Beginner Best Game Help

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jazzmohambone

This is my best game ever. I think I can win it but wanted your suggestions. This is playing "Free Chess", downloaded from download.com. Help me beat the machine!

ArtNJ

Don't you want to try and earn the win on your own?

If you mean general type suggestions, well, I do think there is a strong attacking plan, but it might be hard to find at your level.  Worst case, play careful, trade off pieces, and you'll likely find a way to win. 

Take a look, play careful and you should win.  

jazzmohambone

I'm not sure about a few possible moves because of rules. If Queen takes Rook, is that check  or can the King take Queen. This was one of the rules I wasn't sure about in that once I was in check, could have taken the attacking piece without putting myself in check again. I just wanted to see what you would do in this situation, what you think the computer would do. Just curious.

ArtNJ

If the white queen takes the knight (you said the rook but meant the knight I think), black's king can and would just take the queen, that is allowed.  

Nd4 starts a winning attack, but I would not expect you to be able to see all the permutations.  Many advanced beginners & intermediate players would select it without seeing all the permutations just because of awareness that getting another piece involved in the attack is necessary, and nd4 is the obvious way to do that.  

Homonop
 
 

I have set up the position from your screenshot for a better view.

By simply looking at the position material, you have a huge advantage with your extra queen. You should be able to win this game without any help, provided you don't blunder your queen.

Here are some tips if you need them:

- Try to get rid of one of black's rooks, as they are placed nicely and controlling the c-file and preventing your own rooks from doing much. If you want to be cautious, bring your queen back and try to trade pieces for a guaranteed win.

- You have many passed pawns on the g-file and h-file. Push them and utilise your other pieces to support the pawns, and Black will have trouble preventing them from promoting into a queen.

- If you are aggressive, you might try to attack Black. The e6 pawn is weakness as it is only supported by the king – I agree with ArtNJ about Nd4. Attacking Black might be an option if the computer's strength is not that high.

It is best to post the whole game rather than simply a position. Good luck with the game, I'm sure you will be able to win! happy.png

jonnin

The rule is that the king cannot move INTO check.  What that translates to is that the king can capture a piece that has him CURRENTLY in check so long as the move does not result in him being IN CHECK after the capture. 

For some simple examples,  in this board if white plays QXN+ the king can capture it.   However if you added another white rook on f7, and then played RXN, the king coulnt take because that leaves him IN check due to the queen on h7. 

jazzmohambone

Thanks, not sure what passed pawns mean, I'm not that far into the game, don't understand being "promoted" yet. Thanks  for your feedback.

jonnin

You need to sit down and learn all the moves before you try to do much more.  There is a page on this on CDC or wiki or a million other places.

https://www.chess.com/learn-how-to-play-chess

A passed pawn is concept.  It is a pawn that cannot be blocked or stopped by another pawn.  So you have a pawn on the C file and your opponent has none on b,c,d files, yours is passed.  It is also passed if the opponent's pawns are simply behind yours so they can't stop it (hence the name).  There are a number of similar conceptual terms that you can pick up later, these help communicate with other players about why a position has a weakness or strength etc.

There are really only 4 "odd" moves in chess apart from the normal piece movement.

1) first pawn move of 2 squares

2) en passant ... if your opponent moves his pawn 2 squares on the first move as in #1, and that happens to put it side by side with one of your pawns, you can capture it as if it had only moved 1 square instead on the next turn only.   This one seems to be the most confusing to new players. There is a great visual of it in the link above.

3) castling.   This is a fancy way to trade places with your king and rook under a variety of conditions.   The actual manuver is easily visualized by moving your rook next to the king and hopping the king over the rook (however in tournaments you touch the king first).  Neither the king nor the rook can have moved in the game, the king can't get into, out of, or through a check, and there can't be any other pieces in the way.  You can go to either side.

