Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

dwheeler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 135 posts

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#61

Post by gjm11 »

georgiecasey wrote: post #55
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with tactics training is that there is always a "best answer" because they have been picked to have a best answer. What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin ) were two things: 1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a he…

> 2) playing with an analysis engine like stockfish. so... cheating?

I assume they meant not "playing my games against other humans with the help of an analysis engine like Stockfish" but "playing games against an analysis engine like Stockfish". Which is not in any sense cheating.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#62

Post by Buttons840 »

pacomerh wrote: post #49
metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

I'm not experienced with Chess, how do you know when you reach a certain level?. Is there an "official" way of knowing when you hit 1700?

All the major chess websites and organizations use a similar Elo-like rating system where 1500 is about the 50th percentile. So, roughly speaking, 1700 probably means "when you're at the 70th percentile of active chess players".

One example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#63

Post by dwheeler »

pmoriarty wrote: post #13

After a lifetime of chess, I've more recently become a fan of Fischer random chess (aka Chess960)[1], where the back rows of pieces are shuffled before the game begins. It puts puts people on a more equal footing in terms of their actual chess playing skills instead of their opening memorization abilities. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess

I'm the article of the referenced article on chess openings. I'm also one of the authors of the Wikipedia article on Chess960 (Fischer Random Chess); you can see the information I wrote about it here: https://dwheeler.com/essays/Fischer_Random_Chess.html

I think Chess960 is fun! But many people want to play "traditional chess", not Chess960. Also, knowing a little about traditional chess openings also helps when you're playing Chess960. Memorizing a long list of opening moves isn't helpful, but seeing examples of good openings is helpful even when the starting position is different.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#64

Post by learnstats2 »

idealism wrote: post #18
metroholografix wrote: post #5

Below 1700 or so, openings are mostly a waste of time and tactics rule the day. Learning the basic opening principles and two basic opening moves that you keep playing (one for white, one for black) and focusing on tactics [1][2] is in my experience the fastest way to advance. After 1700 or so, specific openings can be studied. I suggest playing d4 instead of e4 as white (avoids dealing with the Sicilian) and as blac…

I understand what you're saying and agree, although I may suggest that 1700 number come down a bit to maybe 1200. I'm around the 1000-1200 range (just picked it up again recently) and I'd say most of my peers on Chess.com around that range have definitely studied openings and present sneaky traps consistently in the first ~5-15 moves. Playing as black for me is the real driving force for me to study openings because…

It seems more likely that the players you're facing have one safe opening that they almost always play, so they know from experience where it can accept modification at this level.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#65

Post by jmgao »

Buttons840 wrote: post #62
pacomerh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not experienced with Chess, how do you know when you reach a certain level?. Is there an "official" way of knowing when you hit 1700?

All the major chess websites and organizations use a similar Elo-like rating system where 1500 is about the 50th percentile. So, roughly speaking, 1700 probably means "when you're at the 70th percentile of active chess players". One example: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/blitz

Ratings on chess sites are massively inflated compared to USCF/FIDE ratings. 1700 on lichess is probably somewhere around 1200 USCF.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#66

Post by hertzrat »

Has anyone dabbled in Fischer’s chess 960? The idea was to semi-randomize the starting position each game to prevent players needing to memorize a huge body of openers. Kasparov’s response iirc was “...let’s not pretend that research is not an important part of the game”

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#67

Post by SoSoRoCoCo »

EarthIsHome wrote: post #45
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with tactics training is that there is always a "best answer" because they have been picked to have a best answer. What got me playing over 1700 (lichess rating grin ) were two things: 1) deepening my mental checklist: 1) am i being attacked, 2) are there unprotected pieces, 3) am I about to be forked/pinned, 4) can I fork/pin my opponent ... and increase how far down you can BFS this without getting a he…

As an unrated player who plays occasionally, I've also found the mental checklist you've listed in 1) to be more helpful than memorizing chess openings. I've had a pretty high "win rate" when playing non-chess enthusiasts around my workplace or friend group. The issue I've encountered with memorizing openings is that it assumes both sides are playing perfect openings that complement each other. In reality, in my "low…

> There are ways to punish their moves, but I would've needed to memorized that. So, I have to come up with changes to the memorized opening on the spot.

This is a good way to put it. I don't yet understand what makes an opening such a personality. Like, what the "attitude" of an opening is beyond "white tries to dominate the center with a fiancetto from the king-side and crush the opponents defenses through pressure on f7" (this is like how every Wikipedia entry on openings is written). Great, thanks! I think this is probably one of the things that separates enthusiasts from naturals, because while I get the basic point of the sentence, I don't see how that plays out for 10 moves. Or maybe I'm overthinking it. I keep waiting for it to "click" one day.

But yes, seeing someone deviate from a memorized opening doesn't help me win either!

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#68

Post by SoSoRoCoCo »

gjm11 wrote: post #61
georgiecasey wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) playing with an analysis engine like stockfish. so... cheating?

I assume they meant not "playing my games against other humans with the help of an analysis engine like Stockfish" but "playing games against an analysis engine like Stockfish". Which is not in any sense cheating.

Yes, thank you, I assumed it was obvious: I meant playing against a computer while keeping stockfish running, figuring out my next move, and then seeing what stockfish recommends, then trying to follow that line to see if it makes sense. Like asking for help from professor, except you have to figure out the answer, which doesn't always help.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#69

Post by jcranmer »

sour-taste wrote: post #16

I find it amazing that a game that's so old doesn't have a dominating opening. I see no reason for that to be the case. Maybe it's just a matter of us not having the computational power to find such an opening and analyze it's continuations to completion. I know that there's a huge number of reachable chess states, but it still seems like there could be an opening that always wins.

In actual game databases, the first moves of e4, d4 are each played more frequently than all other openings combined, and even of the remainder, Nf3 and c4 strongly dominate the rest. Those four first moves cover about 99% of all games. If you look at black's responses, 1. e4 c5 and 1. e4 e5 dominate, with 1. e4 e6 being the next most popular option, while 1. d4 Nf6 strongly dominates that opening move for white (with 1. d4 d5 the next most popular option).

So, from the perspective of the first move (on each side), given that you can describe almost all games with up to 4 moves out of a possible 20 suggests that there actually is a dominating opening, albeit one a single-move long.

Re: A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

#70

Post by dwheeler »

hertzrat wrote: post #66

Has anyone dabbled in Fischer’s chess 960? The idea was to semi-randomize the starting position each game to prevent players needing to memorize a huge body of openers. Kasparov’s response iirc was “...let’s not pretend that research is not an important part of the game”

I have played it, and Chess960 is fun.

I do not think that Chess960 helps humans against computers. 960 possibilities is just too small an amount of randomness. Besides, computers now have substantial advantages against humans in anything where full knowledge is available. But if the point of a game is to have fun, then Chess960 meets the criterion. Try it out!

Post reply on HN