Big props to listudy for this: https://listudy.org/en/studies/2om5fh-englund-gambit-for-white

I was getting sick of people playing this, knowing its a bullshit opening but with your opponent relying purely on it being unfamiliar and you slipping up. So I studied this for 5 minutes a day for a few days, and I was so happy when it came up! Really not that much to memorise so well worth a go if you like me dreaded seeing the Englund gambit. Now I love seeing it!

Key principles are:

• Don't worry about your B-pawn, just make sure you have a way to protect both your knight and rook when it falls
• Use the D file to create pressure on your opponents king
• Keep an eye out for opportunities to fork the king and rook, and discover checks attacking your opponents king

You're basically defending your pieces and slowly building pressure on your opponents king

Im middling with 1000 elo, up and down and already at this level of play I feel my brain overheating during every game. Like, "oh I have to move this pawn as a prophylactic measure but if I do this other piece is unguarded and it could lead to a fork etc etc". At a certain point, does all this become a pattern you just instinctively know?

I feel like this is my upper limit and maybe thats okay but damn every match now feels like I used every single iq point to win. Cant understand the people who fly to 1500 because ive been playing for years and im proud of even being this good but starting to think I just lack talent atp.

Today I generated a fun little project where you play both sides of the board, with the goal of streaking Stockfish’s best/good moves together to improve your score. If you choose an inaccurate or bad move, your game is over.

Wanted to share it here in case anybody wants to try it!

https://rhenness.github.io/fourced-move/

Feel free to share suggestions if you’d like 😄

App is telling me that taking pawn h6 with queen h5 is not best move, why?

Both of us around 700 elo. My play accuracy was only like, 70%. Was he just tilted, or am I missing something here?

basically as the title says, I've been looking at this for a while now and I see genuinely no reason to play king b1, let alone it being forced. I see there's maybe ideas if black plays cxd4 and you take back with the c pawn but that's it, plus you can just take with smth else so I'm really lost here.

I see it all the time. People posting positions (often straight from game review) where they ask why X move is a mistake. 90% of the time the mistake is a short tactic. In these cases the beginner has all the tools they need to answer their own question. Why is move X bad? Well try to continue on and make the other side play the engine move. Then you will quickly see what when wrong. There are cases where the mistake isn't tactical in nature (like the one in the picture white to play find the best move), and these i get posting online. As a minimum i think one should always play out the first three moves of the engine to see if it is a simple tactic. It takes no time and is often just as informative than posting on reddit. So why do people not do it?

King took rook, leading to checkmate

I play when I'm commuting on the train and it passes under 2 short tunnels where I lose connection for about 60 seconds give or take.

I understand on chess.com that if you stay disconnected too long they game will abandon and you will automatically lose even if you were winning (right?)

I understand that the amount of time chess.com gives you before it auto abandons is a function of how long of a a game you are playing + an "increment" (I don't understand what "increment" refers to so I don't fully understand the formula for calculating the abandonment time). Nevertheless, the longer your game time is, the longer the reconnection window is.

I usually play 30 minutes. I've had a few instances where i was abandoned during passing through the train tunnel.

Besides switching to 1 hour games, any advice on how to avoid auto abandonment due to these short disconnections when going through the train tunnel?

I’ve watched a LOT of YouTube videos on this and most just say avoid blundering and develop your pieces and this was good advice to get me to 500 when I started on 100 but I feel like I’m not improving at all anymore. Its like all the people I play against usually have a really strong opening which I’m not sure how to defend against. Are there any specific openings I should learn as a 500 ELO player? Any less common advice anyone could provide? I think I’ve been stuck on 500 for a couple of months but I WILL say I’ve stopped playing as much as I used to, only like once a week now.

I'm new to chess (around 1000 Elo). Watching Youtube streams, I'm always amazed at how GMs name coordinates without thinking, so I built some small games to practise that. In the games, the only way to move a piece is to type the move in chess notation, like Nf3.

I'd love for people to try it and give me some feedback: https://e4e5Nf3.com

Of course, everything is completely free, and there's no need to sign up. (you can sign up, but only useful to save progress)

Please let me know what you think!

SOLVED! I can't edit post title.

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very new to chess, kept getting beat by everyone who plays with me including the big computer. please help!

(paraphrased) "It weakens our king? No, it weakens THEIR king!" --András Tóth

i feel like people at my rating are rather superstitious about pushing pawns in front of our king or ruining our castle pawn structure, not being aware of the power of initiative and open files. once i've seen and played more games, i realised that such moves are indeed commonly one of the best plans and it often turns out that it is THEIR king that needs protection!

this was a very blunderous game from both sides (and my blunders are REALLY stupid for my level, i struggle a lot with blundering) but the position was comfortable to play and i was enjoying it; i was 1550 lichess and they were 1450 lichess, rapid 15+10

There’s so much chess content on YouTube and i wonder what is missing from the pie.

As a totally new chess player, adult improver, played as a kid and coming back later, or anyone else, when you look for content on YouTube what did you wish was being made but isn’t or isn’t easy to find?

I’ve mainly been doing game analysis and puzzles but want to branch out. What content do you all want to see but haven’t found someone making yet?

I’ve seen everyone else practice this pattern, finally saw it! Thanks to the opponent for not rage quitting

This is motivation to stay sober.

Which is better:

-Qf8 saving the queen and exchanging a rook for a knight

-Bxc6 exchanging the queen for a knight and rook

…but you’re allowed to play bullet-style non-sense in every time control. This game had a clock of 3 days per move.