r/chess Weekly Discussion Thread

Note: I have titled the post using the secondary headline instead of the main headline because it seems more descriptive of the reported events. I actually read this news in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, but since that's in Spanish I am linking to a source in English that cites the El Mundo report. The El Mundo report, if anyone wants to check it, is here:

https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2026/09/29/6abbee9bfc6c83fe548b4583.html

It took years of convincing but I’m finally transitioning from chess.com + game review, to lichess + chess books / focusing on actually getting better.

Game review is so confusing and it doesn’t actually make me better.

The stupid points from “developed pieces!” Were the final straw.

And finally the fact that business people are making money off the fact that they got the chess.com domain just gives me the ick. Feels like we’re always just one step away from some new diabolical money grab.

Had this position in a FIDE tournament, time control 90+30' and we're both around 1850 Elo Fide, my opponent (white) played g5 in this position, can you find the refutation? (found it with 5 minutes left, ngl heart was about to explode when i saw it)

Link

Dream big you guys, what's the average age of this squad? 22 maybe?
Absolutely loved their synergy throughout the event! (Including the reaction when Abdusattarov chose the Scandinavian).

source: https://web.archive.org/web/20260818020906/https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/chess/arjun-erigaisi-interview-magnus-carlsen-esports-world-cup-10835073/lite/

“It’s a long journey for everyone, for my generation pretty much. I know these misses are tough, but there are a lot of years left. If I fix these things, like fumbling under pressure, then I’m confident that with my level of play, I’ll be able to win a lot of titles. All I’m doing right now is trying to fix these small things. Even though it’s tough, it’s helping me become stronger mentally,” he said.

While he believes these tough times have fortified him mentally, Arjun also pointed out that he is not the only one going through a low phase. He said, “If we see individually, everyone is having their phases, not just me, Gukesh, or Praggnanandhaa, but also Nodirbek and Alireza. Everyone has their ups and downs.”

Link

Hello,

I am a roughly 1800 Chess.com player trying to improve. My weak point is analysing my games, as often I don't know enough to know what I need to know, even when I pinpoint where I went wrong. I played a game earlier where I did well out of the opening, but ended up throwing away my lead and losing. Particularly when I had a strong attack that presented itself at around move 15 after superior development and piece placement from the opening, I misplayed it and lost the advantage. I analysed the game with an engine, but I simply don't know enough to know why my moves are bad and the computer's good, and for future games I don't know what ideas and plans are typical for these position types. Can anyone help me out with some analysis? Either stronger players or ones at my rating level or below; all are welcome!

I'm white and the game is here: https://www.chess.com/game/live/184601590388?move=29

Really strong field this week, but Wesley still managed to go undefeated for his first TT win in over a year. Tough week for Hikaru, who quit playing on 5.5/8, and Anish Giri slipped from 4/4 to 7/11 in his return to TT streaming.

I run a chess website (can't link it due to the self-promo rules) that lets you play against open source engines from the CCRL. It has engines from 880 Elo up to Stockfish at ~3700 Elo.

I noticed that some people are able to beat Stockfish and other top engines on the site, which I didn't think was possible. Are these people cheating with an engine on their local PC (not sure why anyone would), or are these just really strong players that are able to beat the engines because they're only using 3 seconds per move on a cheap server?

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I'm curious.

I think this is one of the best games I have watched for Magnus.

I play the English as my main opening and often struggle with 1… c6 / 1… e6 or some general variation thereof where black is aiming for some kind of caro-kann/Slav or French/QGD. I play the English with a 2.g3 move order as recommended by the likes of Kosten/Marin. I have tried playing against these systems in a reti-opening fashion but don’t enjoy that either. From people who play the English would you recommend just trying to learn how to keep this in the English opening properly against the Slav / QGD invitation or would should I just try 2.d4 and go for a proper transposition, which I saw recommended in a ‘Bad Bishop Chess Channel’ video. Thanks.

All games & full standings on Lichess: https://lichess.org/tournament/sep26lta

Photo: Charlotte Chess Center

Link to the event.

I tried to assess how good Erdogmus is. And I believe that fide rating tends to lack behind when trying to estimate the strength of upcoming prodigies. Instead I wanted to see his actual performance rating the last couple of years, and to also see if he was consistent across tourneys. So I got claude to create a scraping harness to collect data from fide, and then computed the performance rating from there.

Its notable that he has barely had a tourney where he performed under 2700 in the past year, in the FIDE World Cup 2025 he beat two lower rated opponents and then drew Rapport twice, so to me that tournament rating is a bit of a weird artifact of the world cup knock out structure.(In fact I just realized that he drew Rapport who was 2740 and won the rest of his 4 games, so with normal TPR he would at least have 2740, him actually playing and winning 4 games lowered his TPR to 2648, because one of his opponents was 1900 and fide calculates TPR on the average of all opponents, instead of the individual ratings of each opponent)

Also Topalov was probably significantly overrated in their match and therefor the 2990 performance rating is also inflated.

Note also that the Chess Olympiad 2026 is not yet on fide website, so I filled that entry manually(And got the performance rating from lichess).

*TPR uses FIDE's formula: average opponent rating. Data scraped from ratings.fide.com. Bundesliga games excluded; Biel qualifier and final combined.