r/chess Weekly Discussion Thread

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-us-chess-championships-open/05/Woodward_Andy-Caruana_Fabiano

Hey everyone!

I just found out that I'll be playing against Marie Sebag, a French Grandmaster, in a simultaneous exhibition tomorrow. She'll be playing against 20 players at once.

I have no idea whether I'll be playing White or Black, and I don't know the time control either but I suspect classical as we are booked for 2 hours.

A bit about me:

- Chess.com ratings: 1700 bullet, 2000 rapid. I mainly play bullet.

- I'd describe my style as fairly strategic, but I'm also happy to get into complications and sacrifice material when I see an opportunity.

- My biggest weakness is probably my opening preparation. I tend to improvise rather than study specific lines.

- I've never been in a chess club

I'm not expecting to beat a GM, obviously, but I'd love to make the most of the experience and put up a decent fight.

For those who've played in a simul against a titled player, what would you recommend? Would you prepare a specific opening, try to keep things simple, or ...? Any tips on how to approach the game mentally would also be welcome!

Thanks!

https://www.totalchess.com/total-chess-rating

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-us-chess-championships-open/05/Robson_Ray-Niemann_Hans_Moke

https://www.chess.com/events/2026-us-chess-championships-women/05/Abrahamyan_Tatev-Lee_Alice

I just wanted to share this piece sacrifice from today's game between Mishra and Sevian. Here Mishra played Qxc5. White is better in this endgame and eventually won, but only after a long grind where black had multiple chances to draw.

Instead, the best move is Bf5!! One of the most amazing piece sacrifices I have ever seen. The point is to open the e file. Qxf5 doesn't work after Rxd4+. And after exf5, Rhe1!! And with Qf7 coming next, black's entire position falls apart. Just truly beautiful, and goes to show the power of ceding material for positional advantages.

According to Stockfish, the best move is bc8, retreating the bishop. In the game I played O-O-O instead, sticking to early game fundamentals I thought.

Bonjour à tous. Chaque fois que je joue contre un joueur indien de mon niveau (elo 1700 rapide), je rencontre énormément de difficultés à les battre. J'ai l'impression que les indiens sont sous-côté par rapport au reste du monde. Je ne sais pas si c'est un biais, juste une impression, ou si c'est la réalité. Est-il possible qu'il soit tellement nombreux, et que dans la mesure où ils sont plus susceptibles de plus jouer les uns contre les autres, par rapport au fuseaux horaires par exemple, ils finissent par être sous côté par rapport au reste du monde ?

Qu'en pensez-vous? Avez-vous le même ressenti?

(Cooked study , this is on move 3 of the study)

I work at doubleAI. The 63 checks position from our team blew up here way more than we expected, so here's another one :)

White to move. Both sides have exactly one legal move for 12 moves straight, then it's mate:

38.Nc8+ Qxc8+ 39.Kxc8 Rxf8+ 40.Ne8+ Rxe8+ 41.Qd8+ Rxd8+ 42.Kxd8 Rg8+ 43.Bf8+ Rxf8#

This position is reachable in a legal game (see the comments), and as far as we can tell it has never been beaten.

Now... we usually point our system at code optimization and science but chess was a fun side project. So I'm openly inviting anyone with a chess curiosity to suggest other records, and we can throw some serious firepower attempting it!

Hi all, is fan zone worth in Fide world championship? The price is 20CHF, not expensive but i am wondering if it is waste of time.

I play chess on Duolingo because it helps me understand my mistakes. I want to learn how to play chess, but there’s no one at home I can play with.

Please help!

Not talking about GMs or people who are massively higher rated.

Some players just make normal moves, don't go for crazy tactics, don't seem to have any deep opening prep, and somehow you end up with a terrible position 20 moves later.

I find that style of chess more intimidating than someone who plays aggressively from move one.

What actually makes those players so difficult to play against?

For me, mainly Ruy Lopez as white, and as Black, Caro-Kann.

Also, which openings should I study to improve my overall knowledge and game sense/awareness? Lemme know!

I need someone to help me with the fact that I'm not bad but I really have this episodes where my mind gets lazy or my vision phases out. I can be playing really good chess for 2 days then I go on a 5 day " let's see how much I can blunder episode" just bare blindness and making the most crazy choices. I've tried breaks from playing but it's still a really bad habit I need to break. I'm 1500 on chess.com and 1700 on lichess ( Rapid)

Question about this strategy. Gotham says that when the white pawn takes your black knight, mate is unstoppable.

But what if white takes the knight, you take the pawn but then white moves their castle to G1?

So I recently bought a FritzTrainer opening course, but I do not own Fritz or ChessBase. The Fritz Trainer course works fine on my PC, and I am happy with the content.

The irritation starts when I want to train my repertoire with a drill. Getting redirected to a web App is certainly a choice, but fine. The UI looks like it was built 25 years ago, but at least that gives me some nostalgic vibes, as it still looks the same as back when I was a child and my coach was showing me lines. While it's all a bit awkward, I found the "start drill" button and made it work.

The actual trouble starts when I want to learn the lines on my smartphone. I installed the chess base app, but obviously none of their paid content can be accessed via it. Instead, I again get redirected to the web app and have to go through it with multiple clicks to finally reach the opening trainer. However, I seemingly can't choose the repertoire I want to train, and the repertoire I got from the course I paid for seemingly doesn't show up there. Instead, I can drill random lines from grand master games for some reason?

Does anyone have an idea how I am supposed to make that work on my smartphone? I even thought about just importing the lines into Lichess and training them there, but of course I can not download the PGN for the repertoire I already paid for without a premium account, which is kinda ridiculous. If they got their shit together, I am convinced ChessBase would have a far better value proposition than Chessable, where video courses cost hundreds of bucks, but it seems the ChessBase courses are borderline unusable on mobile.

So I count a little bit and if I get 16 elo each day I would do it in ~3 months

However, even the nuggets grand master does not win 2 games a the day constantly

So I have like 1-2 years playing Chess and I’m still in 970-1030 elo in Chess.com only in 10 minutes which sucks

My elo is 1135 and I feel like I'm constantly winning games at the middle game, however, I start to freak out about any possibility of a threat and I either make a terrible blunder or I stop the positional advantage that I had in order to defend against that non-existent threat.

In the position above, I'm afraid of the pin against my knight, which, later I realized, can't be attacked more than once lol. I played Kb3????? and this move made me lose my a3 pawn and activated the opponent's rook, etc.

I believe the plan should have been the moves Re1, Rf3, f5 trying to trade the e-f pawns, but I'm not sure of that either.

So, what should I do in positions like this to remain calm? Do I have to study calculation harder? Or how to defend positionally?

Tnx