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Below is my most recent complaint to the website. I am very pleased to report that today (2016/07/08) I got a responce from King Eric hisself. Scroll down to read it. Vote Chess OpponentsNot so very long ago it was a fairly simple matter to get a vote chess game started. I would submit an 'open seek' and within a few hours it would be accepted by a team of players ready to play. When I received notification that the open seek had been accepted and I would navigate to the game page, it was common to find several of my teammates had already joined the game and were eager to get started.Once a challenge had been accepted, it was very very rare that there would be a reason to abort. So rare, that when it did occur, I felt obligated to send a message to the opponent group with an apology and an explanation of why the game was aborted. The only reason I can recall, that it ever became necessary to abort a game was when it was a mis-match due to low ratings or too few players on the opponent team which usually results in time-outs and poor performances on the board. That is still the primary reason.A couple of years ago I began to encounter a new type of opponent. These were groups with very few members; sometimes only one or two or three and sometimes they were all the same person with multiple identities. I would abort these games and send a message explaining why and then submit a new open seek and quite often the same opponent would take the new challenge. I would abort again and message them asking them to not interfere with my efforts to get a vc game started and this was often met with an attitude of defiance. I would then contact website support, explaining the situation, sometimes getting support, sometimes not.But the occurrence of individual admins accepting open seeks, intending to 'go it alone' against a group has now become the rule rather than the exception. The once rare necessity of aborting games for this reason has become commonplace, to the point that it now usually takes two or usually three attempts in as many days or more, before a vote game will start vs. an acceptable opponent.There is no official definition of how many individuals it takes to make a team, but certainly one person cannot be considered a team but rather a massive and defective ego. I suppose as few as two people could be considered a team, but I think for the purposes of the groups I manage it would be only fair to have a minimum of five; because my teams know our opening well and are serious players. Out of five on the opponent team there are probably only two or three who will actually participate in the selection of moves.To make matters even worse; about six months ago, the notifications which used to be sent by the website announcing a new vote chess game have stopped working. I and several other admins have submitted tickets to tech support concerning this problem but nothing has been done. Without these notifications members do not know a new vc game has begun and the only people who join the new game are the admin who submitted the open seek and the admin who accepted it; one person on each team.To work around the websites shortcoming; I have been posting new vc game notifications in group notes and group news but turnout is still only about 25% to 40% of what it used to be. And that still does not improve things in the opponent group. I have tried messaging opponent admins encouraging them to do the same as I have done but they often become irritated and in one case the opponent aborted the game when I suggested they take measures to get more players.So for now, I will allow when there is only one player on the opponent team, but only because the website is not being helpful in this matter. The only other alternative I can think of is to simply discontinue our vote chess program until the website fixes the problem, which may take a long...long...time.A few days ago I submitted an open seek and when it was accepted I received an alert. Other members also received an alert and there was good turn-out for the game. When it was discovered we had to abort that game due to an unsuitable opponent, I submitted another open seek and when it was accepted and the new game started, I did not receive a notification and it appears no one else did either.I believe the admin should be able to stipulate certain conditions when submitting an open seek; such as the number of members or a minimum rating a group must have to accept a specific open seek. I also think it would help if the admin who accepts the open seek would be made known to the admin submitting the seek so that certain conditions could be worked out.They hardest thing in vote chess these days is simply getting a game started.HELP! Thanks for the feedback, Wormrose! Michael, can you handle this? Looks like we need a ticket to add some parameters to Vote Chess seeks: - Minimum club size - Minimum games played Also, can you test where vote chess alerts are or are not working? If a new game starts, club members should get an Alert in their alerts panel. Thanks! Erik

Why does KIA open with 1.e4 or 1.Nf3? I'm a brutally novice chess-player and I've just adopted KIA as my weapon of choice. Its new to me. Why is there two dif. games? I see they meet up later if black doesn't interfere. But why the choice?

hello i am new to KIA .IT seems like a decent opening and i am planning to play it in my next tournaments(most recent is at the end of october)and also my school is sending me for CBSE cluster so i am planning to learn KIA. i need to know its basic stratergies, some good books and of course your ownn games and examples too. deathstroke

I thought this would be an interesting topic, as someone who plays the KIA, what I typically play as Black when my opponent insists on playing a KIA :) As a 1...d6 player, aiming for a quick ..e5 and then a KID or Old Indian, I seem to end up with a pawn structure like d6, e5, f5, c6 with pieces at Nf6, Na6->c7, Be7 (or sometimes g6, Bg7) 0-0 with the idea of Qe8->h5, ..f4 The Tabiya being Just curious what others play as Black against the KIA!

Here's my latest KIA. Why worry about Black's LSB pin?

I was playing black here I thought I had a pretty decent game. I made several pretty obvious erros. Any questions or comments would be welcome!

