The Secret of Chess

I am thinking that you should be able to get a titled player account then, with the CM next to your name. All you have to do is sign up for a new account and in the profile and rating information, follow the instructions. It will give you full access to all of Chess.com features and get rid of the annoying ads...

Post Script Edit....you may even be able to edit your existing account. I am sure at least one Chess.com user has earned a title or gained a new one, thus needing to edit their information. Go for it. You don't have anything to lose. It might even shut some of these guys up...

Don't let the fraud get away with pseudo science when there is zero basis for his claims. He is going for the kind of people who fall for get rich quick schemes.

Sub-1400 players don't have the self-awareness and easily get delusions of improvement. A few losses will get them back into reality. 

its such a shame that brilliant chess writers like Lyudmil come along so infrequently on this site. sigh. but hopefully he will stick around and not get too cheesed off by the ridiculous trolling.

Btw., do you know the good news?

Latest SF development on many cores thinks which first move is best at very big depth?

Yes, right, 1. c4!

I just read some input on Talkchess forum, might want to check there.

So that, basically, SF slowly starts understanding I was right.

You will see many more astounding things in the future, only corroborating my theories.

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

We could debate it, but certainly beginner and intermediate players should take Mikhail Botvinnik's advice regarding the classical approach. Who was stronger and why, Retti, Benko, Larsen, Nimzowitsch....or Fischer ? We could argue that Fischer would beat them playing their own systems, if he played theirs and they played his, but I certainly see a correlation between the strength of the player and their choices.

I actually believe that the stronger the player, the less preferences they seem to have. See Carlsen, for example, who plays rather flexibly, comfortable in pretty much any opening or position he goes into.

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

I certainly agree that over time, once there knowledge and confidence reaches a particular point, they are seeing a weakness in the game played by their opponent, so they are only interested in playing that opening to take advantage of the opponent. I think they may also see an idea in post game analysis in games, whether it be a random player or their own, that they then want to try in a game. 

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

I find it both a bit ironic and comical, when I consider your last passage. I don't mean it in a condescending manner either, though it may come off a bit like it is. The reason I feel that way is as follows. If you set out to learn theory, "your way", as opposed to "my way", or vice versa, surely someone would begin to see the tranpositions and similarities of opening lines. 

You misunderstand me. I'm not trying to argue about whose way is right or wrong—I'm just saying that, given what you've described, it sounds like there are certain defenses that are right up your alley. If you don't want to study them, that's fine. It's entirely your call.

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

I can appreciate your assessment and your desire to try sharing with me what you feel will be helpful. I have played the Caro-Kann ( I almost called it the Karpov Defense... lol) perhaps only 3 or 4 times. I never remembered being able to get into favorable positions from which I could gain the initiative and attack really well. I think of it more as a strangulation and prophylactic type of system. I am not primarily a defensive and positional specialist. I only prefer those types of positions, especially with black because, my truest desire is to get into a comfortable position and then gain the initiative, so I can begin attacking.  I find making a chess game into a fight in a phone booth, with either color, isn't my strength, but as a quote from Spassky rings through my heart and mind, even as a fool is committing suicide, he has the power of the initiative.  From my perspective, who ever has it is who is at liberty to attack and win. The other player is at his mercy.

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

... if we aspire to learn chess thoroughly or as completely as possible, need to learn patterns of all levels, no ?

It's a good question. Regarding Lyudmil's text(s), some might argue that the patterns being taught are either incorrect, or unhelpful (some titled players on this thread have even argued that they exist more in the range of detrimental). Though, this argument seems to extend to other authors as well (see some of the threads attacking Silman's or Nimzowitch's teachings, for example).

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

I think I will be addressing this in my next paragraph, if I remember correctly. It is a matter of semantics. 

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

I have found during the many, many, analyses that I have engaged in, at the highest levels of chess (during the resulting positions), there tends be somewhere between perhaps 2-6 playable lines, in any rich chess position. That means there are multiple ways to win. It becomes semantics really. True, that some lines are stronger than others, but GM's find ways to make a weaker novelty move weak with consistency. The fact there are many openings and playable lines, proves what I am saying.

I find this point of yours ironic, as Lyudmil is one of the loudest voices when it comes to arguing that there is only one best path, and the rest are, according to his perspective, inferior. For what it's worth, I agree with you: in most positions, there's more than one way to skin a cat (unless, of course, it's a position where there's a forced line that leads to a concrete advantage).

Christopher_Parsons wrote: 

From a theoretical standpoint I am incliced to agree with him, but from a matter of practical applicability, I don't. If we could see deeply enough with a chess engine and knew all of the replies to our best move from the outset of the game, it is true we would never lose. It isn't rocket science, but neither of those things is a practical possiblity to me, especially at this time in history.  Maybe someday, we will memorize lists in the begin of our playing days, as part of our chess development. Whoever is better at memorizing the lists, will perform better. 

