#pawns can capture on the a file from the h file

[galo1s]

Attention math and chess nerds: i have discovered a chess variant called cylinder chess! As the name implies, its chess but the board is a cylinder - the a file and the h file are next to each other. There is an website called cylinderchess.com if you want to mess around with it!

[bestworstcase]

actually no i WILL elaborate re: #and the punchline is: salem’s playing the dragon variation (here)

ok. so. rwby’s chess motif is chiefly there to foreshadow and then articulate the paradigm shift that occurs between salem and cinder in V8; insofar as any other characters are involved in the chess symbolism it is largely in service of clarifying what’s being said about those two. but first we have to talk about

✨chess theory✨

for context. some basics. briefly.

if you’re not a Chess Person you probably have at least a vague idea of what the pieces are, how they move, and their relative value. but that’s as good a place as any to start, so:

a chessboard has numbered ranks (rows) 1-8 and lettered files (columns) a-h. you can notate a specific square this way: a1 is the dark square in the bottom left corner of the board. white’s pieces start on 1, black’s on 8. the queens start on the d file, the kings on e. pieces that start on a,b,c are called the queen’s or the queenside and likewise pieces that start on f,g,h are the king’s or kingside.

from the edge of the board in, the pieces go on in this order: rook -> knight -> bishop. then the eight pawns start in ranks 2 and 7.

pawns (P) can move 1 square forward and capture pieces that are 1 square diagonally in front of them (so a pawn on the light square e4 can move to the dark square e5 if it’s empty, or capture a piece occupying the light squares d5 or f5). from their starting position only they are allowed to advance 2 squares if both are empty. they also have a special and highly situational pawn capture (en passant) that Isn’t Important but i have to mention it because it’s really fucking funny to catch the unwary with. look it up. they cannot move backwards, but if a pawn travels all the way across the board to reach the 8th/1st rank they can be promoted to a piece of the player’s choosing (knight, bishop, rook, or queen)—usually queen but there are certain circumstances where a knight is preferable.

rooks (R) move in straight lines vertically or horizontally across any number of unoccupied squares. if they land on an occupied square the piece is captured. rooks also have a special move they can perform with the king if 1. neither the rook nor king have moved yet, 2. the king is not in check, 3. the king would not move through or into check, and 4. every square between the rook and the knight is empty. this move is called castling and it moves the king two squares in the direction of the rook whilst jumping the rook over the king into the light square adjacent to the king’s new position. so if white castles kingside, the king moves e1 to g1 and the rook moves h1 to f1; if white castles queenside the king moves to c1 and the rook moves a1 to d1.

knights (N) move in an L shape (1 square either horizontally or vertically, then 2 squares at a right angle to the first direction, or 2 then 1), jumping over any pieces in between. if they land on an occupied square the piece is captured; pieces they jump over are not captured.

bishops (B) move in straight lines diagonally across any number of unoccupied squares, capturing a piece if they land on it. both players have a dark square and a light square bishop; bishops can never move onto squares of a different color from their starting square.

queens (Q) can move and capture like a rook or a bishop; so, in a straight line horizontally, vertically, or diagonally across any number of unoccupied squares.

kings (K) can move 1 square in any direction (outside of castling). if an adjacent square is occupied they can capture the piece. the king has the unique restriction that it cannot move into a square where it would be under attack, so if there is a white rook on b3 and the black king is on c2, b2 and c3 are not legal moves.

a piece is attacked when it occupies a square that could be taken by an opposite-color piece; if the king is attacked it is in check and the player must use their turn to get the king out of check (by moving the king, blocking the path of attack with a different piece, or capturing the attacking piece). the goal of chess is to checkmate the opponent by forcing the king into an inescapable check; you do not win chess by capturing the king, you win by trapping the king in a position in which your opponent has no legal moves.

(if the king is not in check but one player has no legal moves, the game is a stalemate and ends in a draw.)

so it’s not about overpowering the enemy… :)

anyway. chess pieces are conventionally given relative valuations (standard is P=1, N=3, B=3, R=5, Q=9) for the purpose of having a loose rule-of-thumb to quickly assess positions during a game. but—and this is the important part—piece valuations are only rough approximations of the actual strength any given piece might have on the board, because how strong or weak a piece might be is contingent on a lot of things. the queen isn’t always the strongest piece on the board; pawns are extremely important in the opening and can be really strong in the endgame. etc

so! chess strategy and tactics! basic ideas:

space—that’s how much of the board you control—is very important. space can be evaluated by counting up how many squares a player currently occupies or has attacked (including empty squares that an opposing piece cannot safely move into because they are in an attack line) on the opposing side of the board.

control of the center—d4,e4,d5,e5, the four squares in the center of the board—is achieved by developing pieces to attack those squares. controlling the center is the goal of the opening because the player with the strongest control over those four squares has the advantage in

initiative, which belongs to whichever player is able to attack in a way that their opponent has no choice but to respond, like putting a king in check or otherwise forcing the opponent to defend rather than develop their own position.

placing one piece on a square from which it can attack a square currently occupied by a friendly piece defends the friendly piece; if the opponent captures a defended piece and the defender captures the captor that’s called an exchange. a piece in a defensive position to more than one other piece, or a piece under more than one attack, is overworked and therefore weak.

the strongest piece on the board at any given time is a piece that: 1. can attack through the center, 2. is defended, 3. is not overworked, 4. is not closed in by friendly pieces, and 5. is able to capture, put the opponent king in check, or defend another piece doing those things.

ok! this:

is the setup for an opening called the sicilian defense, dragon variation. black has just moved the kingside knight’s pawn to g6 and will on the next turn move the kingside bishop to g7, then castle kingside. this is notoriously one of if not the sharpest openings—a risky, aggressive, highly tactical play. if you open with the dragon your intention is to spend the rest of the game attacking and counterattacking; ideally you keep the bishop on g7 and knight on f6 until you can capture with the knight and reveal the bishop’s attack up the long diagonal. in this game the fianchettoed bishop on g7 is THE strongest and most strategically and tactically important piece on the black side, to the point that every major line for white to counter the dragon aims to weaken the bishop.

ok done talking chess theory now

back to rwby:

in the essentials, the chess symbolism is constructed around the metaphorical game between salem (playing black) and ozma (playing white); the white king is the relics and the black king is remnant freed from the brothers, basically. and the black queen—

—isn’t cinder.

the black queen is a virus written by arthur watts which cinder deploys in tandem with the grimm and the white fang to shatter beacon’s defenses and keep ozpin’s guardians pinned down while she captures the fall maiden and then takes down ozpin.

and that’s the dragon. conceptually. cinder is the bishop fianchettoed on g7 biding her time until the black queen, knights, and pawns launch the attack on white’s queenside defenses and open the long diagonal for her to go in for the kill.

the same setup happens at haven except that this time cinder’s chief opponent is raven, who can see what cinder is doing and counters by baiting her into a more vulnerable position with a decoy and then whacking her.

and then it happens again in atlas, twice, first when cinder plants the black queen in ironwood’s office to force the winter maiden into the open and second when she remembers how this play actually works and gets watts and neo to tear open the line for her before she forces checkmate.

ironwood is the white queen, and he believes salem is the black queen—hence them being positioned as such in the V8 opener. he sees the black queen as salem’s calling card; ruby connects it to cinder. but the black queen is watts—his virus, his icon—and salem identifies herself in both 3.12 and 8.1 as the one playing black; beacon was the first move and it’s her game to win. cinder “holds the key to [salem’s] victory” and cinder is “more valuable to [salem] than a pawn,” so much so that salem values her more highly than the notionally higher-value queen.

because salem plays the sicilian defense, dragon variation. and. well,

…cinder’s the dragon.

[absinthe-of-midnight]

Alright I shall elaborate on my "Orange might be foreshadowing a Wolfwood v. Legato fight in the future" theory.

Now Have you heard of dragon variation? If not then let's explain that, if you have a basic idea of how chess works, how they move etc, let's get a little more into that, shall we?

The board has numbered ranks/rows 1 to 8 and lettered files/columns a to h, so the starting position looks like this:

As you can see from the rook onward the order is rook→ knight→ bishop and pawns are at 2 and 7. Pieces on a, b, c are queenside and f, g, h are kingside.

Let's move on to how the pieces move:

Pawns can move 1 square forward and capture pieces that are 1 square diagonally in front of them and from starting position only they are allowed to move 2 squares if both are empty. They cannot move backward but if the white reach's 8 and the black reach's 1 they can be promoted to a piece of a players choosing:

Rooks move in straight lines vertically or horziontally across any number of unoccupied squares, if they land on an occupied square the piece is captured:

they also have a move with a king called castling, it moves the king 2 squares in the direction of the rook while jumping the rook over to the king into the light square adjacent to the kings new position:

Knights move in an L shape, 1 square horziontally or vertically then 2 squares at a right angle in the first direction, jumping over any pieces in between, if they land on an occupied square the piece is captured and the pieces they jump over are not captured:

Bishops move in straight lines diagonally across any number of unoccupied squares, capturing the pieces they land on, both players have a dark square and a light square bishop, bishops can't move onto squares of a different color from their starting square:

Queens can move and capture like both a rook or bishop, in a straight line horizontally, vertically, diagonally across any number of unoccupied squares:

Kings can move 1 square in any direction, outside of castling. If a adjacent square is occupied they can capture:

Kings have a unique restriction in that they cannot move into a square where it would be under attack making it an illegal move.

Pieces become under attack when they occupie a square and risk being taken by the opposite color. If the king is in danger of being in check then the player must use their turn getting the king out of check, either by moving the king, blocking the attacking piece or capturing the attacking piece.

The goal of checkmate is to force the king into an inescapable position, simply capturing isn't enough you have to corner the king to where your opponent has no legal moves left.

Pieces are given value but in this case that doesn't really matter, like pawns for example can be very important in endgame (and in this case they are), some very important things to for strategy is space, control of the center, initiative, which is to attack in a way where your opponent has no choice but to counter. Now let's get into which characters represent which pieces.

First the pawns, whites are in fact the earth federation, why they are is important to countering the dragon variation.

Blacks are no surprise, are Some of the gung-ho guns, one of the ways dragon variation can play out is a race-to-mate pawn storm from opposite sides of the board. A pawn can also have a special move called en passent, the capture by a pawn of an enemy pawn on the same rank and an adjacent file that has just made an initial two-square advance.

The white rooks are ship 3 and Milly, the reason for this is that rooks can be used in defensive and stalemating tactics. They can also be used to blockade and encircle opposing pieces, making them unable to move.

For this reason the both the black rooks are Zazie, a attempted blockade against one of their fellow pieces that is.

The white knights are Meryl and Livio/Razlo. Knights have a distinct strategic advantage compared to other pieces and under certain circumstances can cause a stalemate/draw in endgame as well as give an advantage if a pawnless endgame occurs.

Black knights are Elendira and again Livio/Razlo because of the mentioned above and because of a term a called a piece exchange, I'll explain that in a bit.

Now the bishops, now this may surprise you but the white and black bishop respectively are none other than… Wolfwood and Legato! These pieces play a very important role in dragon variation.

