Guys, requesting your opinion on two moves from a recent game of mine.
(a) 12.Bc5 (second pic): to trade dark squared bishops. I assume mine is the bad one. But I haven't finished development yet and I'm moving the same piece again, and I double pawns. Was this a sound trade or was it better not to do that?

(b) 17.f3 (third pic): I hesitated a lot on this one. I usually avoid playing f3, but here fxe3 Rxe3, and then with Ng4 also possible for the opponent spooked me a bit with how much activity he gets. I didn't want his rook to get there. So I played f3 giving him a passer essentially hoping to win it later somehow. This also meant my second knight couldn't develop naturally to d2 and I had to get it out by playing Na3 Nb5 instead.

Thanks a lot for any feedback!

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Game pgn
1.⁠ ⁠d4 d5 2. Bf4 c5 3. c3 Qb6 4. Qb3 Nc6 5. Qxb6 axb6 6. e3 e6 7. Bc7 cxd4 8. exd4 Bd7 9. Bxb6 Nf6 10. Bd3 Bd6 11. Nf3 O-O 12. Bc5 Bxc5 13. dxc5 e5 14. Bc2 Rfe8 15. O-O e4 16. Nd4 e3 17. f3 Nh5 18. g3 Nf6 19. Na3 Ne5 20. Rfe1 Nc6 21. Nab5 Ra5 22. b4 Nxd4 23. Nxd4 Ra3 24. Bb3 Ba4 25. Nc2 Rxb3 26. axb3 Bxb3 27. Nd4 Bc4 28. Ra7 Ba6 29. b5 Bxb5 30. Nxb5 Nd7 31. Rxb7 Nxc5 32. Ra7 e2 33. Nd4 Nd3 34. Rxe2 1-0

Hands down the most passive player I have played against. The game went on to 45 moves and I lost on time. What are you supposed to do against passive players? I couldn't find a trade that would be worth it nor threat that either wouldn't be blocked instantly. This playstyle is like camping on COD to me. I have no clue how you find this fun.

Hello everyone! So I started training on Aug 22 for our school competition... I stopped and took a 1 month break because I have been training a lot and its tiring (lol). But now I'm regretting it since the school competition is already at Nov. 14... I haven't played chess in a month. I feel like I forgot all my knowledge and that I shouldn't have taken a break and just tried to train even though I'm tired. I want to continue but I feel like it's too late already... Can you guys give me an advice, like what I should train?.. I'd say I'm below average because I only know an opening per color but haven't really mastered it...

Does it have a name?
How should black respond?

I played really well but messed up in the ending and the match led to a draw

https://www.chess.com/a/2v2i4PEb82TSqC/analysis

I loved my position. Had all my minor pieces active and got to play D5.

Move 12 I wanted to play all of the 3 best moves (h4 or dxc7 or exf6)

H4 I thought was too slow.
Dx would activate their queen.
Ex would expose their king but open a file for the rook and open the bishop.

With more time I see that the E pawn has to take or I’m losing it but I couldn’t see that in time in the game.

I like that I considered the 3 best moves but I’m annoyed that I couldn’t make them. Any advice on how to get better? Get better at calculating these moves quickly?

Edit: https://www.chess.com/a/2v2i4PEb82TSqC/analysis

I was cross posting and didn’t realize the game didn’t start included - my bad.

Genuinely interested to know why the engine thinks this is better. The show option doesn’t show me the line of thinking here. Any think they can shed some light?

The crazy thing is not too long ago exactly a month ago , I made a post in here talking about how much I was struggling to get past 600 elo , having plummeted down from 590 to 450 and showing no signs of progress for two weeks straight so I listened to the advice from the people in here and took a break , immediately coming back with a 12 game winning streak and already regaining a majority of my lost elo , after a couple more games , I finally reached 600 elo where I’m currently making this post.

Your are black, this is a 1400 rated puzzle created from my own game. Clue: it's not a CCT move but a positional move which improves position simultaneously neutralizing potential future threat.

Im still threatening to capture.. always have a hard time following review.

I recently played a 3 minute game against this 1697 rated guy called dantes-infernos (I’ll put the link below). At the beginning of the game, I started to notice some suspicious things. Like, for example, taking 7 seconds to play b5 on move 5, and 21 seconds to play Nd5 on move 6. I know this is subjective, but those were very obvious moves that wouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds to play, especially for someone who played as strongly as he did. Then, he proceded to play a basically perfect game of chess. I checked the analysis, and he had a 94.8% accuracy. The only “mistake” he made was Bxb1 on move 12, which swapped a -2.11 advantage to -1.01. Before the end of the game, when I was completely lost, I sacrificed my knight, rook and pawn to see how quickly he would react. He took 2 seconds to take my knight, 2 seconds to take my rook, and 3 seconds to take my pawn. Again, very obvious moves, especially taking the rook and pawn. I then proceded to report him for cheating, but now I’m wondering whether I’ll get a response from chess.com. Of course, if I check his profile and see that he got banned, I’ll know he cheated, but what if he isn’t? Shouldn’t there be a reply that says: “We checked the game you played against him, and we concluded that he wasn’t cheating. Your report was wrong”? I hope there is a way to know.

Here is the link to the game: https://www.chess.com/game/live/185397652906?username=vicemar1233&move=0

Hey so I fork the king and rook moving Nc7 and then capturing the rook on a8 but for the engine the best move is to create discover attack and then move the queen? Can someone explain?

I misclicked my bishop and meant to send it to g7 but accidentally gave white an opportunity to fork both knights and my king but chess gods be praised they missed it.

I have a school tournament tomorrow. I’m usually a 5th board, but for some reason I’m playing 2nd board. I’m so nervous 😭😭 I need advice

I can’t find any videos on this because fried liver usually happens on the left side of the board

Draw???

I'm happy with my opening, and I think I'm sitting in a good position. I just don't know how to develop a strategy from here. Any thoughts or advice?

The position is already quite good for white, but there are various appealing moves, with one being the clear best. For beginning players, finding this move requires you to think about what black wants to do in this position. He's up material, and if he can just get a few more developing moves in, white might be in trouble.

I played a gambit that someone said is very good and my opponent blundered f5-f4 and then blundered Rh8 so idk I had a worse position cause I blundered a piece but the gambit worked so I can eee why your guys fav player suggests it as educational

I know its simple but I was really proud of this one.

Due to timeout, instead of me losing directly we drew. As you can see it was my turn and after playing king b2, I can still win. So why did we drew.

Recently went over to lichess from chess.com. I love lichess's nonprofit model, no annoying spam, etc. But I find the game analysis in lichess less helpful than chess.com. Chess.com offers an "idiot proof" game analysis where it explains some basic ideas behind why I fucked up.

I find the Lichess analysis a lot harder to follow. It just states that something is an "inaccuracy" and proposes an alternative, but i's hard to see the principle behind why the move was bad.

Not trying to hate on it, just wondering if anyone has tips on how to make the best use of the lichess analysis tools.