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Like a few other people in this thread, I'm coming back to chess after a nearly 20-year hiatus. I played competitively as a kid but was never serious enough to really study, train, etc. Compared to my peers as a younger kid, I was really good, but putting in serious effort to study felt like no fun. Some of the kids I played in junior tournaments with ended up getting very good, like 2000+, while I reached a rating in the low 1600s (Canadian) by the late '90s and then stopped playing entirely. I got back into the game recently after seeing some of the Youtube channels out there where they go through famous and interesting games, and feeling the bug bite me again. One of my problems was a near total lack of desire to learn openings. I would usually muddle through the opening and often end up in a positional disadvantage (and sometimes a material disadvantage) from which I'd struggle to claw back for the rest of the game. With the advent of the Web it is now much easier to look up the opening you just played, although I am still struggling to remember things beyond the first 4-5 moves or so. I pretty much only have time to play blitz online right now. I'd like to get back to OTB competition and longer time controls but with two little kids that's just not feasible (at least not until they're a bit older and maybe I can get them hooked too...). I feel playing blitz isn't necessarily going to improve my tournament play but hopefully sooner or later some basic opening patterns will start to solidify in my mind and I'll be able to get into the midgame a bit stronger. Right now on chess.com I have a significantly better record as Black (57% winning) than I do as White (46% winning). I have been a d4 player for most of my chess career but maybe it's time to switch to e4. Of course that means starting opening learning from near-scratch again... Below is a sample game which is kind of typical. I'm White. I get through the opening without making any blunders, but playing some moves that the computer says are suboptimal. In the midgame I actually get an advantage but fail to capitalize on some of Black's weakly-positioned pieces, and I miss a couple of key moves that could crack Black's position open. By the early endgame I'm actually down, but Black can't convert. I claw my way back to a totally drawn position and then my opponent blundered and gave me a winning K+P vs. K position. [Event "Live Chess"] [Site "Chess.com"] [Date "2018.01.30"] [Round "-"] [White "NewlessCluebie"] [Black "educhancay"] [Result "1-0"] [WhiteElo "1553"] [BlackElo "1653"] [TimeControl "300+5"] [EndTime "5:50:34 PST"] [Termination "NewlessCluebie won by resignation"] 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 a6 4. Nf3 Nf6 5. Bg5 Be7 6. e3 h6 7. Bf4 dxc4 8. Bxc4 b5 9. Bd3 Bb7 10. O-O O-O 11. Re1 Nbd7 12. e4 Rc8 13. e5 Nh5 14. Bg3 Nxg3 15. hxg3 c5 16. Be4 Bxe4 17. Rxe4 Qb6 18. d5 b4 19. d6 Bd8 20. Na4 Qb7 21. Rg4 f5 22. Rc4 g5 23. Rac1 Bb6 24. Qc2 g4 25. Nh4 Nxe5 26. Nxb6 Qxb6 27. Rxc5 Rxc5 28. Qxc5 Qxc5 29. Rxc5 Nd3 30. Rc7 Rd8 31. d7 Kf7 32. Ra7 Nxb2 33. f3 h5 34. Kf1 a5 35. Ke2 a4 36. Kd2 a3 37. Kc2 Nc4 38. Kb3 gxf3 39. gxf3 Ne5 40. f4 Nc6 41. Rc7 Nb8 42. Rc8 Ke7 43. Ng6+ Kxd7 44. Rxd8+ Kxd8 45. Kxb4 Nc6+ 46. Kxa3 Nd4 47. Kb4 Ne2 48. a4 Nxg3 49. a5 Kc8 50. Kb5 Kb7 51. Kc5 Ne4+ 52. Kd4 Ka6 53. Ke5 Kxa5 54. Kxe6 Ng3 55. Ke5 Kb5 56. Nh4 Kc5 57. Nxf5 Nxf5 58. Kxf5 h4 59. Kg4 h3 60. Kxh3 Kd6 61. Kg4 Ke6 62. Kg5 Kf7 63. Kf5 Kg7 64. Ke6 Kf8 65. Kf6 Ke8 66. Kg7 Ke7 67. f5 Ke8 68. f6 1-0 I missed 25. Rxg4+!. Or rather, I did see it was a possibility and that if 25. ... fxg4 I could get my queen in to a very uncomfortable spot for Black, but didn't have enough time to see that the attack is so strong you can force mate down the line. Also the computer likes the exchange sacrifice of 26. Re1 and tells me that my 26th move pretty much threw my positional advantage away. I was executing on my plan to take Black's c-pawn but it turns out that there were better options. At least I remembered how to win a K+P vs. K endgame...
