Lichess game from 2017 03 22 - Pawn Race in the rook endgame

Online game played on my phone; for analysis - see https://lichess.org/eODwgzVonWbL

Online Chess Servers – How to Download your Own Games

Different online servers provide ability to download your games, which is useful if you want to analyse them yourself, add a game to your opening database, etc.

Lichess gives you a link like this:

From what I recall, PlayChess automatically stores all your games locally, which is convenient, unless you use several machines, I am not sure  how it handles this case.

ICC, at least the Blitzin interface, makes you download each game one by one, which is ridiculous, time consuming, and must be done very frequently, as this is only possible for the last 20 games you played.

Is there a better way to get your games on ICC, or on other servers? I’d like to hear if you have experience with other systems.

Playing Chess online – Game Pools with Increments?

I am continuing to play 15 + minute games online in my quest to play 100 “Standard” games online this year, and I prefer games with small increment (15 +2) to avoid being flagged in ridiculously trivial positions, and also to emulate what it’s like to play in real tournaments, which also use increments. I mostly play on ICC, but I am occasionally struggling to find a game with my preferred time controls.

ICC has game pools with 3, 5 and 15 minutes per game, where it’s often easier to quickly find an opponent.

But there is no 15+2 pool or anything similar, which I think is a shame.

I’d be curious to hear if there is a playing site that has such a feature.

UPDATE: as of July 30th, 2015, it seems that ICC heard this request from many other users as well, and added 25 + 10 and 10 + 5 pools, which roughly is what I was looking for! Here is their newsletter.

Best Place Online for Playing Rated 15 minute Chess games at the expert/master level?

Question for the readers - I am in the low 2200 in my national, FIDE, and ICC standard ratings, and I want to get a few 15 minute games a week on ICC to meet some of my yearly goals.  However, lately am finding I have to wait for a long time to get a game against opponent rated above 2000 on ICC. Otherwise the quality of games tends to be lower than what I see in the local chess tournaments, so this is a less than optimal situation. Is there a better option in terms of other playing sites?

In addition to ICC, I am open to looking at ChessPlanet, Lichess, PlayChess, newly launched Fide playing zone, etc, but want to hear if any of the readers have better experiences with getting slower games?

History of Chess on The Internet

Just for fun, I decided to compile the record of how I experienced Internet chess, your mileage will of course vary!

1998 – free internet chess club (FICS)allows to play games on the internet any time
1999 – chess databases like on sites TWIC get updated on a regular basis and people can get access to them on a regular basis
2000 – major tournaments are broadcast on ICC with thousands of people following and commenting on games
2000 – chess portals like Kasparov Chess begin to publish regular articles
2001 – online 4 and 5 piece Endgame TableBases such as Nalimov are accessible
2001 – online chess lessons become as popular as the ones in person
2004 – instructional chess videos begin to get published by companies like ChessBase on a large scale
2005 – even non-major tournaments like Canadian Open get broadcast over the internet via DGT
2006 – YouTube allows regular chess amateurs like myself to share their analysis with others
2009 – commentators like Sergei Shipov switch to video format for sharing their analysis
2010 – playing online chess on a mobile device such as IPhone becomes a viable option
2010 – live chess ratings get updated on the nearly daily basis
2011 – websites like whychess.org broadcast major chess events with live engine analysis
2011 – Live, multi hour HD full game broadcasts of events like World Cup are streamed live with up to date commentary
2011 – Fritz 13 is released, allowing users to upload and share chess analysis via their online database
2012 – What is coming ahead??

Tactical Themes in Sicilian Defence

DDT3000 – perikitosax, ICC, 2009, 15 minutes per game

Black to Move. Can Black take on ‘e4’ with the pawn?

I posted several days ago a great game by Tiviakov, where the rook sacrifice on the ‘f’ file was the winning idea after White played ‘f4-f5’ in Sicilian Scheveningen. I then remembered having played something similar myself on ICC not that long ago. Well, such games do stay in the chess player’s memory and warm his heart at night, so that’s indeed what has happened, and I was easily able to find that game.

Black made a similar mistake in my game, underestimated White’s initiative and captured with 23…fxe4?? (23…Nc2!? 24. Rxc2 Qc4! was correct). After 24. Rxf7! he had to resign on the next move.