The white and black queens are probably to no surprise Vash and Knives, this is due to the queens mobility.

the kings are the ones with least mobility and the pieces you must safeguard at all costs and cannot sacrifice, with that in mind what do the white king and black king represent?

The white king is humanity on No man's Land, now the black king you may think represents the plants, this isn't exactly the case, not entirely.

The black king is the idea, concept, of freedom. For Knives it was a need to try something because to do nothing was intolerable that unfortunately became extremism. For Elendira and Legato it was freedom through death (Elendira stating she'll make it all go away for Knives and the implication she would stay in the bomb's epicenter when it detonated), for Midvalley it was freedom from Knives, for Hoppered it was freedom from his grief, Livio it was the want to catch up to Razlo and free him of his "burden" of protecting him, Razlo it was the want to have Livio be free of any pain, for Wolfwood it was wanting the orphanage to be free from Chapel/EOM.

Whether it was freedom for their selfs or someone/something else there is still the idea of it present, so with that mini explanation out of the way let's finally get to what I said we would, now this:

Is the setup for sicilian defense, dragon variation. Black's kingside pawn has been moved to g6 and next turn will move the kingside bishop to g7 then do castle kingside. This is considered one of the most sharpest openings you can do, a risky, aggressive, highly tactical play. Opening with dragon variation means spending the rest of the game attacking and counterattacking, one of the best things to do is keep the black bishop on g7 and the black knight on f6 until you can capture with the knight and reveal the bishop's attack up the long diagonal. In this strategy the fianchettoed bishop on g7 is not only the strongest but also the most strategically and tactically important piece on the black side, to the point that every major line for white to counter the dragon aims to weaken the bishop.

Now none of white's major lines against dragon variation really rely heavily on the rooks or the knights. One of two of the common tactics are kingside pawnstorm/pawn avalanche, a tatic which has several pawns move toward the opponent's defenses, a deadly attack white can use against fianchettoed structures.

Back to trimax, something like that is what happens with the earth federation, they're the pawnstorm that "blockades" the fianchettoed structure that allows the other pieces to counterattack, while the "blockade" gets taken off the board it does allow for a pawnless endgame to begin on both sides, which is how the knights end up playing a vital role.

There's a term in chess called a piece exchange, in which both players capture each other's pieces in a series of related moves. This is what happens in the Wolfwood v. Livio/Razlo fight, a bishop for knight exchange, they take the other off the board though with L/R coming back as the other white knight.

The Elendira v. Livio/Razlo fight was also a knight exchange. Now the bishop can decimate the board if left unchecked so the rest plays out as, the white queen(Vash) captures the "dragon" black bishop(Legato), white queen is also nearly captured(the breakdown that follows the "capture" of the bishop), the remaining white knight(Meryl) and the rooks(Milly, ship 3) come to aid the queen (remember! Knights become important pieces when a pawnless endgame occurs.), then what follows is a "exchange queens" which means that both the white queen(Vash) and the black queen(Knives) have been captured/taken off the board and since either king is in check but one side doesn't have any legal moves left in ends in a draw, both the white king and the black king stay on the board, humanity and the idea of "freedom", the hope of connection between humans and plants stays on the board.

Moving on to my tristamp theory, the other way to counter the dragon variation is attempt to force an exchange of bishops by putting a bishop on h6 defended by the queen.

Two bishops trying to capture each other defended by the queen…

( a dragon that's willing to immolate and go in for the kill for you.)

Reasons for this theory is I find it interesting (and kinda funny) that Orange made Wolfwood and Legato's beef with each other more personal in stampede when compared to the manga, where it was sorta petty-ish. That Orange made Legato a part of the "rot"(the eom) that Wolfwood wants to get rid of for the orphanage. There's two ways this theory could go one is they have a "bishop exchange" early on and injure each other so badly that they get temporarily get taken off the board (maybe that's how Legato ends up in the contraption) or the bishop exchange happens in/near endgame (which would include the "flanked by the queen" part of the tactic), another thing worth noting is that with a piece exchange the moves that enable both pieces to be captured do not need to be one right after the other, it can be a bit delayed, but there must be a connection between the captures, and while I'm sure Meryl and Milly will definitely keep their places as knight and rook, Elendira and Livio's are more wobbly, while I personally want them to keep their places as knights in stampede, it's a little uncertain for now. All in all this has been fun to write and a fun theory to chew on for me!

Also Orange has taken a manga panel and ran with it before and there is a panel of the twins playing chess.

(…Dragon means fire, fire as hope vs. fire as wrath. The death of hope is wrath.)

[deepaarumugam]

The Basics of the Chessboard and Pieces:

  The chessboard and its pieces is the first step in your journey to mastering the game.

The Chessboard:

The chessboard is a square grid composed of 64 smaller squares, arranged in an 8x8 pattern. These squares alternate between two colours, typically black and white, creating a chequered pattern. The rows are called ranks, numbered 1 to 8, while the columns are called files, labelled a to h.

When setting up the board, make sure a white square is in the bottom-right corner of the board from each player's perspective. The pieces are then arranged in a specific order:

The Pieces:

Each player begins with 16 pieces: 8 pawns, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 2 rooks, 1 queen, and 1 king. Here’s a brief overview of each piece and how it moves:

Pawns:

Pawns move forward one square but capture diagonally. On their first move, they can advance two squares. Pawns are the only pieces that capture differently from how they move.

Knights:

Knights move in an L-shape: two squares in one direction and then one square perpendicular. They are the only pieces that can jump over other pieces.

Bishops:

Bishops move diagonally any number of squares. Each player has one bishop on a light square and one on a dark square, and they remain on squares of their colour throughout the game.

Rooks:

Rooks move horizontally or vertically any number of squares. They are powerful pieces when they control open lines.

Queens:

The queen is the most powerful piece, able to move any number of squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.

Kings:

The king moves one square in any direction. The primary goal in chess is to checkmate your opponent's king, putting it under attack in such a way that it cannot escape.

Setting Up the Board:

Pawns:

Place all pawns on the second rank for White and the seventh rank for Black.

Rooks:

Position the rooks on the corners of the board (a1 and h1 for White, a8 and h8 for Black).

Knights:

Place the knights next to the rooks (b1 and g1 for White, b8 and g8 for Black).

Bishops:

Position the bishops next to the knights (c1 and f1 for White, c8 and f8 for Black).

Queens:

Place the queens on their colour (d1 for the White queen, d8 for the Black queen).

Kings:

Place the kings on the remaining squares (e1 for White, e8 for Black).

Goal of the Game:

The objective of chess is to checkmate your opponent's king. This means putting the king in a position where it is under attack and cannot escape. Understanding the basics of the chessboard and pieces is essential for developing strategies to achieve this goal.

[noprodigalson]

@tzdkh​ gets a drabble

there’s a slight tint of yellow to the sky as the sun begins to pull itself up along the horizon, just begging to reach up against the edges of the mountains that surrounded this quaint montanan town. dean can understand why deacon remains here. there may be no room for growth, there may be that feeling of laziness that hung in the air like a blanket of low hanging clouds that refused to budge, but dean found himself embracing that particular attitude the more he lingered in the area. people were content here, happy with their life and how they lived.

how long had it been since dean had felt that way ?

with his breath getting heavier with each mile he pushed, the hunter kept his gaze towards the morning light. a thought crossed his mind. what would happen if he just remained on this path ?  allowed his feet to stray from the pavement he was running on and took off over that distantly glowing line. no more aimlessly heading where his life decided to take him, instead taking control of the direction he wished to choose ?  such an idea was almost terrifying with the unknowns it contained, but even with all those variables there’d be one constant. a direction, a goal. a pathway for the hunter to finally forge as his own.

slowing down as the yellow and white lines began to stray to the left, dean took the chance to catch his breath as he stared at the edges of the valley this county resided in. shoes toed the line of pavement and dirt while dean’s sweat slicked chest rose and fell with every gulp of air. how difficult would the journey be ?  what trails would the winchester have to face for just the smallest feeling of control for once in the convulsed mess of a life he had.

he waited as the beginnings of light began to make themselves noticeable above the ridges of the mountains, dean having to shield his eyes as it became more difficult for him to watch the sunrise. eyes blinked as he tried to get rid of the flare of brightness from his sight, turning to see just how far he had gone on this particular journey. a small glint captured dean’s attention, traveling along the same road dean had just jogged. with his gaze turned away from the east, he watched the approaching glimmer that was clearly some kind of vehicle. it wasn’t clear who was following dean’s path until the car began to slow, windows rolled down to reveal a familiar face.

“ here to throw me in the back or do i get to ride upfront this time ?  ” dean says, finding time to speak between his heavy breaths. the hand he had used to shield his eyes from the sun wipes away the sweat collecting on his brow as dean steps away from the curve in the road, feet returning to fully place themselves on the weathered asphalt.

there’s a smile on deacon’s face as they hear dean’s words, soft and forgiving. dean can’t help but to mimic the gesture. he promises that he was on his best behavior unless the notion of handcuffs is involved.

dean stares at the lines on deacon’s face while sitting beside him, remembering how their weathered skin felt against his fingertips. the touch had been soft despite the intensity of the thoughts bouncing around in that brain of his. time had passed without the trading of words, eyes wandering across each other’s faces as they watched the minute expressions that betrayed their thoughts. they spoke wordlessly in tandem —-  to what lengths would i go for this man ? just what am i doing here ? does he know that i would die for him ?

as dean watches the deputy drive, he knows that the direction he chose doesn’t lay in the wilderness and mountains of hope county. there was no need to become a trailblazer, racing towards the unobtainable finish line he had longed for earlier this morning. there was already a path for dean to follow. while it may not be paved or be direct, it was laid out in-front of the hunter; just like the lines of deacon’s face dean had traced earlier, all roads he now travels end at the same destination.

a decision had been made, even if dean struggled to realize it. no longer was he letting the wind take him wherever it wished. the anemoi may wish to have their way with whisking the hunter away without any clear purpose, the moirai may try their best to dictate the winchester’s purpose without care, but dean had finally taken the matter of his life into his own hands for once. he had taken control finally, only realizing it in the exchange of silence.

he had already reached the horizon line —-  now he just required the assiduity to remain.

there was a laugh from mary may as the body spun with a drunken flourish, only for another to safely catch them from falling over while the two continued to dance. their joy was refreshing, having seen this particular bar just a few weeks before wrought with tension. the air had been heavy, bearing down on people’s shoulders as they hunched over their drinks, unsure of what was to come in the following days. not even all the liquor provided by the spread eagle was able to wash away all the stress the people had carried. they had been a grim sight in what used to be refuge for those beaten and lost, but not even fall’s end’s popular watering hole was safe from the threat of the project.

and they were right to harbor that feeling of fear. it hadn’t even been a week when the project had decided to move against the town. the bar had received a few new scars during its occupation, like many of the residents, but time had helped heal those wounds.

fingers rapped against the counter in tempo to the music, an attempt to play the drums along with bob burns. dean knew he was probably butchering the part, but spirits where high and he had just enough drink to not worry about what others thought. eyes continued to watched the couple dance as the song began to end and they took a clumsy bow at the sound hands clapping. he quickly finished his drink, only a few drops left, before looking disappointedly at the empty glass. however help was on its way, as he found the gaze of the blonde behind the counter.