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Jan 30, 2018 17:33
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Loving Africa Chaps posted:Why would you switch to E4? Doesn't it have a worse record then D4 and also aren't you opening yourself up to playing alot of the Sicilian openings which seem to require huge wrote memorisation My logic is: if I'm doing worse as White than Black, there's gotta be something wrong with the way I'm playing White. My suspicion is that the openings I'm playing don't cater to my strengths, but I guess I'm not quite self-aware enough to identify what my tactical strengths and weaknesses are at this stage. Tibalt posted:Chess960 has a pretty respectable crowd on chess.com if you REALLY hate learning openings, and I've been using chessable to help me study. I'm competitive.
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Jan 30, 2018 21:16
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I joined the chess.com group posted earlier in the thread ("Keep Your Fork") and am now participating in a 3-day-per-move tournament. I've never played correspondence/daily chess before. I've seen some posts to the effect that opening study is permissible in this kind of chess. Is there a broad consensus on this point?
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Feb 3, 2018 04:42
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Quickpull posted:Specifically regarding the correspondence tournaments I run on chess.com, we do not use engines. Consulting an opening book is fine, though most of the people playing don’t bother. I definitely understand the difference between using an opening book vs. using an engine, and my question was aimed at the former. I can’t imagine using an engine would ever not be cheating. There have certainly been some unorthodox openings so far in the tournament, so I’m taking my cue from that and not taking openings too seriously either. I appreciate the invite and I’m enjoying the games so far.
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Feb 4, 2018 04:51
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Just finished a blitz game on chess.com where we reached a K+R vs. K+R endgame, no pawns, but my opponent made me play through the next 50 moves while rejecting all several offers. We had an increment so it wasn't even as though he could flag me. WTF is wrong with people. In the spirit of their poor sportsmanship I waited out all but a few seconds of my 3+ minutes on the clock before I played my penultimate move, pinning his rook to his king and forcing the insufficient material draw.
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Mar 19, 2018 02:12
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Maybe someone better at opening theory can help me out here. In the Alekhine, after 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 Bg4 5.Be2 e6 6.O-O Be7 7.c4 Nb6 8.Nc3 O-O you get this position:  In looking at some grandmaster games and a couple of basic-to-intermediate level opening books there are two different lines that confuse me, as follows: Line 1: 9. Be3 Nc6 (diagram)  ...with play continuing 10. exd6 cxd6 11. d5 exd5 12. cxd5 Bxf3 13. Bxf3 Ne5 Line 2: 9. h3 Bh5 10. Be3 d5  ...with play continuing 11. c5 Bxf3 12. gxf3 Nc8 and going in quite a different direction from the first line. What I don't get is, what is it about inserting 9. h3 Bh5 before Be3 by White that makes Black change their plan from Nc6 to d5? I'm not seeing an obvious reason why the Bishop's positioning, and an attack or lack thereof on g4, would make a major difference in whether to develop the knight or push the d-pawn.
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Apr 12, 2018 02:48
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Doctor Malaver posted:I'm also interested. I suppose you'll announce it here. Yes. But chess.com has a convenient analysis mode where you can play around with the current position, without providing the engine analysis it would for a completed game. Any kind of engine use is not OK while the game is ongoing.
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Apr 27, 2018 02:15
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Doctor Malaver posted:And if the teams have different number of players, which seems to be the case now? I'm pretty sure that excess players are dropped. The rival club has lots of players with higher ratings than the folks currently lined up to play, so the rating balance could swing if they get a few stronger players to join.
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May 22, 2018 15:04
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Love to tilt playing blitz late at night and drop 70-odd rating points before I am smart enough to go to bed
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May 23, 2018 13:04
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Well it looks like we have already clinched victory in the chess.com match even with 5 games unfinished, although on a few boards (my own included) there was a pretty huge rating disparity.
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Jun 21, 2018 04:20
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Love to finish a game and think "yeah my play was really tight there" and then run it through the engine and see just how many times I hosed up, followed by my opponent also loving up, allowing me a victory I probably didn't deserve
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Jul 1, 2018 18:35
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 Sometimes these tactics are real stumpers.
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Aug 8, 2018 01:28
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Seriouspost about tactics problems: I am not sure how well they are actually helping me see tactics in actual games, because when you are doing a tactics puzzle you know there's a tactic. It's like, welp, better check out aggressive sacrifices or non-intuitive moves because there's gotta be something here. In an average game there won't be a game-winning tactic every move!
