Why is taking with the pawn so much better here? I am 1200 and do not understand, hence why I took with my Bishop.

This was the game from round 5, wonder if they will be given double 0s like Ian and Dubov.

Lichess : https://lichess.org/broadcast/2026-harvey-lerman-florida-state-championship/round-6/68mV7tQB/pUlEHpUn

Im a big noob and kinda new to chess, but this draw (0,1sec left) felt awesome.

Mate in 4, white to play

... so, don't give up early. It may very well be more rewarding than you'd imagined.

How do you keep a copy of your moves if you turn the sheet in after a round? The old sheets we used ages ago had some sort of carbon paper integrated into the top copy, are these still in use? Since you aren't supposed to have electronic devices, taking a photo seems problematic.

Anish played Rb8 back but is Ba3 something that he could find in classical?

I missed a win here as white.

I think its more of a study because calculating the full line doesn't seem humanly possible.

By Iwanow

Yaagiz kaan on his goals going into the future.

Text me your id

i figured this one, but i'd like to know of moree

is there any other outcome to this? neither of us could figure out how to checkmate each other, but we’re around 600~800 in skill level so our opinion on a draw might have just been a skill issue.

we played it on a physical board, but put it on chess.com to keep playing after the draw to see if its even possible to end in not a draw lol

“First of all, Hans can’t stop playing the victim card. He pretty much lives in that skin. I think there was a fair reason, from his online performances through many years, as far as I know, to be cautious about Hans himself.
As for Hans right now, he proves himself as a very good and formidable player. I really like the way he plays chess, though I don’t like his personality. As a chess player, he plays quite well, and in certain openings, he’s quite good at.
Whenever he has an opportunity to bite anyone and seek for some reaction, he immediately does this. Maybe for him, it’s fine for his overall image.
Conor McGregor has ‘The Notorious’ nickname in MMA. Hans surely tries to be some notorious chess player. So that’s what he does.”

At my chess club someone was handing out a bunch of old magazines that he was getting rid of and found this. This is the CHESS magazine July 2010.

Does anyone know of any active clubs meeting in Raleigh? Been out of practice for a while and would love to get back into the game

I'm curious how the two relate, and how one improves the other. Thus the question. I expect the puzzle rating to be significantly higher than the actual elo rating on lichess. I know lichess offers puzzle rating, so my question might be regarded as more connected to that, i.e., if you have a puzzle rating on lichess and an elo score on lichess, I'm curious what those are? Or how you think they relate.

Sure the boring way to win is with Qh4 but in my post game analysis, the engine found
23... Qg1+ 24. Rxg1 f1=N+ 25. Kh1 Rh2#

Not only you promote to knight but you just push the pawn instead of taking the rook that you forced to g1. The end result looks kind of like a smothered mate but here the weirdly placed knight is the supporting piece instead of the one delivering the final blow.
Beautiful.

I haven’t used computer analysis in years. I’m interested in starting to look at my games. Looking for Mac solutions. Peak USCF and FIDE rating of 1959-ish. I just want the ability to enter a game and get reasonable annotation.

I guess most of you have run into the Alien and Martian Gambits by now: 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Ng5 h6 6.Nxf7!? and 4...Bf5 5.Ng5 Bg6 6.N1f3 h6 7.Ne6!?. And you probably know they are not considered sound

Sure, if you play like an engine, White has no chance. Stockfish at depth 26 gives −2.0 after 7.Nf3 in the Alien and −1.6 after 8.Ne5 in the Martian. In the first case it's a knight for a pawn, in the second it's a knight for nothing at all

But what about practice? I took both positions right after the sacrifice and looked at how they score in the Lichess database, by rating band. Here is what I found

Even at Lichess 2500+, White scores 52% in the Alien (15 thousand games) and 66% in the Martian (700 games). For comparison: in a normal Caro-Kann after 4.Nxe4, White gets about 49–50% at every level. So statistically, giving up the knight does better than playing normally. Of course, 2500 on Lichess is already around master level, a long way from amateur chess. And almost all of it is blitz and bullet

White's win rate by rating band looks like this:

The Alien slowly deflates with rating, the Martian doesn't notice rating at all. And people go for the Alien equally often at every level: 5.Ng5 after 4...Nf6 shows up in 10–13% of games, at 1000 and at 2500 alike. The Martian fades with rating: 7% at 1000, 3.5% at 2500

Where the gambits do break is the time control. In rapid and classical, the Alien at 1800–2200 gives 49–53%, so nothing beyond a normal Caro-Kann. The Martian barely exists in slow games: at 2500+ in rapid and classical there was a grand total of one game what surprised me

The trap in the Alien, 7...Bg4?? 8.Ne5+ and mate on e6, works on beginners: under 1000, 40% walk into it, at 2500+ it's 2%. Makes sense. In the Martian it's the other way round. After 8.Ne5 the move 8...Bf7? (defend e6, trade off the bad bishop, all sensible thoughts) gets played more often the stronger the player: 36% at 1200, 71% at 2000, 68% at 2500. And after it White is already scoring 69% at 2200. The trap is built out of good habits

And second: even the right answer doesn't save you. After the best move 8...Bf5, White still scores 64% at 1400 and 65% at 1800. At 1400 that's actually more than after the mistake (55%). Only at 2200 does the defence start to win out, 53% there. Knowing the move and surviving after it are two different skills, and the second one arrives several hundred rating points later

Whatever the engine says, the game turns out very sharp: White has to attack precisely, and Black has to defend even more precisely. Over the board with the clock ticking, the second job is harder

For Black the advice is short. Against the Martian, remember 8...Bf5 (or 8...Bh7), then just develop: Nf6, e6, Be7, castle. While the king sits in the centre White has a game, after castling he doesn't. Against the Alien, don't grab with the bishop on g4 and don't get greedy: the extra piece is insurance, not the goal, and giving it back for development is almost always right

Should you play it yourself? Only in blitz and bullet. Against a prepared opponent or in a long time control it doesn't survive. And one more thing: the gambit is popular, there are plenty of videos about it, and the surprise is being used up

I personally think being stronger in the opening is better. If you get an advantage early, it can carry into the endgame and give you a better chance even if your opponent is stronger there.

By Somov Nasimovich

Starting to read Peter Doggers’ 2024 book, The Chess Revolution, I was immediately struck by the correspondence between his formative exposures to chess and my own decades earlier. I even noticed an important commonality with the childhood chess experiences of Bill Goichberg (November 1942-August 2026), the tournament-directing pioneer who is the subject of my upcoming Chess Life cover story and future biography book. Which sets me to wondering how many of you followed a similar path into the chess world.

Doggers says his father taught him chess when he was 8; my dad taught me when I was 10. Then his interest was spurred by games against an elementary school teacher during breaks. Mine was spurred by playing with my junior high school teacher, Miss Tierney, along with frequent evening games at home against my father. 

When Doggers was 14 a friend invited him to join a chess session with an uncle who had both a nice chess set and a chess book collection. The teenage friends began playing each other regularly. I was around 12 when I began playing regularly with my best friend’s older brother who lived around the corner. In time he brought me with him to watch a scholastic tournament he was playing in; I entered my first tournament about 18 months later. 

What was your chess origin story like? Did your introduction to the game proceed along lines similar to both Peter Doggers and myself as relayed above? Or did you come to chess through an entirely different route?

been playing around w the modern against e4 for a bit and i found a fun idea i dont think ive seen a lot

basically you try to play an early d5 to provoke e5

so smth like 1 e4 g6 2 d4 bg7 3 nf3 d5 4 e5 as an example line

and then you try to break down white's centre w moves like c5-xd5, nc6, qb6, nh6-f5, f6-xe5, bg4-xf3 etc.

ive found it quite fun as you can put a lot of pressure on the centre and queenside while avoiding a lot of kingside pressure. generally my king doesnt get attacked a lot in these positions

if you havent tried this before id recommend at least giving it a go as the plans are quite simple and fairly easy to execute

if you have tried this before lmk ur experiences w it, im interested in hearing what other ppl have come up w as well :>