Anyone like to play chess? Check this out.

Thanks, forwarding this to Sarah Connor now.

good one.

great! haven't played in a few years but always liked it

never played against a computer yet

computers > humans when it comes to chess

I have had computer games and such for chess in the past, but only one of them was like this. It can be beat but you have to be damn near perfect.
honestly I'de have to say its beaten me 495 out of 500 games.
Scary smart that thing is. Good luck and have fun.

I enjoy a good game of chess once or twice a year.

I never bothered to buy a computer game (or get a free one) with chess heh

but this requires no download etc so its a huge advantage.. I already tried it out
at what level do you play there? I see "Easy" "medium" and "hard"

I play the hard level, but im almost convinced that there is no difference between easy and hard, either way its almost impossible to win.
How did you do?

nice... thanks for sharing!

it's playing too fast for me

just beat it on easy ;) took 5 trys tho

thats pretty impressive, imho

game runs big in the family....my claim to fame is, i once tied a guy that tied gary kasparov...

I play Chessmaster. It came with Vista on my new computer. I play at its highest setting and haven't beaten it yet - not sure if I can.

I started to think I was retarded but I did some research and learned that computers regularily beat the best chess masters nowadays.

If you like to play frequently, get at me on freechess.org. A friend of mine (who is also on this board) turned me on to it and I play once or twice a night.

sounds sweet, leek.
You can also sign up play others at that site for free, but i dont like to play other people on there because it seems you never actualy get to finish a game. People take breaks then forget.
But i'll check that site out, i love to play.

Yeah, I've played on Chess.com but I just really enjoy playing on FICS a lot more. If you sign up, my alias is 'leeked', so add me to your notify list.

BUSTED
(I am the black one)

well played!

Here is me mating it in under 20 moves:

That is out-and-out a killer finish there, leek.
I'll have to play you sometime. If you can do that, I can learn a thing or two from you. Nice screenshot, man

On the default easy setting it's very easy to beat

I played on easy and beated him, and I'm not really that good in chess.

chessmaster is a great game, and it's only like $10 if you shop around a little, great value if you are into chess...

Took him on the first try actually, gonna try hard now.

I am a chess player, and if you've *ever* beaten that chess.com game, then it's not very difficult at all. It's probably no more than a 1400-1500 real life rating. The top grandmasters are rated in the 2700-2900 range, and on ICC some people are well over 3,000.

Every 100 points is a pretty large difference in skill level, and 200 points is HUGE. So a 1500 player could beat an 1700 player sometimes, but very rarely. A 1500 player would have little to no chance against a 1900+ player. Maybe 1 out of 100 games in a long game, and a little more in a short game where you can clock them or they make a blunder. A 2000 rated played has NO chance against a 2300 player. A 2300 player is probably a Master or International Master (IM) but would have very little chance against a 2500+ Grandmaster. In fact the GM could make silly non-sensical moves to begin the game and still beat the IM handily.

If you want to improve your chess game, never go back to chess.com, and visit playchess.org (FICS) which is a free server.. Use the Babaschess program (free download) it's quite good.

If you really want to get into it, the ICC (Internet Chess Club) I think chessclub.com, they charge $50 a year for an account, but it's much better. You can watch real grandmasters play all the time, take lessons from better players, play tournaments, view lectures, etc etc. There are also MANY computer accounts that play, and they're denoted with "(C)" so you know who they are. They have varied strengths too.

If you played a 2200+ computer account, you would never, ever win a game. Ever. And some of the computers are above 3,000 rating level. The computer could have 2 minutes to play its game, and you could have infinite time, and you would still never win a game. If you lose a pawn, or even have any positional disadvantage at any point of the game, and you should resign immediately. They're just that good.

Anyways not to discourage you, that's the beauty of chess! You will never stop learning.

or English

disgrace to the family

wow i feel like a loser now i need to play more than once a year most of you own me

My understanding is that the best players use Fritz. I personally use Chessmaster since I have no interest or business playing a master. Also, I don't think ANYONE could totally give up the opening game to an IM and be assured of victory, not even a GM. There are some positions that you just can't get back from.

hehe, I thought the same, until I saw Nakamura when he was I think 17 years old beat an international master 15 games in a row on ICC, and some of the games he started by moving both his rook pawns up 2 spots... Kid is crazy good.. But mind you they're fast games, probably 3 minutes a side.. But they make it seem like an eternity sometimes. You're right though, in a real 1.5 hour per side tournament game, they'd never get away with it.