“ where’s your deputy ?  ” the question was asked with a knowing smile on her face, even as dean’s eyebrows rose. his deputy ?  he hadn’t been aware others had been talking like that. mary may seemed almost amused at his expression, filling his glass back to full with dean’s drink of choice. he voiced the question he asked in his head —-  it still lingered there, rattling around as he still couldn’t quite process those words. his deputy. the only answer he receives is a pointed look to his head, her own brow raising in a way that told him she was questioning just how smart the hunter was. a hand reaches up to touch the brim of the hat he wore, allowing it to bring a smile to his face. the memory of how he had first liberated this hat played through his head. that day was the same day dean first set his sights on deacon saint. a too good deputy just trying his best during difficult times, who had his hands full the instant they tried to hold onto to dean winchester.

he presses a finger to his lips, playing coy about how he once more seemed to have come into possession of deacon’s hat. it was apparently no secret that the two of them were having their own kind of dance, a regular game of cops and robbers. there’s a roll of eyes in response, but her own smile doesn’t drop. “ you’re a troublemaker, but i’ll keep filling that glass of yours as long as you keep outta fights today. ”

dean rises to the bait as she begins to step away, turning to her other patrons that needed their own refills. “ just today ?  think you can pencil me in tomorrow ?  hey, wait ! how about thursday ?  ” he calls out, only to receive two fingers pointer at her eyes before having them turned his way. a laugh escapes dean’s lips, picking up his refilled glass to take a sip. his deputy, dean muses to himself, feeling the burn of whiskey lingering in the back of his throat.

dean stays true to his word and is back in the following days. however there’s a distinct lack of applause and grins thanks to the news coming from the whitetail mountains. the militia was barely holding out, with every step forwards, the project forcing them another two back. while dean attempted to maintain a neutral position in the conflict —-  he’s had enough of doomsday prophecies and people thinking they could use him to win wars ;  if angels and demons could try and fail in their attempts to make the winchester their pawn, dean would rather die before some jumped up humans on hallucinogenic drugs toyed with his fate —-  he knows deacon is doing his best in helping the citizens of hope county. dean will help the innocent, prevent those who want no part of this war from getting involved, but his loyalty lies with a single person.

both factions would be razed to the ground if anything happened to his deputy, no matter if that wasn’t what deacon would have wanted. dean could handle disappointment, he was used to being on the receiving end of that particular emotion, and he would sacrifice everything that made him happy to make sure nobody would even think about laying a hand on deacon saint.

even if that meant losing him.

the conversation is soft, making dean strain his ears to hear what’s being said. he doesn’t bother to look at them, the neon bar signs providing little light and with night already fallen, the dimness hardly allows for too many details to be seen. so dean focuses on how his fingers grasp the glass in hand and listens. there’s not much that dean doesn’t already know, having poked around the files the police force has.

there are flaws in their movements that are easily seen by the trained eye. growing up as a hunter, with his dad’s background in the marines, tactics come second nature for dean. he’s used to working in groups, moving people around that best suits their talents. while many in this county have some sort of military background, they’ve never had to deal with opponents that were consistently stronger and more prepared than they were. dean didn’t have much room to judge, but in most of their cases, they never really had the intelligence to be placed in a leadership position as well. they were sloppy, overestimating their own abilities while not giving the project the respect they deserved. another issue, dean had learned, was that they relied too heavily on the select few who did have talent while not providing the support they deserved —-  and when things went wrong . . .  well, the blame was easily thrown around.

“ maybe he’s just making things worse. ”

a simple comment, one that didn’t really hold any heat, but still introduced as a possibility.

the hunter’s eyes drift away from his drink and towards the group of men talking among themselves. mary may moves closer to dean, as if sensing the anger rising within him. he’s unsure what her goal is, but he dismisses the presence easily. listening a bit more intensely, there’s a few murmurs of assent, unsure if they agree with what’s being said, but allowing their idea to gain traction in their closed circuit of thoughts. if any of the other patrons heard what was being said, nobody speaks out and that only makes the matter worse.

“ what, you think your bitch ass could do any better ?  didn’t know having a fuckin’ beer gut made you threatening. ”

words flow easily out of dean’s mouth, as glasses are cleared from the bar in preparation. the winchester name may not hold much sway as a hunter in this particular community, but those who frequent the spread eagle know dean and stay clear of him for different reasons. the trio that dean turned his attention to clearly hadn’t gotten the memo of why most people give dean a healthy radius. they rise to the bait with the idea they outnumber the blond. dean knows exactly what they’re thinking :  he’s too pretty to be a threat, lacking muscle definition and weight —-  an easy target to let some of their frustrations out on. the stooges don’t notice the glances they receive are of worry, that people are slowly dissipating around them, not willing to get caught in the cross fire. they don’t hear the phone call from behind the bar asking for an ambulance for three.

what they do hear is the call for them to take their spat outside, dean agreeing as he continues to trade barbs, riling the group up more. He takes notice of their gait, watching how they move with a slight stagger —-  one in particular had a shuffle to their step, giving away an old wound that never healed correctly ( dean files that away, knowing that limo was only going to be worse after this particular scuffle ) .

the night air is refreshing after being in a stuffy bar. dean takes his coat off along with the deputy’s hat, partially because he didn’t want to get them damaged, but also using it as a guise to remover the gun he keeps resting against the small of his back. there’s tension in the cool mountain air as the others wait for the hunter to square up. they laugh at his posture, refusing to raise his fists just yet and read it as a sign of weakness. dean knows the rattle against the window are those who placed bets, peaking between the blinds to see just who was going to win. he’s unsure who makes the last remark, but it’s the final straw. the slur they used against him is easily brushed off, but the fact they also choose to drag deacon into the insult ?  dean may not fight for himself much, but he’d never allow others to think they could get away with believing that of his deputy.

muscle memory takes over for most of the fight, dean lost in a haze of anger as he barely registers fists connecting to jaws, elbows coming down on arms just to hear the bone shatter against the hunter’s weight. a boot comes down against the leg he had spotted from earlier, hearing a cry of pain. he doesn’t come out completely unscathed, a given considering the odds. bruises were gonna appear along his torso where ribs were cracked, skin split along his cheekbone after a knee finds its home there. his mouth is filled with blood, knuckles raw from every hit landed. but one by one the three stooges fall, sirens wailing in the distance.

red lights flash against the side of the bar and dean knows everything was drawing to an end. the anger hadn’t subsided yet, even as blood drips down against his eye from a cut on his brow, that thick bitter liquid sliding into his mouth from where his lip had split open. if anything, the fact that the paramedics were here makes him even angrier. news of this fight was going to get around town, not to mention it’d be documented by the meager police force that tried to maintain a sense of normalcy ;  and if they filed a report, that meant it was going to fall into a particular deputy’s hands. and that ?  made dean burn with a self-flagellating rage. already the soft sigh of defeat could be heard, that weary look that rested heavily on the deputy’s face was playing through dean’s mind. he couldn’t help the display of emotion as hunter yelled into the night, frustrated at the turn of events. one of the bodies on the floor before dean twitched in fear, gaining dean’s focus. fingers grasp their oily hair as dean throws all his irritation into one last movement. there’s a resounding crack as the man’s face hits the side of the bar, nose breaking against the impact as the noise drowns out dean’s heavy breathing. teeth clench as dean wishes he gave the other’s more of a chance to get a few more hits in. the pain would have been welcomed compared to the crushing dismay that began to settle along his shoulders. dean falls to the ground, the concrete jarring his backside as dean looses the strength to continue standing under this new weight. was deacon one of those who had shown up ?  was he able to see the destruction that dean was responsible for ?  was he watching still, or had he finally decided to walk away ?

did it even matter at this point ? 

he can hear mary may in the background, but doesn’t look up from the hands holding up his face. it’s not until he feels her hand on his shoulder that he pays attention. “ got your hat kid. c’mon, i got a room in the bar for ya. ”

the effort is appreciated, but there’s still the feeling of being lost. displaced. dean had been so sure about what he had, but one slip of someone’s tongue had that certainty falling through his grasp. accepting the help to stand up, he moves along back towards the bar.

“ wasn’t pretty, but we all had your back. they deserved everything you gave them for talking shit like that. ”

dean stayed silent for the most part. mary may’s approval was nice, but it wasn’t what he was looking for. before he passes out in the bed being loaned out to him, he waits until he hears her leave, closing the door and walking back down to the main floor of the bar.

“ guess i’ll be getting what i deserve too. ” 

[ehud1564]

Another weekly chess puzzles! The first one was this:

[Image description: A chess board. It has 8 white pawns on a2, b2, d2, d4, e3, f6, g5 and h6. Five black Pawns on a4, a7, e5, f2 and h5. Two white knights on g4 and g7. One black Knight on b7. The white Bishop pair on b4 and h7. The black Bishop pair on b6 and c6. Two white rooks on d6 and h4. A black rook on a8. A White Queen on b3. A black queen on e7. The white King on a1. The black king on f8. End description]

Note: This position is completely impossible to get in a normal game (!!!), Since white has all of their pieces, yet black has two pawns on the a-file. One of the a pawns had to get there by being on the b file and capturing one of White's pieces that's on the a file. Yet white has all the pieces meaning none of them got captured.

Another note: White pawns are going up the board, black pawns are going down the board.

It's a mate in three for white. I stumbled into a completely by accident. I'll put the solution under a read more.

The answer is fxe7+ Kxe7 Qxf+ Kxf7 Rf6#

So the the first thing I noticed is: if the black queen on e7 wasn't there, than Rd8 double check will be checkmate. The king will be under a double attack by the rook and the dark squared Bishop. There's no way to stop both of the checks so the king must move. The king can't escape the rook check, it's pawn on e7 and our pawn on e6 prevent it from escaping. So it's mate.

So I wanted that Queen gone. So as my first move I played fxe7+. Kxe7 is forced, our knight blocks e8, our h pawn blocks g7, black's pawn blocks f7, and the light squared Bishop blocks g8.

The next part of my plan was to somehow force it back to f8. My first idea was to move the g7 knight to f5. It will give a check, but the king will be able to go to e8, and we need two moves for checkmate. I searched for a way to immediately mate it on e8, but there was no use.

So I looked for a different check that will take away the e8 square. The idea of Qe6 flashed in my mind for a split second before I immediately rejected it. White will be able to take our Queen with its f7 pawn. We won't find a mate in one from there.

Inspired by this idea I considered Qxf7+. It's a forcing check, forcing the king to f7. I thought I really didn't want it there. But I was on the lichess board editor, so I gave it a try.

So I did Qxf7+ forcing Kxf7. And now I wanted to give a check so I moved the Rook to f6 with Rxf8#. and I didn't remotely see it was mate. But apparently it's mate. No piece can take the Rook but the king, so the King must move.

