P&B Chess League - Season 8 coming soon….

[arab_joe]

On 04/02/2022 at 15:16, Frank Grimes said:

1st Round Cup Draw

pleslie999 v Arabjoe 

Pleslie999 wins by resignation.

Queen blundered early doors.  I'm not very good at 960 Chess.

[craigkillie]

League results - PurpleKangaroo89 beats cols407 & paakman01.

Edited February 7, 2022 by craigkillie

[Frank Grimes]

Division A	P	W	L	D	Pts
Board_Stupid	5	3	2	0	9
Dearyme	3	3	0	0	9
AimHere	4	2	2	0	6
GCarlos9	4	2	2	0	6
gkneil	4	2	2	0	6
eindhovendee	3	2	1	0	6
Ziggy	1	0	1	0	0
beef2711	1	0	1	0	0
AH13STU	3	0	3	0	0

 

Round 7

Dearyme v gkneil 

Board_Stupid v AimHere

Ziggy_The_Spider v eindhovendee 

beef2711 v GCarlos9

 

Round 8

AH13STU v Board_Stupid

eindhovendee v Dearyme 

AimHere v beef2711

GCarlos9 v Ziggy_The_Spider 

[Frank Grimes]

Division B	P	W	L	D	Pts
Purplekangaroo89	5	5	0	0	15
invergowrie	5	4	1	0	12
Arabjoe	4	3	1	0	9
pleslie999	4	2	1	1	7
PnBMathematics	5	2	3	0	6
paakman01	6	2	4	0	6
cols407	3	1	1	1	4
RBWatson	5	1	4	0	3
Dandies1983	5	0	5	0	0

 

Round 7

cols407 v paakman01 

PnBMathematics v pleslie999 

Arabjoe v invergowrie 

Purplekangaroo89 v RBWatson

 

Round 8

Dandies1983 v PnBMathematics 

invergowrie v cols407 

pleslie999 v Purplekangaroo89 

RBWatson v Arabjoe 

[Frank Grimes]

Division C	P	W	L	D	Pts
XCTR94	5	5	0	0	15
markf268	4	3	1	0	9
N5_Spur	5	3	2	0	9
The_kid1433	4	1	3	0	3
mackieboz	4	1	3	0	3
Strachanovski	4	1	3	0	3
StuSco1	2	0	2	0	0

 

Round 7

XCT94 v StuSco1

The_kid1433 v N5_Spur

markf268 v mackieboz

 

Round 8

Strachanovski v XCT94

N5_Spur v StuSco1

markf268 v The_kid1433

[N5 Spur]

AimHere defeats N5_Spur in the cup by resignation. 

Safe to say the result was never in doubt - Boreham Wood I wasn't (thankfully).

Time to concentrate on the league, etc.

Nice game though and good luck for the rest of the tournament.

[Aim Here]

2 minutes ago, N5 Spur said:

AimHere defeats N5_Spur in the cup by resignation. 

Safe to say the result was never in doubt - Boreham Wood I wasn't (thankfully).

Time to concentrate on the league, etc.

Nice game though and good luck for the rest of the tournament.

Yeah, that was fun. A bit of a tactical workout - you were tricksier  than I remember Division C players being (I'm still annoyed that you spotted the pawn promotion threat in the corner and didn't take the free bishop!)

[N5 Spur]

5 hours ago, Frank Grimes said:

Division C	P	W	L	D	Pts
XCTR94	5	5	0	0	15
markf268	4	3	1	0	9
N5_Spur	5	3	2	0	9
The_kid1433	4	1	3	0	3
mackieboz	4	1	3	0	3
Strachanovski	4	1	3	0	3
StuSco1	2	0	2	0	0

 

Round 7

XCT94 v StuSco1

The_kid1433 v N5_Spur

markf268 v mackieboz

 

Round 8

Strachanovski v XCT94

N5_Spur v StuSco1

markf268 v The_kid1433

StoSco1 - I've invited you for the return game as and when you are ready to play.  Thanks.

[SweeperDee]

Cup game:

XCTR94 beats invergowrie by resignation.

960 is shite, just ended up being less shite for me after pinning Invergowrie into giving up Rook material. Hard game up until that, GG.

[invergowrie arab]

Cup result XCTR94 @SweeperDee pumps Invergowrie. 

My proud record of never having won a 960 continues.

The sweeper boy can play though. My two blunders came after I was already dead.

Edited February 7, 2022 by invergowrie arab

[pleslie99]

22 hours ago, arab_joe said:

Pleslie999 wins by resignation.

Queen blundered early doors.  I'm not very good at 960 Chess.

Cheers for the game. That's my 1st ever win at 960, your Queen blunder early did help significantly tho. Gg

[pleslie99]

@craigkillie I can't find u on chess.com to invite u to a game. I'm trying purplekangaroo89 but gives me some sort of message about blitz rating iv never seen before.

