Chess Thread

[Thestatusquo]

I mean, the greatest way to learn is to read read read and play play play. Play every day. Read about new openings and then try them. You will only become comfortable with lines when you've played them over and over again from both sides. It's also helpful to know what relative win %s are for different lines. That way you can know when you're playing against, say, the excellerated dragon, that X response has a 51% white win and Y response has a 46% white win.

there are plenty of decent free sites. Do some searching. There are also some fantastic chess players on this site. Play them. Sudo, yaw, for instance, are both way way better than me.

[Thestatusquo]

It also depends on what type of skill you are looking to achieve. If you just want to have fun, playing is all you really need.

When I actually played I was around 1800 USCF, knew about the first 10-15 moves of the openings I used, basic tactics and the common endgames. That was about it. Mostly just playing is all that you will need to do if you want to just have fun, once it gets competitive learn a couple openings and other basics. Learn an odd opening too if you want to play at not high competitive skill, since it will trash most of what those people have learned for the early game as they have to fake it

Last thing he said is completely true. Playing reti at a tournament level = a lot of really confused mid ranked players moving pieces at random. You will know the lines and they will be guessing. You will win those games like 80% of the time given equal skill levels.

[Thestatusquo]

mhm. Reti is probably my favorite opening because it crushes any player that is a solid to good but not amazing chess player. I'm not going to beat amazing chess players anyway.

[Thestatusquo]

llama, what is your opinion on the fried liver attack?

[Thestatusquo]

Fried liver might be something you want to look at if you're a very aggressive player as you say, which is why I brought it up. It fits into some of my natural tendencies as a chess player.

[Thestatusquo]

Is this not true with basically any other hobby you could have? Isn't your question basically "why do people bother getting good at things they enjoy?"

Which seems like a pretty dumb question.

[Thestatusquo]

I think the list that llama posted is pretty good. There are so many out there, though. I get that its hard to figure out which ones to read. Another thing I find helpful is there is a youtube channel called thechesswebsite where he does run throughs of common openings/openings that he likes. It's not by any means a comprehensive understanding that he's providing, but it's usually a pretty good introduction to the basics.

[Thestatusquo]

Say LLama and TSQ, have you ever watched Code Geass ("no I don't watch that nerd shit")?;

I don't think you have what kind of person I am figured out very well.

but his play style heavily utilizes movement of the king past the baseline and for use in attacks. They don't show any of his games, so I don't know the answer to my second question: Is such a playstyle possible to competitively maintain?

I just don't think that such a strategy is viable under like 99.9% of circumstances. I certainly wouldn't want to make it part of my usual tactics. Though, I'm not the best person to be asking because I'm not the greatest chess player in the world.

[Thestatusquo]

Not going to play because I don't have a spare 120$ lying around, but I would almost certainly be willing to let you crash on my couch.

[Thestatusquo]

I dont think I've ever played a sanctioned tournament in my life, though at a guess I'd say llamamarble will probably play in this. If I have a new job by then, I'll consider going to this.

[Thestatusquo]

Also, how many other experiences will you have mercilessly crushing multiple people under the age of 10?

[Thestatusquo]

I mean, yeah. Clearly if the goal is simply to get better at chess than you'd be better off with pure strategy books, but theres nothing wrong with just doing fun logic puzzles.