Anyone want to play a game of chess?

I’m happy to take part, haven’t played in years. I do prefer Lichess since it is ad free.

Coincidentally, wife and I tonight started watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix tonight.

Just took a look at lichess, and I wouldnt mind switching over at all.

I am already on Lichess. I don’t mind which chess server …

Finished it last night, great series!

I could pony up a few bucks for a qt3 chess.com server via Venmo or whatever. Will also check out Lichess.

One of the things I like about Chess is how the horizon changes; sometimes I can see quite a bit ahead, other times (usually when it seems the game is the most critical) it shrinks down to just a couple moves. It’s fascinating.

I like Mato Jelic: he has a long series of YT videos about old (and new) masters. Whenever he asks me to pause the video and guess the move, I always go with something other than what the master played. Every time!

Thanks for what @Zenchess and others wrote in this thread: I love learning from those more experienced than me, and I’ve found some of the comments very helpful so far.

While we were watching the first episode my wife asked I could follow the games as they were played and I said no, I would need an overhead camera angle and would need to pause every five seconds. Which she would not appreciate.

I’m glad to hear you like it. The first episode seemed very dark and I’m not sure I am up for a dark drama with all that is going on in the world. But the novelty of the concept, and my interest in chess, is probably enough to at least try ep. 2.

The show also has a thread in the TV etc sub-forum:

It’s pretty universally liked in that thread. I’d definitely recommend not making any judgement based on the first episode, it’s mostly setup. The 2nd episode is more representative of the rest of the series.

I have also created a lichess account, mmurphy1.

I need to know how to pronounce “lichess” in my head, though.

“lick-hess”

Everybody I know pronounces it “Lee-Chess”.

Leeches. Liches (lih - ches)? Lie-chess! Like chessboxing, but with a lying game.

See, it was practically going French with it. Would you like a game of le chess?

But I knew that wasn’t right.

Blockquote
Is cheating rampant on places like chess.com ? Can’t people play you while they have their favorite chess engine running in another window?

This is a very difficult topic to cover. Short answer is yes: on sites like chess.com and lichess cheating is rampant. However it may not matter. It may only be at 2000+ level.

Just as an example I played a game on lichess yesterday where literally every move my opponent played, after analyzing it in Chessbase with stockfish 12 was the #1 recommendation of the engine. The odds of that happening to even a high level GM player are very low, and the moves were not obvious at all. When it’s that blatant I think there’s a high chance that if you report the guy the site will ban them. But there’s always more cheaters lurking in the background.

It’s also far worse than just someone running an an engine on their phone and playing all the engine moves for that. There are browser plugins that can automatically play the moves for you as well as at least one program I know from russia that you feed the piece images into and then it moves the pieces for you.

A lot of people on sites like chess.com will play 3 0 because the theory is it would be harder to cheat during that. And while that is true like I said it doesn’t remove all cheaters.

Cheating is a massive problem online, even among already professional players who cannot resist the urge to do it to win some money (thus risking their entire chess career). I personally think extreme measures should be used to combat this like identity verification, software that runs on your computer and monitors it, etc. I know they’re doing this more and more at professional online events but I think even normal players should be subject to it on some site at least. I know every time I lose to perfect engine play it makes me leave the site potentially for good.

Anyway, this is why I play on the Internet Chess Club. I simply rarely, if ever, feel like I am playing a cheater on there. I wouldn’t really recommend it for others though.

For the most part I wouldnt worry about cheating too much until you get to around 2000+ rating on these sites. If someone is cheating their rating should skyrocket and at low rating you can’t really tell the difference between getting smoked by a strong player and perfect play by the engine so you don’t really have someone to be mad about. However the PARANOIA of thinking your opponents MIGHT be cheating is a crippling thing and in general I would just say that your opponent probably didn’t cheat, at all rating levels there are under-rated players and players who have great games but then later lose and or sandbag. If someone is really paranoid and you just want to verify if they were playing every engine move just load up stockfish and see if every move they make aligns with the engine, preferably after you’ve left ‘book’ in the opening.

On a related topic, cheating ACCUSATIONS are also rampant, and it’s a big problem too. I’ve been personally accused of cheating many times in the game chat by players who just lost. (Never cheated, except once in 1998 when I had a chess opening book open during some of my first games of chess ever).
It’s a really interesting psychological problem. You lose a big game, your opponent plays well, your ego is hurt, you latch out for an excuse and ‘CHEATER!’ is what you find. You don’t need any evidence to accuse your opponent or slander them in online forums. Sometimes even famous chess players do it like Hikaru Nakamura was playing in a simul recently and lost a game and started hinting about how his opponent’s play was suspicious, the guy gets instantly banned and then later reversed by chess.com because apparently they didn’t use their normal statistical analysis or engine analysis to determine cheating and went off of Hikaru’s suspicion. I think this is a massive problem where famous players with ego problems are given too much power because they have a platform and people suffer for it for playing a great game or knowing more opening theory in a specific variation than they do.

I created a Qt3 team on lichess if anyone wants to try that out. Not quite sure about how it helps, except maybe just an easy way for us to meet up. You can join by registering at lichess and then going here.

There’s a even a team forum and a chat window.

cool, I joined the QT3 team.

Join request submitted.

Joining qt3 on lichess. I will finish my current games on chess.com, then jump ship for the rematches.

Current members:

Six is enough for a tourney of sorts, perhaps we could get to eight and do a best-of-three pairings sort of thing?

Ok, ill join up tomorrow if thats ok.

@tylertoo There are different tournament formats on lichess already available. A round robin, where everybody plays against everybody. Or a so called suisse tournament. That’s usually good if you have more than 10-15 players and don’t want to play everybody against everybody.

I would prefer a round robin. With 6 players, that’s 5 rounds then. Or a double round robin (10 rounds playing each player with black and white). Lichess will handle the pairings and scoring.

I’d be up for that. Some of you are most definitely capable of kicking my ass. I challenge those to autocannons at angels 12.