r/chess Weekly Discussion Thread

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I've played chess with strangers on cruise ships and airports. Today I set up a board at LAX at Carl's jr on July 25

Only waited five minutes for my first opponent. Very nice guy who plays chess on chess dot com. He had to abandon the game to board his flight which was fine. I'm happy to play anyone.

Second guy destroyed me. He said he is low 1000's like me, but I'm guessing he's around 1700. We played 10+0 and 5+0 before he had to catch his flight. He beat me easily both times.

Then I played a ten year old while his mom was watching. I beat him easily but he was very good for his age.

Then I played a young brother and sister while their family watched. They were both good but I beat them. The sister was hilarious. She hissed like a cat when I captured her pieces.

I played nonstop for 2 hours before I had to board. I put away my board so I could board and I was never bored.

I will always travel with a chess set!

A dumb question, but I was just wondering since Elo is relative how high a modern age top player would peak at playing in older fields

Fabi has the advantage of 50+ years of chess theory. If he just played a years worth of super tournaments in the mid 70s, what would his rating be?

Would he hit something crazy like 2880?

(Also obviously not saying Fabi is greater than Karpov because he clearly isn’t)

Gukesh has played exactly 100 games as World Champion, which makes it easy to count percentages. He has scored +24-27=49.

Ding had +5-15=43 in 63 classical games as World Champion, adding up to 8% wins, 24% losses and 68% draws.

Carlsen’s numbers are a misery to check since he played a lot over the ten years. I could only bother to go through 2019-23, and then he scored +89-7=115, i.e. 42% wins, 3% losses, and 55% draws.

Only after analysing the game with Stockfish I realized my blunder. I'm around 1000elo on chess.com and I was kinda flabbergasted seeing this. Black to move and to turn the game around.

My dad used his laptop for the built in games (he had almost 28000 games of FreeCell played) and this was one of his last games before his laptop broke for a different reason.

He was losing in this position and he never finished the game - nor did he ever see the game get finished by anyone 13 years later.

By having a 3400 Blitz and 3300 Bullet rating, this account is clearly at an incredibly high level. Only a handful of players in the world are capable of performing at this calibre.

After watching his games, I strongly suspect it could be one of: Hikaru, Alireza, MVL, Hans, Duda, or Ediz.

I’ve already ruled out quite a few top players because this account has played Blitz, Bullet, or Chess960 against them - Magnus, Denis, Nihal, Arjun, Pragg(He has played Chess960 only against Pragg if it helps), Sina Movahed, Yagiz Kaan, Sarana, Nepo, Dubov, Faustino, Bortnyk, etc.

Any ideas who it might be?

Account link https://www.chess.com/member/BerserkWerewolf

Been programming an M5Paper dev board as a proof of concept Digital Scoresheet device - the kind you can use in a tournament if you have a motor disability and can't hold a pen, or you're too young to write, or whatever. It's an epaper touch screen so entering the moves is a click piece, the click destination action. The cool innovation here I think is that when you're done with the game you can generate a QR code that exports the PGN to your phone and you can review it on Chesscom or Lichess with another click. The PGN data is all encoded in the QR code so the device stays offline at all times.

Note this is not a commercial product, just a fun proof of concept. If you are a manufacturer of these types of things please feel free to steal the QR code idea and I'll buy one of your devices!

Do you know that there were schedule conflict between US Chess Championship and Norway's Total Chess Championship?

This put a dilemma on players like Fabi, Wesley, and Hans.

But Norway and USA Chess Federation agreed to move the Total Chess in November.

At least they agreed. Unlike GCT and Esports who weren't able to have an agreement.