Our g5 pawn takes f6. Our h7 pawn takes g7. Our g7 knight takes e6 and e8. Our light squared Bishop takes away g6 and g8. Our dark squared Bishop takes e7 and f8. And our rook delivers the check.

[goodguyjean]

Reiner and Bertolt as Chess Players

I originally joked that there were very important spoilers here, but the reality is not really xD. Under the cut because it does discuss the most recent episode and it’s long. 

Bertolt pondering his next move in episode 26.

I was watching a cool gif of Reiner and Bert playing chess in the opening episode of season two, when I realized two things. First, that Bertolt appears to give up his rook and then pushes a pawn to attack Reiner’s bishop (which is defended and worth less than a rook) like it’s an “aha!” move, and secondly that they’re playing with the board backwards (the square furthest to the player’s right is supposed to be white: the queen always goes on her own color and the white bishop is always on the right side). But the board being backwards gave me an idea: what if--like the sun rising in the west and the map looking like our own world turned upside down--chess in Attack on Titan is played with a black square furthest to the player’s right??

(I’ll give you a minute to finish laughing at me because I know this is a tiny and weird detail to think about xD Ok . . . minute up!)

My careful research has revealed that no, chess is not played backwards in the Walled World. It’s just wrong in this scene-- and this mistake is very common in “movie chess”! In all other scenes involving chess where the squares on the board are clearly visible, the board is set up correctly by our world’s standards.

Eren and Reiner playing chess in a promotional picture. The quality is a little low for me to tell exactly what is happening, but the board is correct.

Chapter 34. The furthest square to Bert’s left is black, so the board is correct in this version of the scene.

Chapter 35. It’s right in this panel too. 

So it’s just an animation glitch, alas lol. 

But then all this research got me thinking again: what kind of chess players are Bert and Reiner, really? Since Isayama actually gave us a viable position to look at, we can potentially analyze the strength and strategies of both teens as chess players. The anime’s position is a little wonky because of the backwards board, but I tried to recreate it as best I could, so I could compare the manga and the anime’s presentations of these two chess aficionados going at it. 

I am only a mediocre chess player myself, but I did risk my pride to run my analysis of these positions by a person in my life who is a FIDE chess master. I will cop to thinking that both Reiner and Bert were a bit amateurish when I looked over these positions by myself, but my resident expert says that--in the manga at least--both of them are actually pretty good. They come off a bit more amateurish in the anime, but most of that, according to my expert, is because the board is set up incorrectly. Here’s a breakdown. 

The Manga Game:

So, it was a little difficult for me to make out exactly what was happening on Bert’s side, but I’m pretty sure this is the position. A few things are immediately obvious: Reiner (white) has control of the center while Bert (black) has taken a more defensive approach. Who is winning depends entirely on who’s turn it is. If it is Reiner’s turn he can move his white bishop (the bishop who is on the white square) to check the king on the H-file (the one furthest to the left). I think the king’s only option then will be to move one square to the left, and then Reiner can move his queen to the open G-file and check the king again. Bert can block the check with his right-hand knight, but it’ll wreak havoc with his position, he’ll lose whatever piece he blocks the check with, and he’ll be even more on the defensive. 

If it is Bertolt’s move, he can take either Reiner’s knight (which is positioned a little unhelpfully on the rightmost file) or his white bishop without repercussion. Doing so would widen the piece-gap between the two of them (Bertolt is currently up a bishop, meaning he has taken one of Reiner’s bishops without losing a bishop or knight of his own) and give him a foothold in the center. 

My chess master consultant says that he thinks it’s probably white’s move and that white will win, while I was inclined to read it as black’s move, meaning that Reiner had hung pieces. According to my consultant, the fact that white has aggressively taken up so much of the center and that a several pieces have already been exchanged implies not only that it is white’s move, but that neither player is particularly amateurish. While black appears to be a bit more defensive, he had to do something to pop out and take one of white’s bishops. They’ve also opened up files and created room to maneuver. To quote my chess consultant, “This looks like a real position.”

So, based on this one game, Bertolt and Reiner are both pretty good and have opposing techniques (or at least have taken opposite approaches to this particular game): Bertolt is playing defensively and occasionally popping out to strike while Reiner is aggressively overtaking the center. One of them is about to gain a serious advantage depending on who is going next: this suggests to me that they are taking each other seriously and both playing to win. Possibly their unique tactics indicate that Reiner is a more outgoing and aggressive person than the introverted Bertolt. 

The Anime Game:

So, I tired to mimic the incorrect board in the anime while drafting this position. Everything is flipped from what you see in the screenshot above to preserve this mistake. Hopefully I’ve gotten everything right! It was occasionally difficult to tell which pieces were which, but I think I’ve got it. Bert is white and Reiner is black in this version of their game.

In this game they’re both kind of in the center. Nothing is hanging. They’ve apparently swapped a few pieces: white is up a knight. The only move we see in the show is the one where Bertolt loses a rook:

Thanks to Fudayk for this gif!

The way Bertolt moves quickly makes it seem like he’s been planning this move for a while; what he appears to be doing (if you look at the diagram above) is putting extra pressure on Reiner’s bishop. Presumably he took Reiner’s rook before Reiner took his (since Reiner is also missing a rook), so they traded those pieces (which is contrary to my initial reading of the situation, before looking at their full position--I thought Bert had hung his rook and then randomly pushed a pawn xD oh me of little faith). 

It’s a little harder to tell who’s winning here, even though we know it’s Reiner’s move. Reiner has more pawns, but is down a knight. Bertolt has pulled out a lot of pieces, as has Reiner, and they’re both competing for the center. Although he is down an important piece, Reiner’s queen has access to an open file and he could try to crack open the center with some of his pawns. Nobody’s planning anything as fancy as Reiner apparently is in the manga’s version of their game and the wall of pawns strikes me as a little weird, but my chess consultant friend says this could be a real position . . . if the board wasn’t backwards! xD 

From a meta perspective, they both seem to be playing similarly: vying for the center, trading lots of pieces. Bert has a slight advantage, but neither of them appear to be playing terribly . . . besides the fact that their board is backwards.

So, I’m not sure this is the meta anyone asked for or even that anyone needed, but I got curious enough to spend the morning blowing up screen captures of this game so I could enter it into a diagram and I felt compelled to be so thorough as to take it to a chess master so . . . here you go lol! 

[fandomsandfeminism]

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a weird and wonderful story, full of odd surreal encounters and wacky nonsense. Despite it's strangeness though, I promise that drugs were not involved in it's production.

To read all of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as a PDF: http://www.gasl.org/refbib/Carroll__Alice_1st.pdf

Full text version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-h/11-h.htm

Full text version of Through the Looking Glass: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm

Closed Captioning coming soon

Transcript below

Alice in Wonderland isn’t about drugs.

Now, I know that may come as a surprise to some people. It’s pretty standard internet fair to point at Alice, with all the trippy visuals and the mushrooms and the Hookah caterpillar, and declare that it was REALLY all about drugs this whole time, oh ho ho, and Disney made a movie about it!

But it’s not. It’s not about drugs.

I want to talk about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass a little bit today, what they are really about, where this idea of them being about drugs came from, and why I find it to kind of be bullshit.

So, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English novelist Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carrol. The sequel, Through the Looking Glass, was published in 1871. I’m going to focus mainly on these two original books, and  not the dozens and dozens and dozens of adaptations and remakes that exist. For the record, both books are in the public domain, so it's very easy to find pdf copies of them on the internet.

Almost every movie version of Alice, including the Disney one, splices together elements and plot points from both of the books, rather than simply adapting one story or the other. It’s not particularly important to know which characters and events happen in each, since they are very often published as a pair anyway. But we’re going to have a quick overview.

-

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice is a young girl who is in the garden of her home playing with her cat Dinah when she sees a white  rabbit in a waistcoat run past, apparently late to an appointment. She follows the rabbit down the rabbit hole and thus into wonderland. What follows is a quintessential example of literary nonsense, filled with word play,  puns, and absurdity as Alice works her way through Wonderland.

She eats an odd bite of cake and drinks a potion which change her size. She cries so hard she creates a sea. She recites some poetry she had to memorize for school buts gets it all wrong. She meets a mouse that won’t answer her call in English, so she tries talking to it in French. She wonders if this assumed French mouse came over with William the Conqueror, because Alice doesn’t know much about when things in history happened. They reach the shore where other animals are. The mouse then gives a lecture on william the conqueror and the animals agree to a Caucus race to dry off  (Because Alice doesn’t know what a caucus actually is.)

Alice meets the Caterpillar, who seems to speak in riddles, correcting her grammar and not making sense. She meets the Duchess, who yells a lot and seems to ignore her baby. She meets the Cheshire Cat, who again, doesn’t make a lot of sense, and then the Mad Hatter and March Hare. More and more riddles. She plays a VERY silly game of croquet with the Queen of Hearts where the rules don’t make sense and the Queen cheats a lot. She meets a Mock Turtle (a pun on Mock Turtle soup, apparently Alice thought Mock Turtles were an animal). Then the world’s silliest court scene, where everything is unfair and doesn’t make sense, and then Alice goes back home, waking up as if from a dream.

Set presumably about half a year later, in Through the Looking Glass, Alice is playing inside the house with two cats, Dinah’s kittens, when she contemplates the mirror in the room. She finds that she is able to walk through the mirror and back into Wonderland.  She discovers a mostly nonsense poem, Jabberwocky, which can only be read if you hold it up to a mirror. She also finds that the chess pieces in the room have come to life. What follows is another adventure in mostly absurdity, though if you know how, you can actually use Looking Glass as a step by step guide for a real chess game. Alice plays the part of one of the white pawns.

She wanders through the garden of living flowers, meets Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, talks to Humpty Dumpty, and eventually makes all the way across the “board” and becomes a queen herself. The Red and White queens throw her a party,  and then confuse her with riddles and wordplay. This actually results in Alice physically confronting the Red Queen and “Capturing her”, putting the Red King into “Checkmate” unintentionally, and thus, she wakes up in her arm chair back home having won the game.

Quick recommendation, if you want to get all of the little wordplay and puns and references in Alice and Looking Glass, I recommend the Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner. It’s awesome.

- These books are pretty strange. So, if not a psychedelic reflection about a weird acid trip, or whatever, what’s up with these books? Why are they so weird?

Well, Carrol said he wrote the book after he and a friend spent a day on a river trip with the 3 young daughters of Henry Liddell in 1862. During their journey, Carrol entertained the girls with a made up nonsense story about a girl named Alice. Alice Liddell was so entranced that she told Carrol he should publish it. And so he did. He spent a few years refining the story before it was finally published, and the real Alice got her copy.

So on the surface, it’s just that- a silly story meant to amuse children, a celebration of imagination and childhood silliness.

But there are some underlying themes in these books. The encounters Alice has have a sort of pattern to them- Adults in the books, whether they are the Queen of Hearts or the White Queen, the Duchess or the Hatter, often speak in riddles. They make up rules that don’t make sense and refuse to explain them. The white rabbit is obsessed with never being late, and much of the word play or silliness comes from Alice not understanding adult or unfamiliar concepts (like the Mock Turtle or a Caucus race.)

