Chess

[pindicator]

Caruana back in the lead with 1 round to go, looking forward to seeing the last day play out

[darrelljs]

So you have to bear in mind I am not good and my questions are going to be really basic .  I've been playing a lot of games on my phone lately and for some reason I am stuck here trying to decide what to do.  As white, I can just take the Knight, exchange Queens, and be happy to be up a pawn (albeit doubled) and development (albeit not ideal).  It just feels like more can be done here but I can't for the life of me see it .

Darrell

[Rusten]

That's a pretty bizarre position. I'd be curious to see the move order.

Don't take the knight with the queen, take it with the knight to threaten discovered check. You are leading the development and should keep pieces on. Nxe4 more or less forces Be7 to which you have the threat of d6 if you can get his queen away from covering the d6 square. As a result you can play a developing move like c3 "for free" and see where he puts the queen. The natural Qc5 is met by d4, so Qb6 is pretty forced. After which the position is objectively winning already.

The point being something like Nxe4 Be7 c3 Qa5? d6! cxd6 Nxd6+

edit: Nxe4 Qe7 is also great for white for many of the same reasons.

[T-hawk]

Does d3 work? Black's knight is pinned so it can't move away and he can't stop dxe4 next turn, undoubling your pawns and controlling center territory. It does leave white's knight pinned, but that can be fixed by a3 to chase the queen away (if a3 Qa5 then b4) or later castling.

Or even f3 instead then fxd4. Then d3 makes a great centered pawn structure, possibly followed by castling queenside.

[darrelljs]

It was an odd start...

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 d5
3. exd5 e4
4. Qe2 Nf6 (?)
5. Nc3 Qe7
6. Ng5 Qb4
7. Ng5xe4 Nxc4

The continuation

8. Nxe4 f5 (??)
9. Nd6+ Kd8 (???)
10. Qe8#

Darrell

[darrelljs]

So this chess program uses Treebeard (a.k.a. Shotest in Japan). It usually doesn't suck that bad (I have it set to level 5 which is estimated ELO of 1352).

Darrell

[Rusten]

You can play Stockfish at various levels on lichess. Would probably result in more sane games.

[Rusten]

That said I don't see the appeal of playing programs. It's 2018 -- find a human to play over the Internet.

[darrelljs]

That said I don't see the appeal of playing programs. It's 2018 -- find a human to play over the Internet.

So I started my first game on lichess...is it generally accepted to use an opening explorer?

Darrell

[Gustaran]

So I started my first game on lichess...is it generally accepted to use an opening explorer?

Darrell

During the game? In correspondence chess usually yes, otherwise no.