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Chess tactics explained

chesstactics.org

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Re: Chess tactics explained

#41

Post by have_faith »

flr03 wrote: post #39
Normille wrote: post #2

I wondered if the popularity of 'The queen's Gambit' would lead to a brief infatuation with chess in the popular imagination. The fact I've seen about 3 chess related submissions on HN recently, where I don't recall ever seeing one before, suggests it does. I used to enjoy a game of chess back in the day, although I was never very good. And I always imagined myself playing chess with a remote opponent by post when I…

Never been good either but I was occasionally playing when I was younger and The Queen's Gambit did get me back into Chess. On Chess.com the post game report gives you the move accuracy which is, I guess, some kind of standard deviation compared to what a chess engine would play. Never seen someone having a very high suspicious score, at least at my level.

I think the incentive to cheat online at chess wears off quite quickly, there's not a lot of glory. When someone cheats and wins a round of Counter Strike or other only game their win is immediately seen by many people. It's also relatively easy through analysis to spot a not so subtle cheater so auto-bans weed out the few cheaters left.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#42

Post by chegra »

tgb wrote: post #38

> between good players, a one-piece advantage is enough to cause the disadvantaged party to resign. Is this accurate? I would have assumed that, say, positioning is equally important and a naive "count the pieces" assessment wouldn't hold much value.

Very accurate, you should trade off pieces quickly when you are ahead, thus solidifying any gains. Also, if you are more than 3 points behind, at least with strong players, it's best that you invest your energy into a new game where you didn't blunder.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#43

Post by seamyb88 »

Looks like good information for beginners, but the hardest part of chess, for me, is the opening and how to play from move 4 onwards. It is less obvious why a strong position is a strong position early on, unless your opponent makes some very poor choices.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#44

Post by faceplanted »

fabian2k wrote: post #33
jjeaff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose if you are really cheating, you wouldn't sprinkle in some computer moves. You would just move your pieces in the computer game exactly as your human opponent does. Then you move your own pieces in the human game exactly as the computer does in the computer game.

Then you're playing at something like 3000-3500 ELO. That's very, very far from subtle. And that is something you can detect by analyzing the games, a human won't pick the engine moves all the time.

I've never looked into it myself but when I was graduating someone in my graduating classes final project was a cheating detection system for chess that essentially ran your moves through a variety of different chess AI's like stockfish such and over the game built up a tally of matching moves for each system, and if you matched one too closely flagged you as cheating.

I asked the guy how he would cheat against it and his suggestion was basically finding chess engines with variable "skill" levels and varying it over the game, essentially pulling out miraculous recoveries or having a good start but then forcing your AI to try to select a win state a few turns later than optimal but using the same heuristics, so it's still practically unbeatable but drags people along a bit longer to disguise itself.

Also I don't know if this exists, but is it possible to tune an AI to a specific ELO to begin with? If so you could set it to gradually ramp up over a long time so it looks like you're steadily improving over months or years and get to the top, but I imagine that wouldn't appeal to the people already willing to cheat anyway.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#45

Post by chki »

mci wrote: post #31
jstanley wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all well and good controlling the centre, putting rooks on open files, co-ordinating your bishop pair, keeping a strong pawn structure, etc., but if you leave your pieces vulnerable to tactics that your opponent can find and you can't, then it's all for nought. That's why tactics can be considered more important than strategy. Strategy becomes more important only when neither player is making tactical blunders.

> if you leave your pieces vulnerable to tactics that your opponent can find and you can't, then it's all for nought. In my book, {avoiding hanging pieces, placing your pieces so that the opponent cannot pin them} ⊂ strategy, being wary of forks ∈ tactics.

>avoiding hanging pieces, placing your pieces so that the opponent cannot pin them

So maybe I don't understand your mathematical shorthand correctly but those things are definitely not widely regarded to be a part of strategy.