And so the books become a very silly exploration of how a child, viewing the adult world, might feel confused and lost. Wonderland is Adulthood cloaked in familiar childhood clothes. Nursery Rhymes and game board pieces doing a fumbling pantomime of adulthood, discussing mathematical concepts and latin grammar, through the eyes of a child who doesn’t understand it.

There are many things that can be pulled from Alice- ideas of innocence, of escapism, of identity and sense of self,  of intentionally bucking order in favor of disorder. But none of those things are drugs.

(Sidenote: There is a whole other issue about Carrol’s….relationship with the Liddell daughters, and his...fondness for young girls in general. This is a whole separate debate, and it  gets kinda messy with contemporary views of childhood and adulthood and whether there was anything...untoward about his fondness for them. But that’s really not what we’re talking about today. )

- So, why do people think this is a story about drugs? Carrol wasn’t known for opium use, or even heavy drinking. He had no exposure to psychedelics (magic mushrooms wouldn't be discovered by Europeans until 1955) So why?

I think the easiest answer is that people want stories to make sense. I want stories to make sense. I spent a lot of money going to college to get a degree in “Making stories make sense.” We want there to be a reason that things happen in stories, and so when a story feels as random and silly and surreal as Alice, we want to figure out what it’s REALLY about.

This is kind of the underlying idea behind surrealism in general- creating art and meaning out of the absurd and random images of dreams and unreality. [Side note, there is an edition of Alice with illustrations by Salvador Dali, which is...amazing.]

And thanks to the culture of the 1960s and 1970s, there is a heavy association between reality-bending images and drug use, especially hallucinogens. And depending on which adaptation you are looking at, some movies really play up this trippy psychedelic aesthetic for Alice.

But I think there’s another level to this one, and one that I find much more grating. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story for children, especially for girls. And there is a certain segment of the population, especially among young adults on the internet, who really seem to enjoy taking things aimed at children and declaring NO, this thing isn’t for kids, it’s actually FOR ME, and slapping an edgy dark interpretation on top of it, however sloppily.

Fan theories like...Ash is in a coma all along, or all the Rugrats are dead and Angelica is just imagining them, and...yeah, a huge slice of the Brony fandom declaring that adult men are the real audience, they aim at appropriating and co-opting child media for adult consumption

And there’s something about that which leaves a sour taste in my mouth over all. - I don’t think there’s anything inherently bad about reimagining child stories in more adult ways. But I do think it somewhat misses the point when people begin to insist that these mature reimaginings are the CORRECT or more valid interpretation, especially if they lead to the exclusion of children from that media space.

With Alice in particular, I think the story gives adult readers a chance to empathize with children, not as dolls or objects of cuteness, but as people interacting with a confusing and strange world as they grow up. It is an opportunity to revisit childhood, with all it’s familiar characters and uncertainty and wonder, and rather than corrupt that story, I think it should be embraced.

I’m going to leave you with the end of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice’s adult sister, having heard her story, lays back, and herself begins to dream, of Wonderland and of her sister Alice. And This is what it says, “Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.”

And that is what Wonderland is about.

Thanks for watching this video! I’ll see yall down in the comments, so if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions, head on over. If you enjoyed listening to this queer millennial feminist with a BA in English ramble on for a while, feel free to subscribe.

[loycereiber]

Divorce Can Make Good People Bad

Why is it that people who seemed to be fairly rational before divorce turn into complete paranoid, hyper-defensive maniacs once the separation and divorce process begins? Couples who promised to do this divorce thing respectfully suddenly turn into ferocious warriors, letting their mean-and-petty streak show through, especially when they get into the pit with their attorney.

Sure, some people are just jerks, but what makes otherwise good people behave so poorly? It turns out this “crazy” behavior is fairly predictable and normal in such circumstances. That’s not an excuse for it, but when you better understand what’s pushing your buttons so badly, you can finally begin to make healthier choices and address the feelings of overwhelm that are triggering such unseemly (read: king of the jerks) behavior.

Here are the panic-button pushing reasons that divorce makes us act so out of character:

Disappointment Over Unmet Expectations

When you said “I do” you did so with expectations about what marriage is all about. But maybe you never fully shared those expectations with the person you actually said your vows to. Many times we don’t articulate our expectations specifically because we assume everyone just knows this is how marriage is supposed to be. But, “everyone” may only be your family and the way they did things, or your closest friends with whom you have discussed this over and over. It never included your now soon-to-be-ex-spouse who (don’t forget) came into marriage with some unspoken expectations of their own. When our deeply held expectations (like “marriage is forever, no matter what”) are unmet, we often feel betrayed, making it easy to feel indignant and cast our ex as the enemy. We believe they let us down. But, if we’re honest, were they ever fully on page with us to begin with?

The big challenge of marriage is putting both partner’s expectations on the table and then working together to create a mutually agreed upon vision for how your marriage will actually work.

Fear of Change

During periods of immense and drastic change (such as divorce), your mild-mannered brain goes into survival mode, ready at a moment’s notice to fight or retreat, thanks to that reptilian brain you inherited from your ancient ancestors.

Whether is it your fear of losing status (social, financial, etc.), a sense of uncertainty about the future, a worry that you don’t belong anymore in your social circle, or just a feeling like this whole situation is so unfair—the problem-solving part of your brain can’t do its job until your panicked reptilian brain calms down.

Uncertainty and fear about how things will turn out take a steep toll on you mentally and physically. Stress from staying in an “I’m in danger” primal mindset can short-circuit your patience, your willingness to listen, and your ability to communicate effectively. Your health is also likely to take a dive as well, making you prone to sleep deprivation and low stamina at a time when you are taking on mountains of critically important paperwork, decisions, and details as part of the divorce. So, even if you want to make good choices, the stress response of facing so much uncertainty and change at once is sure to cause you at least some temporary loss of rational thought and behavior.

Feeling Powerless and Out of Control

In normal life, you are used to being competent and in charge, but now you are thrust into the unfamiliar, unsure of how to get things done right in the divorce process (and in the new life waiting after it). You are being forced to make important decisions immediately. You have to hire a high-priced expert to navigate you through the legal aspects. And hiring a lawyer kicks off what could be seen by the other as an attack; you have drawn up sides and are now ready for war.

Communication is out the window when you feel powerless and unable to fully control things that profoundly affect your life. You have to trust your attorney (who was likely a complete stranger to you before this situation) to lead the charge and make decisions that will affect your future (and your childrens’ future) for years to come. It all costs a fortune. Is it any wonder each side feels like they are being screwed?

A Sense of Entitlement

Splitting apart all of the property (and associated memories) the two of you acquired through your sweat, equity, and hard-earned money can feel like a spiteful business transaction. Each of you has a sense of ownership and “it wouldn’t have happened without my efforts” point of view. Your decisions right now are dominated by your emotions, not your logical problem-solving self.

If you have kids, there is likely an overwhelming sense of guilt and worry that this divorce experience might be damaging them. They may even think it is their fault that mommy and daddy are splitting up. The kids end up as pawns in a fight over what you and your ex believe you each deserve or never deserved. Each of you are in it to “get yours” in the name of fairness. But the ego battle waging between you both in the pursuit of “emotional justice” ends up feeling more like scrambling down an endless tunnel with no cheese at the end.

So, what’s a stressed out person to do in order to keep divorce-induced jerky behavior in check?

Take back your dignity. Get in touch with who you are when you are at your best. Be clear about what is important to you and why, and how you want to remember yourself when this is over. Now, behave your way into that outcome.

Assemble a good team to support you in this transition from married to single. Identify where you need more information, different perspectives, and validation that will get you through this in a way that lifts you up (versus pulling you down). Pick people who can support you in being your best. Fight the urge to surround yourself with people who will urge you to seek revenge, act petty, or take your ex to the cleaners. When you look in the mirror, you want the best version of you reflecting back as you move into your new future.

Listen, listen, listen. Communicate, communicate, communicate—with your children, with your ex-spouse, and with the experts you are relying on to help you make the best decisions based on your needs, wants and values. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge your role in how things are going. If you misstep and act like a jerk for a moment, own it, and then apologize and move on.

Remember your past successes. Take care of what is important to you, ask for help, and remember the times when you successfully dealt with challenging times in the past. What allowed you to be resilient then? How can that help you here and now? You’ve been through hard times before—you can handle this.

Dealing with a difficult ex certainly doesn’t make the divorce process any easier. But neither does being a difficult ex. So keep yourself in check. By understanding some of the hot buttons that you both are pushing in each other, then maybe you can pause, take a breath, drop the jerk behavior and make better choices.

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How to play: a very quick recap

You probably learned the rules of chess somewhere along the line, and whether you did or didn’t you can find a good refresher here. As you’ll (probably) remember, chess is a game built on themes of war, with two opponents attacking each other with their chess armies. Players take turns to move their pieces around an 8x8 board in order to attack and capture enemy soldiers, develop a coordinated battlefield position, and ultimately checkmate the opponent’s king by placing him under an attack from which there is no legal escape.

The pieces

Each player starts the game with sixteen pieces with different movement capabilities:

Eight pawns, which move forward but capture diagonally, which may advance two squares on their first move but otherwise only one at a time, and which never move backwards.

Two knights, which move in an ‘L’ shape—two squares North/South and one square East/West or vice-versa—and are the only pieces that can jump over others.

Two bishops, which move diagonally, one being tethered permanently to light squares and one to dark squares.

Two rooks, which move in straight lines either forward/backward or side-to-side.

One queen, which combines the mobility of the bishops and rooks to move both straight and diagonally.

One king, which can move one square in any direction.

Before we move on, let’s quickly discuss three moves that are different from the others. First, castling is where a player moves their king two squares toward a rook, with that rook moving to the square that the king passed over. Castling is only legal if it is the king’s and rook’s first move, there are no pieces between them, and if the king does not move out of, through, or into, a square attacked by the enemy. Castling is the only move where the king moves more than one square, and where two pieces move. The second one is even more abstract: a pawn that moves forward two squares from its starting position may be captured en passant (French for “in passing”) by an enemy pawn as if the captured pawn had only moved forward one square. This is only allowed on the move immediately following the captured pawn’s advance or the opportunity vanishes, making it a somewhat infrequently-occurring move. It is the only move where a capture is made on a vacant square. Thirdly, when a pawn makes it all the way to the far end of the board, it is promoted to either a queen, rook, bishop, or knight, at the player’s choice. A pawn does not need to be promoted to a piece that has previously been captured, so it’s theoretically possible for a player to end up with nine queens.

The queen, rook, bishop, and knight are all referred to as pieces, and so a player has both pieces and pawns to protect their king, although, somewhat confusingly, the collective term for all the characters on the board is also “pieces.” The queen and rook—the two pieces that can deliver checkmate with the aid only of their king—are the major pieces, while the bishop and knight are the minor pieces.

The board and algebraic notation

The board is an 8x8 grid of alternating light and dark squares. The left-to-right rows are known as ranks, and the up-and-down columns as files. The rank closest to the player with white pieces is the 1st rank, progressing forward to the 8th rank, while white’s left-most file is the a-file, progressing across to the h-file. Accordingly, each square is referred to by its coordinates—a letter and number denoting its rank and file position. White’s lower-left square is a1, while black’s lower-left square is h8.

