Life In 19x19

Except for learning the rules as a kid and playing a few games here and there, I've never really bothered with chess. Recently though, I've started using some apps to learn some of the basics, and god forbid I'm enjoying it. Can someone recommend a beginner-friendly server where I might play a few games?

daal wrote:Except for learning the rules as a kid and playing a few games here and there, I've never really bothered with chess. Recently though, I've started using some apps to learn some of the basics, and god forbid I'm enjoying it. Can someone recommend a beginner-friendly server where I might play a few games?

You are looking for lichess.org.

The other chess site I would enthusiastically recommend is chesstempo.com, where you get served tactical problems from real games that are automatically tuned to your skill level. There's also a facility to play real-time games with other users, although I don't think it is used as much as the other servers like lichess (I've never tried it).

Both of these sites are suitable for all skill levels.

http://chess.com is really good. You can practice tactics and it's easy to get live or correspondence games.

swannod wrote:http://chess.com is really good. You can practice tactics and it's easy to get live or correspondence games.

Besides practice tactics and playing there are also lessons at every level.

Thanks for the suggestions! That's enough to get me started.

If you also want to watch streams, I recommend Chess_Network, who is a lowish-level master but a great explainer. But there are also top-level GMs on twitch, such as maskenissen (the world champion), gmfabianocaruana (his challenger later this year), and GMHikaru (top 10 player and bullet monster), and a good number of others.

The best tournament commentaries in my view tend to be by Chess24 on YouTube, especially if they get Jan & Peter commenting.

I picked up chess sometime last year and played for about six months before I got busy and distracted. If you ever want a game in lichess, I go by Nomadology there (I was at about 1400-1450 ELO on there last time I played, probably dropped some since then). I'm also happy to suggest some resources I found helpful learning the game if you decide you want to look for more.

I think it is great that you found another item of interest that you enjoy doing! Even if it is .... ahem Chess.
; )

Well, it's not like I need another hobby. I'm already learning a dozen languages on Duolingo, and there's also this game with the black and white stones...

In any case, I got interested in playing Chess because a friend of mine plays, and I haven't been able to interest him in go, so I thought what the heck, I'll give it a try. I've registered on a few websites, but still haven't played any games. For now, solving problems is still a lot of fun. Surprisingly difficult considering how small the board is.
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I learned chess from my father when I was in middle school, and he was pretty much my only opponent. All was well and good until I beat him one day. That was the last game we played. I haven't played against a human since. In undergrad, I worked with a couple of others to make a chess AI, so I guess I played a little bit then for testing purposes. But even then, I didn't know any chess strategy (we just used minimax search, with a heuristic for evaluating board positions - a combination of piece value + board mobility).

Seems like an interesting game, but I feel like I'd be starting all over again from the time I invested into go. OTOH, if the learning curve is anything like go, I might experience improvement more frequently with chess, since I'm pretty inexperienced at the game.

It always feels good to improve at something, so maybe it's worth giving it a shot.

My dad is retired now - maybe I can convince him to play me, again.

Just played my first game today on Chess.com. After the game, I was offered the opportunity to have my game analyzed by a computer. I chose a fast analysis - it took one minute, and it pointed out which moves were inaccuracies, mistakes or blunders. For each error, it showed a better move and a continuation. I could click the variation and follow it on the board (Edit: apparently getting the continuations is a premium feature, but still...). There was also a graph showing who was ahead during the game, so you could really tell where the tide turned.

In comparison it seems that go servers have a lot of room for improvement.

Needs a bit time to catch up.

Re: recent discussions about bot help --
Go must not head toward this direction:

daal wrote:Just played my first game today on Chess.com. After the game, I was offered the opportunity to have my game analyzed by a computer. I chose a fast analysis - it took one minute, and it pointed out which moves were inaccuracies, mistakes or blunders.
{snip}

In comparison it seems that go servers have a lot of room for improvement.

While we have superhuman bots, there still seems to be a good deal of uncertainty about their judgement of individual moves. They have nothing near the accuracy of top chess engines.

daal wrote:Just played my first game today on Chess.com. After the game, I was offered the opportunity to have my game analyzed by a computer. I chose a fast analysis - it took one minute, and it pointed out which moves were inaccuracies, mistakes or blunders. For each error, it showed a better move and a continuation. I could click the variation and follow it on the board (Edit: apparently getting the continuations is a premium feature, but still...). There was also a graph showing who was ahead during the game, so you could really tell where the tide turned.

In comparison it seems that go servers have a lot of room for improvement.

You should check out the feature en.lichess.org has: after your game, you can get a computer analysis like in Chess.com, and then click a button 'Learn from my Mistakes'. The computer then takes you to each position where you made a blunder or a mistake, and asks you to find a better move. You can then also do this from the opponents side as well. Basically, you can turn your game into a small set of chess problems afterwards for you to solve and learn from.

I would pay a small monthly subscription to have a Go server that could turn my game into a series of tsumego afterwards to help me learn from my mistakes. It's a really great feature!

lichess is fantastic

and I like to play chess from time to time for recreation

but my go suffers when I do, I loose about a rank while playing chess


Luckily as soon as I return to play go fulltime , I recover soon