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The Vote Chess has already started and it's our team's turn to reply, we have three days' time. So, please visit this page and let's talk about what move is best to play and vote for before you vote. Please read the Vote Chess Guide i have provided already if you are new to Vote Chess. Cheers visit our Vote Chess match here

What is Vote Chess? Vote Chess is a team-based game. Club members collectively decide the best move by voting. The move with the highest votes is played on the board. It encourages teamwork, strategy, and discussion. How to participate in a Vote Chess Game? Glad you asked, well, usually the club admin will start a Vote Chess match against another club and inform the team. Once the VC Game is set, club members will be able to find it under the Vote Chess section of the club, but the admin should usually announce it and share the link for ease. How to vote for a move? Good question! Once on the active Vote Chess game, the position will be displayed along with a timer showing how much time we have to vote - as is the case in all games, i presume. You could make your move as you often do in other games and that would be recorded as one vote. but as i will explain more in a bit and for very good reasons, please do not go and just vote, bear with me, you'll see why soon. So, supposing people have voted and the time is up, the system will count the votes and make the move for the most voted for move, hence: vote chess Here are the rules and mechanics of Vote Chess: Majority vote decides the move, meaning the move with the most votes gets played automatically when time runs out. No takebacks! Once a move is played, it is final. Turn timer: There is a fixed time per move ( as in most games i play 3 days) before the system finalises the move. Key features: Discussion Board: Members can, and if you ask me, should, discuss strategy and possible moves before voting. Move suggestions: Players can suggest moves, and others can agree or disagree, politely and with etiquette, and bring their reasons and opinions and enlighten others. (NO FOUL LANGUAGE IS TOLERATED!) Game History: You can review previous moves to track the game's progress. Strategy for winning Vote Chess: Team coordination Discussion before voting is strongly encouraged, do not randomly vote for whatever you think is best, although that may be the best move, but it beats the purpose of Vote Chess. Vote Chess is one of the best ways we can improve our game play simply by learning from our fellow team members and hearing their ideas and paying attention to their strategies and brilliant thoughts and plots, we will make mistakes, but that's also great since we learn best from our failures. Analyse together the threats, tactics, and positional advantages before voting. Avoid blunders, please, take your time to evaluate all candidate moves and check for traps, too! We normally take part in 3 day games, as said earlier, so i suppose spending about 48 hours on planning and discussing would surely and usually give us enough time to come to an agreement on the move and we should not start voting before that last 24 hours limit. It is desireable to have everyone vote on the same move, always together in agreement and harmony. Stronger players should lead the way, it is advisable and desireable that our highest ranking members take part in our Vote Chess games and help us out. Other club members should listen to them and learn from their experience thankfully. Stronger players would be very kind if they provide clear explanations for their suggested moves. We should always make sure the move we have chosen to vote on is the best move after careful analysis. We are not allowed to use chess engines in any game, so forget about that if you had the slightest idea. But you are more than welcome to study and grow up in chess as you play. As in any chess match, don't just play tactical moves, we need to be mindful of long-term strategies as well. Multiple moves ahead should be considered, as in any chess match. Best to have and consider 3 to 5 moves in advance. Common mistakes to avoid: Voting without thinking. Ignoring team discussions. Rushing moves. Failing to spot opponent's threats! Tools: Post plans visually (if they are complex): There are a number of tools at hand in Vote Chess where we discuss things, for instance, we can draw a chessboard and display and explain what the situation is and what your thoughts are for the coming moves, look at the example below: By drawing this, you can clearly illustrate how your ideas are going to shape and what your plan looks like. If you do not know how to produce such a board, read below, but trust me, it's not complicated, we are chess players, nothing is too complicated ⦁Step 1. First if you want to talk about the game at hand, you need to click on the download button to save the FEN / PGN(s) of the game: Then copy them: Just above the text box, you will see a chessboard icon, the first icon on the message toolbar. Click it! ⦁Step 2. Select "Load From FEN/PGN(s)" (it's the last radio button), and then click "Make Moves" at the top. Insert the game position you want to display by pasting the FEN or PGN: ⦁Step 3. Then the button will change to Add Game: Then click on the Arrow to go one step back and get ready to put in your plan: ⦁Step 4. Once there, we sometimes may need to flip the board when we are playing Black! And then we are ready to make our moves as according to our predictions and plot: You simply click on the pieces and move them according to your plan and thoughts, it is a good idea to go on for more than 2 moves ahead, better up to 5 moves each team! (FEN strings show a board position only, whereas a PGN contains all of the moves that have been played.) Finally we are ready to place the chessboard in our comment by clicking on the 'Load' button. DO NOT close the page from which you started to add analysis. Your game will not get inserted anywhere, and there will be no warning, you'll just lose what you worked on! So, i hope this has been helpful, sorry if it seems a bit long, but i am sure you agree it was worth your trouble and the time. Let's join in our team matches, vote chess or otherwise and let's win games and at the same time, grow up together Bless your hearts, Totoo

