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Chess tactics explained

chesstactics.org

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Re: Chess tactics explained

#241

Post by jsnell »

sullyj3 wrote: post #158
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could still use computer assistance which could suggest several different moves with explanations, and you could just pick one of those, maybe not necessarily the best move. Basically computers can give good hints for you. Pretty sure this type of thing would be undetectable.

Explaining the moves is a very difficult problem, in a sense the "line" (series of moves) the computer recommends as best for both players is the explanation. Translating that information into, say, english, or some sort of useful graphical format, would be a pretty novel feature.

https://decodechess.com/ does that kind of thing.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#242

Post by herval »

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…

You don't have to wonder: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=chess,quee... - data seems to point it that way

Re: Chess tactics explained

#243

Post by glangdale »

mci wrote: post #16

> This site teaches chess in words. > It assumes you know only how the pieces move and builds step-by-step from there. Do not get me wrong: TFA is a fine and useful book for an intermediate player but the above claims are overselling it. They are equivalent to telling you that learning the x ^= y; y ^= x; x ^= y; trick will make you a better programmer while being silent on what copy-and-paste programming, magic cons…

I think elementary tactics are a little more important to chess than a single random bit-twiddling hack is to programming. Not having a basic grasp of tactics and missing simple forks, pins, etc. is really only going to give you a game that's slightly beyond "not hanging pieces".

Anyone good enough to light you up tactically probably also knows at least the Cliff's Notes version of positional play and is not going to develop knights to a3, block their bishops behind an idiotic wall of pawns, or set up a nice doubled isolated pawns for you to murder.

A balanced approach from the start is reasonable.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#244

Post by bsder »

ofrzeta wrote: post #157
YinglingLight wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chess is like Boxing. Pays nothing. The workload is insane, the natural talent is insane, your competition is global. Only the very top 0.5% get name recognition (money). And like Boxing, these athletes could get paid more had they devoted their life literally ANY other pursuit with their work ethic and talent. With far less punishment involved. Concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-st…

Work ethic ok but talent is domain-specific, isn't it?

The Polgar sisters are the counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r

Re: Chess tactics explained

#245

Post by kilburn »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #228
kilburn wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of your proposals can be detected by statistics: - [...] just to alert you to when your position is strong. Oh, so you are a player that never misses a win? Hmm... - [...] avoid traps in early games. Now you are a very strange player that never blunders during openings but blunders normally later on. Suspicious. - [...] just for the occasional move. How do you know what move is that? Are you implying you never m…

It seems like most of these would just detect when a player was unusually strong, which of course unusual things are suspicious but they can also be the case that some people are unusually strong.

The point is that in chess there's some variance between the opening/tactics/strategy/positional strength of players at the same level, but not _that_ much difference.

To cheat convincingly you have to boost all those facets at the same time, because otherwise you'll just give yourself out. For instance, nobody is extremely sharp at tactics but severely lacking (human-understandable) strategy.

Engines will help you in opening and tactics, but not too much in the positional/strategy game (they make good moves, but oftentimes it is just impossible for humans to understand them without very deep study, meaning they would never be casually played in an online game).

Another example, regarding cheating but only on the openings: even GM's make mistakes during openings. If you play openings at that strength level but then you often lose won endgames it is clear to anybody who knows the game that you are cheating (because opening theory is much wider than the standard endgame theory).

Finally, since you are not at the level you pretend to be whilst cheating, it gets very very complicated for you to know what you can or cannot get away with.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#246

Post by themeiguoren »

ndiddy wrote: post #191
noxvilleza wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of cheaters are detected and banned, but like you say there's probably a lot of 'minor cheaters' not caught. The issue really is the group who are detected and banned - they just sign up with a new account, and then carry on crushing players until they're banned again. The average game quality in this situation is pretty poor - because the rating of a player is very far from their true skill.

Lichess (a popular chess site) combats this issue by not actually banning cheaters. Instead, the cheater is not notified that they were caught and is still able play or create games, but they're only matched to other cheaters.

