Never Play f6

Must be. Listen, the moves of the bots are randomized. The highest level Stockfish always plays the same moves, but the bots do not. Try it. They always play differently. What possible motivation would I have to fill up my games with the exact same game? I get no ratings. It's a glitch. Why is this hard for you to believe?

It's a known problem. They added an auto-save to the archive for computer games when an analysis is done. The problem is the same computer game is added to the archive every time an analysis of that game is repeated.

Naw, it's cool. As long as you play g5 after f6, you're good.

@QuickerFinger - Meh, there's an old saying that goes that you have to learn the rules before you know when to break them. If you're a 500-700 level player, if you're playing f6, 99 times out of 100 it's for the wrong reasons.

Besides, you're making a strawman argument. I wrote in the very first post "never play f6 as black unless you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing." That's not dogma.

I swear this is true. I came back to this post because I was JUST going to write that someone AGAIN just played f6 in the King's gambit (on that other web site) and resigned in 8 moves.

@manekapa - thank you for confirming that I'm not some kind of lunatic who fills up her game history with the same game, and that it's a known problem when analyzing bot games. I appreciate it.

Dogma: always calculate queen checks on the e8-h5 diagonal

If you play g5 after f6 in the King's Gambit, you're dead. The computer read +7.8.

Ugh. Telling someone rules of thumb is not dogma, it's practical advice for a beginner's forum. If a beginner knew when it was good to play f6 because they could calculate well queen checks on the e8-h5 diagonal, they wouldn't be a beginner. If they knew enough theory to know when f6 is proper and right in the French Defense, they wouldn't be a beginner. Would I post this in an "advanced tactics" forum? No, duh.

I see what you did there....

(for the beginners who don't see it, it's mate in 1)

Here 5...f6 was good:
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044370

Here 16...f6 would have saved the game 16...Be6? was the decisive error:
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1072945 

Yep... Fischer, Spassky, and Keres... total noobs.

what's funny is that this position has been reached 2252 times in the Lichess database, and Qh5 checkmate was found in only about half the games (1153 times). So yeah, it's these people the advice is aimed at, not Fischer, Spassky, and Keres.

The world was a cooler place when we thought you were just a maniac crashing the same bot over and over again in the same fashion...

It's free but if you send me a premium membership I'll throw some gas into the fire

Thomas Barnes actually played 1...f6 against legendary Morphy and got a winning position.. unfortunately for him he liked crazy sharp tactical positions and that's pretty much suicide against Morphy

Yeah, but Barnes wasn't dumb enough to play f6 against the King's Gambit. He played the Modern Defense, which is one of the weaker responses. Morphy did play the Rotlewi against the Modern (which is considered a mistake these days), But Barnes wimped out, didn't take the offered pawn and was in a worse position in the early middle game. Morphy, though, was too aggressive, refused to take take the pawn on f4 before it was too late, and got into a losing position. Meanwhile, Barnes was a machine and literally move after move he was making Stockfish's top recommendations. It was after this game that Morphy decided to take the match seriously and not just try to out-tactics the legendary Mr. Barnes. It's a fun match.

     I can't count the number of times when a low-rated player has told me in post-game analysis they made a poor move in the opening because they learned "develop knights before bishops" or "strive to occupy the center" or "don't put your pieces on the edge of the board" or "avoid doubled pawns" or many other "rules of thumb" they have absorbed as absolute truth.

     It can't be stressed strongly enough that they must always seek out the best move in the position on the board, no matter how many similar positions might exist where that move would be a mistake. Learning to analyze properly and calculate accurately is more conducive to eventual strong play than any set of easy "rules" that might let a tyro more quickly become a somewhat more successful but still weak player.

Nobody is saying that following rules of thumb outperforms concrete analysis. Nobody. But when twice in the space of two days someone plays f6 against the King's Gambit, clearly they are doing neither. By definition, a rule of thumb has general applicability, not universal applicability, and as I said before, too often really, if you're going to break a rule, you have to know why. That's all.

     Agreed. But too many novices think the "general principles" are ironclad rules and will follow them blindly for too long as they seem to be improving as they make fewer mistakes. Making your own mistakes and seeing why you were wrong is a better learning tool in the long run.

     And of course all of us make gross blunders, and many of us, myself certainly included, just don't see as much as we should.