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Chess tactics explained

chesstactics.org

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Re: Chess tactics explained

#131

Post by matsemann »

jlg23 wrote: post #91
magicalhippo wrote: post #14

Due to Magnus Carlsen, chess has had a major boost here in Norway. His major tournaments are covered in detail on TV with commentary by chess experts, which makes it quite approachable and exciting to watch. Given the inevitable slow parts of the game, the experts have time to explain the position on the board, and show how the variations can play out etc. They've somehow managed to turn chess into a spectator sport.…

I've been watching high class matches on TV all my life, but usually with sound turned off. Comments are usually just computer analysis read out loud and background trivia like "he played similarly 2 years ago against XY" don't provide any benefit to me.

That's not how the Norwegian broadcasts have been, at all. Three different producers have been trying different stuff, and made it really approachable. First it was NRK (the national channel, like BBC for norway) and VG (the biggest newspaper) that both made their own live coverage. And now lately TV2 (biggest paid channel) is also in the game.

The coverages usually consist of a panel with a chess expert and a professional commentator/host, and then various other guests swapped each day. Mostly one celebrity and one other chess player. Then when a move is made it's discussed for some time and variants shown (not just computer analysis read out loud....), mostly by the professionals not looking at a computer. And then the guests can ask noob questions that's also what we viewers are wondering about ("why not just do X") and the chess experts show why.

Then it may be twenty minutes to the next move, so the discussion becomes like a chess-focused talk-show for some time until the next move is made. Or if it's speed chess, that kind of talk is in the 15-20 minutes between each game.

I'm actually going to miss having the speed chess world championship this christmas. Almost become a tradition watching that with the family.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#132

Post by 46756e »

watwut wrote: post #129
Buttons840 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. As mentioned, cheaters are detected and banned. But from another perspective, cheater or not doesn't matter. You know you are playing against someone you have a statistical chance to beat. Same thing in Starcraft where people use map hacks. Who cares? The ranking system matches you with people yo…

Cheating in chess typically means using engine. There is big enough difference in how engine plays and how human plays for it to make game less fun. Pls, it is quite natural for humans to care about notion of fairness. How and why we loose matters.

Yeah, although this is speculation, I imagine its less of an issue because cheaters would get board somewhat easily.

I mean whats the fun in copying what a machine says to win chess games against strangers?

Its not like its people they know who might be impressed and if they cheat then their ranking will rise far above their skill, so if they wanted to play a real game, they would then be crushed.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#133

Post by jlg23 »

matsemann wrote: post #131
jlg23 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been watching high class matches on TV all my life, but usually with sound turned off. Comments are usually just computer analysis read out loud and background trivia like "he played similarly 2 years ago against XY" don't provide any benefit to me.

That's not how the Norwegian broadcasts have been, at all. Three different producers have been trying different stuff, and made it really approachable. First it was NRK (the national channel, like BBC for norway) and VG (the biggest newspaper) that both made their own live coverage. And now lately TV2 (biggest paid channel) is also in the game. The coverages usually consist of a panel with a chess expert and a profes…

That's how I know chess broadcasts. For me the signal to noise ratio is simply not favorable, I rarely learn from the comments because they cater all levels of players, not just mine. I found it more worthwhile to replay the moves at my computer and ask it: "why not just do x?".

Re: Chess tactics explained

#134

Post by Normille »

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…

Wow! --that got a lot of replies, for one of my comments!

Thanks for all the interesting info. I'll probably have a go at online chess again, after reading all the assurances about how cheating is discouraged.

After all these years and never having been that good to start with, I'd probably be on an ELO rating so low I'd be paired against a hitherto undiscovered tribesman from the depths of the Amazonian rainforest, who'd never seen a chess board before...

...and still lose.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#135

Post by whimsicalism »

amcoastal wrote: post #71
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.

You can also just use the computer for the opening. If you don't have a certain opening, or response to a certain opening memorized, just use a computer. The difference between a memorized opening and what a computer would suggest is basically nil.

This is the only sort of cheating suggested in this thread that wouldn't be caught, but wouldn't actually be that helpful.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#136

Post by calrueb »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #65
MauranKilom wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blunders computers make and that human players make are/feel very different. I wouldn't expect to last long if I were cheating on, say, lichess.org by playing out the moves of a mix of engines at various ratings.

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.

I think the problem here is that chess engines are going to recommend 'non-human' moves at any point of the mid/endgame. And these 'non-human' moves could be the first/second/third best moves according to the engine. You'd have to have to have decent understanding of the game to realize what moves aren't going to blow your cover. I am confident over the long run anti-cheating software could pick this up in most cases. But also what are the incentives for someone to cheat at online chess over the long run? It wouldn't be that interesting for more than a couple days to get a quick thrill of beating a bunch of people in my opinion.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#137

Post by whimsicalism »

seanhunter wrote: post #69
bttrfl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 play on lichess and in the last 6 months I've had at least 5 different games annulled because the opponent was banned for cheating. It certainly happens.

It's very common in the 1400-1600 band but not much outside of that in my experience.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#138

Post by sudhirj »

drw wrote: post #106
sudhirj wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely re-kindled my interest in chess. I played as a child, but never took it seriously. Got a chess board for my 4-yo, but unfortunately she isn't a prodigy. Who'd have thought. Still has fun arranging the pieces and make up stories with them, though. And I'm playing on the Chess.com app. The puzzles especially are a neat way to get your brain running, and they're a better attention sink than Twitter / HN.

Something we work very hard on at chess.com is the rating of the individual tactics puzzles. Some of you might enjoy looking at the distribution of our puzzle ratings. Truly hard problems are precious, and we would always like to have more at the high end. The distribution is multimodal because puzzles of different lengths have different modes. +----------------+---------+ | ratings_band | count | |----------------+-…

Ah, thanks. That explains how you manage to have so many available. I like the progressive / adaptive mechanism as well, it keeps the challenge at the right level. Thanks for a great product.

There were some issues (crashes) with the videos on iPad, but I assume you’ve seen that in your logs already.

Re: Chess tactics explained

#139

Post by 1996 »

watwut wrote: post #129
Buttons840 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. As mentioned, cheaters are detected and banned. But from another perspective, cheater or not doesn't matter. You know you are playing against someone you have a statistical chance to beat. Same thing in Starcraft where people use map hacks. Who cares? The ranking system matches you with people yo…

Cheating in chess typically means using engine. There is big enough difference in how engine plays and how human plays for it to make game less fun. Pls, it is quite natural for humans to care about notion of fairness. How and why we loose matters.

> Cheating in chess typically means using engine. There is big enough difference in how engine plays and how human plays for it to make game less fun.

I've pondered moving to something different-but-close to get again the beginner fun, like shogi.

Also, there's more variety of movement with the lances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi#Movement

Re: Chess tactics explained

#140

Post by whimsicalism »

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

I find the lichess puzzles do not scale up like the other chess puzzle sites do.

I have a 2150 puzzle and definitely not a 2150 normal rating.

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