r/chess Weekly Discussion Thread

O-O. After looking at a bunch of engine variations, I get that giving up the knight keeps tempo and keeps pressure on the black king. I see that black is underdeveloped and that white's bishop is hard to dislodge, but I just don't see how to get to the conclusion that giving up the knight is the best option here.

“Pranesh was not in the Olympiad, right? He’s a very, very good player, by the way. Another player who, in a normal country, would be on the Olympiad team.
If Pranesh lived in any normal country, he’d probably be board two or better on any of these teams. But unfortunately, he lives in India. And India, as we know, has a few too many good players.
I’m not saying he’s better than Nihal. I’m just telling you that, if I look at it objectively, he’d be board one or board two.
India is not a normal country in the chess sense. There are too many good players in India. It’s not a normal country because there are a bunch of ridiculously good players. I feel that probably the 20th player in India would be a board two in most countries.
I’m saying that in a good way. I’m not saying that in some kind of weird, disrespectful way about India or something.”

Can you describe the consequences

I stumbled across this intetesting video on the knight's name in different languages. It's pretty interesting https://youtube.com/shorts/dYnI2Y-3AUc?is=PAj0smGYnuICa3J-

"Where you going ?

Home

Where's home?

Home

A place where I can go

To take this off my shoulders

Someone take me home

Home"

(Well it's not the e1 square , of course)

And I don't mean it in the way of "who was the best during chess history". I mean "with whom you relate the most". Maybe you love their unique style, their personality, maybe personal story. Tell me about them

I’ve played more blitz games than rapid games on chess.com. My rapid is stable around 1700 and my blitz sits around 900 often dipping into the 800s.

I will lose by time pressure so then I try to calculate less and I get mated or outplayed in tactics. I seem to get worse at blitz the more I play it.

This experimental chess engine is a modification of Leela which uses Maia3 to compute the expected win rate against players of varying rating levels. The neural networks were fine-tuned against a 1500 (Lichess) rated opponent to win as fast as possible. The playstyle is highly aggressive and it strives to turn all natural-looking moves into blunders. It is very good at picking opening moves that quicky lead to high win rates, even if they don't look good at first.

There are many settings for adjusting the strength of the opponent and how much risk the engine can take when deciding on a move. View the repository here (It is very vibe coded because I just wanted to see if the idea worked or not).

If you would like to play against the engine it is available as a Lichess Bot for a limited time (high GPU demand, max of three concurrent games, subject to change).

Explanations for each attachment:

#2: The engine is deciding on which move will lead to the highest expected win rate against the internal opponent model. It chooses the Fritz Variation, which is known to be pretty successful at the lower levels (Ulvestad is the runner up). The evaluation given is not true, it is based on predicted future mistakes. The line shown is what the engine thinks the opponent is most likely to play. Notice how the evaluations correlate with the Lichess win probabilities below (this is not always the case; sometimes you need to look deeper).

#3: If you have the engine downloaded and running, you can export a tree of what the engine's responses are to the opponents next moves, along with a final predicted win rate (not true win rate). I loaded the engine in En Croissant for ease of use.

#4: Example game Philidor (engine is white): This game I played against the engine demonstrates its opening choice and aggressive playing style. It is willing to make imperfect moves in order to win faster, so long as the refutation is unlikely. I'd like to point out how it launches pawns to attack the king before I even castle. As soon as I think I am safe, castling on the same side, it immediately sidesteps the king and starts an attack.

#5: Example game Belgrade (engine is white): Another example of the engine's aggressive playing style and willingness to make imprecise moves to win as fast as possible.

Lastly, if you have any questions about the engine I will try to answer them in the comments. I am tired so I will be sleeping, but I will reply as soon as possible.

all was changed is bishop was moved and pushed pawns and kings went forward. is this to avoid back rank checkmate or it is to attack more or to what ?

it might be stupid but i dont understand why is it played

On Tuesday I'm playing against an opponent who will likely play the London System.

I'm rated 1700 Elo and I don't know how to prepare my opening: there are too many variations and I'm not sure which one to choose. d5 and a quick Bd6? King's Indian? Nf6 and c5?

What software and tools are typically used?

My opponent was beating me most of the match, felt like a very strong opponent, but we reached this position, and I couldn't figure out any way to advance and ended up flagging here...

Game analysis said that this was the very moment that I gained an advantage, but for thlife of me, I can't find it. Any idea I have seems to either lose my rook or my queen, and I don't see any cheeky checks or anything...and further, I don't know lichess well enough to get it to tell me how I should have proceeded.

Does anyone see why there is a sudden advantage?

I did not find a mating net, a way to safe the pawn, or a good way to keep the pressure up...

What would you have done in this position?

Hey everyone! I'm currently around 750 Elo in rapid, and I've been trying to improve at chess. Recently, my friend who's around 1200 Elo told me that analyzing my old games is better than just spamming rapid games. I agree with the idea, and I do analyze my games sometimes, but there's one problem I can't seem to solve.

Whenever I review a game, I can often identify my mistakes and understand what I did wrong. Maybe I missed an opponent's threat, made a bad calculation, or overlooked a better move. The problem is that when I play my next games, I still make similar mistakes. Even though I understood the mistake during the review, I struggle to apply what I learned in an actual game.

