When I first began playing Chess, I was obsessed with the Scholar’s Mate, which is when white wins the game in only 4 moves. Such occurrences are quite rare when playing against experienced players. However, I recently began thinking about how checkmates in under a certain number of moves could be useful.
If a game is won in very few moves, there is a high chance that the winning player did not make any mistakes. Also, in certain arena tournaments, the winning player of the tournament is who has the most points by winning more games. Those who know how to win games in fewer moves can simply get more wins in the same amount of time.
Therefore, I have written some instructions for using pgn-extract to find games with a certain number of maximum moves. I have previously mentioned how useful this command line tool is. If you download your own database of games from lichess.org, you can use my example commands by simply changing the names of the files and your username in the commands to find the games you have won the fastest.
How to Find Checkmates
the “–checkmate” flag is used to only output games that end in a checkmate instead of a resignation or a stalemate. See the example commands here.
This first command takes all of the games where chastitywhiterose was the white player and won the game by checkmate.
The documentation for pgn-extract shows that you can limit the length of games matched in database. By combining the “–checkmate” flag and the “–maxmoves” flag with a number as an option, you can find all the checkmates that happen up to that number of moves.
Because I am someone who usually plays the Queen’s Gambit opening as white and the French Defense as black, very few of my games end this quickly. My play style is to slowly wear my opponent down in a long classical game. But perhaps your style is to take your opponents down quickly before they even know what happened!
I suggest downloading and installing the pgn-extract tool and placing the path to it in your system settings so you can run commands to extract your best wins.
My own purpose in this is to identify games that I have played which are high quality enough to include in a future Chess book. Fast wins are quite satisfying.
Besides writing about Chess in this book, I also sometimes write poems about Chess which double as song lyrics. The lyrics for my top 3 best songs are below.
Chastity’s Chess Challenge Lyrics
[Verse]
Chastity sat down
Chessboard in the light
Pieces in a row
Ready for the night
[Verse 2]
Every piece unique
Knights jump around
Bishops slide oblique
Soon the pawns surround
[Chorus]
Checkmates and castles
Battles on the squares
Chastity’s got the tactics
Winning everywhere
[Verse 3]
Opponents get nervous
Rooks move with speed
Chastity keeps her cool
Focused indeed
[Verse 4]
She'll show you the websites
Where she likes to play
Just watch her stream highlights
And you'll learn the way
[Bridge]
Every move calculated
Every step so clear
She's the queen of the board
No need to fear
[Verse 5]
We don't always make the best move
But the point of Chess is to have fun
If you keep playing you will improve
You'll believe me when the game is done
[Verse 6]
Whether you are a powerful queen
Or just a slow moving pawn
Soon you'll become a chess machine
Playing in your dreams from dusk to dawn
[Verse 7]
Some people call Chess a game
While others say it's a fight
Perhaps it's all the same
The dance of black and white
[Verse 8]
Chess is for people of every kind
It doesn't matter who or what you are
You have all the power in your mind
Learn to checkmate like a star
Chastity’s Chess Chapters Lyrics
I was trying to inspire people to play chess
My plans were good, but the execution was a mess
If people don't know how to start
Then they will never know that chess is art
I decided to write my own chess book
With large pictures for people to take a look
The new player needs some motivation
Before they even know chess notation
My graphic design was quite berserk
Most of my time was spent on artwork
They needed to be the right size
I failed so many of my tries
I never give up because I am a nerd
I put my heart into every single word
I want my readers to understand
The vision of chess that I have planned
Because chess is not hard to learn
As long as you do not rush your turn
It's not a game for the strong or fast
But for the patient who can outlast
With every piece that you take
You question if you made a mistake
The book I write will not mislead
But you need the patience to read
If there is something I should show
Then message me and let me know
The game of chess should always be free
If you take the time, I know you will agree
Chess for All Lyrics
[Verse]
Board is set let's play our game
Everyone can join the same
Pieces move their timeless dance
In chess there's always a chance
[Verse 2]
Kings and queens on either side
Pawns advance with humble pride
No one's left out in this fight
A game of skill no dark no light
[Chorus]
Chess for all chess for you
Every move it's something new
No matter who or where you are
In this game we're all a star
[Verse 3]
Black or white it doesn't matter
On this board no walls to shatter
Rich or poor we all belong
In this fight we're going strong
[Verse 4]
Even if you've never played
There's no need to be afraid
Anyone can learn this game
That's why chess has so much fame
[Bridge]
Male or female gay or straight
At this table no one's late
Every voice and move unique
All together we are sleek
[Verse 5]
Anyone can win this game
But when you lose feel no shame
Even masters make mistakes
All your games are just remakes
[Verse 6]
Each new player finds their style
When you find it you will smile
Books and courses help us learn
What we need to take our turn
[Chorus]
Chess for all chess for you
Every move it's something new
No matter who or where you are
In this game we're all a star
There is a response that black can use against white’s queen’s gambit. The result is that black can take white’s queen if they make two critical mistakes,
I have pictures of the most common sequence of moves here. I will explain the ideas behind the Albin Counter Gambit and why it can be used to turn the tables against white and destroy their queen. They can of course avoid the trap in a few ways, but this opening is psychologically very tricky.