Dear Club Members, since the internet is so wild, and since it has become so dangerously unbearable, i have removed my photos from social media sights and am not happy to share any personal images anywhere any more. Having said that, we can possibly safely share our chess images here. So, here's the first one from me, hope you like it Oh, yes, you can share yours by replying to this   Bless your hearts Totoo It's just me, myself and i

Please find below the top 50 principles every good player enjoys, i found these from a YouTube video by NM Nelson Lopez, you can watch the clip here But if you want to have a list to keep at hand and check every now and again, here you go: 1: Control the center 2: Develop pieces quickly 3: Castle before move 4: Avoid too many pawn moves 5: Avoid "bad" bishops 6: Avoid moving the same piece twice 7: Don't bring out queen too early 8: Pay attention to f2/f7 9: Watch out for stalemate 10: Knights before bishops 11: Connect your rooks 12: Rooks to open/half-open files 13: Knights on the rim are dim 14: Avoid doubled pawns 15: Avoid isolated pawns 16: Avoid backward pawns 17: Don't move pawns in front of castled king 18: Don't open center if your king is there 19: When attacking, don't trade queens 20: If cramped, trade pieces 21: 2 minor pieces better than rook and pawn 22: 3 minor pieces better than queen 23: Rooks are strong on 2nd/7th ranks 24: Doubled rooks on open files are strong 25: Bishops better in open, knights in closed 26: Capture towards the center 27: Activate king in the endgame 28: Trade fianchetto bishop to weaken king 29: Knight on f8, there's no mate 30: Slow down - use your time 31: Don't play hope chess 32: Don't trade bishop for knight without a reason 33: Meet flank attack with a counterattack in the center 34: Rooks go behind passed pawns 35: 2 connected passed pawns on 6th rank beat a rook 36: Attack in the direction of your pawn chain 37: Knights are best blockaders of passed pawns 38: When ahead, trade pieces (NOT pawns) 39: When behind, trade pawns (NOT pieces) 40: 1 pawn can stop 2 pawns 41: Put pawns on opposite color as your bishop 42: Watch out for pawn storms when castled opposite 43: When attacking, remove key defenders 44: It's easier to attack than defend 45: If c3, then d5 46: If f4, then d5 47: In d4/d5 openings, don't block c pawn 48: Kings can use the crooked path 49: Be carful for poisoned b or g pawns  50: Be flexible about your plans Bless your hearts and enjoy your games, Totoo

Greetings everyone, It's been a long time, and i'm so very sorry. I've had my down for a long time and that's the main reason for my long absence from spending time on the club. Hopefully this year it's finally time to go up a bit and i hope our dear club members will join me and enjoy some cool club activities and share their wisdom and learnings to help everyone grow up better. I enjoy chess, that's stating the obvious, but i also enjoy and really appreciate chess 960, i have a wonderful friend, who i hope will be joining us here in this club soon, and this friend has been having an issue in chess 960, and as the title of this topic already suggests, it's got to do with castling in chess 960. He told me that it has occured to him that often times he has been unable to castle, and that only in chess 960, and since we were in a chess 960 game already, i was able to detect the problem. Below are screenshots of our game, halfway through, where he wanted to castle and says he couldn't castle on Queen side.  I tried the Analysis tab and went back a couple of moves to detect and see for myself. The only reason, to my humble opinion, he couldn't castle Queen-side is that he might have not pulled the king to the corner of the board hard enough. You see, in chess 960, it is not enough to pull the king to the squre he is supposed to move to when castling, you need to pull the king right to the corner of the board. Hopefully the pictures below will clarify.  This is made more clear by allowing the legal moves to be shown on the screen. As you can see, the king was on D1, in orcer to castle Queen-side, i had to pull the king all the way to the A1 square. and here's the screenshot of the castle after letting the piece go: As you can also see from the notation, the Queen-side castling was achieved. Now let's see what happens for King-side castling: And as you can see, by pulling the King to the farthest square, we are able to castle King-side: I hope this has been helpful. Feel free to challenge me to a game or more either regular chess or 960 3-day move games, please! Bless your hearts, Totoo

Greetings all, Here's a situation, what would be your next move for white?