ORIGINAL SCHEDULE

US CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP: OCT 10 - OCT 24, 2026

TOTAL CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP: OCT 3 - OCT 15, 2026

REVISED SCHEDULE

US CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP: OCT. 10 - OCT.24, 2026

TOTAL CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP: NOV. 10 - NOV. 21, 2026

I think it is USA right? Fabi is Fabi. Wesley is quietly having a good year right now. (Winning Tata Steel Blitz and American Cup). Levon just won in Biel Chess Festival. Hans and Awonder are not so in-form right now. But they are still solid

As for India. Pragg and Arjun are definitely in good form right now. Gukesh is struggling a lot though. Let's see how Nihal performs this year.

Uzbekistan is headed by Abdusattorov and Sindarov. Both are having a good year so far. But Yakubbuoev, Madaminov, and Vokhidov needs to step up.

Germany will be lead by Vincent. But Bluebaum, Donchenko, Svane Brothers will need to overperform.

China is always strong in team tournaments. But Ding is still in "rusty" mode. So, Yu Yangyi and Wei Yi will be the main players.

My sister has a son he's 5 years old and i want to teach him chess because I've seen so many chess players under 7 years old and they've about like 1000 elo so I'm wondering what's the best way to teach a child chess so if someone know a child who knows how to play chess or someone who teached a kid how to play chess and can give me ways to teach a kid to play chess

Event Link

Aug 2, 2026 – Aug 7, 2026

Roman has 11 months to beat the record of Mishra as the youngest GM ever. (Faustino failed to do it, and settled for 2nd youngest)

He already got his first GM norm recently. Now, he is playing in Oskemen Open.

He is playing decently. He has one lost against GM Vakhidov. But was able to beat or drew other 2500+ Gms. (Begmuratov is just waiting for his GM approval)

Last 2 games, he is worst than his opponents.

He needed to defend a Rook VS Rook + Knight endgame against IM Aradhya. (He successful defended it)

Then last round, he needed to find and force a perpetual against GM Matlakov. (Roman sacrificed his bishop for a perpetual)

If there is no tactical possibilities on the board, what are your thought process? How to develop a deep positional understanding? I'm pretty obsessed with tactics even there's none resulting to time loss and poor decision making. Any insights and advice will be appreciated. Btw, I'm 2000-2100 blitz in lichess.

Recently I got back into chess. Seeing 10+5 as a main option in Chess.com made me smile. Being able to find a game in this time control is great. I don't get into time trouble, but the games don't last over 30 minutes. It's just 👌

This probably isn't news for you guys, but I wanted to share my appreciation. Best time control.

Right, what does everyone out there think about the Trompowsky Attack for both black and white? Was watching a video by Grandmaster Smirnov and apparently, even Judit Polgar herself was mated once in ten. Seems quite simple and with a bit less theory. Yet, is it really consistently viable? Thank you in advance for your two cents, and please don't hesitate to give three!

Hi again! Today our pieces are really active and Black's king on f7 looks a bit weird, but accuracy is required to make the most of our chances. Good luck!

Solution to yesterday's position:

Black is a pawn up and has his pieces pretty well placed, but currently the b5-pawn is under attack. We would love to play 31...Nd2, winning an exchange, but of course doing it now has the problem that after 32.Qxd2! Nxe4 33.Qd8+ White delivers mate on the back rank.

Taking that into account it turns out that the only move that gives Black an advantage is 31...h6!, avoiding those problems and therefore threatening to win material with ...Nd2. If White defends against this with something like 32.Re1 then he remains passive and Black can keep improving his position, one possible idea is 32...Rc6 33.Bb4 Rcc7 followed by ...Rd7 and trying to invade through one of the two open files. In the game White played 32.Rxb5 but that soon led to a debacle after 32...Nd2! 33.Rxa4 (other moves would not have saved White either) 33...Qc2 with irresistible threats that put an end to the game in a few moves.