First, we are in the Queen’s Gambit position. White offers a free pawn on c4 to tempt black into taking it. I have previously covered why you should not accept the gambit pawn. Those who are playing black can use the following tricks.
Instead of taking the pawn, or using the common declines of moving a pawn to e6 or c6, black instead moves their king’s pawn two squares to e5. This is a counter gambit because now white will think “Yay, a free pawn!”. Usually they will take it without question.
White takes the pawn. There is no reason not to because it really is a good move. However, white will be overconfident at this point, thinking they are playing someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.
Black moves the d5 pawn one square forward to d4 where white’s pawn was before. This doesn’t look like a problem except that it means white cannot move their knight to c3 or the pawn will take it.
White will probably try to advance their king’s pawn to e3 with the idea of trading queens if the black pawn captures it.
Black now moves the bishop to b4 and puts the king in check. White has 4 options here, not a single one of which is any good. Either they move the king out of the way to e2 and block their bishop, or they put their knight, bishop, or queen in the way on d2 to block the check.
Not wanting to sacrifice a knight, white sacrifices the bishop on d2.
But black never intended to capture anything with the bishop. They check was just a distraction from the d4 pawn which now takes the e3 pawn. Now it attacks the bishop and pawn. Also, the white bishop on d2 is not able to capture that pawn because then the king will be in check again.
The white bishop simply takes the black bishop and thinks they are winning the game already.
But then the black pawn captures the f2 pawn and the king is in check. There are two legal moves here, both of which are losing for white. Either they move the king to e2 and let the pawn kill their knight, or they take the pawn, which seems like the logical option.
The white king takes the pawn and yet fails to notice that nothing is defending their queen.
Black queen takes white queen because when the white bishop moved out of the way, they had no obstacles between them.
At this point, white usually resigns after losing their queen. There really are no good moves for white in this position and the black queen can keep putting the white king in check while taking all their pieces. This is why the Albin Counter Gambit is so dangerous to a Queen’s Gambit player like me. Don’t fall for this trap as I once did!
But you may wonder, can the Queen be protected if the white king moves to e3 instead of taking the pawn on f2?
No, because remember that the pawn can promote to any piece, including a knight when it promotes. This puts the king in check.
Of course, the rook can take this black knight, but that will not help the situation at all.
The true purpose of taking that knight was to remove the final defender of the king from a bishop on b4 check.
As you can see, there is no way to protect the queen. As soon as the king moves to one of the 3 legal squares, the white queen will be captured by either the black bishop or queen.
The Albin Counter Gambit doesn’t always go this way, but it certainly can. This is why it is a perfectly valid response to the Queen’s Gambit.
When I made the decision to move my king’s pawn to e3 after black accepted the Queen’s Gambit. I learned of a Chess opening trap that led me to prefer pawn to e3 over e4. In this trap, black will lose a knight, bishop, or rook depending on which mistake they make.
What I learned about this is that even though pawn to e3 blocks the dark squared bishop from getting out past it, the high chance that my opponent will fall into this trap makes it worth it. That bishop also should be kept there to defend the king from diagonal checks in the future.
If you are the black player, I would recommend against accepting the Queen’s Gambit entirely. It leads to many traps by white. If you do accept it, you will lose your pawn anyway. Don’t waste time with that and instead move out other pawns depending on what pieces you plan to move. Below are the two most common responses to the Queen’s Gambit. The following is my written recommendations black should play instead.
1. d4 d5 2. c4
! Good moves for Black
e6 Defend the d5 pawn by moving the king’s pawn to e6. If white decides to capture the d5 pawn black will capture back and then white will still not be able to move their bishop to c4. Playing e6 is called the “Queen’s Gambit Declined”. This is the best move in my opinion because moving this pawn there prevents diagonal attacks on the f7 square even if white does manage to get their bishop or queen lined up there.
c6 Although it is less common, c6, known as the “Slav Defense” is another way to decline the gambit. By playing this move, black is hinting at a possible check against the white king by moving the black queen to a5. In any case, this move has the same idea that black will capture back on d5 if white’s c4 pawn takes it. It isn’t bad but
? Bad moves for Black
dxc4 If black takes this pawn, they can fall into one of many possible traps. It is nearly impossible to prevent white from taking back this pawn with the bishop after moving the e pawn. Also, white now has the option to safely move the e pawn to e4 without it being captured because black no longer has the pawn on d5. If black has played dxc4 here, then they are now in a “Queen’s Gambit Accepted” position. White has the advantage of controlling the center with both their king and queen pawns. Black can still win of course but it will be much harder from here.
Queen’s Gambit Declined
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6
If black declines the Queen’s Gambit with e6, there are some things white must look out for. First, by moving the e pawn, black allows their dark squared bishop to get out next turn. This can possibly put the king in check and/or pin the knight if it has moved to c3. Therefore, all evaluation of moves should consider this threat.
