Me = beginner. Lost against 1300 in chessmaster. Help?
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move 17. should have been Qxb4, on move 20 u should take with the knight which would have kept his queen out of ur space. on move 14 and 15 u had Bxc6. i think u just have to take more time looking at each move because he was giving u pieces and u missed it. just analyze a little more and i think u will easily be able to take him down next time
Now, perhaps I'm missing something, but what was wrong with 14 Bxc6? after 14 Qc2 you just appear to be much worse.
It is not possible to tell you just one or two things how to play good. Chess, like any sport, takes a lot of practice, it takes some time to start "seeing" these good moves. It takes even longer to start seeing great ones... Just keep playing and it WILL come to you. Also, do tactics problems, from a book or something, they help ALOT. Good luck.
jjjmmmccc177 wrote: move 17. should have been Qxb4, on move 20 u should take with the knight which would have kept his queen out of ur space. on move 14 and 15 u had Bxc6. i think u just have to take more time looking at each move because he was giving u pieces and u missed it. just analyze a little more and i think u will easily be able to take him down next time
I see that you're right. I didn't capture with the Queen because for some reason, I thought the Knight on f4 would come into the position... without a Queen there, I wasn't really sure how to get rid of it. But I guess by not taking it, I got 2 knights in my position. I was really expecting 17...Nd3 from black.
I think after that, I knew I was losing badly. Something tells me moving my rook up to the 3rd rank was a big no-no. It just seemed getting in the way. Rooks aren't good defending in these kinds of positions. It's clearly an attacking piece... or good for mating in back-ranks... or sacrifices when you come crashing in... or behind passed pawns. Here, it was just a dud - making everyone scramble to protect it so it never got picked off.
Well my advice is if a piece is in your way and you really don't like it trade for an active piece in your opponents army. One of two things will happen you will be happy with your trade or you will start to appreciate the piece and learn to use it better.
You don't know what you have till you lose it.
jjjmmmccc177 wrote: move 17. should have been Qxb4, on move 20 u should take with the knight which would have kept his queen out of ur space. on move 14 and 15 u had Bxc6. i think u just have to take more time looking at each move because he was giving u pieces and u missed it. just analyze a little more and i think u will easily be able to take him down next time
I'm not so sure about Qxb4 here. Following Qxb4 is Knight to d3 forking the queen and the rook. You'll probably lose the rook. Thus trading a rook for a knight.
chessmaster at 1300 will intentionally hang a pawn and sometimes a minor piece. the purpose of training with CM at this level is to develop your game positionally and to recognize and take advantage when CM makes that occasional blunder.
after every CM game you play, you should run a post-game analysis (i usually let it think 5 seconds per move) and then watch each move with the annotation window open. you'll see the numerical score at the bottom of each move. a positive number means white is winning and a negative means black is winning. it will also give you the natural "best" continuation for the next 4,5, or 6 moves. I expect that you will see a large positive number (maybe between +3 to +6) when black hangs the knight at c6. i imagine that when you waste the opportunity to kill it goes back to the -2 to 1 range. after not playing maybe a 17.Qd3 i bet the number drops to -10 or worse
your positional play is stronger than your recognition of blunders by yourself or your opponent. but the whole point of positional play is to put your opponent in a situation where they don't have good moves and therefore make bad moves. this is a good thing because punching a blunder in the nose is an easier concept to learn with CM.
Don't just think about what pieces are attacking what, look for holes in your defense that enemy pieces can move into, then think about how to cover them before it happens or how to deal with it when it happens. You fell apart because you let the enemy knights into strong positions in your camp.
What moves could I have made to cover the holes at what points in the game? Any general principle to look for when doing this?
One principle that once a great player taught me:
"Before you learn to run fast, you will need to learn to run slow"
and he was referring to chess. He is a great player and my best chess teacher.
The point is - don't push it - just play with enough time to think over the moves - even if this means a game a day. This is much better than constantly hurrying up, playing 100 games a day and doing tons of blunders.
Wow... a game a day? Interesting.
Would that mean that within time, I can start playing those really good moves that it took me so long to find faster and faster?
