How do you develop strategy and aggression?

[gerold]

Just download latest version of Crafty and play 50 game a day.
Throw them books away.

Best of luck,

Gerold.

[stwils]

Ok, if you are into correspondence chess competition, we are going to make you champion.

1. go to, and download the free engine from:

http://www.rybkachess.com/free/Rybka22n2.zip

(I hope you are computer fit in a way that you know how to handle zip files and the files which come up from decompression. Put these files in a directory of your choice, and remember where you have put them.)

2. Now, you have an UCI engine. In your Fritz, go to "Engine/Create UCI Engine..." (blah blah blah) and do that for Rybka 2.2n2.

After doing this, defeat your correspondence chess opponent by using Rybka 2.2n2 for your analyses. Congratulations!

How do you put an ongoing game into Rybka? (I have Rybka 2.2 in Arena and in Winboard. I only use it for playing my own games. Also I have Shredder Classic and Fritz 10.) I am not sure how to use it for analysis.

I haven't the faintest idea how to insert an ongoing online game into the computer. Would that be fair if I could do that? Are others doing that who are playing against me?

Tell me how to do this.

But what I really need to learn to do is think! Visualize. And think. So far I'm not the greatest chess thinker or visualizer!

S.

[TonyJH]

How do you put an ongoing game into Rybka? (I have Rybka 2.2 in Arena and in Winboard. I only use it for playing my own games. Also I have Shredder Classic and Fritz 10.) I am not sure how to use it for analysis.

I haven't the faintest idea how to insert an ongoing online game into the computer. Would that be fair if I could do that? Are others doing that who are playing against me?

S.

This would be cheating unless the correspondence league / server you're playing in allows computer assistance. You should probably check their rules before doing this.

[stwils]

Tony, I wondered about the fairness of doing something like what he suggested and I said so.

It does NOT seem fair, and besides, I would only be using the computer as a crutch (even if I knew how), and really I would end up cheating myself by not relying on myself.

I would not want to be unfair to any opponent even if they were using a computer to help themselves out. I have no reason to believe that anyone is doing something like that in the games I am playing.

But I would like to learn to use Rubka to analyze the game when it is over and see what awful (or wonderful ) things I have done during the game.

So far I only know how to use Rubka in my Winboard and Arena to play against.

S.

[Mike S.]

In correspondence(*) chess, using computers is not unfair. It is normal. In fact, if you don't analyse with a chess program, you will not have a chance unless your opponents are very naive beginners.

I am aware that there are correspondence chess sites (or at least one), and maybe even corr. federations which try to forbid the use of chess software, or discuss doing so, but that is not realistic. - AFAIK, the International Correspondence Chess Federation ICCF allows any analysis help including chess software, but I don't know if they allowed it explicitly.

(Of course, you don't have to analyse with chess software if you only want to play some "fun" games for learning etc., but I'd think that would be a big time effort for small effect.)

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_chess

*) In contrast, using chess software in "realtime" online games which are intended to be played by humans (only), is cheating. But these are usually blitz games on servers, or up to normal over-the-board tournament time, but that's not correspondence chess.

Also, there are forms of server games where computer analysis is included by definition ("Centaur"- or "Advanced Chess" games), and pure engine vs. engine games too.


If your corr. server provides the game notation in PGN, you can either:

Copy it (like text), and paste it into your chess program. There you can analyse it, save it etc. Or if that doesn't work (although it should), you can also save the PGN into a file (like ASCII text) but with file name extension .pgn, and open this file with your chess program. You can put several games into one single PGN file.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pgn

The third alternative would be to enter all moves which have been made so far, manually. You need to find the mode where the engine doesn't reply automatically and you can just enter the moves for both sides. It's "somewhere" in the menus of the interfaces, each. Then, you can save them, and as your corr. games continue you can always load them, enter the new move(s), analyse etc., and replace the saved games with the updated games each.

I would do all that in Fritz because it is very comfortable and can display the notation with variations and sub-variations which you would probably create during analysis. You can use Rybka 2.2n2 in Fritz 10 too, as explained. The F1 help of the programs each, contain detail information about the related functions.

[Ovyron]

I have Shredder Classic

Ok! That's a good starting point, do you have Rybka installed on it? If not, do this:

Click on Extras > Engines > Install Engines.

Set Engine Type to UCI Engine and click OK.

Click on the [...] button.

Navigate to where you have the exe located, select it, click OK on the next dialogs.

Ok, you've got your engine installed! Now, click the rectangle that has the engine name over your evaluation window, select the engine you've installed and click Load. Now you have loaded the engine.

After that you have to enter the game into the GUI, by clicking Mode > Enter Moves, and moving the pieces manually on the board, or if you have the moves written down, copy them and then click Commands > Paste.

Now you're ready to start, navigate your game by clicking on the arrows below the board, and when you're in the position you're interested in, click the Magnifying glass icon on the toolbar and the engine will show what it thinks about the position. Let it run for a minute or two.

The important thing is the evaluation of the position from the engine, shown on the second square as a number like 0.00, if it has a +0.00 number and it's green, it means white is winning, and if it's like a -0.00 number on red color, black is winning.

You can check if the move played on the game is the same that the engine is suggesting or it's different, then, make the move that was played in the game. If you have a sudden change of score then probably a side made a suboptimal move and you can see it on the evaluation.

Basically scores of 1.00 means that one side is winning by a pawn, while a score of 3.00 means that side is winning by a piece, etc.

I suggest getting used to this before trying something more advanced, Shredder Classic is a great GUI for beginners