Shades of Blunders | Hacker News Reader

Shades of Blunders

lichess.org

45 pointsfzliu9 comments

Are there similar articles but for chess beginners?

I.e. people who are familiar with the rules but don’t play well and don’t understand the notation; I liked this text but it was difficult for me to follow and I didn’t understand many examples (e.g. I can’t spot a checkmate in one, I wish the article pointed it out).

I encourage you to learn the notation! It's not difficult and will open up a wealth of resources: books, articles, videos, etc.

As for the mate in 1, it's in the analysis next to the game board (you'll need to learn notation to read it).

Thanks, I’ll try. Assuming I learn the notation, where in the analysis board can I see the mate in 1 information?

The notation is really not that frightening, once you get it. Just read the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_notation_(chess)

Don't bother with that large table at the bottom.

#1 means white can mate in 1 move, #-2 means black can mate in 2 moves.

Look for that in the UI

Thanks, this helps, this is what I was after.

The board shows the moves, and the right side lists them in notation along with some commentary. On move 61 Black blunders, allowing White a mate-in-1. White misses it, however, also blundering on move 62.

In case you missed it, you can just click the left and right arrows at the bottom to move through the game, the best and worst moves are highlighted with ! and ? and sometimes different colours.

The Chess Notation lesson[0] from Lichess was really helpful when I was learning the notation a few years ago.

If you have a physical chessboard it can also help to try to play out a game from it’s notation and stop every few moves to check your board’s state against the state of the actual game.

I spent a couple of afternoons doing this and it stuck. You can refresh with some Chess Vision training[1] from Chess.com.

If you are interested in learning or reading more about chess, it is worth learning Portable Game Notation[2] (PGN). If you’re interested from a more programmatic perspective the Forsyth–Edwards Notation[3] (FEN) is more common in software, and there’s also the Universal Chess Interface[4] (UCI) format that is mostly used for communicating with engines.

[0]: https://lichess.org/study/ezdKJ7Di/9NLD1jo2

[1]: https://www.chess.com/vision

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Game_Notation

[3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsyth%E2%80%93Edwards_Nota...

[4]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Chess_Interface

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