The white and black pawns begin on the second and seventh ranks respectively, with their armies behind them: rooks in the corners, knights on the next squares in and then bishops, with queens on the d-file, and the kings on the e-file (giving us the terms kingside and queenside for the two halves of the board). If you remember one thing from this article, make it this: set up the board so that the bottom-right square from each player’s point of view is a light square, or else you’re doing it wrong, dummy.

(This doesn’t seem too much to ask, but getting the board set up correctly seems to be a difficult task. Here’s an incomplete list of famous persons Doing Chess Wrong: Hugh Hefner, Conor McGregor, Woody Allen, Leonard Nimoy, Luciano Pavarotti, Madonna, Jay-Z, Austin Powers and Ivana Humpalot, Bill Cosby, Marcel Duchamp, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, Sir Alec Guinness, Lorna Simpson, Frasier Crane and Norm Peterson, Ja Rule, Gerard Butler, Lady Gaga, the Wu-Tang Clan, John Safran, Andy Dufresne, Aladdin’s Genie and Magic Carpet, Matt Bonner, Wilt Chamberlain, Salvador Dali, Bart Simpson and Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky, Bart Simpson again, Zoidberg, Peter Griffin, Brian and Stewie Griffin, Paul Heyman, Sachin Tendulkar, Kim Kardashian, Frank Sinatra, Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, and Richard Branson. Feel free to post any others you can find in the comments!)

Each move in a chess game is recorded using algebraic notation, which allows games from all over the world to be recorded for posterity. There’s no video footage of games from hundreds of years ago or from small tournaments halfway across the globe, but the recording of moves allows chess players and fans to review, recreate, and analyze tens of millions of games from throughout the sport’s history. These days, games are entered into online databases such as that at ChessGames.com; before the computer era they were circulated by post, published in newspaper columns, and compiled in books of notable games. Then as now, they all matter; chess players study past games in the same way that other competitors break down tape.

Chess notation is easy to learn. All pieces except the pawns are given an identifying initial: K for king, Q for queen, R for rook, B for bishop, and N for knight. A move is identified by combining the piece’s initial with its destination square, so the move of a bishop to the c4 square is therefore simply “Bc4”, and verbally stated as “Bishop to c4,” whereas a pawn moving to d6 is just “d6.” If a piece makes a capture, an ‘x’ is inserted between the initial and the square coordinates, so “Qxc1” is “Queen takes on c1.” If a capture is made by a pawn, the letter of the file of its departure precedes the ‘x’: “exd4” is “e takes on d4.” At the end of the game, “1-0” denotes a win for white, “0-1” a win for black, and “½-½” a draw (the only three possible outcomes). That’s 95 percent of what you need to know about that, and you can learn the rest here.

In addition to recording your own games and following those from elite contests across the world, you can relive the oldest chess game ever recorded, played between Francesco di Castellvi and Narciso Vinyoles in Valencia in 1475. Or the first game of the first official World Championship in 1886. Or how about a game between Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer? Or Napoléon Bonaparte getting pantsed by the first chess computer?

Elements and tactics

This seems like the right time to have a look at some of the building blocks of chess: some of the basic elements, and some common tactics.

Elements

Naturally, each piece’s different movement capabilities mean that some are more useful than others. Over the years, chess folks have developed a point system which gauges each piece’s value relative to the others—that is, their material value. To wit: a pawn is said to be worth 1 point, bishops and knights 3 points each, a rook 5 points, and a queen 9 points. This scale is used as a guide by novices and Grandmasters alike, though it is more or less universally accepted that, in a vacuum, a bishop is more valuable than a knight, because it can cover a greater distance with each move. A sequence in which pieces of equal values are captured in succession is known as an exchange (e.g., to exchange queens), and to allow one of your pieces to be captured for free or for lesser compensation is known as a sacrifice. Giving up one of your rooks for an opponent knight or bishop is specifically known as “sacrificing the exchange.”

Players alternate moves throughout a game of chess, and if you are one of those players you should try to make each one count. Each move essentially represents one unit of chess time, known as a tempo (plural: tempi). If you take two moves to achieve what you could achieve with one, you are said to lose a tempo, while you might gain a tempo with a move that forces your opponent to spend their next move retreating one of their pieces.

A chess board is comprised of a finite number of squares, and both players are competing for control over those squares so that they may overcome the opposition. A player has a space advantage if they control a greater number of squares than their opponent. If you have a greater number of pieces attacking a square than your opponent does, you are said to control it. To this end, players fight for control of the center of the board—that’s the most valuable real estate in chess, because pieces stationed in or attacking the middle (principally, the d4, e4, d5, and e5 squares) can control a larger area than those stuck near the edges.

The strength of a player’s pawns goes far beyond merely how many they have, and each side’s pawn structure is one of the most important elements in any game of chess. A pawn chain is a strong line of attack in which pawns are connected in a diagonal line, defending one another and forming a formidable barrier. Two pawns on the same file are doubled, which is generally a bad thing, as the hindmost pawn is blockaded by its teammate. An isolated pawn that does not have any friendly pawns on adjacent files is ripe for being captured by the enemy, as it does not have any one-point comrades to defend it. A passed pawn—having no enemy pawns in front of it on the same or an adjacent file—is worth its weight in gold, as it is a prime candidate to stomp to the end of the board and earn that hard-earned quantum leap of promotion.

Tactics

It is not legal to make a move that would leave your own king under attack from an enemy piece, or in check. (Here seems like a good place to clarify a common misunderstanding: there is no rule requiring you to announce “check” when you make a move that attacks the enemy king.) A piece that blockades an enemy piece from attacking its king is said to be pinned, in that it may not legally move out of the way. A pin can therefore be a powerful tactic, as it may cause a piece to be unable to otherwise fulfill a defensive assignment, or doom a valuable piece to being captured.

A piece that is simultaneously attacking two or more enemy pieces is said to be forking them. A fork is a powerful tactic as the opposition player will usually not be able to save both pieces. A fork attacking the enemy king may be especially devastating as the check must be resolved immediately.

A discovered attack is unleashed when the movement of one of your pieces uncovers an attack on the enemy by one of your other pieces. If the moving piece attacks a valuable piece or delivers a check, your opponent will likely be unable to satisfactorily answer both threats.

While we’re here, let’s throw in a few more foreign-language chess vocab words. A piece that is under attack and not defended is en prise (French for “within grasp”). A player repositioning a piece on its square in an over-the-board game should announce “j’adoube” (French for “I adjust”) to affirm that they are correcting the position of the piece and not moving it. A zwischenzug (or intermezzo, German and Italian respectively for “intermediate move”) is an unexpected move interposed into an apparently forced sequence that requires an immediate response from the opponent. Finally, zugzwang (German for “Ahhh, shit”) is an endgame situation where the player to move has only bad options and is losing by virtue of the fact that they may not pass their turn.

Openings, Middlegame, and Endgame

Here is another bit that you already know: chess games are notionally divided into three phases. These are the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame. There is no clear demarcation between these, although the opening generally refers to the initial period in which players are activating their pieces, the middlegame is generally the period during which players are competing for position and material in the middle of the board, and the endgame begins when many of the major pieces have been captured and each player competes to advance a pawn to promotion and mate the enemy king.

Opening

There are several general aims each player is trying to achieve in the opening. The fight for the center of the board is all-important. Castling is essential, as the king is exposed in his starting position and is safest in the opening and middlegame when hidden behind a wall of pawns toward a corner of the board. Players also need to develop their pieces—to activate them from the back rank into positions where they can more fully contribute to the game. Very generally, your knights are often best stationed on c3 and f3 for white and c6 and f6 for black; your bishops will ideally want to seize control over long diagonals; your queen will want a moderately active role before she springs into life in the middlegame; and you will want to “connect” your rooks on the back rank such that there are no pieces between them. You will in short want to fully mobilize your army as efficiently and effectively as possible. The general rule is to not move the same piece twice in an opening.

About that opening: Over time, a hugely dense body of theory has developed on this topic. Since the starting set-up of the board is fixed, it is possible for players to brute-force memorize optimal responses for variations that might be encountered in common openings. Chess players study theory on a huge array of openings, so that on gameday they can draw on their preparation to choose moves that they know to be theoretically sound and that will push the game in a direction that will support their overall strategy. The most common openings are catalogued and coded in the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings (ECO).

The moves 1. e4 and 1. d4 are by far the most popular initial moves for white, as they strike boldly into the center and open diagonals for white’s bishops and queen. The English Opening 1. c4 is currently very trendy, and 1. Nf3 is also a good option. Those four are pretty much the only widely-played first moves, although the World Champ busted out the surprise Bird Opening 1. f4 earlier this year and went on to win that game. This is because any other initial move will not capitalise in the center as efficiently as other options and therefore risks wasting white’s first-mover advantage.

Common openings and defences are given names, so, for example, a game that begins 1. e4 c5 (denoting white pushing its e-pawn two squares forward, followed by black doing the same with its c-pawn) would be said to be exhibiting the Sicilian Defense. Depending on the next moves, the game might become an Open or Closed Sicilian, which can then splinter off into different variations (such as the Dragon or the Scheveningen, to name just two). The variations of the Sicilian are in particular extremely well-traversed paths, and so every chess player would know that a Najdorf Sicilian game refers to one that opened with 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6, and would know a range of sound continuations from there. (It’s often said that there have been more books dedicated to chess than to any other game on Earth, and you can find entire books dedicated to Najdorf continuations beginning with 6. Bg5, and on literally thousands of similarly-specific chess topics). Each opening has its positives and negatives according to the specifics and nuances of the position, and some are more solid than others. Theory on the most well-known openings can extend 25 or 30 moves deep. It’s a strange game that way.

As a competitive chess player, you’d need to know theory of many different openings. You might be booked up to the eyeballs on many variations of the Grünfeld Defense (1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 d5), but if your opponent opens with 1. e4 (or responds to your 1. d4 with 1. … d5), you’d need wider preparation to draw on. Indeed, chess players will sometimes try to surprise their opponent by playing an unexpected move from the fringes of theory that the opponent is unlikely to have studied, in the hope that taking the opponent out of book will pay dividends with an error down the line.

Middlegame

In the middlegame, players fight for material, for tactical and strategic advantages, and to prepare for the endgame. The middlegame is far less susceptible to theoretical standardization than the opening and the endgame.

Once you have mobilized your army in the opening, you can start to formulate your middlegame plan based upon an evaluation of the position. You will want to continually improve the position of your pieces, search for combinations that win material, and protect your king. Opportunities might open up on the queenside; that window might quickly close while another opens on the kingside.

