Moving into progress post six of the semester I wanted to get another level of strategy under the belt. I decided to read up on space, which is a simple concept but a deeper understanding really opens the door for strategy. Being not only adaptable to how the board plays out but to also know when to take advantage of space on the board as well as when to back up and play the passive angle. I first read up on chess-teacher.com where I was able to tackle the concept a little deeper. This mixed with a couple youtube videos one being by the Hanging Pawns channel on youtube.

 

I was really able to make a direct correlation between this concept and the game itself when I was able to analyze a game after my lesson. I was able to see that I had the space advantage on the board but really didn’t take advantage of it and my opponent came back and beat me in the end. From my chess exposure so far it has definitely been the game that I’ve learned the most through my losses and not my wins. That seems to be the one drawback from playing against computer opponents as well compared to real people. Computers sometimes allow your mistakes to go unpunished while the real people will really get on you for it.

 

I think moving into the coming week, I’m going to be doing more puzzles and lessons on the chess.com site as it seems to be the ultimate utility for furthering your game as a whole. I think for right now furthering my knowledge will prove to be more beneficial than trying to increase my rank among chess players.

Total Rank Growth: 400 -> 700

Links:

https://chess-teacher.com/the-advantage-of-space-in-chess/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t81S1wLUOcU&ab_channel=HangingPawns

chess.com

This week in my journey in chess, I wanted to further my knowledge in another strategy that can implemented into my play. I read up on a recommended concept called piece activity. Simply put pieces have abstract values depending on their position on the board. Pieces that are behind pawns and trapped from play have less value than others that have the ability to move around the board. You can also play aggressive even with less pieces if you know where you stand regarding activity.

Out of pure curiosity I looked into some professional chess games just to get a feeling of how advanced high level players think. After watching some gameplay from Magnus Carlson (Arguably the world’s best player) my mind was blown with how advanced these players are. They are thinking 30 moves down the line while I’m maybe thinking one or two. It really furthered my appreciation for how much dedication it takes to get to the top.

 

I went over some lessons using the chess.com lesson page, here professional players go through situations and break down optimal moves. I chose a lesson based on activity to tie in with my reading this week and needed some tips along the way but made my way through the lesson.

 

I followed some practice by going into some more games against online opponents. I aimed to play some more games casually throughout the weeks to get some more casual practice in. Overall my rank hovered a bit as moving forward just means better opponents down the line but I definitely feel like I can put up a fight in every match played with my boosted confidence.

Total Rank Growth: 400 -> 650

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gb_rXuCJIk&ab_channel=Chess.com

https://chessimprover.com/piece-activity/

chess.com

This week to strengthen my sense of strategy and understanding I familiarized myself in a field that I excel in, math. I did some research into the concept of material counting in chess, which in short relates to each piece of the chess board having a value and being able to see who is leading. Knowing these values leads to understanding better trades and either playing passively or aggressively as the game moves forward.

rustic-chess.org had a great article on values, they valued each piece as follows: Queen: 9 points, Rook: 5 points, Bishop/Knights: 3 points, Pawns: 1 point. It seemed without some sort of system to base trades off of set me up for failure in the long run since I didn’t have any sense of value of the pieces. Integrating this idea with the openings idea I used from my second blog post I can go into a game with a sense of strategy and planning moves down the road.

I first utilized the puzzles section of chess.com to practice some exchange sacrifices, their website does a great job to give feedback and reasoning to puzzle answers then simply saying if you are right or wrong.

 

I played a couple games against higher ranked computers to try to make better trading moves in the middle and late parts of the game. After a couple practice matches I moved back into playing against real people and got back to trying to improve my rank. After about an hour of playing I felt more comfortable actually making trades and decisions which factored into my overall confidence level.