4) Promotion is a type of move: when a pawn reaches the opponents back row, it can be exchanged for any other piece except the king.  So you can have a second queen, or 2 black bishops, or whatever.  In practice, you almost always get a queen unless there is a very good reason not to do so.

jazzmohambone

Thanks for all your help, I did see the video explaining these things but hard to understand unless you see it in action. So it should be one of the things to try to do, get a pawn to the other side. What deciedes if it becomes a queen or any other piece? Man I want to win this game, it would be my first win, and beating the computer. Does anything happen if the King makes it to my side, does it become a Queen or something?

ArtNJ

You can pick what you want your pawn to become.  In literally over 99% of cases, you will want a queen.  It is just for pawns.

Yes, getting an extra queen is one way beginners tend to win.  Because they have trouble coordinating checkmate, and the extra queen can help.  Trading off stuff tends to help as well.  

But, just gonna be real honest here, you really cant learn *just* by playing.  You either need someone to teach you a little bit, or you need to get a learn to play chess type book, or find the same material on the web.  You need to learn to checkmate with a king and queen against a lone enemy king, and with a one or two rooks and king against an enemy king.  If you don't learn that, very tough to learn to find checkmate in more complicated positions  

jazzmohambone

That's why I'm here, to learn. I do have the begginers guide to playing chess, and have been watching the videos, thanks. The game I downloaded is also a good learnig tool, as it shows you where the pieces can move and where they can't. I did win, the game was 4 days long. There was a hickup at one point where I had the rook in my sites, but the game did not let me take it, after trying a couple of times, clicking on the rook, it finally took. Not sure what that was all about. Thanks guy's for your help, next to football, I love this game!

ArtNJ

Gratz on your win.  It takes some dedication to learn the basic checkmates from a book.  It is about 20x easier/quicker to have a human explain the method and then gently correct you as you try to perform it.  We can't do that for you online.

I am not trying to be discouraging, you CAN do it from your book and by asking questions here.  Especially since you pulled off a checkmate in an actual game -- not easy without some human training.  Still, it will be a lot easier if you can spend a few hours with a human before utilizing other training methods.  If you don't have someone to do that with, you don't have someone, but you could try a chess club.  You might feel a tad awkward at this early stage, but they would likely help you a lot.   

jazzmohambone

Thanks. I don't have any friends who play, I've checked out chess clubs in my area but not into the 'drive' to get out there. The computer game is good though, I'm now trying the 'Impossible" difficulty setting. It's not really that much different than the "very easy" setting except it seems more aggressive,first game it kicked my butt in about 4 moves. I figure it's a good teacher, though a machine. Chess is math, it seems, there is no person in front of you putting out 'vibes'. I cna save the game as I go, come back to it a few hours later. It's amazing how I can 'not see the obvious' and loose a piece.

ArtNJ

Let me be concrete on what I would do next Jazz.  I would set up a computer match, pick a random position for the enemy king (but in the middleish, not on the edge), and give yourself a queen and king on an edge.  Try to checkmate the computer.  You seem pretty smart, but for most everyone, it is really hard, and they need to be taught the method.  So you'll need to read up on it in your book.  Then do the same thing, but king and 2 rooks against king, and finally king and rook against king.  If you master these three, than play another game with the computer and keep track of all moves, so you can post the game for us to comment on.

I know this might seem like work, but you will blow a ton of games if you can't perform these checkmates, and you really can't learn them just by playing unless you are a genius.     

jazzmohambone

Ok, cool! I'm down dude.

Homonop

Hey! Glad you won the computer! happy.png

If you need to refresh your memory with the chess rules, here's a nice article on this site: https://www.chess.com/learn-how-to-play-chess

There are many resources on this website that you can use to improve your chess skills as well. I see you've tried out the tactics trainer already. The interactive lessons (https://www.chess.com/lessons) are great tools to help with your learning. (Though I suppose you already know this, since you have a premium membership?)

Finally, play some chess games online! Playing against a human opponent is always different to playing against a computer. It also allows you to practice what you've learnt in a fun way!