Exactly, with more experience you will be able to analyze a position faster.
However, until then you will need to know how to analyze first, and after that improve speed.
hondoham wrote:
chessmaster at 1300 will intentionally hang a pawn and sometimes a minor piece. the purpose of training with CM at this level is to develop your game positionally and to recognize and take advantage when CM makes that occasional blunder.
after every CM game you play, you should run a post-game analysis (i usually let it think 5 seconds per move) and then watch each move with the annotation window open. you'll see the numerical score at the bottom of each move. a positive number means white is winning and a negative means black is winning. it will also give you the natural "best" continuation for the next 4,5, or 6 moves. I expect that you will see a large positive number (maybe between +3 to +6) when black hangs the knight at c6. i imagine that when you waste the opportunity to kill it goes back to the -2 to 1 range. after not playing maybe a 17.Qd3 i bet the number drops to -10 or worse
your positional play is stronger than your recognition of blunders by yourself or your opponent. but the whole point of positional play is to put your opponent in a situation where they don't have good moves and therefore make bad moves. this is a good thing because punching a blunder in the nose is an easier concept to learn with CM.
I hear ya... That's why I pinned his Knight to his Rook and created what I thought was a good positional situation for me. I knew I was going to win the Knight or the Rook at some point. I think in that situation, Andy was thinking 'really hard', although I'm sure he was faking it.
Still, he went Ra7 to get it out of the line of fire from my centralized bishop... and when I had the oppurtunity to grab the Knight with my Queen, I didn't take it. I guess I got paranoid from the other Knight getting my rook, so for some reason, I figured I was going to be down an exchange. Now that I see the game, it's kind of rediculous why I didn't take the Knight. I knew I considered it during the game obviously. that was the point.
Now that I think of it, I could have taken the Knight with the Queen, and if he did attack the rook, I could have just slid it across to the open file that was created.
So how useful is going over games and learning from the computer recommendations? Do you really learn what to do by analyzing games like that? Does it stick? Or do you just play the same? How do you make it stick?
So how useful is going over games and learning from the computer recommendations? Do you really learn what to do by analyzing games like that? Does it stick? Or do you just play the same? How do you make it stick?
very useful to me. the game is still fresh in your head so you don't have to spend time reanalyzing each position, you've already done that. when you see an analyzed and annotated game, you don't learn much just clicking [next] over and over again and seeing the game in a minute. if you take the time to debate what the next "best" move for all moves, and then see the results the learning experience involves the individual more and knowledge has been shown to be retained more efficiently. there is a lot of existing theory on this in Adult Education under the topic "Experiential Learning" or "Adult Learning Cycle" and it applies to most things that i know of that Adults learn, including Chess.
There is a point where you have a stylistic difference from the computer where you should be playing games to get to an endgame that you are comfortable with... but that's more complicated and i'm happy if i just don't blunder.
also, i said 17.Qd3 in my post, looking at it again 17.QxN, N forks Q&R 18. Q gets to a safe spot, NxR 19. RxN (or maybe NxN) and you still should win material 2 Knights for a Rook... so i blundered a little in my post too.
You were playing a Closed Defense of the Ruy Lopez. I think 9.h3 is the best option, to prevent black's Bg4 from pinning the f3-Knight which is needed to defend the central dark squares.
9... Bg4
Pawn up on the very right to go for the Bishop.
Control the center and you'll control the game - mah teacher used to say
ray_fields> So how useful is going over games and learning from the computer recommendations? Do you really learn what to do by analyzing games like that?
You learn more if you write out your own analysis before running the engine.
[If you played at blitz time controls, this analysis may take awhile. If you played at slow time controls, it may simply be recording your in-game thoughts.]
Eg, 8...Bc8? "8...Nc6! would be better because it also prevents Bxb7/Bxa8 but has the advantage of developing a piece (rather than undeveloping one)."
When you run the engine, look at the best move(s) but also try to understand why the moves you selected were wrong, and why you missed better moves.
In this way, yes, it will help you improve.
How do I play better? Not just moves, but what I was missing that really ruined this game?