White won after 24… Kxf7 25. Qxh7 1-0 with mate to follow.

Black really has to watch out for this theme in this line of the Sicilian, if it works, it is usually quite deadly!

Fritz 13 Let’s Check Feature

Fritz 13 is adding a new feature that is called “Let’s check”. The feature allows to share engine analysis with other users and upload it to the “cloud”. Such analysis would be easy to look at in one of the Fritz panels:

The benefits of this kind of feature seem very exciting:

• it will allow fast access to all previously made engine analysis
• reduce the need to redundantly run engine on positions that someone else has analysed
• encourage sharing between chess players on an unprecedented scale
• it actually has a UI that is easy to understand. Convekta’s IDea still seems very complicated to me when I read explanations of how it works

The Video tutorials are brief and to the point:

But the scary aspects of the feature seem a lot more obvious:

• spying on each other – sounds like the option is on by default!
• in perspective, this takes us much closer to chess being completely solved
• ChessBase may control data contributed by many chess players, many engines and so on. While games are now being shared in databases produced by more than one vendor, ChessBase having billions of extra positions stored in their private databases will give them a monopoly over most of chess data, data contributed by their own users, who would now have to pay yearly membership fees to access that data.
• focus is on engine analysis, although I think this kind of system should have put emphasis on people’s verbal commentaries (Comments Network feature does seem to go in that direction though, although why not instead use existing GM comments that are spread out through their MegaBase already?)

Yes, this is just a tool to help players with what they do – use best engines to solve mysteries of various chess positions. Some would argue that this is inevitable anyway, but I find this tool more disturbing than anything else.

The biggest question I have though – for how long are they going to have enough storage space to maintain trillions of possible chess positions??

How to learn the most from your online blitz games

1. play with slower time controls. You won’t learn much from 1 minute games, and on ICC it does not take too long to find an opponent for a decent 15 minute game
2. focus, focus, focus, don’t get distracted on other windows open on your computer while opponent is thinking (or even worse – during your move!). I already wrote a whole other post about that.
3. don’t play online chess when you are tired. That kind of makes sense, since it’s hard to focus when you’re tired.
4. make sure all your games are automatically stored into a pgn file
5. review each game soon after it’s played
6. don’t feed it immediately to an engine, analyse by yourself for a bit
7. check the opening against a Reference DB to see where you and your opponent deviated from previously played games
8. if your opponent played something you completely did not expect - update your opening repertoire afterwards
9. don’t play too many games in a row
10. don’t take online chess too seriously, remember that over the board tournaments is a completely different game from online blitz

To the last point, when I played in my first British Columbia Junior championship a few years ago, the highest rated player had been a bit rusty. He had not played tournament chess for about a year, and he did not do so well (finishing outside of the top 3 from what I could recall) in our little competition. After the tournament he told me with a smile that he had played a lot of 1 minute games right before the tournament. He was doing really well in those, and assumed he was in excellent shape for the event. Switching time controls is never easy, I am sure we have all discovered that!

Spoiled Sacrifice in a Blitz Game

DDT3000 – pirulo, 2010, ICC, 3 minutes per game

 White to move 

This is a typical IQP position, with one pair of minor pieces gone off the board, but White (myself) still having enough resources for the attack. Books have been written about this structure, Winning Pawn Structures by Baburin being my favourite one. Black has pressure on b2, and White does not want to play b2-b4 as that would weaken the c3 square. Running down to the last minute on the clock, I realized that my main idea is to exploit the pressure on the a2-g8 diagonal, and that this was as good moment as it would ever be. So …

23. Bxf6 Bxf6 24. Nxe6! A typical idea, all of White’s pieces have lined up for this sacrifice, so if it does not work now, it is not likely to work later either. I already once blogged about a similar sacrifice on e6, where the placement of the White pieces was quite alike.

Black to move. Black’s rook on f8 and knight on d5 are hanging, so he has to accept the ‘gift’.

24 ... fxe6 25. Rxe6 Qd8?!

White to move.

Here I messed up my little ‘creation’, and according to my previous idea (from 5 seconds ago), I continued to build up the pressure on the a2-g8 diagonal with 26. Qf3? That allowed Black to escape and the game later ended in a draw. However, there was a much better and simpler idea, that would have left White up two pawns, with a winning position. What was it? Hint – White uses the fact that Qh3 may later attack Rc8.

