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1500 questions
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votes
1 answer

Is computer chess exhibiting the predicted "draw death"?

At various times, even going back 100 years or more, people have been predicting the "draw death" of chess meaning that top players will get so good that every game will be a draw. In the 1984 World Championship, this prediction seemed to be coming…
Cecil De Vere
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7 answers

What proofs for refuted gambits are there?

I've stumbled upon this article a while ago, and I've also seen refutations for the Muzio Gambit (Joseph Kling & Bernard Horwitz - Chess Studies on Endings of Games). I'm wondering what other gambits are proven to be unsound. Edit: I'm looking for…
Valentin Brasso
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4 answers

What are some examples of promoting a pawn to a rook or bishop?

I understand the theory, and have seen examples, of endgames where a pawn promoted to a queen creates a draw and instead the player typically promotes to rook. My question is, has this ever occurred in a game at the international level? Instances of…
Justin C
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5 answers

Is it a draw by insufficient material if the board is K vs K, N & N?

It isn't possible to force checkmate with King vs. King, Knight & Knight. A checkmate position, however, is still possible to achieve, so does that mean the 50 move rule applies, or does insufficient material mean insufficient material to force…
james82345
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8 answers

What should I do about the dilemma of castling early?

OK, it has been said that one of the opening fundamentals is to castle early, but I have a dilemma with this and it may very well be a natural dilemma that has to be dealt with or there may be signs that one could look for. Here is the dilemma: If I…
xaisoft
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25
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4 answers

Deep Blue vs Kasparov - Aftermath

Evaluating 200M positions per second and having a search tree of 20+ moves might not be enough to beat a World Champion if a computer searches in the wrong direction or if it's evaluating positions a human opponent would never consider (either by…
Marsellus Wallace
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4 answers

Is there a freely available online 7 piece Endgame tablebase?

The only 7 piece site I heard about is http://tb7.chessok.com/ , and upon registration I am able to setup various positions with 2-6 pieces . However as soon as I setup a position with 7 piece, I get an error about service not being avaiable. Has…
Joe
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How to organize a chess tournament

I want to organize an amateur chess tournament inside the company I work for. I am looking for a convenient way of creating groups, keeping the scores, and getting some statistics. Is there an online solution to organize a chess tournament? Do you…
Harry Dobrev
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25
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4 answers

Is there a recourse when a player does not resign in a clearly lost position?

I manage a chess club. Two 1900+ players A and B were playing. They reached a position where A had K+Q, and B had only K. They each had about an hour left on their clocks. B just waited the full hour, letting his flag fall instead of resigning,…
Daniel Moskovich
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2 answers

Pawn to Queen probabilities chart

Statistically speaking, which white and black pawns are most likely to be queened?
blunders
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Etiquette question: a funny way to resign

Once, when I felt it was time to give up, instead of resigning in some conventional way such as knocking over my king, I saw that I had a helpmate in one, so I decided to go for that. This happened when I was playing a board in a simul. When the…
bof
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Why did this legendary game of Carlsen vs Nakamura not trigger threefold-repetition after move 5?

As far as I can tell, the position is the same after move 1, after move 3, and after move 5, so why does the game last until move 6 is done? Did it not get claimed as a draw by either player? [fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq…
Florian Wendelborn
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1 answer

What happens if you touch a piece that cannot move?

I heard that in formal games you have to move the piece that you touch first. What if the piece cannot move, as in there are no legal moves that involve that piece? What would happen in that circumstance?
user30315
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What was Arpad Elo's own Elo rating?

I've found several sources that indicate that Arpad Elo was a "master-level chess player", but it's been very difficult to find any information about what Elo's own rating would have been under his own system - primarily because if you do the…
patbarron
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Given a legal chess position, is there an algorithm that generates a series of moves that lead to it?

Given a FEN board position, is there an algorithm that can return a PGN move list that evaluates to it from the standard initial position?
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