King can’t take because a bishop is looking in her direction from half a mile away.

I’ve gotten into chess for the past year, and while I used Lichess for a little bit, I wound up going with chess.com primarily instead. The app is great. The learning modules are really helpful, and I love the puzzles.

It also has tens of millions of users on the platform, so your matchmaking is going to be more accurate, whether you need to be matched with opponents who just learned how the pieces move, all the way up to the top professional players.

As for outside resources, I’ve been mostly learning from random masters/GMs that have youtube channels.

We need a fourth, derpy-er dragon.

I’ve always heard that until you’re master/GM level, it’s better just to play it out. Your opponent might blunder too, or accidentally stalemate you. At the very least, it’s good practice playing at a disadvantage. I know I’ve blundered huge leads myself, so who knows what’s going to happen?

There’s a psychological thing where we always assume that our opponents in games will never mess up, which makes it feel easy to give up the moment you make a mistake.

This is great. I have a new daily game to play. Thanks for sharing!

I’ve found that doing a metric ton of puzzles has greatly improved my tactics when I’m playing “recklessly”. It helps your board vision and you’ll generally have a better feel for what you can safely attack.

As far as playing too defensively, maybe finding an opening that leads to a natural attacking plan would be helpful. I’ve been really enjoying Queen’s pawn openings that point all of your pieces toward the opponent’s castled king, so even though I’m playing “safely”, I’m still creating threats.

Thanks for the input - that’s exactly my dilemma. I’ve been posting on AnarchyChess too, but the AnarchyChess from reddit that inspired the AnarchyChess community on lemmy was more for highly ironic shitposting, so depending on how strict we want to be, this comic and normal memes wouldn’t really work there.

There doesn’t seem to be a separate “Chess Memes” community on Lemmy yet, and I suppose I could just create one, but I also don’t know if the need is there to split the already small communities again. For now, I figure I’ll just feel out what the mods/communities in @chess@lemmy.ml and @AnarchyChess@sopuli.xyz want.

I have a new favorite comic now

After playing online for a while, every time I go back to a real life board, I feel blind! It’s an adjustment.

I’ve been thinking of hitting up a local chess club at a bar too and will probably have the same problem.

This sounds like good advice. I guess I need to learn my openings well enough to play them quicker and quicker. Reminds me of learning to play something complicated on a musical instrument: you don’t start at full speed, your learn it at a slow tempo first and then speed it up.

SNES - I love 16bit pixel art.

I’ll check out his channel, thanks!

Usually chess.com

So basically I might be faster if I take some time to learn more opening theory… That makes sense.

I do really like the rapid time control, it’s just that it’s a longer commitment and harder to find the time/focus for me. In a year of being into chess, I’ve only played 20 rapid games, with my rating sitting at 1170.

Yeah, I’m on chess.com (I know I know, it’s not the FOSS option).

There’s a 3-dot options button next to “quote” that has “Text Faces”.

(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

(ง ื▿ ื)ว ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

Oh my god, I’d never tried tapping this button before.

Now THAT also sounds like early internet too…

I’m going to say yes. Every teenager is an alien.

Lol, you mean you didn’t like them singing Row Row Row Your Boat around the campfire? Or Uhura’s sexy fan dance? How about Scotty running into a crossbeam like he’s in the Three Stooges?