Lichess is the best chess site

[FGD135]

[Slida23]

Black’s b5 pawn is unprotected. It must be white’s turn here. So Nxb5. If black captures the bishop, then recapturing with the “a” pawn will open up an attack on the a7 pawn from the rook, which is already being attacked by the knight, so black needs to react to this(a6 is probably best as it attacks the knight and saves the pawn). If black chooses not to capture, then the bishop can be potentially saved with Ba4, which also protects the knight. If it is black’s turn here, then black should protect b5 with a6 because the bishop is trapped and there’s no need to capture it right away. Black is underdeveloped but can move most of his pieces to multiple squares in this position, and white needs to untangle to mount any sort of offensive, so I think I’d take black here(if it’s black’s turn).

While there are an amazing amount of available resources to learn about chess, virtually none of them include information about how to deal with unorthodox strategies, so this person may do just fine against someone playing “normally”, but is not skilled enough to deal with this. A particularly bad sport though. Probably just a kid.

[redesigned]

i typically don’t mind unconventional games. they are either some of the most interesting or over quickly, and are typically more fun than textbook snoozers.

i always appreciate people taking a different approach to a problem, wakes me up, otherwise you might as well be playing a book or computer, although some of the new AI have started playing go and chess quite differently than humans have been playing and it is going to be interesting how these insights trickle out to human strategy and play.

AlphaZero: Shedding new light on the grand games of chess, shogi and Go

[Slida23]

I wish I was at a deep enough level to experience the amazement that the elite players do at Alpha’s exploits, I can understand it, but they are genuinely baffled and delighted by it’s choices. I like interesting games too, and if someone does something weird I can’t figure out, I’ll keep playing them, if possible, until I do. There is a unique frustration if you fall to an opponent who is doing unsound things, but it just means you have more to learn.

There is a quote from Magnus Carlsen I like, it’s not about Alpha Zero, but it’s about playing chess engines and it’s something like this: “It’s like playing an idiot that doesn’t understand chess, but you always lose.”