Good morning Many players know the rules of the game, but there are also many who simply ignore the rules just because they blundered or made a mistake or a dubious move. I found this on Wikipedia about the 'touch-move' and 'j'adoube!' as well as no retraction and thought worthy of sharing The touch-move rule in chess specifies that, if a player deliberately touches a piece on the board when it is his turn to move, then he must move or capture that piece if it is legal to do so. If it is the player's piece that was touched, it must be moved if he has a legal move. If the opponent's piece was touched, it must be captured if it can be captured with a legal move. This is a rule of chess that is enforced in all games played in over-the-board competitions. The player claiming a touch-move violation must do so before making a move. If a player wants to adjust a piece on its square without being required to move it, he can announce j’adoube ("I adjust") before touching the piece (Hooper & Whyld 1992:425). A player may not touch the pieces on the board while it is his opponent's turn. There is a separate rule that a player who lets go of a piece after making a legal move cannot retract the move. Have a great time Totoo

Greetings, all Have you tried Fritz, and their recent version 16? Any ideas, comments? Do you recommend spending time on playing and practicing and analysing your games there or online? Wish you a great time, Totoo

Good morning and wish you a happy time This is to remind you that there are many many wonderful lessons and drills available on the site and all you have to do is enjoy them. There are also Videos and Tactics, and much more under the Learn Menu, which will also prove very helpful. You won't regret spending some time over the lessons, at times they might seem a bit too obvious and at times a bit boring, well then, move on to the more inspiring and difficult lessons. You will soon realise how useful all this has been and that it was truly worth the while and you will soon be able to enjoy your games far more than ever before and win more games too. Have a great time, Totoo

Greetings, Here's how you might get lucky when your opponent disregards the fact that one had better keep the Queen safe rather than take her out for a ride early in the game, enjoy: Move 1 Player A Move 1 Player B Move 2 Player A Move 2 Player B Move 3 Player A Move 3 Player B Move 4 Player A Move 4 Player B Move 5 Player A Move 5 Player B Move 6 Player A Move 6 Player B Move 7 Player A Move 7 Player B Move 8 Player A Check-Mate! Have a happy time Totoo

i fallowed ur direction but unfortunately it went no where, i clicked on the link where u told me i can click here but it bring me to an advertisements page i typed too https://www,chess,com/ but bring me to the same page where i am starting on to loadging nd anywhere i go it bring me to the same page that everywhere i click nothing happen. I saw ur gme went to it it's loading to it but when loading finish noting no board. It look am out of this site but i dnt understand why if it was the case because when i click on lodge in it bring me directly to the without put it my username nd psswrd This it's very strange but ty 4 ur help Totoo :~ )

Am still lost, Example on my page it show in a rectangular orange colour the word PLAY nd underneath it say, PLAY A FRIEND nd underneath it say, CUSTOM CHALLENGE nd OPEN CHALLENGE nd join tournament. But when i clickon any link nothing happen. I clicked on ur name nd try to challenge u but i could nt see the option to challenge u, that in the past it was easy to do now i cant see how to do it, it look it dnt aloud me strange Anyway ty so much 4 ur guidance much appreciated merçi mon ami but nt sure if we going to hve the chance to play sad hope we do nice to meet u nd peace nd harmony to all of us :~ )

Bonjour Totoo how r u long time nt hving sharing words nd play gmes hope everything going well, Since new display of chess live am a bit lost to find my way to do things i can't find how to read my messages in my profile can't see how to look at my profile it say on screen Play a friend, but when i click on it nothing happen. Can u guide me please Totoo if u can ty but dnt send me please messages in my profile send it here in Chatrang Club in topic forum please because i can read messages that u nd peeps posted but i can't see my messages in my profile anyway hope to play u soon mon ami

What are the worst opening No! No! moves you know? Thanks for sharing and have a great time playing chess wisely totoo

4 Simple things to consider and keep in mind throughout a good game: 1) King Safety 2) Development 3) Centralisation 4) Mobilisation Enjoy

Greetings, Would be lovely and kind to share traps you have created yourself. i came up with this one today and i'd like to call it the 'Surprise in 8' 1.e4c52.Nf3e63.d4Nc64.d5Nb45.a3Qa56. Bd2 Qa47. Nc3 Nxc2+8. Ke2 Qc4# i need to add that i have not seen this trap anywhere before and it dawned on me during a match, if a similar set of moves was already there by someone else, they can keep the honours. Hope you enjoyed this, Cheers

Greetings, i wonder how is the average time per move calculated, is it an average of all games no matter what kind, or is it mainly for the daily games? Thank you

Study the following situation, do you think that the opponent may fall for this or not? Would you take the risk? Is it justifiable? Cheers

This is the situation at hand, Which of the following solutions would you pick? A) B) C) D) E) or F) Enjoy

This is what might possibly happen if you move out your sweet first lady too early in a game, enjoy You can reckon the rest of the game for yourselves, but even if the black has to sacrifice their Queen, they are sure to win the game within 20 to 22 moves! Cheers and stay wise