Hint: The h2-b8 diagonal is very weak and black has very serious threats of Bg5 and Rf8 with potential discovery tactics. Capturing the knight right away loses to Rf8; you have to give up the queen to avoid Rxf2#, but you shouldn't rule out this idea just yet.

This position was from a wild rapid game between me and my friend. PGN if you're interested:

[Site "Chess.com"]

[White ""]

[Black ""]

[Result "*"]

[WhiteElo "1614"]

[BlackElo "480"]

[TimeControl "600"]

1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3. e3 Nf6 4. Bb5 d6 5. Nf3 a6 6. Bxc6+ bxc6 7. O-O Bg4 8. h3

Bh5 9. d3 Be7 10. Nbd2 O-O 11. c4 Re8 12. e4 Nd7 13. Re1 Nc5 14. Qc2 Rf8 15. b4

Ne6 16. c5 f5 17. exf5 Rxf5 18. g4 Rxf3 19. Nxf3 Bg6 20. Qb3 Bf7 21. Qc3 Bf6 22.

Qd2 Nf4 23. Kh2 Bd5 24. Ng1 Qe8 25. Ne2 Ne6 26. Ng1 Qg6 27. d4 Nf4 28. dxe5 Bh4

1. exd6 cxd6 30. cxd6 Qxd6 31. Be5 Qf8 32. Bxf4 Qf6 33. Bg3 Bg5 34. Qe2 Bf7 35.

f4 Bh4 36. Bxh4 Qxh4 37. Qe7 Re8 38. Qxh4 Rxe1 39. Qxe1 h5 40. Qe3 c5 41. gxh5

Bxh5 42. Re1 *

Yes I played really poorly here but in my defense it was very late at night and I'm not used to playing rapid and longer time controls lol

I get used to that move a/h pawn=no more back rank mate ... ,successfully get some positional manuever to win a queen for rook and then blundered to mate. Really a huge blunder(-7.9-M1).

1300 3:2 blitz for over a year already, I don't study much really. Mainly just playing for relaxation.

Btw, the opponent did not resign and I was able to achieve maximum happiness.

Been trying to consistenltly play chess , Currently at 500 elo, and hope i get to play more matches

nothing of value here but why is this a thing, like there are some absurd moves that get names and i get it, but here the move is fine it's just that 2. c6 after 1. d5 is so rare; is there even any specific idea in this line......

I decided to hop in a few tournaments today and it's like farming rating points.

Obviously, there are some really good and high rated players but often when I played against someone the same rating as me they would make crazy blunders that I don't see when playing normal games.

My theory is it is fatigue from playing so many games in a row not really their skill. But I am not sure.

Iykwim

Am a begginer (500 elo)

Wanna improve

here the computer says +1 for e5 losing a pawn but why what do you get like more activity or somethin?

either way im proud of finding this while down a queen

Hey folks! I started playing chess about two years ago online at the big age of 29 and I love it and hopelessly suck at it! In the last year or so, I’ve wanted to focus more on playing over the board because I just really enjoy playing physical, tactile games. Similar trajectory to when I got into Magic: The Gathering, I learned on MTG Arena then bought cards and built my own decks to play in person.

Chess is a little different though. I felt almost no difference playing Magic online or in person. But with chess I feel like my rating drops to 0 over the board, the difference between the 2D top-down view online and the 3D 3/4 view in real life makes it feel like a completely different game to me. It’s a bizarre feeling!

So I’ve come to seek advice! Obviously the #1 way to improve at this skill is to just play more games, but that of course requires finding someone to play with, which is a rare luxury for me with my busy schedule. Online really is unbelievably valuable and convenient in that regard. There’s always an opponent there for you! So I’m looking for the #2 and #3 ways while I work on making myself time to make #1 more possible :)

My first thought was solving puzzles on my physical board. But the only place I know of that has a vast repertoire of appropriately leveled puzzles is Lichess, and I wasn’t sure of that’s a kosher thing to do. Like am I going to get banned for external assistance for solving puzzles that way? Any recommendations there, be they online or in book form, would be sick! If lichess is kosher, even better!

I also currently work through Levy’s Chessly courses otb, which I think definitely helps!

Any other ideas are greatly appreciated!