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Aug 8, 2018 04:07
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I've read that you can only enter one tournament at a time on chess.com if you are a free member. I'm already part of another tournament that's waiting to start. The "join" button is still available for the SA one which makes me wonder, if I'm in two pending tournaments but one starts, does it kick me out of the other pending one?
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Aug 18, 2018 16:25
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I've now joined a club and am enjoying playing in the weekly classical tournaments they have there (one night = one round). It seems they always do three sections for every tournament: U1400, U1800 and Crown (>1800). You can only "play up" if you are within 100 rating points of the threshold, i.e. as a 16xx player I have to play in U1800. With a tight rating spectrum in U1800 each game is going to be fairly competitive but I wonder if I am missing the learning opportunity of getting my rear end kicked by a 2000+ player every so often. (Counter-argument: how much are you learning if your opponent is way out of your league?)
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Jan 8, 2019 15:22
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regulargonzalez posted:At first I was like yeah definite draw but Bc5 followed up with Kg4 wins the knight and saves the pawns as far as I can tell and then it gets tricky but black seems to have no good options. I still feel like it ends in stalemate but I'm also a very bad player so Once Black gets his king to b8, being down a piece doesn't matter. The white Bishop is on the wrong colour to help take the b7 pawn. Black will just move Kb8-a8-b8 ad infinitum.
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Jan 28, 2019 01:48
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silvergoose posted:I don't see how black gets to b8 though, e.g. Fair enough. On further review, can't the Black king just shuttle between c8 and d7?
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Jan 28, 2019 02:49
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Played last night's game in my club's weekly tournament, frittered away a promising opening position against someone who didn't know how to play the Slav because I was afraid to sac a pawn to go for the jugular, ended up slightly weaker going into the endgame but managed to salvage things and ended up with a KQP vs. KQ endgame. Had only a vague notion of how to win it. Checking the tablebase I could have won in 58 moves with optimal play, but it was 11:30 at night and I took the draw. Looking at the tablebase optimal lines, there are a lot of non-obvious moves that presumably are about taking away checks, but lord help me I don't think I could have figured that out last night.
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Mar 5, 2019 19:07
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I had a great result in an OTB tournament and picked up around 50 rating points taking me to a new personal high, but I can't help but feel a bit empty. I had three wins that were basically drawn endgames until my opponent blundered (in two cases just dropping a full piece, and in another case, I blundered a winning position down to an equal position in a time scramble, but then he mis-positioned a rook so he couldn't stop me from queening). I also accepted a draw which was actually a tablebase win for me, I was just too tired to push it through. In a couple of the games I outplayed my opponent in the opening but then let the middle game slip back into equality. In another, I botched the opening and was lucky to claw back in the middlegame. I guess I am being harsh on myself, in the 1500-1700 rating range games are still largely being decided by blunders, I just feel like I didn't actually deserve full points for most of my victories. Anyone else get this feeling?
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Mar 30, 2019 15:33
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Drone posted:I'll usually give a move about 5-ish minutes of thought in correspondence, more if I want to whip out the analysis board and game out what I think might be an interesting line (only then to forget all about that line on my next turn). If you are using the website (rather than the app) you can put in a chain of conditional moves so you can follow through on your brilliant plans... assuming you're confident in your calculations...
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Apr 3, 2019 01:30
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Since first-round upsets at Reykjavik seem to be your thing, can they really be called upsets anymore?
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Apr 8, 2019 21:26
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Hand Knit posted:Now to fix every other round. Easy. Phone in a bomb threat. Shared first place at an international tournament!
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Apr 9, 2019 01:08
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I like chess.com’s app but I wish it would stop sending my phone notifications that I drew a daily game by agreement a week ago.
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Apr 12, 2019 11:13
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Hand Knit your first-round game got profiled on chess.com!
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Apr 13, 2019 03:46
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Hand Knit posted:Had a new one today. Got up to use the washroom. When I got back some guy had taken my seat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5_QV97eYqM
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Apr 14, 2019 01:24
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Doctor Malaver posted:And do any chess sites have that feature, playing with a handicap (if that's what it's called)? I don’t know the answer to your question, but the term you’re looking for is “odds.”
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Apr 15, 2019 00:31
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Here are two missed mates-in-four that the broader and narrower chess world witnessed yesterday, one courtesy of an Icelandic GM in Reykjavik who went on to lose, and another courtesy of me in a club tournament (despite missing the quick mate, I managed to win, for reasons which should be apparent): #1, white to move:  #2, white to move: 
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Apr 17, 2019 02:48
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totalnewbie posted:I prefer this line: Dang, make that two different mates (at least) that I missed. Sadly they ended up resigning a few moves later, before I ever got to play a move that required me to specify which queen was moving (like Qhc8). What's the fun of having two queens if you don't have to make your opponent write down which one was moving?
