What do you all think?

For black, between QGD and Slav/Semi-slav, which do you prefer and why? I am trying to understand what is appealing on both sides and why you make the tradeoff of potentially blocking in the your light square bishop. Personally, I respond with the Nimzo Indian as black, and when playing as white I hope for QGA or Catalan.

Showed up in my feed on another site.

I'm assuming it's expecting Qxb5, Nxc7+ with a royal fork. But what's stopping c6 or Nc6 instead, keeping the black Queen in a position to protect c7?

For those of you that haven't come across him, GM Sadler is active on mastodon (@gmmds@mastodonapp.uk), and posts some really exciting and interesting content on his YouTube channel (https://m.youtube.com/@SiliconRoadChess/videos).

I'd summarise his videos as using a variety of engines to produce unique, engine approved yet human comprehensible attacking ideas, often in opening/middle games, but he's also analysed some famous human endgames with these engines. While they're not necessarily good videos for beginners, I think anyone over ~1200 OTB will get a lot out of his videos.

If you want a good example video to see if it's for you, his/Dragon's Qd2 idea in the Pirc is a great example (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DuFfJwBgMD8), though I'd encourage you to flick through and find a video on an opening that you play.

I'm sure many here are already familiar with the Chess Page 1 youtube channel, but I've been watching them lately and figured I'd make a post for anyone else who might be interested. It's entertaining, and I love how they lay out the information. The editing and short format is easy to digest, and I find myself retaining more info from this than anything else I've watched.

Has anyone found a good online shop or had any luck at thrift stores, maybe?

I'd like to get a nice chess board without spending tons of money for something highly-stylized - I don't care for those sets that are so stylized that you have a hard time identifying the pieces at a glance. I think my ideal board would be simple, but nicer than one you'd find at a Walmart or something.

Maybe I need to hit up some Goodwills or antique shops. If any of y'all have found one that you really like, I'd be very interested in hearing where you looked.

When I play chess I always take one of two roads which both lead to defeat.

Either I play very carefully, leaving my opponent open to all of the attacking. With carefully I mean I only move important pieces to spots which are defended.

Or I play too recklessly which makes me lose important pieces to the stupidest of decisions. Seriously, I lost tons of queens to spots which were very clearly defended.

Either way I always lose. So:

Does anyone know of: tactics, videos, rule of thumbs, anything. Which can help to find a good balance?

Also: When should you start strategising about check-mating the king?

Just thought I'd take this opportunity to double-check, but how do you feel about chess memes/comics/etc in this community @jalda@sopuli.xyz?

I’m sure this is a beginner question, but I’ve playing chess solely online(mostly on my phone) for the past 6 years.

I went to my first weekly casual chess event that’s hosted at a bar in the city I am in. Everyone was super nice and I can’t wait to go back - even though I only played one game and got my ass handed to me.

Anyways, I feel really dumb looking at a board in real life. Like not calculating correctly and not having the same “board vision” that I normally would have when playing online. Maybe just cuz I am so used to looking at a top down virtual version of the game?

Has anyone else experienced this? Any tips or is it just something I maybe need to practice more in real life to get comfortable playing this way?

I've been casually enjoying chess off and on for the past year, and while I can tell that I'm improving, I think I need to get faster at calculating. I play mostly Daily games (1300-something currently) and am a puzzle fiend, but I find myself getting into time-trouble constantly when I play games with actual time controls.

I want to get comfortable with blitz, but I feel like I'm not learning as much because I'm just scrambling to get (often terrible) moves out in time. I tried puzzle battle for the first time recently too, and even though my regular puzzle rating is 2500, I'm frequently losing on time once the puzzles get to 1000+ (my avg time per puzzle is usually 0:06-0:08 at the end).

I suspect the answer is just going to be to play more with time controls, but I'm curious if anyone here has found any practice tips that have helped them personally.

I'm a little over 1300 elo, and I feel it's time to start really getting down and dirty and learning openings. I know a little bit about Scandinavian, very little about French and I've recently got interested in Ruy Lopez but I wanted to get the opinion of you guys to see where the next step in my chess journey should be?

I got a laugh at seeing this was a "book move".

Was trying to checkmate in the middle of the board but had my queen too close.

I am trying to start analyzing my games, but I am a bit unsure how to even go about doing that. I originally would have the computer analyze my game, and comment on what I think are the main points of the match I should keep in mind.

I have the following tips so far:

• serious games, create a study to analyze
• try to comment what went through your mind as you played the game
• view what others did in a similar position using a database
• have final comments/lessons learned
• classify mistakes. leads to pattern recognition
• computers don't fully understand openings *use computer analysis after my own analysis and see where my analysis went wrong

More entertaining than educational. Not so much about education and more about diving into the people and culture and fun stories. Maybe I'm looking for fun inspiration.