So you're pretty much on the right track with the software. Fritz is an engine, like Crafty, Junior, Hiarcs, Shredder, Rybka, etc. The engine is just the brain inside the game, all it does is think. The interface, features and options are from a program called Chessbase. When you get Fritz, Junior or any of the other above engines, you'll get a basic version of Chessbase to play in. If you own two engines, you just have the same program, but with 2 engines you can load. They think differently, so you'll get different analysis from them. Crafty is free, so it's in there too. I used to run a Crafty computer on Chess.net back in the day, I had a PC that would just sit there and play people all day, and I could watch or just let it play, etc.

For the serious player, it's really cool to have the full version of Chessbase, which is pretty expensive, and then the engine of your choice. The full version is waaaay more advanced, and if you get the upgrades to it, it's a fuckin monster. One of the biggest most complex computer programs around I'm sure. Player databases, decades and decades of games from top tournaments, stats on all those games, custom opening books, you can even have it build an opening book from your database of games, up to move 8 let's say.

Chessmaster is good for the casual player, but it leaves so much of the game out of it. I don't think it's the best way to go if you really like the game and spend time with it. Maybe you'll never beat Chessmaster, but whatever, that's not the point. You can set Fritz to play as strongly as you play, and it will learn over the games you play against it to adapt its strength to yours too.

But the real advantage is the learning you can do, in a fun way that's not reading a book etc. You can just pick an opening for example and look through the tree of what moves players about 2500 make... Based on the database of the 4,000,000 games that comes with the mega database.

Not cheap though, you have to be into it. There's also educational addons, for like $25-30euros, teaching you about various parts of the game from grandmasters. You just need Fritz for those. Honestly if you tried Fritz, you wouldn't go back, it IS chessbase too, just a dumbed down version. You can analyze, setup matches from positions between engines, all that.. It's like 75% of the way there.

My computers have spent many a night analyzing the games I've played, thinking for 30 minutes per move. It's cool to see what you should have done and why, or where you left yourself open to a combination and didn't notice, etc. I don't think I ever would have done any of that with Chessmaster (hell, anyone remember Battle Chess for Amiga? hehe)

Fritz:

http://www.chessbase.com/shop/produc...58&user=&coin=

Chessbase 10 full:

http://www.chessbase.com/shop/produc...93&user=&coin=

The database thing I was talking about, same site as above:

Mega Database 2009
The exclusive annotated database. Contains more than 4 millions games from 1560 to 2008 in the highest ChessBase quality standard. 62,000 games contain commentary from top players, with ChessBase opening classification with more than 100,000 key positions, direct access to players, tournaments, middlegame themes, endgames. The largest topclass annotated database in the world. The most recent games of the database are from the middle of November 2008. Mega 2009 also features a new edition of the playerbase. As usual, this is where most of the work was done. As the player index now contains already more than 220,000 entries, it made sense to use an adapted playerbase which includes about 248,000 names. Doing this, the photo database was extended as well to contain 31,000 pictures now.

in 12...



i felt redeemed til i realized it was on easy

I'm probably around 1400. It's tough to muster the discipline to teach yourself to be significantly better when you don't really have anyone to play with. I played on the chess team in high school (yes I'm a nerd) and always loved the game but it would take so much effort and time to get better it's hardly worth it.

In a way, it's more fun not to have every opening memorized to 20 moves out, more of an adventure every time you play lol... I have a pretty good understanding of the principles behind the opening moves and that usually carrys me through to a decent position in the middle game.

I play on gameknot.com regularly. Its cool for people that don't a lot of time, as you can set your own time per move. Usually 3 days.

to take a 1400 player to become a 2000 player, how much of the game is memorization vs. how much of the game is short term analytical ability improvement??

great one thanks for additional info

Hey Socks... What's your FICS handle?

I like chess...thanks for the link!

Not a bad. I like it thanks

great post Socks, very informative

I had no idea there were so many chess players on GFY.

Good link, I haven't played in several years but used to play all the time. I'm a bit rusty but managed a win first try on easy...




Made some frivolous moves early on, then had to play defense for a while. Once I went back on the attack though it was go time.

Will have to try it on harder modes.

I have never played before

chess is fun.. have not played it serious in a long time though. It's too time consuming for me.

Once in a while I play a game at instantchess.com

Nice :D I had a good game with it.... goofed once and it was over.