Chess forum by Grandmasters

Question on French 3.Nc3

Hi

I recently had a game as black where I had problems with the variation

1.e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 h6 5. Bxf6 Qxf6 6. ed Bb4 7. Bb5+ Bd7 8.Bxd7+ Nxd7 9 dxe6

I don't understand what compensation I have for the pawn. This variation (the second most popular after 7. dxe6 at my level and the most popular at master level) is not mentioned in the blackmood course. 

Can someone please explain the ideas in this variation?

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How do you calculate?

How do you calculate?

My coach tells me to first create general considerations, then create candidate ideas and then candidate moves. But i get really confused and overwhelmed. Can someone explain how to calculate?

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Your coach advice is good, though you can break it down like this:

First, look for the ideas that you want to accomplish.

Second, find the most important of those ideas.

Third, find the moves that best help accomplish those ideas.

The 7Q method course, if you are a Chessmood member, will help a lot with the first two steps.

Chessmood will also be soon releasing a course on Calculation, so that topic will be explored in depth there!

Hope this helps!

1950 on lichess

First, you check if something is under attack or if something is forced.

Then, you look at the moves you like, or want to play to accomplish your goal. 

After that, you look if that piece is defending another piece.

lastly, you want to look at the order of your moves while you are calculating, to make sure you are right. 

Hopefully that helps😃

What rating are we talking about? If you're 1000, it's very different to 2200.

The calculation process is something that can't easily be answered here. There is the courses on evaluation and planning which are part of it, but much isn't useful to a 1000 player. For now I'll assume that sort of level.

Main elements for that level are:

What did my opponent just do and what's he threatening (if anything) - trying to answer why at this level doesn't help.

What are the checks in the position; analyse each.

What are the captures in the position; analyse each.

If neither checks are captures are fruitful, ask what can we threaten (loose pieces, early developed queen, etc) - tactic ninja will help here to find threating moves.

If nothing obvious if I'm in the opening, can I develop another piece, can I control the centre, can I get my king safe (opening principles course which is useful irrespective of rating, though only new to lower rated players).

If it's the middle game, can I improve . my worst piece, can I move forward, can I attack the king yet (more pieces around than defenders (mating matador helps with patterns here).

The rest you pick up as you go for now.

How do recovery from drop rating

Hi i just peak performance from 1880 last week but now my rating was dropped too fast .

I try calm down analysis after every game.

when i play some move i'm not confident i remember opponent break rule principle also i can't find idea to break opponent .

My rating was equal before i learn many course from chessmood TT

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Often after learning new things, your rating will drop down. Don’t worry about this. 

Let me tell you a little story. 😁

For a long time I was stuck on 1100. When I started learning on chessmood, my rating dropped from 1100 to 1000 chess.com rapid. I wanted to give up immediately, but I decided to stuck to my plan. And just 2 months later,  I reached 1650.

If you learn new things, you will make mistakes. And the nice thing is ,  these mistakes are opportunities to learn. So see this rating drop as a opportunity to analyze your games and fix your mistakes! 😃

Sometimes you are in a bad mood as well. GM Avetik has written some amazing blogs about how to handle this, and I would recommend you to read them if you have some time (especially the first one):

https://chessmood.com/blog/5-crucial-steps-to-stop-bad-results-in-chess

https://chessmood.com/blog/mistakes-are-not-failures

This is our motto in Chessmood because it does not matter how good you are, if you are not in the mood it's useless to play chess…
Also it is a way to enjoy life, not to make you feel bad! So stop tilting first at all!
Please read Noel's article https://nextlevelchess.blog/no-more-tilt/ and also Avetik article on the Golden Method https://chessmood.com/blog/golden-method-to-increase-rating-in-chess💪 , not only read the posts, make them yours! Apply them if you want to feel better and play better… 😊

Due to underrated kids my FIDE dropped to 1800 and is gradually recovering. I've beaten FMs in the past and am dangerous to 2100s. Rating means little.

Am I improving, how is my current form, is a far more useful to question.

Why no pgn and homework for alekhine def opening?

There's no starter pgn to download for the alekhine def course. can one be added?

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😀I think that Avetik wanted to add something more, but we will check this out. Thanks for your post!😀

pattern recognition in OTB

Yesterday, I played in OTB and it turned out, that I did not see a simple tactic. When I would face this tactic in training I would easily solve that without even thinking, but in OTB I stopped calculation too fast because I did not recognize the changes after an exchange. 

Does this sound familiar? How can I solve this issue?

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I can add the position if this will help to understand what I mean.

If I do too much chess on screen and neglect to play with pieces , it seem to affect me . I took the advice of Peter from discord and put some positions on a board occasionally and it helped me . 