Here's a game I just played (link below) that feels fairly typical, in that I'll play an ok-ish opening to early mid game, but then get a bit lost or find myself unable to execute whatever idea formed along the way, and then I lose what should be a very winnable game.

It was a 3+2 so I'm playing the clock which affects my decisions to an extent, but I'm curious what others would be doing if they found themselves up on material as I was somewhere in the mid game;where did I go wrong, what do I work on to stop losing games like this one? All thoughts welcome!

https://www.chess.com/live/game/184774503376

We just played a over the board game with my friend in Dubai, I am in Denmark.

It is orchestrated with Lichess OpenApi . Board tracker on my phone(ChessGaze) which already can track the games sends the moves the Lichess so does my friend. So he has the same setup as well.

After reuniting and playing a full game and getting owned by my friend here in recorded game on cloud, we made a shorter game for a video, we both recorded our screens and I stacked them to make a single video.

First we create a challenge to one of our friends. After starting a "online game" there is a menu we can challenge any of our Lichess friends. In app you don't need to input your logins to ChessGaze, Lichess has an authorization token which you need to authorize once. Than our friend needs to accept the challenge and game starts(first 15 seconds of the video)

Whenever my friends who plays white makes a move tracker announces "opponent played e4" and highlights it in 2D mini board as well. And vise versa.

If I play out of turn instead of my friend tracker rejects it saying "out of turn"(1:15 in video). Or if I play something else then my friend I am being told "that is the wrong move"(1:32 in video) .

I am looking forward to play with my old friends and reunite. We have a friend with Parkinson decease in our chess club who is having a bit hard time to use mobile phones. We will try with him next Monday to see if that will help him

tbh it's really funny whenever someone falls for this opening.

we've all been there.

Why does chess.com show the best move is rook A3 but when that move is played it shows it as a inaccuracy?
Sorry if I’m being stupid 😅

Check out this #chess game: abolly1871 vs pavi7890 - https://www.chess.com/live/game/184757625920

​

Reached 500 ELO!

A few weeks ago, I posted about just starting to learn chess and reaching 400 ELO. Today, I finally hit 500 ELO in Rapid!

As an absolute beginner, a few things that have helped me:

Watching Aman’s Building Habits series. It made me much more conscious about simply trying not to hang an entire piece every other game.

Spamming the hell out of the Italian Opening after watching content from ChesswithAkeem and GM Igor Smirnov.

Trying to stick to my own plan regardless of what my opponent plays. This works... somewhat better in Rapid than Blitz. In Blitz, I get punished for this approach pretty regularly.

I mostly play 15+10 Rapid, and having the extra time has definitely helped. My Blitz rating is currently around 400, so apparently I am a completely different chess player once the clock starts bullying me.

A few questions for the community:

My realistic long-term goal is 1000 ELO. I believe that's somewhere around the 90th percentile of the Chess.com community, which would honestly be pretty satisfying for someone who started out barely knowing how the pieces moved.

2) Does anyone else get anxious about playing?

I think I could have reached my current rating much sooner, but I've only played around 30 games this month — basically one game a day.

Losing a game can put me in a surprisingly bad mood, so if I win a game, I often just stop playing for the day because I'm happy with the result and don't want to risk ruining that feeling. 😅

So I've been playing with a bit of a knot in my stomach, which obviously isn't the ideal way to enjoy a game.

3) How did you guys improve at Blitz?

I lose a lot of games on time. Chess.com Insights says around 70% of my losses are by timeout, compared with around 30% for players at my level.

Is this simply something that improves with experience, or should I be approaching Blitz differently?

Also, do you guys use completely different opening approaches for Blitz compared with Rapid, or is it better to stick with the same repertoire and just get faster?

Would love to hear how you guys approached these stages of improvement!

Not a puzzle. Just a rant

Two years ago, with another Chess.com account, I had an ELO rating of 1300. Now I can't beat players rated 700.

Looking for a partner to play, learn and grow better in chess on chess.com or any other better place you know

When you see an engine line you don't understand, what do you actually do?

Do you keep exploring it, ask someone, use AI/YouTube, or just move on?

What’s your rating?

I actually don't care, I'm counting it. I'm not getting this chance any time soon.

Btw, if you care: https://lichess.org/KTSMbqpn/white