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

As far as I am concerned, unless Lyudmil plays only other titled players, he will be one of the most likely targets for cheating. Many players would be happy to get banned even, to prove he can't beat Stockfish. If the guy can't get a fair game, there isn't much point in him playing. Most GM's probably aren't going to stop everything they are doing to play him, in any setting. If he starts playing the other titled players here and is generating the numbers I got from post game analysis of his blitz games, he will likely be thought of as a cheater, considering the level of his play is so high. It all seems like a lose / lose proposition from where I am sitting. 

If he wanted to, Lyud should be able to get into the 2200-2300 range pretty quickly (after a mere handful of games, due to the quick rating-spike from provisional wins).

At that point, you're mostly facing titled players, who really have no need to cheat (nor would they likely even know, nor care, who Lyudmil is). Most of the strong players here don't hang around these forums. They log in, go straight to Live Chess to play, then log out when they're done.

There's also an implication there that players would need to cheat to beat Lyud. I'm fairly confident that there are many players on this site who would be able to best him in blitz, without requiring any sort of assistance. Which isn't to say I think he'd be a pushover—but to say that there a lot of potent blitz players here. Even Top-10 players like Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, and Hikaru Nakamura have found themselves on the losing end of some blistering attacks from some of the resident blitzers.

More to the point: you have guys like Carlsen playing against random opponents online. Everyone knows who he is, yet you don't see him wringing his hands out of fear that someone will use an engine against him.

(For some good fun, check out the YouTube video of him Berserking his way through everyone, from 1500s to 2500s, on that other site.)

Of course, if Lyud wants to avoid playing, that's his choice to make, and no amount of debating about it will change that fact. I just see it as a wasted opportunity not to, is all.

Christopher_Parsons wrote:

Frankly, if I were Lyudmil, I would get my free CM account here. I would find a friend of two amongst the titled players and challenge them to the 1 or 2 minute bullet games, like he plays against Stockfish. In my honest opinion, it is so difficult to cheat at one minute bullet, even with a bot, considering your percentage of engine matches would be through the roof. I tested his and he comes out at about the GM level. I would expect that to come down a bit in live for a few reasons. One is that his opponents wouldn't be playing as many engine moves and therefore his replies wouldn't likely be as memorized. He would have to think a bit. This should bring his performance down some. Also, the pressure of playing live and all of the consequences of his loses may weigh on his mind. His detractors surely wouldn't let him forget it. This would likely affect his performance also. Certainly though, I would think he could get quite a respectible rating on Chess.com in no time. 

Might as well "claim" a PhD in chess then.

Also, janitorial work at the embassy does not make a person a diplomat

When I see how powerful 1...c5 is for black against 1. e4, it starts to make sense for me. It undermines black's strongest pawn in the center, ahead of time. Considering it gives you the chance to play different lines of the English or transpose into the Queen's gambit, I personally consider it be damn powerful against humans, regardless of what engines are saying. 

I would very much request the feedback of the Chess.com community.

Looking at above preview on Amazon, what do you think of the way the puzzles are presented?

A person suggested to me he would like to have the solution and diagrams separate, so he might figure out the solution himself and I wonder how this could be done without much detriment to the layout?

Views/layouts are different for PC, tablet, Kindle reader and phone, so adjusting it on a PC will not solve the possible issues with the other devices.

I would hate putting a key to the exercises, as this is hard even for the reader to turn pages all the time and very few people do it.

Some put 2 diagrams next to each other, one just the board and pieces, the second one plus the solution, do you think this way would be better?

On the other hand, many don't do it, for example 'Tactics Time', and it looks a bit unplesant to me really.

Another suggestion is to leave some space, couple of free lines or so, between the diagram and solution, what do you think of that?

But the, there are others who would use the book just to learn how the puzzles go and would like the text immediately following the diagrams.

So, I really don't know what to do.

I would be very grateful, if people suggest how they perceive and prefer it.

Renato, Chris, others?

Here my first best-selling book, of which I still have not sold a single copy.

I would very much request the feedback of the Chess.com community.

Looking at above preview on Amazon, what do you think of the way the puzzles are presented?

Forward Chess has a "quiz" format that allows you to hide the solutions below the diagrams if you wish.

I think Yusupov's training series with Quality Chess has a good format with structured lessons ending with 12 diagrams (6 diagrams to a page) as problems and solutions following the problems with a scoring system.

In the Kindle format, you could put a page in between the diagrams and solutions with directions and/or a scoring guide.