! Good moves for White
c5 By advancing the c4 pawn to c5, black is prevented from getting their dark squared bishop out entirely. I recommend this as the best move because now both of black’s bishops are prevented from getting out. They already blocked their light squared bishop on e6 and now our c5 pawn prevents them from moving the dark squared bishop there unless they are prepared to get killed by the d4 pawn in response.
a3 is not the most offensive move but it is a nice defensive measure to prevent the dark squared bishop from coming to b4. This move should be done if white wants to safely move their knight to c3.
Nf3 Moving the knight to f3 is particularly good in the Queen’s Gambit Declined position because it is safe here and can possibly move to e5 next turn. It also means we have not committed to whether we will move the e pawn one or two squares.
? Bad moves for White
Nc3 Whatever you do, don’t try moving the knight to c3 on this turn unless you are prepared to lose it! You can move it here later if you wish but not until you have dealt with the threat of black’s dark squared bishop first. There will be some people who disagree with me on this because they think losing a knight to take down a bishop is a fair trade. However, I protect my knights because they are my “Queen Killers” and are often involved in forks later in the end game that my opponents don’t see. If you move the knight to c3 here, the bishop can move to b4 and the knight can’t move because that would put the king in check.
Slav Defense
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6
I must admit that I have not studied the Slav Defense as much as I have the Queen’s Gambit Declined or Queen’s Gambit Accepted. However, I do have two recommendations for white moves here.
Nf3 is a solid move because the knight will certainly be involve in the game at some point and is not under immediate threat.
Bf4 is a good idea here because we can target the knight on b8 now that the c pawn is not in the way. We have a lot of options for where the bishop can go from here. It is a safe move at this point with no real downsides. Don’t hesitate to kill the knight with the bishop unless you are player who prefers to keep your bishops alive. There is some matter of preference when it comes to the value of knights vs bishops.
As I play more games in the Slav defense, I may have more to say here. The Slav Defense has its own merits even though it is not as popular as other responses to the Queen’s Gambit.
Follow me for More Chess Tips
I play Chess on Lichess.org almost daily. You can find me as user chastitywhiterose. Send me a challenge for a correspondence game or contact me for setting up a time for some live classical Chess!
I also stream on Twitch and upload the videos to YouTube also.
The Reference that was too big for the other book!
Chapter 0: Introduction
This is the start of a new Chess book devoted to the Queen’s Gambit. Like the last book, it will be a series of blog posts, usually with some pictures to help you visualize it.
This book will guide you through some of my most tested positions when playing Chess with the Queen’s Gambit. While this may include some material from my first Chess book, Chastity’s Chess
Chapters, it will expand further beyond what I had space to include because the paperback was already at 100 pages. To reduce the number of pages and the printing cost, I will be reducing the size of some of the included images.
Like the first book, I want the pictures to be a visual guide for people who have not mastered Chess notation yet. The failure of many Chess books is that they are full of notation and it is hard to follow unless you are literally sitting at a Chessboard or using Chess software to follow along. While you should be doing this for the best experience, I have a photographic memory and I find that without a picture, I won’t really remember what I learned. The visual learners will get the best benefit out of this book.
The Queen’s Gambit Accepted
The Queen’s Gambit sounds like a fancy name, and this name was used for a Netflix show as well. However, this opening was well known before people had televisions, computers, or the internet. The word “gambit” means sacrifice. In this opening white sacrifices a pawn with the hope of getting an advantage later. To some people, it also means a gamble because there is no way of knowing if it will work out the way you want depending on what your opponent does.
The opening starts with each side moving the pawn in front of their queen.
Then white moves the pawn on c2 to c4.
In this position, black’s pawn can capture the white pawn and yet it doesn’t appear that white can capture it back, at least not yet. If it does take the pawn, this is known as accepting the gambit. New players will more likely than not take this pawn if they don’t see the trap.
You see, the idea was to distract the pawn and move it away from the center so that white’s king pawn could move two squares forward. Also notice that the white bishop on f1 could also capture the black pawn on c4 next turn, but not so fast, first, black has to choose their next move. The only problem is that there really is no good way for black to stop white from taking their pawn with the bishop. If they try to protect it with another pawn, things can turn out badly. Sooner or later white will capture back the c4 pawn with the bishop and if black tries to stop it, they will only lose more pieces.
My best advice is that if you accept the Queen’s Gambit, also accept that you will lose this pawn and don’t try to defend it by moving the b7 pawn to b5. This has never worked out well for my opponents.
All white has to do is move a pawn to a4 to attack the b5 pawn. The goal is to remove it from defending the c4 black pawn. White’s bishop wants to go there to attack the f7 square.
If you are black, do not let the sequence of the following images happen to you!
I also want you to notice that the previous sequence of moves would still be just as bad if white had decided to move their king’s pawn only one space to e3. There are valid reasons they might do so to add extra protection to the d4 pawn. The d4 pawn is only protected by the queen right now so beware of this in all your games.
In the Queen’s Gambit Accepted, I prefer to move the king’s pawn to e3 because of a really awesome trap that has caused me to win a lot of games. Black’s most common way of protecting the c4 pawn is with pawn to b5. This never works well for black. And in this case, there is a 100% chance of black either losing a rook or a knight.
Let me show you what happens in if white moves pawn to e3 instead of e4 after black defends the c4 pawn with b5.