[craigkillie]

9 minutes ago, pleslie99 said:

@craigkillie I can't find u on chess.com to invite u to a game. I'm trying purplekangaroo89 but gives me some sort of message about blitz rating iv never seen before.

I've tried to resend a challenge.

[Curmudgeon]

Ziggy_The_Spider withdraws from the cup without playing which I assume advances Board_stupid through to the second round.

Ridiculous competition being the reason. The 960 chess format that is, not Frank's administration of it which I'm sure we can all agree is top notch.

[SweeperDee]

Ziggy_The_Spider withdraws from the cup without playing which I assume advances Board_stupid through to the second round.
Ridiculous competition being the reason. The 960 chess format that is, not Frank's administration of it which I'm sure we can all agree is top notch.

I’ll see if I can find the interview of Fischer talking about Fischer Random as well as Capablanca’s altered format; think he ended up hating chess (and his mind a wee bit) that he came up with 960. It’s a bonkers way to play chess.

ETA: Fwiw Capablanca Chess has two new pieces and the board is fucking massive iirc, so maybe we should count our blessings it’s just 960 and nothing more bizarre. [emoji1787]

[Aim Here]

2 hours ago, SweeperDee said:

I’ll see if I can find the interview of Fischer talking about Fischer Random as well as Capablanca’s altered format; think he ended up hating chess (and his mind a wee bit) that he came up with 960. It’s a bonkers way to play chess.

ETA: Fwiw Capablanca Chess has two new pieces and the board is fucking massive iirc, so maybe we should count our blessings it’s just 960 and nothing more bizarre.

Is Fischer Random really that bonkers? It just forces you to actually think about opening principles from scratch rather than sleepwalk your way through the first 4-to-20 moves of opening theory (depending on how skilled the players are). 960 games usually tend to settle down into something that looks a bit like normal chess after a few moves.

 

[SweeperDee]

Is Fischer Random really that bonkers? It just forces you to actually think about opening principles from scratch rather than sleepwalk your way through the first 4-to-20 moves of opening theory (depending on how skilled the players are). 960 games usually tend to settle down into something that looks a bit like normal chess after a few moves.
 

The fact that it settles back into theory and book moves after the first few moves renders it pointless I think; just ends up as a daft gimmick after you’ve played it a few times. If you start white in Fischer random you can end up with a move advantage and can pin high scoring material just by virtue of where your pieces start. For example if Queens start in corners, etc.

[Aim Here]

2 hours ago, SweeperDee said:

The fact that it settles back into theory and book moves after the first few moves renders it pointless I think

That's surely wrong. It doesn't go into theory, but instead you're into a middlegame without the book moves or the theory. That's the whole point - it's much the same game as chess, except that (apart from the two starting positions that are essentially identical to the standard game) you don't have to prepare a ton of opening book theory to compete at the higher levels.

As for the issues with the first move advantage - that's a matter of taste. I like to think of it the way you had to think about chess when you were a beginner, and try to work out what the weak squares are in the opening position, to take advantage of, or defend, as necessary.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Aim Here

[SweeperDee]

That's surely wrong. It doesn't go into theory, but instead you're into a middlegame without the book moves or the theory. That's the whole point - it's much the same game as chess, except that (apart from the two starting positions that are essentially identical to the standard game) you don't have to prepare a ton of opening book theory to compete at the higher levels.
As for the issues with the first move advantage - that's a matter of taste. I like to think of it the way you had to think about chess when you were a beginner, and try to work out what the weak squares are in the opening position, to take advantage of, or defend, as necessary.

Surely theory applies to all phases of the game? Fair enough about book moves I shouldn’t have mentioned that but theory for definite does apply even after the opening, regardless of what 960 tries to do.

There’s a lot written about the White advantage in 960, but it’s the case in all types of chess; whoever goes first will always be that 1 step ahead until mistakes occur.

[Aim Here]

21 minutes ago, SweeperDee said:

Surely theory applies to all phases of the game? Fair enough about book moves I shouldn’t have mentioned that but theory for definite does apply even after the opening, regardless of what 960 tries to do.

As I understand it, when chess players say "This is all theory", it means that it's within the corpus of known game positions (i.e. you're still playing a book move or some position that's shown up in a high-level tournament). There are other uses of the term (I imagine someone will say something about 'Hypermodern theory' or whatever, meaning the doctrine where players avoid taking the centre early on, or 'endgame theory', which is how to play late-game positions) but when a given position is 'theory', it means opening theory.

The whole point of 960 is to avoid "opening theory" simply because with the standard board, it ends up being a bunch of memorization and preparation that some players, like Fischer, don't like. "Middlegame theory" isn't a list of known lines and isn't memorizable the way that 'Opening theory' is; it's a bunch of informal principles and ideas, and it's where the fun stuff is. If you don't want that, you might as well not be playing chess at all. It's reasonable to want to keep the middlegame and ditch the opening memorization.