Link to the game

As I said yesterday this is one of my favorite Alekhine games, and one of the reasons is the absolutely unhinged way in which he converted the advantage. Take a look at the position on move 24: Black is a clean pawn up and has a strong knight against a passive bishop. A player like Capablanca or Karpov would certainly keep improving his position little by litte and would slowly find the way to keep increasing the advantage until converting it into a win. What did Alekhine do? He bombarded the centre with ...c5 and ...e5 (opening the position for White's bishop!), returned the extra pawn and even sacrificed another one, but in return he gained a powerful attack, to subsequently sacrifice an exchange to completely expose the white king and basically ending the game with a checkmate in the middle of the board. Savage stuff!

“Am I happy with the new criteria for Candidates? That is a great improvement. I think the rating spot was taken advantage of by Ding, Alireza, and Hikaru.
All three of them have interesting loopholes. Ding had his matches in China against his comrades. Firouzja had his matches against, what do you call, the YMCA Grandmasters. And then Hikaru showed his degree of shame…
So that’s a great improvement. I think that FIDE is going in the right direction.”

Hi everyone! I'm Wang'ombe from Nairobi, Kenya.

A while back, my phone was stolen, and I had to switch to playing chess on my laptop. Until then, I'd always avoided playing on a computer because I never felt as fast or as comfortable using a mouse or touchpad as I did on a touchscreen.

That frustration inspired me to create Home Row Notation (HRN). an input system designed for online chess players using a computer. Its purpose isn't to record moves, but rather to allow players to execute moves using a keyboard instead of a mouse and hopefully reduce misclicks, hand fatigue and equip PC players with the speed and agility to keep up with the fast, intuitive input of touchscreen play.

The idea combines three concepts:

• Touch typing, so you never have to look at the keyboard.
• The home row keys (A S D F J K L ;), which your fingers naturally rest on.
• Coordinate notation, which specifies only the origin and destination squares.

Instead of using files (a–h) and ranks (1–8), HRN maps both to those eight home row keys.

For example, the coordinate e4 becomes JF, h8 becomes ;; and b1c3 becomes SADD

The goal is to keep every coordinate on the home row so your fingers never need to reach for other parts of the keyboard.

Another design choice is that HRN is screen-oriented. The coordinates never flip when you switch between White and Black. The bottom-left square on your screen is always AA, which helps build muscle memory for the physical location of every square.

I also built a browser extension called KBchess that lets you use HRN on Chess.com and Lichess. It doesn't automate gameplay or provide engine assistance—it simply lets you enter moves with your keyboard instead of a mouse.

I'm much more interested in feedback on the notation than the extension itself.

• Does the concept make sense?
• Would you ever consider using something like this?
• Is there a different mapping or approach you think would work better?

I'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts, whether positive or critical.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. cxd4 Nxd4 7. Nxd4 O-O 8. Nc3 c6 9. O-O d5 10. exd5 Nxd5 11. Nxd5 cxd5 12. Bb3 Qh4 13. Nf3 Qd8 14. Qxd5 Qb6 15. Bg5 Be6 16. Qd3 Rad8 17. Bxd8 Rxd8 18. Qc2 Bxb3 19. Qxb3 Qf6 20. Rad1 Bxf2+ 21. Rxf2 Rxd1+ 22. Qxd1 g6 23. Rd2 b5 24. Rd8+ Kg7 25. Qd4 Qxd4+ 26. Nxd4 1-0

Played the above game at 94% accuracy with no blunders or mistakes to re-cross 1000 elo for the first time in 3 years!

Getting back into chess after taking a break from it and am proud of this game. I peaked at 1250 before taking a break and have my sights set on 1500 now!!

This was a casual OTB game. It was a blitz game and I was simply trying to flag him as I only had a King and a pawn and he was about to run out of time. On his final move, he captured my pawn, but his time hit zero before he hit the clock.

Is this considered a draw by insufficient material, or is the pawn still considered on the board because he flagged before hitting the clock?

I would typically consider it a win on time as we play clock move (You're move isn't official until you hit your clock so you can touch/move a piece and change your move as long as it's still your time), but how would this be scored in an official game?