If you are the black player, I would recommend against accepting the Queen’s Gambit entirely. It leads to many traps by white. If you do accept it, you will lose your pawn anyway. Don’t waste time with that and instead move out other pawns depending on what pieces you plan to move. Below are the two most common responses to the Queen’s Gambit. The following is my written recommendations black should play instead.
1. d4 d5 2. c4
! Good Moves for Black
e6 Defend the d5 pawn by moving the king’s pawn to e6. If white decides to capture the d5 pawn black will capture back and then white will still not be able to move their bishop to c4. Playing e6 is called the “Queen’s Gambit Declined”. This is the best move in my opinion because moving this pawn there prevents diagonal attacks on the f7 square even if white does manage to get their bishop or queen lined up there.
c6 Although it is less common, c6, known as the “Slav Defense” is another way to decline the gambit. By playing this move, black is hinting at a possible check against the white king by moving the black queen to a5. In any case, this move has the same idea that black will capture back on d5 if white’s c4 pawn takes it. It isn’t bad but
? Bad Moves for Black
dxc4 If black takes this pawn, they can fall into one of many possible traps. It is nearly impossible to prevent white from taking back this pawn with the bishop after moving the e pawn. Also, white now has the option to safely move the e pawn to e4 without it being captured because black no longer has the pawn on d5. If black has played dxc4 here, then they are now in a “Queen’s Gambit Accepted” position. White has the advantage of controlling the center with both their king and queen pawns. Black can still win of course but it will be much harder from here.
Queen’s Gambit Declined
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6
If black declines the Queen’s Gambit with e6, there are some things white must look out for. First, by moving the e pawn, black allows their dark squared bishop to get out next turn. This can possibly put the king in check and/or pin the knight if it has moved to c3. Therefore, all evaluation of moves should consider this threat.
! Good Moves for White
c5 By advancing the c4 pawn to c5, black is prevented from getting their dark squared bishop out entirely. I recommend this as the best move because now both of black’s bishops are prevented from getting out. They already blocked their light squared bishop on e6 and now our c5 pawn prevents them from moving the dark squared bishop there unless they are prepared to get killed by the d4 pawn in response.
a3 is not the most offensive move but it is a nice defensive measure to prevent the dark squared bishop from coming to b4. This move should be done if white wants to safely move their knight to c3.
Nf3 Moving the knight to f3 is particularly good in the Queen’s Gambit Declined position because it is safe here and can possibly move to e5 next turn. It also means we have not committed to whether we will move the e pawn one or two squares.
? Bad Moves for White
Nc3 Whatever you do, don’t try moving the knight to c3 on this turn unless you are prepared to lose it! You can move it here later if you wish but not until you have dealt with the threat of black’s dark squared bishop first. There will be some people who disagree with me on this because they think losing a knight to take down a bishop is a fair trade. However, I protect my knights because they are my “Queen Killers” and are often involved in forks later in the end game that my opponents don’t see. If you move the knight to c3 here, the bishop can move to b4 and the knight can’t move because that would put the king in check.
Slav Defense
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6
I must admit that I have not studied the Slav Defense as much as I have the Queen’s Gambit Declined or Queen’s Gambit Accepted. However, I do have two recommendations for white moves here.
Nf3 is a solid move because the knight will certainly be involve in the game at some point and is not under immediate threat.
Bf4 is a good idea here because we can target the knight on b8 now that the c pawn is not in the way. We have a lot of options for where the bishop can go from here. It is a safe move at this point with no real downsides. Don’t hesitate to kill the knight with the bishop unless you are player who prefers to keep your bishops alive. There is some matter of preference when it comes to the value of knights vs bishops.
As I play more games in the Slav defense, I may have more to say here. The Slav Defense has its own merits even though it is not as popular as other responses to the Queen’s Gambit.
Follow me for More Chess Tips
I play Chess on Lichess.org almost daily. You can find me as user chastitywhiterose. Send me a challenge for a correspondence game or contact me for setting up a time for some live classical Chess!
I also stream on Twitch and upload the videos to YouTube also.
There will be many people who did not make it past even the first chapter of this book. This book about Chess is necessarily long because I am sharing all the information I possibly can from my years of experience playing Chess and games similar to Chess. At this point, you might be thinking, “This book is too long! I am not going to read all this!” And you would not be the first to think like this.
The truth is that most people, especially in these modern times no longer have the time nor patience to get as deep into Chess as I have. This world is built around a system of instant gratification as people are bombarded with advertising about movies, toys, First Person Shooter video games, and sex. Most people never dedicate their lives to anything with much devotion. They have short attention spans, and they want to feel happy and feel it NOW.
And I think that is what is wrong with the world. I don’t just promote Chess because it is a board game that I happen to enjoy and am pretty good at. I think Chess is actually good for the world. Although you will probably not take the time to read this, I have compiled a list of the benefits of Chess and why I have such loyalty to an ancient board game that almost nobody will play with me outside of nerds on the internet.
Chess teaches people to think before they act. Relying on impulse or your first guess is almost certainly wrong. We could all use a little more hesitation in all of our decisions. A person who moves without looking at all the pieces on the board will make huge mistakes. Chess reminds you to look at your surroundings and think of the cause and effect that could take place.