Edit: and if they were we would no longer be in disagreement. So apparently our different views simply come from different definitions.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#46

Post by Raphael_Amiard »

bttrfl wrote: post #34
fabian2k wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the chance of cheating is a serious issue if you're playing at a low level online. You're generally matched against playes with a similar rating, and someone using a computer heavily would drastically inflate their rating. Which also increases the chance at detection significantly. Computers are scary good at chess, it's not exactly invisible if you use them to cheat. If you're a beginner it's also quit…

I sometimes play online and for some reason I frequently stumble upon users who cheat in all kinds of ways. From using a computer (it's easy to tell when all moves regardless of difficulty take exactly the same time to make) to baiting me to play a 3-min game and then changing it to 30-min right before I accept the game. The only reasonable explanation is that they are trying to harvest ranking to "transfer" it to an…

I have a completely opposite experience (on chess.com). Playing a lot of games lately at a low level, never stumbled upon a cheater.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#47

Post by mci »

chki wrote: post #45
mci wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you leave your pieces vulnerable to tactics that your opponent can find and you can't, then it's all for nought. In my book, {avoiding hanging pieces, placing your pieces so that the opponent cannot pin them} ⊂ strategy, being wary of forks ∈ tactics.

>avoiding hanging pieces, placing your pieces so that the opponent cannot pin them So maybe I don't understand your mathematical shorthand correctly but those things are definitely not widely regarded to be a part of strategy. Edit: and if they were we would no longer be in disagreement. So apparently our different views simply come from different definitions.

> and if they were we would no longer be in disagreement.

I tried to explain my (perhaps unorthodox) understanding of strategy and tactics in the last paragraph of my grandparent comment.

EDIT: Now I can see that I was framed into the tactics:strategy dichotomy by the answers to my top-level comment. To get a better verbalisation of my ideas, replace "strategy" with "principles" in all I wrote.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#48

Post by c0ax9 »

tromp wrote: post #19

Train your chess tactics at https://lichess.org/training/ For me, the challenge is solving 15 consecutive problems correctly to turn the bottom bar all green. I also enjoy the 5 daily problems at https://www.chess.com/puzzles/rated

never thought to keep doing puzzles until the green bar is fully green. Nice idea!

Re: Chess tactics explained

#49

Post by notagoodidea »

Normille wrote: post #2

I wondered if the popularity of 'The queen's Gambit' would lead to a brief infatuation with chess in the popular imagination. The fact I've seen about 3 chess related submissions on HN recently, where I don't recall ever seeing one before, suggests it does. I used to enjoy a game of chess back in the day, although I was never very good. And I always imagined myself playing chess with a remote opponent by post when I…

> I used to enjoy a game of chess back in the day, although I was never very good. And I always imagined myself playing chess with a remote opponent by post when I was a dusty old man [as featured in a few period dramas].

> It's a shame that the advent of the internet has simultaneously increased your chances of finding someone to play with remotely but, at the same time, [for me anyway] pretty much removed all inclination to do so, as I'd never be sure my opponent wasn't just putting the moves into a computer and playing whatever it told him to play.

I play on ICCF servers that are the past postal federation. Centaur games (Human + Computer help) are allowed with large time clock (50 days for the first 10 moves, and so on). I play for my fun and taking my time to dig into the problems of the position without hurry. You have to be registered at your national federation to play there but it is fun and very different of the general online chess experience which tends to be centred around blitz games.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#50

Post by [deleted] »

tlamponi wrote: post #7
Normille wrote: post #2

I wondered if the popularity of 'The queen's Gambit' would lead to a brief infatuation with chess in the popular imagination. The fact I've seen about 3 chess related submissions on HN recently, where I don't recall ever seeing one before, suggests it does. I used to enjoy a game of chess back in the day, although I was never very good. And I always imagined myself playing chess with a remote opponent by post when I…

> I wondered if the popularity of 'The queen's Gambit' would lead to a brief infatuation with chess in the popular imagination. There are some indicators that yes, that show has increased interest in learning chess. For example, check the Google search trend for "learn chess" over the last 12 months, or even 5 years to ensure it is no periodic increase of interest: https://trends.google.de/trends/explore?q=learn%20ch…

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