 

I think confidence is going to be my biggest goal moving forward, I look forward to what my next step will be while becoming the one of the world’s best. (Definitely not one of the worlds best)

Total Rank Growth: 400 -> 590

Links: https://rustic-chess.org/evaluation/material.html

chess.com

The tool I decided to utilize for this weeks post is called OBS. OBS stands for Open Broadcaster Software and is something I’ve heard of before in the field of video game streaming. Watching a YouTube break down linked at the bottom, shows the uses of OBS beyond just to livestream. It is a really easy recording software to use where you can overlay things such as text, images or webcams on top of a recording. I can see software like this great for prerecorded lectures for example to improve them beyond just a shared screen of lecture notes.

To tie into my learning project I found OBS as a great tool for documenting a game recording as well as to look back at the moves I made to reflect for improvement after the fact. Here I included a recording of a game I played to show off how easy it is to record a game with OBS. During this game I tried opening with the King’s Indian setup which was discussed in the last learning post. Here with OBS I can really analyze what decisions I made post setup and critique my moves as the game progresses.

I would recommend OBS to anyone wanting to record a video with numerous customization options to improve the video while recording rather then in the editing process.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/XtKUnw2bRdM

Links:

https://obsproject.com/

chess.com

For my introduction into the chess scene I started my journey by signing up on chess.com which is the world’s leader in online chess and the site that will track my matchmaking rank as described in my first post. The platform was actually full of valuable information and teachings from puzzles to show optimized moves and even practice matches against bots of different skill calibers. After making my account I started with a matchmaking score of 400 which will be the baseline for my progress.

To start my learning process I moved to what I found to be the most valuable resource when learning any type of skill online, YouTube. I started discussing with my one friend who plays chess if he had any recommendations for channels that cater to beginner players. He told me to check out GothamChess on Youtube which is a rather large content creator that specializes in lessons such as openings and match critiquing. My friend also recommended a video on the topic of openings which is the starting point of chess strategy.

 

 

An opening simply put is a strategy of moves made from the start to set up the beginning of the game. Different openings are used to accomplish goals such as better protecting the king, creating space for later movements and making it easier to set up pawn captures as the games moves forward. I watch a video on the King’s Indian setup which I will link at the bottom. This setup provides a great starting defence for the king as well as room to make plays with the surrounding pieces.

After tackling the King’s Indian setup I moved into games against the generated computers provided on the chess.com website. I started against the lowest possible bot and transitioned into bots in the range of 200-400 matchmaking rank just to try to get a hold of the movements and trading concept. One of the biggest struggles in my introduction was understanding the different piece values and what was a good or poor trade. Being able to play against a computer that wouldn’t completely punish my mistakes made a great starting point to use the opening learned in the first YouTube video.

 

 

I think for my next moves this semester is try to utilize some of the puzzles and different learning methods accessible to me and move into playing games against real world opinions around my skill caliber.

 

 

Photos taken from the chess.com website and the GothamChess Youtube page via https://www.youtube.com/c/GothamChess

For my semester long learning journey, I’ve decided to try to tackle the game of chess. Chess is something that I have zero experience in other then exposure to its references in pop culture. With its resurgence of popularity due to online streamers taking an interest in the game I thought it would be an interesting skill to try to grasp a hold of. I’m a person that is very interested in games whether it be sudoku or different types of video games so I’m predicting that I’ll take a liking along my journey.

To start, my current knowledge is very limited in chess. I can recall some of the pieces movement and have played checkers in the past but have zero experience in strategy. From what I hear chess is a game that is not terribly difficult to learn but the ceiling for skill is very high. This is another reason the game interests me as I feel climbing the ladder in skill will be a great way to benchmark my journey.

This leads me into another interesting element that attracts me to chess specifically is the ladder system it introduces. In chess there is an assigned number to your perceived skill rating. Based on your wins and losses in online and in person games your number will increase or decrease. I think this is a great benchmark for my progress and looking at the bell curve of number distribution I can see how I compare to the rest of the community throughout the semester.

So my journey starts here and I am excited to see what it brings throughout the semester!

Photo via chess.com