Chess teaches you to understand the mind of your opponent. By trying to anticipate what moves your opponent is planning, you are entering their thought process. Many times, I have come to respect someone’s intelligence based entirely on how I see them play Chess. It is the one game where someone’s thought process is evident. Chess is not like Monopoly, where a lucky dice roll can make someone win without really knowing how to play the game. The process of winning is much more satisfying in Chess because you know that you actually outwitted your opponent.
Chess is entirely free to play. Although there are many computer programs that you can buy, the original form of Chess is a board game. If you first buy a Chess set, or someone gives you one, you can play with your friends or even play against yourself. There is no limit to how many games you can play. You could play once a week against your friend or you might be obsessed and have played over 5,000 Chess games online like I have. Because there is no punishment or reward for winning or losing, you do it as much as you want, when you want, limited only by your goals.
Chess is a game of equality. Race, gender, financial status, religion, or political affiliation have nothing to do with Chess. Being in one category or another does not make you win or lose. It is the one game where you can be considered a loser by society’s constantly changing standards, but you can still win at Chess against someone who is too overconfident and doesn’t have the intelligence to stop you.
Learning Chess is easy. Learning to play Chess is really not hard. Chapter 1 covered all the rules that you need to know. A person can begin playing Chess and even win a few games on the same day. It’s not nearly as hard as learning to play most other board, card, or video games.
Chess is tough to master. Although it may be easy to learn the rules, getting experienced enough to win 75% or more of the time can take years. By constantly playing and training yourself to avoid mistakes, you can improve. Most people simply don’t have this much time, nor are they willing to sacrifice other things in their lives that they spend time doing. But I honestly think that if Chess were easy to master, then I would have already achieved everything I could do, and then the fun would be over. Chess provides me with enough challenge that I never get bored.
Chess can help you make friends. Many people are not physically inclined for other activities. Some of them can’t play sports or participate in what is popular for most people. However, Chess is something that many people can find community in. There are groups, Chess clubs, meetups, and no shortage of online websites, such as lichess.org. Over time, you might meet people who can become good friends over a shared activity like Chess or whatever else you may have in common.
Chess is also a game for the solitary. There are hermits like me who can spend much time alone and meditate on the possible moves that can be made. The fact that I can play Chess against a computer when no human is available allows me to test my mind against the artificial intelligence of Chess engines like Stockfish. Chess can help you be social when you want to, but it does not require it if you would rather be left alone. I sometimes play entire Chess games in my head because it brings me comfort for something to make sense when life can be so unpredictable.
If you have made it this far, you can consider yourself above average. Although anyone can play Chess, not everyone sees the beauty of it like I do. My hope is that because I wrote this book, there will be at least one person who has never heard of Chess but comes to learn to play and understand the joy of Chess as much as I have.
If my writing causes even one person to find happiness or relaxation by playing Chess, then I have succeeded in my mission. If you are that person, please let me know.
As I have said before, you don’t have to learn Chess notation in order to play Chess. You could even be a Grandmaster without learning Chess notation. However, learning Chess notation does have some benefits that you should know about.
If you know Chess notation, you can write down any sequence of moves on paper that you play over the board. If this information is not written down, you will probably forget what happened in the game and why you won or lost. This is extremely frustrating for someone who wants to improve.
Most Chess websites will automatically keep track of the notation for you. In fact it is quite possible to look at the notation and figure out what it means because it is very simple.
Names of the Squares
If you are viewing the board from the white player’s perspective, the names of the squares are as shown in the following picture.
The letters are called files and the numbers are called ranks. If you are familiar with the name of the squares, then you can know what piece starts on that square and where it can move. For example, the white queen will start on d1 and the black queen will start on be on d8. The kings are on the e file instead of the d file. The 8 white pawns are on rank 2 and the black pawns are on rank 7.
However, if you are the black player, you will have to remember that the view is flipped from the previous image. This means that all your major pieces are along rank 8 instead of rank 1.
Many Chess boards have the letters and numbers printed on the sides of the board to help people remember the names of the squares by reading it like a map.
If learning the names of the squares is too much for you, just remember that it’s not required. However, if you understand the names of the squares, then you can write down from the beginning of the game where a piece moves. For example, if white moved their knight from g1 to f3, then the notation would be written as “Nf3”.
Letters of the Pieces
Each Chess piece, except for pawns, is represented by a letter.
K = King
Q = Queen
N = kNight (second letter used because K is already used for King)
B = Bishop
R = Rook
Pawns moves are simply written as the name of the square the pawn moved to.
If a piece moves to a square at the same time as capturing something already on that square, then you add an x to the notation For example, if the notation says
1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4
Then we know that we have reached the Queen’s Gambit Accepted position as described in chapter 2. Black has captured the pawn on c4 that white was trying to sacrifice.
Suppose that a pawn gets all the way to the other side and promotes to a queen. Then the notation would be
d8=Q
If any move results in putting the king in check, we add a plus sign to that move. For example if white’s bishop were to capture the pawn on f7 and put the black king in check, it would be written as
Bxf7+
Once you know how to write the notation for the moves, it is possible to record any Chess game and even make notes for yourself. This is especially helpful in Correspondence games. Of course most people don’t write the notation because we have computers to do it for us. I think the main benefit of learning Chess notation is being able to read it.
