How to be an enlightened chess player

The Picard Maneuver@startrek.website to AnarchyChess@sopuli.xyz – 322 points –
20

Starcraft II player: misclicks 8 times in under a second, resigns 0.2 seconds later

Ugh I got told that at my level you should never resign because all of us make such stupid mistakes there's still a chance of a win.

Hard to actually do though when you're down 10+ points and huddled miserably in a corner.

Here's another reason you should never resign: endgames are crazy hard, and not resigning is the only chance you'll ever get to practice them.

@duncesplayed thanks that's a really good point!

I just somehow won an endgame after losing both my castles, thought of this convo.

I once won a game back that was +63 from analysis, to M1.

Just so your best to keep a rook on the board, and walk your king over slyly to the king.

I mean if you're an adult and you get ladder mated you deserve to feel bad

@Jackcooper well yeah as soon as you see an inevitable forced mating pattern you'd resign, I don't think they mean that.

That said, I'm a super old adult and I'm never going to feel bad for being terrible at chess.

Does Lichess check for this? I definitely get an aborted game more often when I am white. I also notice my ELO went up after I actually locked down strategies for black. Yeah it's only like a 0.5% advantage for the masters, but if you play a lot of games, aborting everytime you are black is a helpful strategy.🤷

Apparently it's more like a 5% advantage for us normies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess

I prefer black. Remember that the saying goes: "White begins, black wins." (I have no idea if this saying also exists in English but it does rime just as well as in German („Weiß beginnt, Schwarz gewinnt.”))

I don't agree and don't think the data agrees. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess

Two thoughts: white can more easily set the speed of the game, as well as not have to adapt to their choices (which black must do)

Almost certainly for elo play and stuff where people learned all the first 10+ moves of all the viable opening strategies.

But as a casual player (ok, I was chess club in Jr high if that counts for anything) I always chose to play as black and have always won at least 90% of all my games played. I'd be confused as hell if I played as white, at this point.

Never resigning because maybe the 1200 that you're playing against might make a mistake and give you a dub

happens more often than you think

if you're playing against me, that is. I'm about 1200 rapid, and the amount of times I've absolutely thrown games after a good setup is simply sad

that's probably the reason why I can't seem to get any higher