I set out this morning with the intention of mastering the italian game, but ended up, like Magnus Carlsen, defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi in a pretty intense match.

Not really, I did defeat his bot though, with takeback moves and online analysis enabled. 😉 It’s one of the ways I am learning a lot about chess is playing the really hard bots with analysis enabled. Those who have studied will remember that grandmasters learn to chunk moves, learning to just be able to see the correct one. I do feel the more I play hard opponents, and can test moves and take them back, the more I get a feel for the whats and whys of the structures I see over and over.

I sort of feel like I’m over puzzles at this point. They annoy me in that I always solve them, but they may want me to move in a certain order or sometimes have some strange objective. Playing the bots with hints on is much more insightful.

For those who don’t know, the italian game is a very classic chess opening. Playing to the kingside open, it pushes forward a bishop in an attack lane early, putting pressure on the opponent’s kingside for an early fork; and allowing for a quick castle. There are a lot of variations of how the game can progress, but I find that it creates some nice and structures around both attack and defense; with some clever wrinkles that you can introduce.

I really started to try and learn this opening about a month ago. Once I had the basics down I started to use it in live timed matches. It is often effective - definitely more effective than some of the more freeform openings I had been playing previously; but still has many vulnerabilities.

One thing that I have learned in playing timed matches online is that the same patterns emerge on both the good and bad sides. In my mind I have started classifying these position variants as chunks and traps. When you start to see the pattern chunks, then you pretty much already know what the best move is. When you see a trap, you know that it’s probably time to reevaluate your strategy and apply the proper counter.

Chess is really a game that you only get good at by playing. I notice that like lifting weights, if I stop playing for a week or so my understanding fades back down to a level closer to my base chess level. Which, my base level still isn’t terrible - good enough to beat the random on the street, but not the random in the park. It would be nice to be actually good enough that in my mind, when someone asks me if I play chess, it’s a ‘Do you want to see?’ rather than a ‘Yeah, I guess.’

I’ve started seeing a lot of fascinating other openings I want to study as well; but one thing at a time. Not having a live human to bounce these things off of makes learning somewhat more difficult so for now bots will have to suffice.