For example, consider the following notation:
1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4#
If you play those moves on the board or in your head, you will get something that looks like this picture of the fool’s mate from chapter 1.
The # is the symbol for a checkmate, the check where there is no escape for the king. If you are searching a large text file database of games, you can conveniently search for this character to find the games that ended in a checkmate to separate them from games that ended because somebody gave up and resigned.
As someone who plays a lot of online Chess, I accidentally became fluent in Chess notation because I read the notation as I play the games and see it written on the side. As a result, I often speak in Chess notation to describe moves while playing with people.
Unfortunately, people don’t know what I am talking about. For this reason, I felt like it was necessary to at least include this chapter which serves as a basic introduction. Other Chess games have their own notation. For example, Shogi notation is often written in Japanese and Xiangqi notation is written in Chinese. I can’t read their notation systems at all but there are westernized versions of them as well.
A person can also make up their own notation entirely. If you can think of a better system to help you remember what moves you made, then it’s not wrong as long as it helps you.
In this chapter, I give some advice that I believe will help players improve.
The Meaning of Chess Ratings
At some point, a Chess player will notice the numbers of their rating or their opponents on Chess websites. The ELO rating system is a very controversial and confusing tradition, which I believe can lead to problems. To avoid these problems, I want to explain some things.
When you win a rated game, your rating goes up, and when you lose, your rating goes down. However, the amount by which it changes depends on the rating of your opponent. So, for example, if a 500-rated player beats a 2500-rated player, their rating would go up by a lot more than if they beat a 300.
But the most important thing is that ratings are only a measurement of how smart of a player you are; they do not represent actual differences in strength or that one player has an unfair advantage. Chess is not like a physical sport where one person is stronger and can always win. The 500 and 2500 player each could win the game theoretically if they outsmart their opponent with the right moves.
But what I am about to tell you is that players with high ratings are often cowards. They are afraid to play with lower rated players because if they lose, they lose more rating points than if they lose against another player rated closer to their rating.
I believe this problem comes from the fact that having a high Chess rating is seen as a status symbol for bragging rights. My own opinion is that they are meaningless, however. You don’t have to just take my word for it. I have links to two games to show an example of what I am talking about. The fact that every game in lichess is stored permanently on the server means that anyone in the world can play through it and see how it all happened.
In this first game, I was rated 1763 but I beat someone rated 1926.
If you browse through that game, you will see that they allowed me to fork their king and queen at the same time, and I captured their queen and then proceeded to checkmate them in a few moves after that.
In the second game, I was rated 1913, but my opponent got a pawn to the other side and checkmated me with the new queen. I also made several mistakes, like allowing their bishop to fork both my rooks at the same time.
Basically, the takeaway from this is that I go into each game knowing that I can theoretically win. Both sides have the same pieces at the start, and the only difference between me and my opponent is the moves we decide to make. I don’t take Chess ratings seriously at all.
That being said, as a player naturally improves and makes fewer mistakes, their rating will probably rise accidentally! So ignore what your opponent’s rating is and instead look at where all their pieces are! That is what you should focus on. Do not be psychologically intimidated by what ratings you see.
Keep a Database
One of the benefits of lichess is that every single game is stored on their website. Also, it is possible to export all of your games into a text file and then analyze it with the software of your choice, including those that I mentioned in Chapter 4.
By downloading the database and loading it into software like ChessX or En-Croissant, you can see how often you are winning or losing with certain openings and see what moves you might be making that cost you the game. Keeping and studying a database of your games is the single most awesome way that you can learn from your losses and be encouraged by your past wins as well.
Take Notes
Normally, a person cannot take notes during a chess game. In fact, it might be considered cheating in over-the-board tournaments. However, something that can be done is to take notes during correspondence games. Sometimes, you have to wait a few days before your opponent takes their turn. When this happens, you may totally forget what moves you planned to respond with when they captured that bishop or knight you sacrificed to set up a trap.
Writing things down on paper or perhaps digitally on your phone or computer, which you normally use to play online Chess, can be a really good idea. It will keep you organized because correspondence Chess is harder on the brain than ordinary classical Chess. However, I find the lack of time limit to be quite relaxing. Having a ticking clock during live games can distract my eyes from the board and lead to mistakes. Therefore I recommend taking notes and trying correspondence instead if you also have this same problem.
These notes can also be useful for planning your future games as well. If something worked well for you in a game, maybe try that same technique in the next game. If you don’t write it down, you will probably forget!
If you are looking for a good application to take notes on for PC, iPhone, or Android, I highly recommend Joplin. It allows you to take notes and organize them by folders or tags. Using Joplin could be useful for making a personal database of Chess games by tagging them according to wins, losses, and draws, as well as reasons for why the games were won or lost. Was it a checkmate or a resignation?
If you are the writer, you can include as much or as little information as you want. One of the reasons I recommend installing the Joplin app over just having a bunch of text files on the computer is that my poor memory means that I can’t remember where the files on my computer are. Having the notes in Joplin means that I can type in a search and find what I am looking for instantly!