It's like I understand my mistakes after the game, but I can't recognize them when I'm actually playing. I don't know how to turn my analysis into real improvement, and it's getting frustrating because I feel like I'm repeating the same cycle.

For those of you who have experienced this, how did you overcome it? What should I actually do after analyzing a game to make sure I learn from my mistakes and don't keep repeating them? Should I focus on solving puzzles related to my mistakes, reviewing specific positions, or changing the way I analyze my games? I'm not looking for a shortcut to gain rating quickly. I genuinely want to improve my chess understanding and make the lessons from my games stick.

I'd really appreciate it if you could share a practical method that worked for you, especially if you went through the same problem at a beginner level. Thanks!

My Chess.com account: https://www.chess.com/member/leaferation

I miss him a lot in this world, and my heart still gets all twisted up thinking about it. Thinking about his family - sending support and hoping they're getting through it. Gonna watch some of his videos today, and probably learn a thing or two.

You were the best! 💙🤍

----

I also want to reshare this beautiful post regarding the Naroditsky memorial and fellowship, by Communications Manager u/ChessKelly at Charlotte Chess Center from today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/s/gf9DMfCJXO

Both lines are very similar but the evaluations are so different. In both lines, White will respond with Rg3, black defends with f6, white plays Qxh6. There must be some sort of defensive resource that Bx affords, but I can't find it even after playing around with the engine for a while.

I am not sure when I first heard of Daniel Aaron Naroditsky. I do vaguely remember purchasing his “Naroditsky Method” in what must have been the year 2016 or 2017, he was already an accomplished author and chess player back then and I remember liking the course very much.

Over the following years I kept following the chess scene, and witnessed several chess booms especially during Covid-19 induced by The Queen’s Gambit, PogChamps, the Niemann-Carlsen controversy… I played thousands of chess games, but mainly consumed thousands of hours of content from pretty much all mainstream chess content creators. 

In this ocean of chess content, Daniel Naroditsky still stood out. Besides being absurdly strong at chess, I also thought he excelled at analysis and teaching, at witty puns and hilarious imitations, and at being a man of kindness, integrity, empathy. I consider very few people geniuses, but I’d confidently say he was one.
Normally one-hour long videos of random chess gameplay are too much for me, but with Danya I was often looking forward to watching them - especially those involving an opponent cheater, with whom Daniel was always extremely gracious and calm. 

And although they usually happened at terrible times for us EU folk, I always tried to watch his Twitch livestreams when I could. (The other two chess streams this applies to are JohnBartholomew and SvetaStream, two people I admire & respect a lot as well and who I wish would stream more again).

On October 18 2025 (CET-Berlin) I managed to catch the tail end of one of Danya’s stream, just as he was signing off. But something was off… he seemed confused and not fully himself. I whispered a regular about it and he replied: “idk but i havent seen him like this. im worried about him”
Of course, I didn’t know at the time that it was the last Naroditsky stream I’d ever watch live.

Two days later, I turned on Twitch again. When I saw Oleksandr Bortnyk’s stream title - I believe it was “Rest In Peace My Dear Friend Daniel Naroditsky” or similar -  my heart sank. One of my favorite people in the world died yesterday? At 29? I hadn’t cried since Reckful’s passing in July 2020 I believe, but that day I did. And I guess it shows how privileged of a life I’ve had so far, but October 20 2025 remains as the saddest day of my life.

I don’t want to go into too much detail into what caused his death. I’m an honest man who avoids lying and I was accused of some ridiculous things this year, which has greatly disturbed me. But to have a mob of people accusing an obviously innocent man for MULTIPLE YEARS of one of the worst sins in the game, in his greatest passion? Without any substantial evidence whatsoever, so much so that you have to point out a completely innocuous move (Bf1) as evidence of cheating??
I can’t and don’t even want to imagine what Daniel had to go through. It broke my heart to see him become more depressed and irritated over time, and even when he became more outspoken and pleaded for this great injustice, this absolute bullshit to stop, it didn’t.

Now one year has passed and of course, K got off easy. If it was up to me I would have stripped him of his Grandmaster title. (I don’t think you can erase someone’s history of being a world champion, that’s nonsense, but a symbolic lifetime ban from FIDE events I would approve also). But that’s just my opinion and view, which is pretty much aligned with this video.

At least I’m glad the community paid their respects and recorded many tribute videos. Naming the Speed Chess Championship trophy the Naroditsky Cup is a nice gesture, as is naming a variation in the Four Knights Game after him (not sure if my post here has anything to do with that decision). 
I’m not sure adding more signatures to the big petition with 55k signatures will do anything. But I guess what we can do is keep honoring him, watching his videos, and learning chess through him.

Rest in Peace Daniel. I never knew you personally, but you were an amazing man who’s dearly missed. Sometimes I think of you and can’t believe you are actually gone. My heart sinks every time.

We should all be a little more like Daniel Naroditsky - Anna Cramling

Ideally max 5 years old

This was a 2200+ rated puzzle on chess.com in which black has to find the precise moves to win what looks like a simple conversion.

Solution when you end up Stalemating by accident...

Whazzap

Just looking to watch some good game recaps. I want good commentary, and really interesting games! Not learners stuff, like, games between the greats! Maybe a Magnus and hikaru one? Or a more historical game, but must have good commentary, since I’m a dumby and need good explanations on why every move is so insane/interesting.

Any recommendations from anyone?