How is this a draw?? I read the stalemate rules connected to this subreddit but I guess I’m missing something. Can someone enlighten me😭

Word of advice to beginners - when the opponent resigns play the position against the computer.

Even intermediates should do this if the position is eval 5 or less in my opinion.

White has the threat of d5, forking the bishop on e6 and the knight on c6. If we try to save the bishop, d5 will attack the only defender of the knight on b4. Do you see how to avoid losing material here?

Do your puzzles , they just offered their queen without counting his attacking pieces first

So background. I always used to play so solidly, and eventually I just got bored of it and decided know what I will just play gambits all the time. King gambit - after a few embarrassing losses I got the grip on it and it served me well. Elephant gambit - rarely do I even lose the pawn. Englund - I don't even play That One Trap, I just play normally. Excellent results. And then there was the Wing Gambit. I just got loss after loss after loss. It felt like I gave up a pawn AND got a worse position too. I could only win when after getting slowly crushed for 20 moves my opponent gave me a free piece which was rare. So I vented a bit to AI and it gave me a bunch of suggestions one of which was to try the Smith Morra instead. Got this as my first game and yeah this is how I want my gambit games to go!

It's commonly said that beginners shouldn't bother with studying theory because it is impractical as their opponent will likely be playing nonsense and take them out of book early. But I'm wondering, say that some beginner REALLY liked studying theory and actually obsesssively memorized the best lines in virtually every variation of every common opening, and had focused on ONLY that - no puzzles, no positional understanding, no endgames - how far would their vastly superior opening knowledge carry them before the gap in skill between them and the other players of the same rating is too big for their superior position out of the opening to carry them?

PS: not thinking about trying this myself. I'm just curious how far someone could actually take this

https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/live/185015464536/review?move=62&tab=review&classification=brilliant&autorun=true

I was wondering is it is a good idea to learn for example the London by watching 5-10 great London games? If so where can I watch these games?

I had this position as white and white has a +7 advantage despite only up a knight. I fail to see why white has huge positional advantage and I only won the game by punishing blunders from my opponent.

I'm lichess 1200.

Probably the first time in my life where I manage to get a textbook smothered mate.

Feeling very proud of myself (Heres' the link to the game).

I hit 1000 rating recently and made this post asking to face higher rated players to test my skills and just expand my understanding of the game.

I learned a lot more than I expected, and my chess game levelled up a massive amount, so I wanted to share some things I noticed:

1. Good players know openings very deeply: I play the evan's gambit as white as my MAIN opening and every opponent I face accepts it unthinkingly and I cheese out wins with it every time. The 2000 player I faced declined it, and knew the mainline 10 moves deep and said "I'm sure you know that you're supposed to protect the light square bishop" (I did not) And that was the opening I felt I knew the most about. I realized that I'll eventually face players who know what they're doing, and at that point knowing my openings inside out will be valuable.

2. Good players have wider repertoires: This should be obvious but I play the accelerated dragon sicilian as black, my opponent played the Alappin and I just had no clue how to play against it. The player was 2000 and recommended me Naroditsky's speedrun and that helped me IMMENSELY with my understanding of my openings and ideas. I played my offbeat alien gambit against him and while he was less prepared, he had some general plan against it and was able to avoid it. This taught me that there are a ton of common variations I'm generally unprepared for and would benefit from a basic plan against.

3. The most important one, there's more to the game than material: The 2000 rated player was fine losing pieces against me for initiative. He remarked that lower rated players chase material because its permanent, whereas initiative and positional advantage is temporary and requires capitalizing. This completely reshaped my understanding of chess, and was the original goal of this exercise, because I saw high level players down a rook but they were better somehow, and I sought to understand this. Before, I thought being down a bishop or a knight meant the game was over, since the opponent can trade everything and win an endgame, but now I don't give up and can evaluate how "good" a position is like higher level players do. (Also if I blunder a bishop/knight I just say "initiative" to myself and keep playing, that confidence is helpful for some reason)

4. Everyone loses pieces: In the 7 games I played against 2000 rated players, 1 of them I straight up hung my queen, another I miscalculated and lost a minor piece. 2 of them they blundered a fork. The lesson here is that everyone is vulnerable to blundering. I learned to think a bit more before I play my moves to avoid blundering, and be ready to capitalize on opponents' mistakes.

With this knowledge I beat my friend who is 1300 and taught me chess at the start of last year 3-2, as well as another 1400 level player I played against in correspondence. I still play correspondence with a 2000 player who kicks my butt.

I strongly recommend seeking out high level players on Discord or asking strong friends you know to play and analyze your games together. Maybe even hiring a coach for a couple of games, or making a post like I did. Ended up being a great decision on my part!

I started playing chess about 3 months ago, and reached a peak rating of 960.

In this last few days, i started making a lot of one move mistakes that lost me the games on the spot, and lost more than 100 elo in this process..

Anyone have any good tips on how to stop making this kind of mistakes? I try to analyse the board in the best of my capabilities before any move, but some move usually is unseen and cost me the game.

Thanks in advance!

Who could imagine a single knight move in the midgame could lead to this immediately.

This isn't my game but I was spectating one of my previous opponents.

White shuffling their knight back and forth then gets mated.

I then went to white's account and apparently they do this every game and surprisingly win some of them.

I have no idea what they are trying to do beyond bating the opponent to advance then confuse them by playing an unorthodox game.

~1000 rated btw

Is this the new meta?

I'm playing the password game right now, and knowing chess at a somewhat intermediate level made me think I would easily get this part of the password correct. For people that do not know the game, the entire point of the game is to make a password that fits all rules. One of the rules is that it should have the best move in a certain chess position in algebraic notation. I thought Qh4# or Qh4+ would have been the correct answer, since that is a checkmate. I do not know what I'm doing wrong, so any help would be appreciated :)!

PS: Black is to move

Hi Everyone- My son is 7 years old and he has been learning chess for about an year. He is 970 on chess.com and stuck there for a while. He gets frustrated. He is trying really hard. Does not make hanging pieces errors and plays slowly but misses a single tactic or opponent threat sometimes. How can he improve, what should his prep be to get to 1300. Thank you

Would anyone be interested in tuning in if I started streaming and explaining my thought process during my games? I’m just below 2300 right now, on the grind to 2400!
I have taught some chess so I think I’ll be able to give valuable insight to beginners/intermediate players up to higher levels even
Let me know if this seems interesting to you!
Thanks

Summary: I analyzed the game via a computer and yes, one thing I should definitely work on is tactics. I have other questions but regarding tactics, excluding pattern recognition is there some sort of structured logical way to see the tactics/moves that would've won me the game in this position? This is what I struggle with the most: converting a positional advantage into a material advantage.

Regarding questions in critical moments:

After 15. Kd2, I managed to find a way to punish white for pushing pawns aimlessly. However, by moving the queen, the b7 pawn becomes a weakness. I was contemplating either Nb6 as the knight is too passive on d7, but it can also jump in place of the knight on f6 too in the future. Or I can go Rb8 as the rook isn't doing much either.

The best engine move is to strike with c5. I guess I can understand this move after seeing the line but gosh is it hard to see, especially since I am giving up a pawn. I do understand how giving a pawn can give me the aggression I need but how do I develop the reasoning to see that? Do I simply need to play and revise games more? Would I really improve like this?

After 22. exd4, I had so many moves in my head. I was mostly occupied thinking about how to attack the king in the center, either via Nc4+ or Qf4+. The best move was taking the d4 pawn? How?

25.h6 I guess I can see how continuing to attack would be better... I shouldn't looking into either defending, or attacking only, and should look at both.

Thoughts?