Forum

Hello everyone , each admin from active members will be creating a new vote chess game. Here is mine : http://www.chess.com/votechess/game.html?id=23854 , it would mean a lot if you guys joined it :)

For those of you whom play the sicillian , which is your favorite variation ? And why ?

Original message by: Coopah ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hi all. We have just cracked the top 100 in the Vote Chess leaderboard. We are looking to continue to make our way up the ladder in 2012. However lately there has been some deviations from our normal voting pattern. So those who play Vote Chess in Active Members should know these rules. First I should explain how we DO NOT play vote chess. We DO NOT join the game, look at the board and vote for the first move that pops into your head. If this is what you do then please stop doing so , if it continues time and time again you may get kicked from the group. This is called Drive-by-voting , and is not good for the team or your team mates and may lead to loses. How we do play: 1. When you first join the game make sure that the box that alerts you of new comments is ticked. This will let you easily follow the discussion. 2. When it is our turn to move please look at the game and post in the comments which move you want to play and why. DO NOT VOTE for that move yet (except in the most extremely obvious of cases , ex. Obvious captures , only moves ect...) . 3. After discussion there should be a move that a high majority agree upon. 4. We have admins which will inform everyone it is time to vote, either by posting a confirmed move sign or by voting for that move themselves. 12 hour games are called earlier then 2 days/move games due to the time restrictions. The admins which currently monitor vote chess are ksh, Skofe, jmac100 and myself (Coopah). 5. We vote for the move that has been confirmed and only that move. If you are adamant about a different move and have shown why it is better then the confirmed move please do not complain. We go with what the majority of the team wants. If enough players support your move then the admin can post a spilt vote. By following these fairly simple guidelines we should ensure that Active Members continues to prosper as a Vote Chess team. Signals to vote may look like this : ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. d4 vote now or like this ------------------------------------------------------------------ Current Votes 3...a6 (63%) 3...f5 (25%) 3...Nf6 (13%) 8 votes cast. or like this ------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks so much . Your friend and team mate , Skofe

In vote chess we are currently on a 20 win streak (20-0-0) This streak may end soon although we will still have an extremely high win % Good job active members :)

Hey everyone , I've decided to host a pyramid tournement for active members . Leave a comment if you would like to join the tournement !

Hello guys , i've created a new group . And it would be pretty awesome if some of you guys joined :) http://www.chess.com/groups/home/team-53\ Kind regards ~Skofe

The point of this game is to say something about the person that posted above you. Example: funandniceisme: the person above me doesn't exist adude23: the person above me created this forum CodyCarson: the person above me is a dude funandniceisme: the person above me is a super admin in this group etc. Notice how you are not allowed to post after yourself. That's all for now, and remember, have FUN!

Hey guys, If you were ever in the mood for attacking, you should try this opening out. Its a hell of a lot of fun, and I love to play it when I want to DESTROY my opponent. Now it may not be totally sound (with best play from black, you should only be able to get a draw), but it is quite a powerful line in case black plays incorrectly. There are a lot of traps, and anything can happen. So the starting moves for the danish gambit (I will look at the accepted lines first, because declining will give white an advantage). Now, black has 3 main moves, Bb4+, d5, and Nf6. Qg5, although looks good, is pretty much instantly losing. I will put that line in just for kicks lol. Now, we will look at the Bb4+ line which is quite interesting. There are two choices here, and 1 leads to a very sharp game, while the other leads to a much more "sound" game, where white can maintain a slight advantage. That basically covers the main ideas in the Bb4+ line. Of course, black can stray from those lines (by not playing Bxc3) but the main idea after that is to play Nd5 and white usually has atleast a pawn advantage there as well. I will continue this later, but I hope you enjoy looking at that line.

Okay, this one is one that ended up biting me in the tail end once.... I ended up having to pay up for a mistake in a game tat was pretty much drawn.

Hey guys, sorry for the recent lack of puzzles.. because of school, I can barely get online somedays :\ Today I am going to post some opening traps, lets see how well you do! Sorry for the bad layout, the forums are being mean :P

here is another game: This is a great example of how to mate with a knight and a bishop.. I found that watching videos, and reading books on this wasn't enough. It took me 20 minutes after practicing this multiple times to get it 100 percent of the time. Try and figure out the pattern if you don't know it yet, and once you get it right once, do it again and again! Hopefully you will learn it from this puzzle!! Enjoy :D and don't have any knight mares lol

Hey all, this is my first article, feel free to comment and suggest new ideas for the second article. Also, I apologize for no puzzle yesterday, I accidentally left my computer at school and had to get it :\ So the Ponziani looks like this: Many people look at the move 3. c3 and are like what is he doing? he just blocked in his whole queenside from development and just made a hole on d3, this can't be good. Also its rather "untheoretical" which means that there are not many lines that people really have to know. About 90% of the time, you will see 3. Nf6 (which I believe is super easy to play against) but the other 10% you will either see d5, f5, or d6 (which are much more complex and difficult to play against) Lets look at Nf6 first: That should cover the Nf6 variation pretty well. Now we will look at the d5 variation, which is the only one that comes up too much. the other two lines are rather inferior (so there is no real point at looking at them, because they really won't come up, but I will toss them in anyway)

Based on request, I have been doing quite a few endgame puzzles. I hope that you are all enjoying them :) The first one is rather simple, here is another that might not be as well known! Hope you guys enjoy these!

Here is another of the most beautiful endgames of all time: And that is just one possibility.. there are many more, like the king trying to come and get the pawn, but that doesnt work either! That looks more like this:

There are a lot of lines of course, but the idea is to skewer the bishop, and force a mate, or win the bishop with a winning game.

Hey all, I am going to publish my first opening article on saturday or sunday. I don't really know what openings you guys would like me to cover, so I wanted to leave this open to you guys to decide. I was thinking maybe the ponziani, but its all up to you!

Hey guys, I felt like doing an additional endgame puzzle today, so here it is!

Hey guys, Here is a puzzle from one of my recent games.. It has a tricky tactic that I was super happy to see :)