Think hard about how to best employ your pieces based on their characteristics. A knight’s strange movements make it versatile, as it can attack any piece (aside from another knight) without that piece attacking it back, and its eight-tentacled reach gives it deadly range. A bishop placed on an important diagonal is a valuable attacker and defender, especially when employed in tandem with its sibling bishop (forming a bishop pair). Rooks are most valuable on open or semi-open files, and are lethal when they invade the seventh rank of the opponent. The queen is the quarterback, facilitating attacking opportunities all over the board, as she is mobile in all different directions and at long distances. Pawns should be used to defend teammates and key squares, prevent enemy pieces from invading your territory, and, at the right moment, to swarm in numbers on your opponent’s defenses in an attack known as a pawnstorm.

Endgame

The endgame sees the last few remaining pieces duke it out to deliver checkmate to the enemy king. While there are many famous endgame scenarios which may be “solved” according to the exact arrangement of the pieces on the board, endgame theory largely revolves around recognizing types of positions that should be winning, losing, or drawing according to theory, and then converting accordingly with principled play. In the endgame, strategy takes precedence over tactics, and each move is precious—one loose move can entirely undo an entire game’s worth of winning play.

The most common aim of the endgame is to usher one of your pawns to the far end of the board in order to promote it to a queen, from which point mating the enemy king should be a formality. Your play will usually be targeted toward this aim, and you will need to take your cue from your and your opponent’s pawn structure, the importance of which is exploited in the endgame but which should be considered right from the opening.

With most of the powerful pieces exchanged off the board, your king is unlikely to be mated before a pawn can be promoted. Therefore, he should be brought to the middle of the board in the endgame, as his omnidirectional attacking capability makes him a valuable weapon. The player who centralizes his or her king first will usually be at an advantage. You will want your king to seize the opposition—facing the enemy king on a rank or file with only one square between them when it is your opponent’s turn to move. Any side-to-side move can be mirrored by your own king, keeping his enemy at bay while you shuffle your pieces around to get your pawn into the endzone.

Thinking like a Grandmaster: Evaluation and calculation

So, what’s the answer to the age-old question: how many moves are chess players thinking ahead? Every Grandmaster will tell you that there’s no fixed number, and also that it’s not really the right question. At each moment, a player is simply trying to make the best move in order to increase their chances of winning. The more relevant question, then, is to ask what an increased chance of winning looks like.

Evaluation

I might be able to calculate what the position would be along a range of different variations, but then what? Is that good? Do I even want to reach that position? What is my best path to winning the game? To answer these questions, chess players must be able to evaluate a position on the chess board.

Evaluation is an incredibly complex art, and one that even super Grandmasters never stop learning. There are no progress scores in chess, and no one-size-fits-all method for securing victory, and so it is not always clear which moves will cause a player to be “winning.” Identifying those moves is what chess is all about.

There’s no definitive list of what needs to be considered in evaluating a position, but the main elements include the following. The easiest to evaluate is material—the collective strength of each side’s army, taking into account the point scale referred to above. (The rule of thumb is that you should aim to exchange pieces when ahead in material, and to exchange pawns when behind.) The king’s safety is paramount, and you’ll almost always want to castle during the opening, to refrain from advancing his protecting pawns unless necessary (to avoid opening up the squares around him to invasion), and defend any potential lines of attack. The activity and coordination of the pieces refers to their position on the board and how effectively they can contribute to the cause—a piece stuck on the back rank or in a far-flung corner of the board may not be as valuable as a piece controlling the center, and well-coordinated pieces will defend each other and key squares while not impeding each other’s movement. Each side’s pawn structure can foreshadow who will have the upper hand in the endgame.

A proper evaluation of a position should lead you toward developing your winning strategy and making the best move. The relative importance of each factor will depend on the totality of the situation, and understanding the dynamics of a position is a fundamental chess skill. Material is certainly important, but a deficit in material may be offset by some compensation in development, position, or danger to the opponent’s king. You can follow an excellent example of a fulsome evaluation of a position here.

Once you’ve evaluated a position and understand where your winning chances lie, you can calculate where your next move might take the game.

Calculation

There are more potential sequences of moves in a game of chess than atoms in the known universe. The game-tree of possible variations spreads so broadly that it’s a near-certainty that the next chess game you play will not match a single game in any chess database; I’d wager, though it would obviously be impossible to prove, that it will be totally unique compared to any game played since the beginning of time. Supercomputers have yet to solve chess, though they may do so one day. In other words, brute force calculation of all possible variations is out of the question.

At each position in a game of chess, a player will have a finite number of legal moves available. Many can be immediately dismissed out of hand, because they would forfeit material, achieve a bad position, or simply not achieve anything useful. Players therefore identify candidate moves (a term coined by GM Alexander Kotov in his famous 1971 book Think Like A Grandmaster), which are those that appear to have some merit and that deserve fulsome scrutiny. (The fundamental rule is that at a minimum all possible checks and captures should always be considered.) Each candidate move, in turn, would provide the opponent with an array of legal responses, most of which will again be dismissed out of hand, leaving a field of responses that may be realistically anticipated, and so on. All-encompassing calculations are therefore inefficient and unnecessary; rather, the decision tree is pruned significantly, right from the root.

Chess players therefore look at the board and envision the pieces moving around, calculating possibilities and then evaluating the positions that arise—if I do this, they can do that or that, and then the board would look like this, that’s no good, what about something else. A position might require nearly no calculation—the recapture of a queen, the resolution of a check, staving off mate-in-one—and moves in these situations are said to be forced. In more complex positions, you might have a large number of potential options, to which there might be a number of good responses for your opponent, and so on. The purpose of the exercise isn’t to calculate zillions of moves ahead just for the sake of it, it’s to identify which of your current available moves improves your chances of winning, and which ones don’t. Ideally, you will consider all relevant variations before making your move. In real life, that’s even tougher than it sounds. You’ll hear chess players say things like “I missed that he/she had Qh4 following that combination” after a loss.

So: let’s think about a move in a position.

It’s our move, with white pieces. Let’s do a quick evaluation of the position. Material is equal. Both kings are relatively safe, and there’s no immediate threat to ours nor obvious attack on theirs. Both sides’ pieces are relatively active, with our e-rook sitting on a nice semi-open file. Black’s bishop is somewhat cramped and immobile. Overall, white looks to have a somewhat better position.

Can we find a combination to win some material? Look at black’s pawn on d5. White has three pieces attacking it (pawn, knight, queen), and black has only two defenders (bishop, queen)—a fairly clear indication that we should be able to make a profit out of a combo. Can we take the pawn? Visualize in your mind what might happen next if we do.

If we take the d-pawn with our e-pawn, black’s bishop is under attack and should move—it can’t take our pawn or we’ll gobble up its queen. So, the black bishop takes our bishop, and we recapture with our knight. We’ve won a pawn and a bishop, and lost only a bishop—a handy profit. If the black queen continues by capturing our knight (now on b5), we take the knight on g4 with our own queen and we’re still ahead, with no apparent adequate compensation for black.

However, we’ve also got a better and cooler combination. Let’s capture the d5 pawn with our knight. Now our bishop is undefended and black may capture it with its bishop. But check this out: then our queen captures the knight on g4! Is that a blunder? Can’t the black queen take ours for free? Nope. Queen takes queen, and then we move our knight to f6 and check. Knight-fork, baby! Our knight is attacking both the black king on g8 and the black queen on g4. The king must move to escape check, and we capture the queen, with the result that we netted a pawn (pawn + knight + queen versus bishop + queen), with no obvious compensation for black. A material advantage is greater when there are fewer pieces on the board, so the fact that this exchange removes the queens is more advantageous, and it’s far more fun.

Note that this combination wouldn’t have worked if our rook was still on f1, because it would now be under attack by the black bishop—the little things matter.

Most elite players will say that trusting their instincts is just as important as trusting their calculations. Experienced players can look at the board and feel the best move—the coup d’œil—and rely on intuition as much as calculation, searching for familiar patterns in each position. This produces more creative and original play, and leads to positions which are themselves more intuitive. Plus, in short-format games there is no time for lengthy calculation and playing by feel is essential. It’s far more fun to play quickly and by instinct, anyway!

So, calculation is an incredibly important tool in ultimately deciding on your next move, but it’s a means to an end, not the end itself. You might only need to calculate one move ahead in a position, or you might end up calculating 15 or 20 moves ahead. It all depends on the circumstances—it’s not like Grandmasters have enough RAM to calculate exactly n moves ahead, but not n + 1. (Hey, if we had a magic chessboard with an infinite number of ranks, and you and I both had 1,000 rooks each facing each other on one file, we could both realistically claim to be able to calculate 1,000 moves ahead.)

Here’s an awesome clip of the GOAT talking through his calculations and evaluations from Game 20 of the 1990 World Championship match:

Practical considerations

First-mover advantage

White always moves first in chess, and from there the players alternate moves throughout the game (there is no passing or moving twice in a row). This rule gives white an inherent advantage, as it can develop its pieces faster via its starting tempo and therefore has a greater ability to push the game in the direction that it wants. In the 23,000-plus games in Chessgames’ database from so far in 2017, white has scored about 54.5 percent, winning approximately 37.7 percent of games, drawing 33.7 percent, and losing only 28.6 percent.

Time restrictions

Chess games can be played under different time controls. There’s the classicalformat for quintessential sit-and-think contests—for example, in the 2017 World Cup, each player has 90 minutes for their first 40 moves, and then 30 minutes for the rest of the game, plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move 1. (The exact intervals differ from tournament to tournament.) Then, there are much shorter formats—a rapid game might give each player 25 minutes with a 10 second delay each move, and a blitz game might grant five minutes with a three-second delay. If players are even after a series of games, they might showdown in a single knockout Armageddon game, in which the parameters are prescribed so as to give each side the closest thing to a 50 percent chance of emerging victorious—white might receive five minutes to black’s four, with white needing to win and black only requiring a draw.

In each format, players press a button on a chess clock after making their move, which stops their time running and automatically starts their opponent’s.

It goes without saying that the shorter contests are chalk-and-cheese compared to classical games—it’s common for players to spend 20, 30, or even 40 minutes on a single move under classical time controls—players get up and have a look at the other nearby games in progress while their opponent is pondering their next move, which I find to be an endlessly amusing quirk—but the compressed formats require players to blitz out their moves without allowing much time for thought, resulting in exciting attacking play, inexcusable blunders, and thrilling races against the clock. (Former World Champion Vishy Anand spent an are-you-crazy 1 minute 43 seconds of his available 5 minutes on the fourth move of the 1994 World Blitz Championship semi-final, and went on to win.)

Mating the king

Unlike in every TV show or movie ever to involve chess, checkmates do not come out of the blue as a surprise to an opponent. Elite players invariably resign when a clearly losing position is reached, and over-the-board mates in competition are very rare. Between Grandmasters, a player losing a piece would usually resign on the spot, because unless they have significant compensation in position or initiative there is no realistic likelihood that their opponent will do anything but inevitably cruise to victory. In endgame situations, the difference of a single pawn can be enough to precipitate a handshake. Similarly, a significant positional advantage or an imminent mate will invariably result in resignation. It is seen as disrespectful to play on in a clearly lost position, and most elite players aren’t interested in suffering through a humiliating forced march to checkmate.