PS. I find that these IQP structures are really hard to hold for Black without allowing White his moment glory with a d4-d5 breakthrough or piece sacrifice around the weakened kingside structure like in this example. It is quite rare to see a game (at least in my experience) where a favourable opportunity would never present itself and Black would just exploit the weakness of the d4 pawn.

Opening disaster video

If you ever studied Riga variation of the Open variation of the Spanish opening (quite a mouthful!), you’d have known this position and know the right move immediately. My brain, however malfunctioned, and I played the wrong king move.

White to move. Black just played Bxh2+, and White has to respond correctly to fight for the advantage.

Watch the video if you want to see the gory details:

Unexpected queen sacrifice

I overlooked the following neat idea while playing a blitz game today:

White to move
In this typical Spanish structure, I erred with 27. Rxa8 Rxa8 28. Qf7 which brought me nothing after Qd8. Disappointed, I lost the game. Instead I had the brilliant queen sac:
27. Qf7!!

  White threatens Qg8 with mate, and otherwise Black has to give up two rooks for the queen:
27… Rxf7 28. Nxf7+ Kg8 29. Nh6+ (the point) Kf8 30. Rxa8+ Ne8 31. Rea1 White is much better:
Bishop will be transferred to g4, White controls the only open file and Black’s kingside pawn structure is damaged. It won’t be easy…

Internet Blitz Chess – it’s all about concentration

A few years ago I got a great deal for a set of wireless mouse and keyboard (less than $40 CAD in total). And it’s been serving me great because cables annoy me (there is already too many of them around my desk). The only times the wireless mouse bothered me was when replacing batteries, and when playing blitz games: the control over the cursor is just not as tight as with a regular mouse. Recently I played a few games with a different mouse and noticed that my blitz EXPERIENCE is dramatically better. I feel a lot more confident and in the last game – I managed to outplay an opponent from a completely hopeless position and win on time. That got me thinking. With a bad mouse, I surely play moves  a bit slower, but I rarely drop a queen. A better mouse may gain me 10-20 seconds per game, but is that really what makes such a difference? Sometimes it does, but I realized that the level of concentration I am able to achieve – is what really loses or wins 3 minute online games. I have not read Hikaru Nakamura and Bruce Harper’s recent book Bullet Chess: One Minute To Mate, but I am sure it talks about this. This also is true for regular games. Garry Kasparov in his foreword to Secrets of Chess Training by Dvoretsky, mentioned that ability to concentrate is one of the most important factors for success in chess.

When I win blitz games online
- The pieces and the board are convenient to see, the user interface is quick and responsive (I don’t need to think about it)
- The mouse is not there, the moves come from my brain, not from my fingers
- There is nobody talking to me while I am playing. TV is turned off

When I lose blitz games online
- I am tired before the game even begins
- I need to keep resizing the board to get it to be convenient
- I keep banging the mouse against whatever surface it’s on, because the surface is crap, and every move costs me mental energy that’s being wasted on getting the mouse to do what I want (move that darn pawn one square forward, not two, will you?)
- Someone starts talking to me to right when me and my opponent are down to the last 30 seconds

Cordless Mouse? Thanks, but no thanks!

Missed chance to beat a grandmaster

I faced a grandmaster in a 15 minute game on ICC yesterday, probably for the first time after playing there on and off for about 10 years. After making a blunder in the middlegame, I was forced to give up a piece for only a pawn. However, in the endgame, my opponent played a couple of inaccurate moves, and suddenly my pawns were rolling:

Mr-Pattaya – DDT3000

  White to move. 1R6/1P4k1/8/5p2/1r4p1/3P3p/4KN2/8 w - - 0 50
Apparently Black’s pawns are too strong, and White’s are not going anywhere yet, so White decided to bail out and sacrifice both b7 pawn and the knight: 50. Rc8 Rxb7 51. Rc1 Kf6 52. Nxh3 gxh3 53. Kf3

Black to move. 8/1r6/5k2/5p2/8/3P1K1p/8/2R5 b - - 0 53
The rook endgame is likely winning for Black, but we were down to about 1 minute SD, with 1 second increments, so as usual, a comedy of errors ensued. A few moves later, however, I got my chance for glory, after White played 66. d6??

Black to move. 8/7r/3P1R2/8/8/4k2p/5p1K/8 b - - 0 66
66… Rh6!! would have won the game, as after 67. Rf8 Rxd6 I should be able to get to the Lucena position. Allowing me to queen the ‘f’ pawn after 67. Rxh6 f1Q should not save White either.
Instead I played 66… Ke2?? and White gave me a perpetual check with the rook, resulting in a DRAW. Perhaps – a fair result?

Bishop Sacrifice in Panov Attack (Caro-Kann)

One of the main points of playing blitz on the internet is to go over finished games, and draw certain conclusions from them. I learned a fair bit from the game I played online today – something that can be useful in tournament games I play later, because the pawn structure and combination ideas are typical for the opening that I play.
This position occurred in this game
White to move
Black just played 11… Nde7, instead of the more standard 11… Nce7. I continued with 12. Be3 and got a position with isolated Queen’s Pawn (IQP) that I like, but putting the bishop on e3 did feel a bit passive.
After the game, I looked up this position in Karpov and Podgaets’ book on the Panov attack since the move Black played took me a bit by surprise. Turns out White has a nice way to exploit the fact that Black reduced his control over g5 square, and play 12.Bg5!? The key point is that if 12…Bxg5, then White can strike with a typical sacrifice on h7 with 13. Bxh7+!?:
White does not win on a spot, but the book shows that his position is better. This is the kind of guidance I would expect from an opening book, so I recommend it for its thoroughness! I took a longer way around, but in the end did create pressure against Black king and won (who said that analysing blitz games is a waste of time?!)
Replay the game in the viewer:

Attacking the king – rooks vs. bishops

I played a rare 15 minute game online today, and managed to get to an interesting position where bishops and rooks were tangled up in a curious way.

DDT3000 – Fundie, ICC, August 1, 2009

White to move

White is better because he controls the ‘e’ file, but here I was not sure what to do, but accidentally played the best move:
21.Ne4 This exchanges the main defender of Black’s king. Nxe4 22. Bxe4 Bg7 23. h5! And here Black started to collapse in time trouble f5 24. hxg6+

(Apparently also very good was 24. Bxf5! Bxf5 25. Re7
White’s attack is very strong: Qb6 26.
Bxh6! Rhg8 27. hxg6+ Bxg6 28. Bxg7 Rxg7 29. Rxg7+ Kxg7 30. Re7+ Kf6 31. Re6+
Kg7 32. Qg5 +-)

24... Kxg6 25. Bf3 Rf8 26. Re7 Bd7 27. R1e6+ Bf6

White to move
I thought this position was kind of curious – both bishops are attacking my rooks, but they are both pinned! Since none of my rooks can be captured – I can simply continue attack against the king.

28. Qe2! (28.Bh5+ was apparently mating immediately Kxh5 29. Rg7 Bxg7 30. Qe2#) 28... Qd8 29. Bh5#  1-0

Online chess – clearing diagonal for a bishop

Here is a quick snapshot from one of the games I played today:

DDT3000 - deadly-viper, ICC, 3 0, 2009

1. e4 b5 2. d4 a6 3. Bd3 Bb7 4. Nf3 d6 5. O-O Nd7 6. a4 c6 7. Re1 b4 8. c4 a5
9. Nbd2 g6 10. b3 e6 11. Bb2 Bg7 12. Qc2 Ne7 13. Nf1 O-O 14. Ng3 h6 15. Rad1
Rc8 16. h4 h5 17. Ng5 Nf6 18. Qe2 Qc7 19. Bb1 e5 20. dxe5 dxe5

 White to move

21. c5! It may seem that the pawn could become weak on c5, but it is much more important to hit the weak spot on f7. Rfd8 22.Bd3 Rd7 23. Bc4 Rcd8 24. Bxf7+

Kh8 25. Be6 Rxd1 26. Rxd1 Bc8 27. Nf7+ Kh7 28.Nxd8 Bxe6 29. Nxe6 Qb8 30. Nxg7 Kxg7 31. Qc4 Neg8 32. Qe6 Qb7 33. Bxe5 Qa6 34.Rd7+ Kh6 35. Bxf6 Black resigns 1-0

About a year ago in a slow game I missed a similar, but less obvious opportunity:

Jiganchine – Trotchanovich, 2008:

White to move

32. a5! was the best way to continue the attack, since when the black king would try to escape from the kingside – Ba4 would come with decisive effect. I had found this example fairly interesting and even made a youtube video about it.

