TalkChess.com

"Bust" is a bit of an extreme word in this case. I have been communicating with him, and I found forced draws for white in his proposed line (and he agreed with my analysis). Nevertheless, I think he correctly claims that in his lines, black is the one pressing and white is (successfully, with good ...

Neat idea - I'll try to play a few games with friends who like variants. What happens if two conflicting conditions occur on the same move? For example, here, after black plays 1... Rc6, white plays 2. Nxc6, resulting in both stalemate and insufficient material. k1r5/8/1K6/4N3/8/8/8/8 b - - 0 1 Rep...

Neat idea - I'll try to play a few games with friends who like variants. What happens if two conflicting conditions occur on the same move? For example, here, after black plays 1... Rc6, white plays 2. Nxc6, resulting in both stalemate and insufficient material. k1r5/8/1K6/4N3/8/8/8/8 b - - 0 1 Repe...

"Weak pawns" is a concept I do not have, so yeah, I probably lost this game because of inferior human chess knowledge. Pawn that cannot be protected by another pawn. It's worse if that pawn can't move. Here white has two weak pawns on d4 and f4 and loses. 8/8/4p3/B2pPp2/3P1P2/3K4/8/2k3b1 b - - 0 1 ...

I have looked at this some more, and I don't see the loss until you played 53 ...gxf4. That is the only point where I am certain that you are lost. But it's clearly possible that my hardware and software is simply not adequate for this game. I think very few people would have access to computer tha...

The lesson for me here was about endgames with same-colored bishops being won for one side (no matter what engines say) Perhaps you have already realized this, but this non-drawish tendency is specifically about same-color bishop endgames with weak pawns (usually one weak pawn isn't enough) unable ...

A fun engine idea: Start out playing like full-strength Stockfish (in order to win some material) and then use near stalemate positions and self-smothering to force the opponent to checkmate it.

My impressions and with using some backward analysis, you had totally equalize with move 28. Bd6 - always a good time to offer draw here ;>) The first weakness was 29 ...b5 which allowed Qa5, the next series of moves are pretty much straight foward, but 36.. Ra1 was not the best move I'm afraid. Af...

You were lost after 38. .... Bxb4. If your opponent would have played 39.Kd1! the game was effectively over. I agree that Kd1 is a better move. However, what actually changes after Kf2? I have not looked at this in depth, only for a few minutes. In either case, white is marching the king to the que...

A similar (but much simpler!) position occurred a few days ago in the US Junior championship game Li-Cervantes, and even in this simplified position, it takes SF a while to realize that black is winning. 8/4b1k1/4p3/3pPp2/3P1P2/4B1K1/8/8 w - - 0 51 (the conclusion to the game can be seen here: https...