing are strong points for me in general, and I don't think that was a power I had before I got good at chess.

[Llamarble]

'distrust a pawn move; examine carefully its balance sheet'

Having control of more of the board means better / more relevant squares for your pieces and worse squares for your opponent's pieces. If your pawns are far advanced they also start to threaten promotion. With a lot of space to work in, it will be easier for you to do things like attack a pawn forcing it to be defended, then move your attacking pieces across the board rapidly to attack something else. The defender's pieces will have a hard time moving to defend the new threat because with less space their other pieces / pawns will likely be in the way. It is generally desirable to exchange pieces if you have less space than your opponent to ease this cramping effect.
So in general it is useful to gain a lot of space, and typically you attack on the side of the board where you have a space advantage because it's harder to defend where you're cramped.

You generally don't want to advance the pawns immediately in front of your castled king though without pretty specific reasons ('I can't let his knight stay on such and such square' or 'The blocked center means my king won't come under attack even though I'm moving the pawns away from it') as having your king exposed makes it much easier to attack. Enemy pieces can sit on the squares your pawns used to be guarding, and long range pieces can deliver checks along the lines that the pawns were blocking.
And sudo is right that you want your pieces to be on good, useful, supportive squares while you're pushing pawns.

The trouble with playing against yourself is that it's much harder to find your own mistakes than for somebody else to.
I prefer to play against a computer over playing against myself, and to play against another person over playing against a computer.
Time that I would spend playing against myself is usually better spent on book-study.

[Llamarble]

They will not help you become better at chess. Or at least certainly not compared to a normal chess book.
Those books are about looking at an implausible-looking position and determining what must have happened to create it.
Chess mysteries of Sherlock holmes is probably my favorite logic puzzle book though, so I would say you should buy it anyway .