Specializes largely in what is known as "blitz" chess.
Basically chess played with time limits of 10 minutes per side.
It's free and no registration required; you can play a game lasting as little as 2 and a half minutes if such is your choosing.
It's apparently called chessbase.com, but on a mobile phone can often be found by simply typing "play blitz chess".
At any rate, I played a game I thought PROBABLY conforms to the idea of positional chess. Unfortunately, being unregistered, I'd have no way of ever revisiting the game and eventual seeing if I'm right or even get input from other players online without relating it in a forum like this one.
So, with Danielle Reardon bookending ...
Image of white sheet with gobbledygook features chess NOTATION, i.e. the moves of a game written in a kind of descriptive code. This version of notation used letters and numbers. The parentheses are largely meaningless to a standard player.
I'm playing as white here, using an opening called the King's Gambit.
Registered users can examine the image in this particular post and see exactly what that looks like. Those without privileges can Google "King's Gambit" or simply watch a short YouTube clip to find out what that is and/or looks like.
My idea is to sacrifice a PAWN to advance my overall movement as quickly as possible, sacrifice a PIECE to prevent my opponent from performing an effective defensive move known as castling, and gradually build a diagonal "ladder" of white pawns right up to his king. My opponent realizes this though, and uses his Queen to block the front of my line ...
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Above, you can see my opponent, who was the first one to decide to take someone off the board, prove himself even more aggressive and get a pawn all the way down to what is 6th rank from Black's perspective.
He more or less forced trade offs with his knight and bishop; good players can create a LOT of chaos once they get a knight or two down to your end, and threatens, by the end of all this movement, to create what is called a "discovered" check (surprise advance that leaves the king attacked by a piece DIFFERENT than the one that advanced, and usually must be dealt with BEFORE dealing with the advancing piece).
This "discovered" check would be devastating, leaving my king under attack by the black queen, while simultaneously leaving my own queen helpless to defend herself from the pawn.
And the Amazon who is his pawn, via what is called "promotion" would then become ANOTHER queen for him.
A must stop situation:
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Here, my opponent all but doubles the threat described in the previous post.
He reinforces his Queen's power by concentrating the attack with a bishop.
Chess pieces are generally accorded inherent value, expressed via a numeric point system.
Roughly the following:
Pawn = 1 point
Knight = 3 points
Bishop = 3 points
Rook = 5 points
Queen = 9 points
King (not applicable; game automatically won or lost if King is captured)
Here, simply counting material for each side, you'll find I'm behind in points.
In fact, after my opening kamikaze attack with my bishop, on like move three or move four of this game, I'm behind at every turn.
But I like chess precisely because it's not ultra-slavish to points alone.
In fact, by blocking his ready-to-queen pawn with my OWN queen, I'm able to thwart his pawn, bishop, AND his own queen.
Still, though, there's the reality that my opponent is ahead in material and points. I've GOT to get rid of at least one of those 3 before the rest of his army joins the fight. Fortunately, though forced to trade off one knight to stop his, I've still got another, and I manage to attack both queen and bishop. My last knight is gone after this, but it's worth it.
Following the trade offs, I'm in position enough to have one of my rooks chase his queen away. Now, though still down in points, my advantage in position starts paying off. By the point of the move shown in image 8, the game, though I'm STILL down in points, is won for me. The King's world is reduced to what that Rook chasing away the Queen left him with, less than half a board, and my Queen can safely lead him to capture by moving on any white square in range with the exception of the very top of the board. Not that she needs to -- if his King goes up there he'll be instantly checkmated, and my opponent knows it.
Chessbase, again, does not have good reproduction features. Without the app, the last few moves disappear if you so much as turn your phone to the side, making game data irretrievable. In the future, I might use another program to recreate the end for better illustration. For now the best I can do is pay an image of the notation and let readers role play.
The all-important feature was the opponents pawn move on move 11.
From that point to the end of the game it stayed, inadvertently protecting my King better than own troops could have.
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Game which opened Sicilian, featured me kamikaze-ing my bishop to expose my opponent's king, sacrificing my other bishop and allowing him to get a SECOND Queen, and then using my positional advantage to reverse a 15 point deficit and win.
In this particular post, the selections don't highlight anything extraordinary.
They are merely a way to get a complete transcript of the written notation so the game can be rewritten, replayed, and re-examined for study if I ever became more serious.
The "Play Blitz Chess" website apparently has a few more features than what I realized before; I might explore a bit today.
I'm curious, for instance, if, once a person actually registers, video replay becomes an option for what were previously only text notation transcripts.
But, that's a mystery for a future moment, not this one:
Fun match this one. Tilts in my favor despite early material loss and castles essentially blown up on both sides.
I think I'm getting better at kamikazes, interdefense of pieces, clearing of files to benefit from castled rooks, pawn marches, and taking advantage of my opponents' own unintended roadblocking abilities.
I'll probably re-obtain the chessdotcom phone app at some point to get more experienced feedback on whether the things I try for fun are in reality any semblance of sane gameplay.