They also ‘refund’ the rating hit you took from losing to the cheater. I think it works pretty well.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#247

Post by SamBam »

drw wrote: post #208
noxvilleza wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really love your chess puzzles, I play Puzzle Rush most days! If you can share, how many puzzles do you add each month? Are they mostly hand-generated or do you have some nifty way of deriving puzzles from real games automagically? Would also be really cool if a puzzle rush spread out puzzle types more it feels like there is heavy clustering of a specific problem type at key rating ranges: early puzzles (1-6) are ver…

Last month we added 2800, the vast majority automatically derived, though we also prize expert review. We are thinking of doubling that rate next month. I'm not sure much can be done about the predominance of certain puzzle types in the very early Rush puzzles. Would you prefer more hung pieces? But in the later levels, mixing it up by themes/tags is an interesting idea, about which I will make some measurements.

Why such a large number? Do players really go through thousands of puzzles a month, and remember them all?

If you produced fewer, would that increase the proportion with expert review?

Re: Chess tactics explained

#248

Post by cjohnson318 »

SamBam wrote: post #183
cjohnson318 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a Romanian stats teacher that sneered at Americans' preoccupation with fairness. She would say, "Why do you use this word fair? Life is not fair. It is a useless idea."

That seems merely like a way of perpetuating unfairness. I don't know the story, but it sounds like the teacher was in a position of power and someone said she was being unfair. Retorting "life is unfair" when you, yourself, are the agent causing unfairness simply inflicts needless pain. For what -- to teach the lesson that life is unfair? As a parent, I try to parent my kids fairly. I try not to show favoritism. I t…

This was a graduate level class and the teacher did not believe in partial credit. Someone had missed a sign and thought their B was unfair.

I agree, kids should be treated fairly and taught to treat others fairly. However, I think it is just as important to teach children resilience in the face of unavoidable adversity. It’s important to feel feelings, but to not let them poison you. Learning to get over a breakup, or an injury come to mind. I’d like to stress unavoidable adversity, in contrast to crimes like discrimination, battery, fraud, etc.

So, my harping on “life isn’t fair” is an indirect and misleading way of saying, “it’s important to be resilient”. I apologize for posting my comment without more context.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#249

Post by FreshFries »

Normille wrote: post #227
cjohnson318 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a Romanian stats teacher that sneered at Americans' preoccupation with fairness. She would say, "Why do you use this word fair? Life is not fair. It is a useless idea."

>I had a Romanian stats teacher that sneered at Americans' preoccupation with fairness. She would say, "Why do you use this word fair? Life is not fair. It is a useless idea." I can see the point of that, to a certain extent. We [well most of us] are brought up to play fair and with a deeply inculcated sense that it's shameful to cheat and that "cheaters never win". Then [in my case anyway], when we get a bit older a…

Thing is, what you call unfair or cheating is only true when 1: the rulebook says so, 2: one is caught doing it, 3: when the evidence is indisputable & the interpretation of the rule is agreed upon.

Many big strides forward in sports are accomplished by re-interpreting understanding of said rules and coming up with possibilities that others have not yet thought about.

Take the Ten Commandments as example. Easy enough, at first glance. But the interpretation has been going on for about 6000 years with no end in sight.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#250

Post by ofrzeta »

beagle3 wrote: post #221
ofrzeta wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work ethic ok but talent is domain-specific, isn't it?

Read on Magnus Carlsen[0] and Josh Waitzkin[1] - both have top spots in other fields, (and I'm sure others do too, these are from memory). Either talent is less specific than you'd think, or work ethic is more important than you'd think. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen#Personal_life [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Waitzkin#Martial_arts

I don't see this with Carlsen. Fantasy football? Well ... Waitzkin may be successful in martial arts but still that's the exception not the norm.

Also I would claim that talent is domain-specific insofar that very few people have a mental and a physical talent at the same time. For instance there are professional athletes who are very good in some other sport but I know of no one who is also very good at chess.

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