An interesting game that I think I should have played better in the opening. I saw Nakamura play Qe1 against white's Bg4 in a Sicilian, but this wasn't a Sicilian...h3 was probably best. Anyway... I'm going to post this game twice. I'll post a link to my blog, if you want to see my comments about it. I'll also just post the full game here, if you'd rather not leave the comfort of our little group to check it out. Either way you view it, enjoy! http://www.chess.com/blog/zirtoc/1510-kia

This was a pretty interesting game, and a win for me. I did go down the exchange partway through, by not paying attention. But then I got a good kingside attack going, and my opponent ended up sacing his queen to save the game, but it wasn't enough. I played some questionable chess here...comments welcome!

I wonder if getting more sleep at night would help me play better!

I often have trouble finding a plan in the middlegame, but in this one it seemed to come pretty easily. I don't know if I'm improving, or my opponent just cooperated!

I just played this amusing blitz game, the capture of the e6 pawn for 3 pawns looks correct (but the rest of the game is an amusing rollercoaster with mistakes everywhere), I recall seeing a few games where it's possible due to the Bf4 Qc7 setup, so I went with it, especially after ..h5 by Black

Hello, all, I played this game here on chess.com yesterday in Live. I'd appreciate everyone's feedback, especially you KIA veterans. :-)

I often find myself with a big attack with the help of my f-pawn when black fianchettos his DSB and castles kingside, but this is my best game of that sort so far:

Good afternoon, Two questions really: I regularly play KIA, but recently came unstuck when my opponent threw in g5 within the first ten moves. I will try to post details of the game later, but I played the standard moves Nf3, g3,Bg2,0-0,Nbd2,Re1. My opponent chose not to castle and was hedging his bets to go queenside. He followed g5 up with a prompt h5 leaving me with a heavy sinking feeling. What should I be doing to counter this? Also, I wanted to ask about the general rules as to when Qe1, rather than Re1 should be played (supporting the e4 push). I realise there are no general rules as such, but a few pointers would be useful. If I get time later, I will post the game referred to in the first paragraph for your general amusement.

Hey, all, it appeared Carlsen opened with the KIA in yesterday's game. It ended in a draw. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_2014#Game_4

Team Match Tips Please join Team Matches only if you intend to play and not time out. Unlike personal games, Team games affect your fellow employees. Timing out has a greater demoralizing effect than simply losing. It implies lack of effort or caring. Use your time wisely. Similar to a Vote Chess game, spend your 1st day on considering all potential candidates. (Search wide before deep.) On the 2nd day analyze variations, consider your opponent's possible replies, and discard and narrow down your candidates. (Search deep after searching wide.) Finally, on the 3rd day recheck your calculations and make your move. The time factor cannot be sufficiently stressed. Recall that correspondence chess is not a sprint race with the quickest doing the best (like Bullet or Blitz). Correspondence chess is a marathon. Those who use their chess skills and resources wisely ultimately do best. There is no "extra credit" for moving quickly and hastily. The race goes to the one who has made the best moves not the fastest. In turn, you can only find the best moves if you take your time. The use of databases and other reference materials (including books, websites, compact discs, etc.) may be used for all phases of the game including the opening and the endgame. However, do NOT use a computer engine to play or computer endgame tablebases! Chess.com has strict rules concerning cheating and they will close your account permanently for doing so. KIA inc. adheres firmly to company policies and has zero tolerance for cheating as well. What if you lose your games honestly? That is well within acceptable parameters. We participate in Team Matches for the purpose of engaging in the learning process. Losing is an integral and important part of that process.These additional suggestions were submitted by another member, zirtoc, in a different group. "Tip #1: Analyze! When I first saw this button in a game, I thought it was for computer assistance or something. If this is you, then rest assured that it's for the player to play out moves on a board, and has nothing to do with computer analysis. Clicking on it will give you the current position, and then you can try out sample lines. Extremely handy. Tip #2: Copy and Paste the Moves When I find a line that I think might happen in the game with Analyze, I click on 'Current' to get back to the current position. Then I highlight and copy the moves I just made (Control+C) and click on the 'Notes' tab. Then I paste the line into the notes (Control+V) and save it. Sometimes I'll save two or three lines this way, so I'm ready for different moves by the opponent. Just make sure the main match window has it saved also before you make your move, or you might lose your notes. Tip #3: Explore! I discovered early on with chess.com that I could go to Learn->Game Explorer and look through a database to find positions. But weirdly, I never bothered to click on the 'Explore' button in a match until just recently. It actually lists all games in the database at your current position. This is available from both the main match window and the Analyze board. Press those buttons!" Live long and prosper KIA inc.

Hello everyone! I saw this video, and thought I would share it with you guys. It's really helpful, as it tells you both the plans/ideas for white and black, unlike other videos where it just tells you a move order with no reasoning behind the move. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e95SLI3fcgk