But the most important thing is that no matter what tools you use, you are in charge of your Chess improvement. You can do it according to your style and enjoy the journey.
But remember, if you ever want a real person to help analyze your games from a human perspective, you can always ask me! I love to stream and record videos about Chess just for fun. I will gladly analyze your games, and you only need to ask!
And the best part is, I don’t charge money. I just want people to play Chess with me. That is why I must teach them the ancient ways of this game!
There are more websites to play Chess on than you can possibly imagine. However, only a few of them support variants beyond just standard Chess. In Chapter 2, I mentioned Crazyhouse, Atomic, Shogi, and Xiangqi. These are only 4 out of hundreds of variants. In this chapter, I will go over the top websites that I play on regularly and which variants I usually play on those sites.
Lichess.org
lichess is the first website you will want to visit and create an account if learning Standard Chess and variants based directly off of it. It supports Chess960, Crazyhouse, Atomic, Three-Check, AntiChess, King of the Hill, Horde, and Racing Kings. This is more than most people can master.
It’s also important to mention that the site is entirely free and made with open source software. This is a big deal philosophically for me and for many other people who do not like the corruption of big companies that try to claim ownership over what can be done with a game. The site is financially funded by people who voluntarily donate because they want to help keep the developers paid and keep the site hosted, which is probably not easy considering that it manages billions of Chess games every month!
Lichess is the second most popular Chess website in the world. Chess.com is still number one but it does not support all the variants that Lichess does. It also does not allow correspondence Chess for anything besides Standard Chess or Chess960. Because I like Crazyhouse the most, I started playing on lichess almost exclusively.
Lishogi.org
Just as Lichess is built around Standard Chess and a few variants, lishogi is a fork of Lichess with everything changed to be about Shogi, which is the name for Japanese Chess. You will find that Shogi is even harder to master than Standard Chess and there are a lot more rules to remember, especially when it comes to promotion of pieces that reach the other side. The goal may still be to checkmate the king, but it is still a different game than Standard Chess. However, if you have played Crazyhouse Chess and you enjoy dropping captured pieces back on the board, I can’t recommend a better site than lishogi. It also has variants of Shogi that I haven’t even learned how to play.
Pychess.org
pychess has more variants than any other site mentioned in this chapter. However, there are 4 variants that I particularly play on there than I must recommend.
Duck Chess
Just like Chess, except that there is also a duck! I know it sounds insane but this is one of the funniest but also most challenging variants. There is only one duck but after each player makes their regular Chess move, they are required to move the duck to a new empty square ANYWHERE on the board. The duck cannot capture anything but it also cannot be captured or moved through. This means that the duck can block even a checkmate temporarily if no other pieces can stop it.
Grand Chess
Grand Chess is played on a 10×10 board and has two new pieces in addition to the standard chess pieces. The cardinal moves like a Bishop and a Knight. The Marshal moves like a Rook and a Knight. If you think about the fact that the Queen in Chess is like a combined Bishop and Rook, these piece combinations really don’t seem unusual. Even so, pychess is one of the few sites you can play this variant on.
Fog of War
In this variant, players cannot see their opponents pieces unless they have a piece that can legally move to that square. This variant is unique to playing on a computer because there is no way to simulate this experience on a regular chessboard that I can think of.
Alice Chess
Alice Chess is a variant based on “Through the Looking-Glass” by Lewis Carroll. The game involves pieces moving between two different Chess boards or perhaps opposite sides of a single chessboard made of glass in the way that Pychess renders it on the site. I am really bad at this variant but because I am a fan of the Alice in Wonderland series, I think it is worth exploring more in detail and eventually I shall master it!
pychess-alternates.onrender.com
The pychess_alternates website is an alternate site for Pychess.org users which has more variants that have not been merged into the main site. I have to recommend it because it has two games not available anywhere else!
Coffeehouse
Just like Crazyhouse except that captures are mandatory. If you can take an opponents piece, you are forced to even if it is a bad idea. I am bad at this variant but I love playing it and can never get enough people to play with because few people know the site exists…
Coffee Shogi
Just like Coffeehouse except that it is based on Shogi instead of Standard Chess. This is probably the most psychologically challenging Chess variant that I have ever played! If nothing else, this would make the site worth a visit for the serious player who doesn’t think Shogi is hard enough!
Those are only two of the variants that are only available on that site. However, few people know about the site because it isn’t talked about much. I only know about it because it was mentioned in a Pychess blog post.
playstrategy.org
Playstrategy has a lot more than Chess and its variants. It also has Draughts, which is usually called Checkers in America, and Go, another really popular board game in Japan. I visit this site specifically to play those games even though it also has Chess, Shogi, and Xiangqi.
chessvariants.com
The chessvariants site is a great resource for learning about the rules of Chess variants that you have probably never heard of. Usually lichess and Pychess do a good summary of the rules and can be accessed directly on their site, but chessvariants can tell you a lot more information about the variants including their history which is useful for nerds like me. I don’t just want to play the games, I want to know everything about them too.