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Apr 18, 2019 01:33
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Doctor Malaver posted:Can you make Time Control shorter? Maybe 1 day? If you are playing through the Web and not the app, you can set conditional moves to mitigate this problem. Doesn't solve poor sportsmanship, i.e. your opponent could deliberately wait 71 hours to play each move in a losing endgame regardless, but it still helps.
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Apr 30, 2019 12:29
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 Position from a game I played tonight, White just played dxc6 to complete an exchange of rooks, find the only winning move for Black!
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Jul 9, 2019 04:25
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EugeneJ posted:https://lichess.org/GXqhQ0QUG4tv Stalemate is a rule of the game. It’s when you have no legal moves and you are NOT in check. The game is a draw, no matter how many more pieces the other side has. An important beginner skill is learning how to do basic mates, particularly king + queen vs. king, without accidentally stalemating your opponent and giving them a draw instead of a loss.
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Jul 16, 2019 05:02
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I just had my most painful chess experience in recent memory. Played the OTB tournament game of my life against someone 300+ points above me, an over-2000 player (I am sub-2000). If I won, he would be the highest-rated player I’ve ever beaten. He got greedy for a pawn and I punished him, cracked open the centre while his pieces were hideously undeveloped. I ended up with KRR vs KRNN ending with a pawn majority on both sides, which I converted to a textbook winning KP vs K position (pawn on 5th rank, king ahead of my pawn, pawn was on g-file)... and my mind went blank. I had like 4 minutes on the clock and just could not loving see how to maneuver him off of h8 and h7. All my brain could see was how to stalemate him. I offered him a draw in a position a 1000-level player can convert. I’m still proud of the rest of my play, and I’ll gain some rating for the draw, but I feel sick to my stomach, I’m so embarrassed/mad at myself right now. Last week I blundered a winning endgame into a draw against a strong player in time trouble too, but that one hurts less. That guy was ahead most of the game and had to make a couple of big mistakes to give me a chance. Tonight, it felt like a tight game that I was playing well the whole time... until the end. Ugh.
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Sep 24, 2019 05:46
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Quickpull posted:Well if anyone’s interested, we have a vote chess match with another club. 6 hour turns for the vote match? I've just joined but we're going to need folks in different time zones to avoid flagging overnight! Also I hope the vote game will show up on my phone app... it isn't showing up on the chess.com main page on my PC...
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Oct 10, 2019 03:48
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Remembering some theory: Usually Getting OK position out of opening: Usually Achieving slight edge in middlegame: Often Blundering into losing endgame from seemingly innocuous move: Always Remembering to hand in scoresheet: Usually someone who is good at chess please help me figure this out. my game is dying
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Nov 26, 2019 06:30
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qsvui posted:Is there a way to make pre-moves in chess.com daily games? I know there's the conditional moves but you need to specify the opponent's move. Can you just say you want to make this move regardless of the response? Not to my knowledge. But you could set up a conditional move for every possible move of your opponent, and make it the same move every time...
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Jan 19, 2020 18:03
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Hand Knit posted:Also I might put together a SAS thread for candidates. Have one thread stay kinda active next week. Please do!
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Mar 13, 2020 22:36
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oh dope posted:Hey thread, I'm just getting into chess and I'm enjoying it. I'm playing against an AI to learn the game, and I'm wondering how I determine if I'm getting any better? I played an online game against an similarly ranked opponent and was thoroughly stomped. Keep playing online. If you keep getting stomped, your rating will go down until you are playing people you have a chance against. In this day and age there's no good reason to be learning against a computer. Computers, particularly on low level, don't play like humans do.
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Jun 25, 2020 02:19
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Was tilted pretty bad earlier today but managed to score a nice win in a bullet game to end my night. Win White's queen.
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Jun 30, 2020 06:00
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fart simpson posted:my friend sent me this puzzle from one of his games today. win blacks queen: It's like Aman Hambleton of the Chessbrahs says, when you have mate in 1, look for better. Nh4.
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Jul 2, 2020 17:20
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grah posted:Yeah is Nh4 even better? ...Qxd3 | Qxd3 and uh, now your knight is on h4, hooray? Nh4 isn't better, it's just a facetious response to a facetious problem. Bg5 doesn't work because you allow the queen an escape square on h5.
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Jul 2, 2020 18:48
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