This also reminded me of an episode from one of my other games that was played even a longer time ago:
Seid – Jiganchine, 2001, BC Closed 2001

Black to move

32… c4! Now Black's pieces can be activated through the c5 square. 33. Bg2 Qc7 34. Ne4
Nd7 35. Bd4 Nc5 36. Bxc5 Bxc5 37. Nxc5 Qxc5 38. Bf1 Bd3 39. Bxd3 Rxd3
This position is an easy technical win for Black. A passed pawn, active pieces and an exposed White king make it almost impossible not to win this endgame.40. Ke2 Rd4 41. Qc3 Qd5 42. Rf3 Rd1 43. Qc2 Rh1 44. Rf2 Qd4 45. Kf3 Rd1 46. Re2
Rd3+ 47. Kg2 c3 48. Kf1 Rd1+ 49. Kg2 Rd2 After the exchanges on d2 the king is too far to stop the pawn 0-1

Online tactics: double piece sacrifice

White to move. DDT3000-KMehmedov, 3 minutes per game

I already sacrificed a piece for two pawns, and now need to keep the attack going. I came up with a second sacrifice, and the engine confirms that this is the best move:

17. Bh6! I noticed that I get to win the knight on d7, and just could not resist playing this.

The game continued:

17. … Bf6 (17... Kxh6 18. Qg6#) 18.Nxd7 Kxh6 19. Nxf6 (19. g4 !! +-) 19... gxf6 20. Qxb7
Qd6 21. Qf7 Re4 22. Rac1 Rae8 23. Rxe4 Rxe4 24. g3 Re7 25. Qf8+ Kg6 26. Qg8+
Rg7 27. Qe8+ Kh7 28. Qh5+ {Black resigns} 1-0

Online tactics: a typical sacrifice I missed

DDT3000-Chanchar, 2009, White to move

White won the exchange in a typical IQP/hanging pawns structure, but Black has broken through on the queenside by just capturing on c3.

I played 21. Nxf7 and later failed to win the game. But another typical sacrifice (which I did not have time to calculate) was much stronger.

21. Bxe6!! was winning. If black takes on e6, he loses the f6 knight and is under attack. If Black takes on h3, White takes on f7 with check, and then recaptures the queen, remaining up an exchange and a pawn. There was not all that much to calculate, but I missed this chance in my 3 0 ICC game.

Online tactics: Find Sacrifices feature in Chessbase Light

Chessbase Light has an ability to find simple sacrifices in an entire database of games. Since I keep track of all my online blitz games in one database, that’s a very handy feature. In the search dialog box, go to the “Manoeuvres” tab, and make sure that “Sacrifice” box is checked.

Leave crawling through all your games for a while, and out of every 5 positions it finds, 1 is usually a pretty decent tactical shot. Yet another example of extra options computers offer for learning about the game.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that in the same 2+1 bullet game 8 years ago, I played two decent sacrifices. Under the pressure of having to make a move every couple of seconds – a player can intuitively come up with quick shots and just trust himself that they do actually work.

moon-DDT3000, 2001. Black to move

14… Nc5!

The knight goes to e4 or b3, it cannot be taken as then Bc5 would win the queen.

moon-DDT3000, 2001. Black to move

A few moves later in the same game - White’s pieces are quite disorganized.

22… Rxf3! followed by Nxd4 and Bc5 was a good way to wrap up the game.

Online tactics: passed pawn

White to move.

I was playing Black, and in this position White was easily winning with Rc3! However, my opponent did not sense the danger, and went pawn grabbing:

42. Kg6 ??

White assumed there is plenty of time to stop the 'e' pawn with Rc2. That did not go so well after 42... Bb4 43. Rc2 Bd2!! 0-1

There is no defence against e3-e2.

Suddenly White has to give up the rook for the pawn, with Rc4 and Re4, but after that Black wins easily.