Other sites
Chess.com is usually the first site where people begin playing online Chess. Although lichess.org is better in my opinion, chess.com existed before lichess.org and has even more users. There is nothing to stop people from playing on both sites and see which they like better.
Xiangqi.com is probably the best resource for learning about Chinese Chess for a new player. I prefer playing on Pychess.org but that’s because I already know how to play and because Pychess supports correspondence games which fit into my busy lifestyle better. But if you want to get a quick real time game of Xiangqi, then Xiangqi.com has the most users who are specifically looking to play this variant which is popular in China.
In this Chapter, I will go over the best Free and Open Source software that is available for either playing or analyzing Chess. There are two command-line Chess Engines that I will recommend, two Graphical User Interface Programs that can use those engines, and two more utility programs that are specifically about managing Chess databases. Finally, I will mention how you can use these tools to analyze the games you have played.
Stockfish
I will not be covering how to install Stockfish because that is a separate matter, depending on your operating system. However, I will explain how Stockfish can be used from the command line once it is downloaded and placed in your path.
However, you can easily download Stockfish and find a detailed guide for installing it on your platform.
Usage at the command line
Although the official stockfish documentation is very good at helping people to set up Stockfish with most GUI software, there is a way to play directly by running commands from a terminal or command prompt.
After downloading and installing the engine by whatever means you used, just type “stockfish” at the command line or adjust the name to whatever your executable is named You will probably see a message similar to “Stockfish 17 by the Stockfish developers (see AUTHORS file)”.
Simply type d and press enter. You will probably get something like this:
That is because d is the display command and it will show a text representation of the Chess board. The position can be changed with a certain format. For example
position startpos moves d2d4
Will move the pawn from d2 to d4. This is my favorite starting move. So if you use the d command again. You will see that the pawn has now moved!
Now that we have made our first move as white, we need to tell the computer to search for a move to reply with. For that we can enter go depth 1 and it will come up with a quick response. For example if we get the result “bestmove d7d5”. This means that the engine has decided that moving black’s Queen pawn is the best move. So we add this result to the end of our last command.
position startpos moves d2d4 d7d5
As you can see, both pawns have moved. However, this is not the preferred way for most people to use the engine. However, I did this as an example to show you what a Chess GUI has to do behind the scene to operate the engine and get back moves from it.
Fairy Stockfish
I would like to mention briefly that Fairy-Stockfish is a version of Stockfish that support all of the Chess variants available on lichess.org and even more. I have not mastered the use of it from the command line, but I have confirmed that it works with Xboard, which is the next program I am recommending.
Xboard
You can use XBoard/WinBoard to run not only Stockfish, but many other Chess engines that are less popular. I find the interface of the program to be a little bit confusing. However, I have created convenient commands to use which allow me to play Chess, Shogi, or Xiangqi with it on my Windows 11 laptop.
winboard -fcp "C:\stockfish\fairy-stockfish.exe" -variant normal -xclock -depth 1
If you are playing XBoard, the Linux version, you can change winboard to xboard and change the path of fairy-stockfish to wherever you have it installed.
Although I have less experience using Xboard than the other recommended software in this book, XBoard when combined with Fairy Stockfish allows you to play more types of Chess Variants than any other program that I know about.
Also, if you beat Fairy Stockfish at depth 1 using commands similar to the above, then try changing that number to something higher and then then the computer will search deeper and find even better moves to play against you. Beating it at full strength is impossible for a human player.
En Croissant
I recommend En Croissant for people who are only interested in playing standard Chess and want to analyze the games they have played on lichess.org or chess.com. It has a feature which can download all the rated games of a username of a player on those sites specifically. This means that if you play online on these sites, you can instantly obtain a database of your own games. You can use this to see how often you win or lose and what mistakes you are making.
It also allows you to download larger databases of games like Caissabase which are full of games from the top Chess Masters of the world. This allows you to see how really good Chess players can play and maybe learn some things from them! That’s what I try to do!
pgn-extract
Once you have a database of your own games, or perhaps games of other people, you may want to filter them by certain criteria. The program pgn-extract is exactly what you can do this with. It is a command line only program. You will have to read the documentation to know all of its options but here are some commands that I commonly use to keep track of my best wins.
These commands use the file “lichess_chastitywhiterose.pgn” which I downloaded directly from lichess.org. There is a built in export feature that allows you to select games of different time controls and/or variants and decide which ones to export to pgn file. pgn-extract can only handle standard chess games but it can sort them extremely fast. For example
This first command takes all of the games where chastitywhiterose was the white player and won the game by checkmate.
I have said for years that only games ending in a checkmate are reliable information. If you opponent timed out because they fell asleep or got distracted, that doesn’t really feel like a win does it?
ChessX
The best currently available free and open source Chess database management program is ChessX. It allows you to open a pgn file and actually play through all the games with a graphical user interface. This is the best way to analyze your games and see visually where you made the mistakes. I have not full explored everything that the program can do but I read that it also has filtering capabilities similar to what you could have done with pgn-extract which I previously mentioned.
Possible Updates
I know there are infinitely more open-source Chess related programs out there that I have not had time to use or write about. If you know of any really good programs that are also open source, let me know and I can probably include them the next time I update this chapter!
Chastity's Chess Challenge 