Ku rt, we don't know your level, nothing about you. Age, rating, number of hours that you play, that you train… 
It is very difficult to tell you how can you solve this issue by telling us that you missed a simple tactic.
Everyone blunders, even Carlsen. 😅
Do you regularly (every day) solve tactics? Do you play OTB often? There are many things at work here…
In this exact question, you need to work more in calculation, and get used to not stop the variation so soon. This is the biggest mistake in calculation and GMs also fail in this. No need to worry about it, forgive yourself, learn the lesson, and move on. 
The next game, try to calculate a bit longer and check all the options carefully. This is the only solution to this issue. 💪

Psst! there is a tactic in this position! Now will you see it? The question is what were you thinking about instead? Being single-tracked into strategic ideas is a common way to miss tactics. Were there any clues (indicators of danger/resources) that suggested spending some time looking for the tactic was worth it? What about the thinking process: checks, captures, threats?

PGN file for Classical Games

Hello, I just have a quick question about the Classical Games course, 

On the 100 Classical Games course, I thought there was a PGN file where you could download the games onto ChessBase. Does anyone know what happened to this?

Thanks

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We reorganized the game collections lately.😅 We will check this out. Thanks for letting us know!😄

Daily lessons with a Grandmaster

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Thank you coach, for this series. It's wonderful and it takes just 1/2 hour to learn something important.

Wonderful series of instructional content!
Coach Avetik, it would be great if after a day or two you could somewhere provide the solutions to the daily tasks for us to think about at the end of each daily lesson

Great stuff. Short and sweet. And easy to do first thing in the morning or during lunch break.

Hi Avo,

congratulations on your crystal clear masterpiece in #1.

Just beautiful.

Gracias GM Avetik y staff de chessmood

my chess rating on chess.com has grown about 35 points in 3 months and continues to rise! I'm already going to reach 1200 firm rating and I have defeated opponents rated 1250 or higher. This is the pace of the game that I find most in line with me: 5+5. I play at a reasonable level, I can analyze later and I play more games per day = more learning! How I did it: reading and putting into practice a few excellent emails from GMAvetik: I warm up with 3 exercises of normal difficulty, I started always playing 1.e4 (much more fun, aggressive and instructive), and I try to play 3 or more games in a row (the last few, I'm at my peak of warm-up and concentration). I'm also slowly putting together the COGROW lists. Congratulations on the material and the good vibes!! Best regards, Federico (fehb at chess.com/lichess)

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Muchas gracias amigo!
That's always good to hear! Keep on working! You can do it! Looking forward for the next update… Maybe after 100 points more? 😁

Orthoschnapp Gambit

I've faced this twice against my French Attack recently, with one win and one loss, although I survived the opening both times and both were long games.  Is this covered in our courses?  I've looked on the Internet and found various evaluations and approaches, but I'm curious about our GMs' and community's thoughts.  What is the best way to play against it, consistent with our BlackMood lines?

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I'd never heard of this gambit and I bet the ChessMood GMs haven't either.  There is a very amusing comment on the standard chess.com page about the opening: “Just because someone blundered it doesn't mean you have to name an opening after them.” :-).

I faced this move twice in the past in an English pub with some beers in between, we talked about it with Gabu because we analyzed the games since it was new to us…
I played as in the game described as number 2 in the study below, considered mainline of this variation (we did not know it).

https://lichess.org/study/VTnoS0UT 

 I found the moves OTB and I got a position very similar to this mainline. Check the game 2 of the study (nothing else, do not lose time on time on this / it's not efective), take the pawn, trade pieces, remember …Nd7 to attack the Queen and you will be fine. If you need defensive skills check the course “Defend with honor” https://chessmood.com/course/chess-defense

Happy hunting! 

https://chessmood.com/course/chess-classical-games/episode/6748 

10:50 Here why not exd5 opening the b1-h7 diagonal for our a4 bishop so it can be happy

Thanks for the reply

Vedant

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No reply?

Sorry for the delay, sometimes we cannot reply as fast as we would…
😅

In this case both captures are logical but cxd5 is a bit more precise because taking with the e pawn would weaken the square f5, and after Rf8, f5 could be a possible move in the future. Also we have our pawns in light squares, makes sense exchanging the Bishop, isn't it?😀 Still your idea is also very good and it makes sense, but having the center, exchanging the Bishop and a bit of the King Side under control seems more natural. I would say, the game move is number 1 and yours number 2, still both work.😀

How do I buy courses with Moodcoin?

I don't know if I need to get PRO to do this (I'm not a PRO member) or if I'm just stupid. Can someone tell me how to buy a course with Moodcoin?

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Hello, when you click on some courses, some do not have the Lifetime buy feature (SLP course is one example of this.), on the others, to the right of the introduction video will be a little tab there. At the top should be a button to buy the course. Once in the payment page, click moodcoins as the payment method and if you have enough funds, you can buy it.

Hope this helps!

Opening on the flanks

Hi all,

Recently I've come across opponents who open with d4 or e4 (nothing unusual there) but their next moves are a3 and h3.  This seems completely at odds with the idea of taking control of the centre.  Is it just some sort of pre-emptive attempt at discouraging their opponents from moving their bishops to the b4 and g4 squares? 

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Hello!

A3 and h3 are usually a waste of time.

Chessmood made a video about “Senseless pawn moves” in the Openings Principles course :

https://chessmood.com/course/opening-principles/episode/3425

There is also a youtube video by Chessmood about the best setup if your opponent makes passive moves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDeaXGraeNI