Disclaimer: I have played 7 games of chess in my life. I would like to improve, though. Anyway, last game had to be stopped in the middle, and as we couldn’t leave the board out (crowded apartment, cat, y’know…) we snapped a picture and finished it later. I (white) was in a (for me, anyway) frustrating and annoying position. When the game resumed I couldn’t figure out what to do with it, and eventually lost.
Would someone look at the picture and give your thoughts? White’s move.
warning- big jpg, but okay if your browser scales it. Also, upside-down (black is on the bottom).
Is there a standard way of describing a board position like this? Is it just done by giving the record of the moves? I don’t have that, so picture it is.
Yes, there’s Forsyth Notation. Looking at the board from White’s point of view, you work left-to-right, top-to-bottom (so Black’s home row – where his pieces start – is described first, then his pawn row, and so on all the way down to White’s home row). Describe each row by giving the initial letters of each piece, white in CAPS and black in lower case, but using “N” for kNight as we are here to distinguish it from King. Empty squares are written as the number of consecutive empty squares. Put a colon at the end of each rank, except that consecutive empty ranks can be written as a single number (16 = two complete empty ranks, and so on). In this notation the initial position on the board would be expressed as:
Seems to be a slow day here, Dragoness, so here’s my take on it:
How it happened you know better than I, but White appears to be a little matter of a Rook for two pawns ahead (Black has eight pawns, the Queen, a Rook, two Bishops and a Knight; White has six pawns, the Queen, two Rooks, a Bishop and two Knights. Bishop and Knight are reasonably equivalent in value). Also, one of Black’s Bishops and one of his Rooks are out of play at the moment.
Long term, White must win. By seeking positions in which you force Black to give up piece for piece, eventually you reach a position with King, Rook and pawns against King and slightly more pawns. In a position like that the King and Rook quickly dispose of any left-over pawns and you can queen one of your own. (You don’t need to if you’re familiar with how to mate a defenceless King with King and Rook, but I’m assuming you haven’t learnt the technique in your seven games to date; I certainly didn’t.)
Short term, I’d take his Knight with mine, getting rid of one of his few active pieces, and get the rest of my pieces deployed as quickly as possible. The two Black pawns over on the edge of the board, one in front of the other (“doubled pawns”) are weak as they cannot protect each other, and his King is much more exposed than yours. All this should add up to, at least, the opportunity to force the exchanges I’ve been talking about, and a comfortable win for White.
Wow, glee, that’s really very impressive (I’ll bet you get that a lot).
This probably sounds like an odd question, but to what do you attribute your success? I mean, is it just (“just.” Hah!) a great deal of practice and study, or do you think you have some kind of natural talent? Brain wired a bit more logically, always had a knack for seeing patterns, or whathaveyou? I ask only because I’ve always been interested in the way people who are very good at various things like math and logic puzzles answer that.
Thanks, Malacandra, for the info and the analysis. You asked what actually happened, and I pulled out my board to see if I could recreate the game, up to the picture. It was only three days ago, after all! But my memory has just not been trained to work like that. Glee keeps absolutely astounding me with his ability to pull out “Well, I saw a game played from this position once that went…” in all three current chess threads. He must keep some kind of database :dubious: .
As for after the picture, it was something like:
Qb5 Nxb5 (I quite simply did not see this)
Nxb5 e5
Nd2 Qb4
Right here c3 or Nc4 all would have prevented it. Instead I moved my bishop- either e2 or c4, and Qb2 was checkmate. In short, er, a learning experience. I was drop dead tired for the second half (I’m just going to keep insisting that, to preserve my dignity).
And I want to say that all three active chess threads are great fun to watch. Thanks for playing in public, where we can all be entertained!
Oops. Leaving your Queen en prise (chess term meaning “where it can be taken”) is a good way to lose quickly.
The secret of glee’s success is probably, like most things in this life, some natural aptitude backed by a f’ of a lot of hard work. I’ve not the patience for it, despite the liking and aptitude for chess trivia, which is why I am now and forever will remain a mediocre club player. On the other hand, I’m a better singer than most chess players (glee, shut up about Smyslov! ). Life has its compensations.
Though if glee can play D&D and get paid for it, I hate the s.o.b. even more
Yahoo chess is just a basic java online chess game. I really like it becuase after the game there is a little slider that you can click back to any point in the game. You also can have it e-mail you the game in e2-e4 type notation. Its at www.games.yahoo.com/ch . Its a good aplet with timers if you play that way and its pretty easy to get a game going. The only problem is that rumor has it once you get up in the rankings a lot of the people are using a cpu chess game as a kind of cheat.
You will need to sign up and make an ID if you don’t already have one. Your id is also an e-mail address for "id"@yahoo.com and I think you get some web space. If you already have a yahoo mail account you should be able to just log in using that. I will probably be on for at least the next 6-7 hours (damn homework!) so if you want to pick a room we can meet up in there.
Yes, but you’ll be amazed at how strong the salt is after he’s moved it… and how quickly and irresistibly the pepper, mustard and vinegar fall into line.
)
as “: p” :smack: :wally
). Life has its compensations. 