quick chess update

After not playing competitively in a long time, I fired it up, got paired with a 935 and won. Raised my rating to 915, which is now better than 3 out of 4 players on chess.com. 

chess history

Just for posterity, I got into a phase of playing human opponents on Chess.com from April–June 2022. 

I played 71 games, going 42-24 with 5 draws. 

Counterintuitively, I was 18-16 with white, but 24-8 with the black pieces. Apparently, I played better when responding to attacks than forming my own.

My best win was against a 878. My best ever rating was a 879 and my current rating of 865 puts me in the 70th percentile among all chess.com players. My goal was to say I was better than 2 out of 3 players, and I achieved that. 

chess vs real humans

After only playing bots for months, I finally started playing against other live humans. It's wild, this week alone I've played against accounts from India, Honduras, Brazil, France, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Morocco. 

This violates my rule of avoiding online multiplayer games. I started the rule because I would get upset playing ps4 games online and realized it was counterproductive to my goal of having fun playing games. But so far, I've been able to enjoy the online chess. A big part is that if I lose a game, I know that my next opponent will be easier. 

I've learned that a human rated 700 is much tougher than a 700-rated bot. My account started at 400 and after 12 wins, 4 losses, and one draw, I'm currently rated 787. In case you're curious, the best player in the world is rated 2864. 

I've had some comeback wins, a draw that I salvaged from a losing position, some games where I was outmatched and some hard-fought struggles. 

I'll run through two recent wins I'm proud of. 

First up, I'm using the white pieces and it's my move. 

I move bishop to g4. I have a plan.

He takes the bait with his bishop.

I recapture with my queen. It looks like a blunder because there's a knight on e5. But he can't take my queen. My rook on e1 is pinning the knight to the e file.

He then moved his rook to a space that once again looks like it's protected by the knight on e5. But this is a blunder.

I take with the queen knowing he can't move his knight and he resigns down 13 points of material.

New game.

This time I'm using the black pieces and it's my turn to move. 

Using post-game analysis tools that don't appear during the game, the computer recommends the three best moves for me. Although I'm down a pawn (1 point of material) there are two moves which give me a decent advantage. And one move that gives me a full 9-point advantage. 

I find it. Knight to f4.

I'm not merely threatening his queen. Here are the computer's top three moves for white:

The first loses the queen but in a place where the bishop can take my knight. The second abandons the queen entirely to take a bishop.

My opponent being a human player who doesn't want to lose his queen, seemingly finds a space where his queen is safe. But at what cost?

I take the bishop on c4 with check.

He blocks with a feeble pawn to d3 and I take it as well, again with check.

King to g1 is forced.

At this point, I'm thinking I'm doing pretty well. I turned a one pawn deficit to up 3 points of material. I look at the board above and seven seconds later, I make a move.

Queen up the middle to e1. It's not even protected by anything. Just a deep bomb to the middle end zone and it's checkmate. 

Those last four moves starting with the knight to f4, the two bishop moves and the queen checkmate...those were all the top engine moves. Meaning from his perspective, there was no difference between playing me for those four moves and playing the top player in the world or the top computer engine. Checkmate on the 13th move. But hey he never lost his queen. 

What's worth more than a queen? The king.

Go to hell, Isabel

This Costa Rican bot gave me so much trouble. Every time she puts you in check, this is what you see. The exclamation point really rubs it in.

I was winning and was down to a rook vs knight endgame. And then I blundered my rook in a fork. But somehow I was able to promote a pawn and win the game. 

I've now beaten two advanced bots. And I'll never have to hear Jaque! again.

Antonio, Suck on this

Over the last week, I've played this smug Paraguayan bot at least 50 times. He's rated 1500 and the first advanced level bot. Today, I finally beat him.

I traded queens early, he blundered a rook, and I played a solid endgame to close the deal.

No guarantees that I get better enough to beat any of the other three advanced bots, but at least I beat one once. 

Chess Progress

In late November, our family got into chess. In early December, I was playing on Chess.com vs the computer bots and I could beat the beginner bots with ratings of 250, 400 and 700. I could beat the first intermediate bot rated 1000 but not the 1100 or 1300 intermediate bot. So around December 10 I would say I would be rated 1050.

Now after playing about 100-200 games with Mrs. Hoagie Central, I've beaten the 1100 and 1300 bot.

The three crowns means I beat them without any assistance, including taking back a move. So currently I've beaten all the intermediate bots. Next up is advanced: 4 bots at 1500, 1600, 1800 and 2000. 

(After that there are two master bots at 2200 and 2300 and a grandmaster at 2650.)

So currently between I'm between intermediate and advanced.

King on the Run

The last time I used the chess tag on this blog was in January 2007. This probably sets a record for longest times between tag uses. In this game, I was white and looking for a way to attack and capture the black queen.  

The move? Queen to h8. Black moved the king to f7 so I respond with knight to d6, forcing king to f8. Good start. So how do I get the queen from the board below?

Bishop to h6. Again puts the king in check so he has to move to e7.

From there it's simple. Bishop to g5, again putting the king in check. Allowing a queen capture without sacrificing anything.

Four moves in a row where black had their king on the run, ending with a queen capture. From here, easy to close out.

The Queen Trap

Again, I'm white. The black Queen has been agressively attacking, so I boxed her in. It took a lot of moves to get to this position: If I move my knight from D6 to C4, I will force black to surrender the Queen while keeping my own. In the next picture the Queen captures my bishop, but will be taken by either my king or queen. You can write game over in your notebook.

When All Appears Lost

So here's the situation. I'm white. I'm losing pretty badly. Black has 2 more pawns, 1 more knight, has my rook under direct attack from the black queen without any defense, and has a stranglehold on my king, keeping me in check for most of the game. At this point, I'm not sure what to move. What move would you make? I could move my rook out of danger, but that doesn't do me any long term good. I decided to move my bishop from a8 to c6. The black queen moves from f6 to h8, taking my rook. So now what should I do? Well, I moved my queen from c8 to d7, taking the black knight, and putting the black king in check...and mate! From being down 4 pieces, I mate with a queen and 2 bishops. Bravo.