In fact, I can only identify mate being delivered over the board once in World Championship history—chess author and player Jimmy Adams alerted me to Alexander Alekhine’s mate of Efim Bogoljubov in Game 8 of their 1929 World Championship match. However, in an interesting quirk pointed out to me by chess author and player Stewart Reuben, three of the most famous and celebrated games in history did indeed end in mate over the board: The Game of the Century, The Immortal Game, and The Evergreen Game.

By the way, the quickest-possible checkmate can be achieved in just two moves, the so-called Fool’s Mate:

Call it a draw

A game can end in a draw in several ways. It could be a stalemate, where a player with the move has no legal move and his/her king is not in check; or threefold repetition (if a position appears on the board for the third time); by the fifty-move rule (if each player has made 50 moves since the last capture or movement of any pawn); by perpetual check (technically a draw by agreement, occurring if one player can perpetually place the enemy king in check without actually being able to deliver mate); or through insufficient mating material, which is when neither player has enough firepower to checkmate the other, for example if the forces are reduced to a king versus a king and knight.

Most commonly, though, games end in a draw by agreement, where players simply shake hands and agree to split the points based on their evaluation of the position on the board. This makes sense in a lot of endgame positions, for example where material and position are equal; between elite players a final result of a draw for one of the above reasons is inevitable. Far more controversial are early agreed draws. The laws of chess permit agreed draws any time after move 1, while some tournaments may prohibit them before a certain point is reached; in the World Championship, for instance, a draw cannot be agreed before move 30. Often, both players are happy to earn a draw, perhaps for rating purposes or to ensure a solid finish in a tournament, and so might go into a game ready to jump at a draw at the first opportunity, especially if the game follows a well-known line in the opening. Some games end in agreed draws after as few as five effing moves. This tends to raise eyebrows, and also to raise questions as to whether the players are truly giving it their all.

Chess as a metaphor

Chess is often referenced in politics, the arts, sports, and elsewhere as a metaphor demonstrating deep intelligence or intellectual superiority. “I’m playing chess while everyone else plays checkers! I’m thinking two whole moves ahead of everyone else! You’re all pawns in my game! Checkmate!”

As often as not, the most common chess metaphors are off the mark. The laziest trope is that chess skills signify intelligence, and vice versa. You do need to be intelligent to become an elite chess player, but that also goes for just about anything worth being good at. A smart person who has never played chess before will be very bad at chess. Similarly, a person who is triumphantly claiming that they stroll through life like a chess Grandmaster, thinking multiple moves ahead of everyone else, is generally just showing us the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

To make a good analogy, the objects being compared actually need to be analogous. In chess, there are only two actors, they start with equal firepower, and the circumstances that constitute winning and losing are clearly defined. The rules are fixed, there is no hidden information, and everything unfolds within a closed system with no outside interference. These parameters are rarely perfectly replicated in real-life scenarios. They are rarely imperfectly replicated in real-life scenarios.

It’s not to say that chess metaphors can’t be made, or that only Super Grandmasters should make them. It’s the exact opposite—elements of chess show themselves in the real world all the time, and even casual players will know the lizard sensation of recognizing elements of chess in real-life scenarios. Chess teaches how to think strategically, to map out all available options, to anticipate the consequences of your actions, to plan for contingencies, and to choose when to attack and when to defend. Chess themes show up in every sport, in politics, in business, and in every competition or ecosystem with multiple moving parts. Anybody can learn chess, and anybody can learn from chess. I suspect the issue is that non-chess folks see issues from the real world and are tempted to clumsily try to make them fit into how they think chess operates. That’s doing it in reverse—if you take the time to learn the game of chess, you’ll be amazed at how often you see its themes materialize in front of you.

The Global Context and Chess at the Elite Level

The World Championship

The World Championship is decided every two years in a 12-game-plus-tiebreaks match between the reigning champ and one contender, who is the winner of the traditional eight-person Candidates Tournament. That tournament is just as cool as the World Championship match itself, and the race to qualify—the Candidates field is made up of the previous World Championship runner-up, the two highest finishers in two major tournaments, the two otherwise highest-rated players, and one wildcard—is the most enthralling ongoing storyline of each World Championship cycle. Norway’s Magnus Carlsen has been World Champion since 2013, and most recently defeated Russian Sergey Karjakin in tiebreaks in 2016 to retain his title and take home more than half a million Euros in prize money.

Chess is universal, and there are tournaments held all over the world all year round for players of all strengths and ages. The elite players compete in tournaments ranging from the biennial national-team Chess Olympiad, to the single-elimination World Cup, to the big-money events on the new Grand Chess Tour. There are always tournaments happening all around the world, whether age-limited or open, individual or team, knockout or round-robin or Swiss-system.

Ratings

Players earn ratings according to how strongly they perform in tournaments. Chess’s international governing body FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs, pronounced “fee-day”) bases ratings on the Elo rating system, a complex mathematical scheme also employed in other sports and in the algorithm underpinning the predecessor to Facebook. A rating is simply a number that represents a player’s chess ability—the larger the rating the better the player—and which fluctuates up and down after every game according to the player’s results relative to their opponents’ ratings. Players are ranked by their ratings: as of the December 2017 list, Carlsen is currently ranked No. 1 with a rating of 2837 (his May 2014 rating of 2882 is the highest ever recorded), six others are rated just above or below 2800, and the world No. 100 clocks in at 2652. A beginner who understands the rules but not much else would probably be rated lower than 600.

Titles

FIDE awards titles to elite players based on their performance in classical tournament play. In order of increasing prestige, players can become a Candidate Master (carrying the honorific ‘CM’), FIDE Master (FM), International Master (IM), or a Grandmaster (GM). There are separate women-only titles corresponding to each. All titles are granted for life. The byzantine technical criteria which must be fulfilled to achieve Grandmaster status essentially boil down to two requirements: achieving a minimum rating of 2500, and achieving three norms, which are 2600-level results—say, a tournament score of 7/9 against a field of average 2380 rating—in tournaments against diverse and highly-rated opponents, where the field features players from several different nations, at least one-third GMs, and no player rated lower than 2200. Got all that? There are currently 1,570 Grandmasters in the world, although many are now retired or inactive. The countries with the most Grandmasters are Russia (220), Germany (90), USA (89), and Ukraine (86).

Seconds

Just like all sportspeople have coaches and training staff, elite chess players hire other chexperts (chessperts?) to act as seconds—essentially, coaches and assistants to help them prepare for important matches and tournaments. Seconds usually have a particular expertise in certain areas, and may be either active players or semi- or fully-retired. They might be tasked with studying particular opening lines, coming up with novel attacking themes, addressing their player’s weaknesses, or studying a future opponent’s past games, all with a view to briefing their player so that they are fully prepared on game day. Seconds might be engaged on a permanent or ad hoc basis, and many players don’t like disclosing who they’ve got on their team for fear that their seconds’ profiles will hint at what they have prepared.

Supercomputers

You knew this one was coming. The advent of chess engines—supercomputers that calculate millions of possible variations stretching many moves ahead—has fundamentally changed the game of chess, in the same way that the three-point line fundamentally changed basketball. Chess engines are orders of magnitude more powerful and less susceptible to error than even the strongest Grandmasters, and have broadened analysis and research beyond what was ever thought possible. Magnus Carlsen’s ascension to World Champion marked the dawn of a new era in chess, as he is the first champ to have forged his playing career entirely in the age of supercomputers.

At each position in a game, chess engines calculate the best continuations, spitting out recommended moves in order of their strength, and listing the first few moves in the strongest continuation thereafter. Their evaluation functions estimate the chess equivalent of a progress score based on all the factors described above. If an engine evaluates that, all things considered, black has an advantage worth the equivalent of exactly one and a half pawns, the evaluation of the position will yield a “score” of -1.50, with negative numbers indicating an advantage for black and positive an advantage for white.

The open source engine Stockfish, for instance, evaluates the starting position at +0.23 because of white’s first-mover advantage. Chess fans can follow chess games from around the world live on websites such as Chess24, which reports the moves accompanied by Stockfish’s evaluations and calculations, which adds a cool layer of context and analysis (follow the calculations and evaluations of the final game of the 2016 World Championship match here). It’s a lot of fun when a game reaches an extremely complex position, and while the players calculate with furrowed brows we at home can yell things like “I can’t believe he/she hasn’t seen Bxg4 already! It’s so obvious!”

The advent of supercomputers has had an immeasurable impact on chess. It one sense, it has somewhat levelled the field between players, because a player with lesser inherent chess instinct can paper over that gap to a degree with extensive research and preparation. Supercomputers have advanced opening theory by light years, and some variations have fallen out of favor amongst elite players because computer analysis has shown them to be susceptible to a certain attack or defense.

Of course, players have to make the moves on the board based on their own brainpower, and an over-reliance on computer study at the expense of understanding the game of chess can be a player’s undoing. The computer’s recommended move might not always be the best one for a human to make, because it might be reliant on a 35-move combination that a human simply can’t calculate. One challenge for elite Grandmasters is to figure out how best to use engines in their preparation; that is, as a tool to make them better and not as the endpoint of chess itself. One challenge for the chess authorities is to ensure that players aren’t clandestinely using engines during matches—in big tournaments, players are required to walk through airport-style metal detectors before and after games to make sure there’s no funny business.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour around the black and white of chess. More than that, I hope you dust off that old chess board you’ve got lying around, play some rapid games against other players online, or download one of the millions of available chess apps. If you’ve got kids, teaching them chess has enormous educational benefits, and it’s never too late for you and them to get started. Spend 10 minutes learning the main lines of some cool openings, like the King’s Indian and the Dragon, and while you’re at it, pick an opening to play just because it has a cool name, like the Pterodactyl, or the Hippopotamus Defense. Try some chess puzzles, borrow a beginner’s strategy book from the library, and attack the enemy king like you’re Mikhail Tal, even if it won’t always come off. Talk some trash, win and lose a few games, have some fun.

Ben is a Deadspin reader who likes chess.

[raymondchouplayschess]

Calculation: Part 2.5, Scattered Notes While at Work

So I’m at work right now, and there’s no one else here (since I’m usually the first in in the morning, and I have no student assistant today), so I think I’m going to take some time to really think about some thoughts I was having last night.

Interestingly enough, though many problems can be simplified - this just may be one where the complexity is preserved, despite the transformations I’m about to make...

I was doing some of the daily chess.com puzzles, trying to practice my calculating skill, and I think I’m getting better at it! The idea of analyzing all of the possible moves first, and then simply switching around the order, is very effective. I have noticed a few things however:

It is very important to calculate the squares for which pieces can move in subsequent turns. I know how a knight moves for the first two moves only, I’ll try to figure out 3 very soon. With bishops, queens, and rooks (long range pieces, as I will now call them), since each one can theoretically end up on any square within two moves (except for bishops, they can move to any square of their color after only two moves), it is more important to look at paths and open lines. Do not forget captures to end up at the arrival point!

Very important, also, to be able to move the location where capture happens. (For example, say a rook was aiming down the h-file at your king, then you play h6, and if a capture were to happen, then the g7 pawn can defend)

We need some sort of system where we can count threats and immediately be able to rule out certain moves

Whoever has the move is very important - hence moves that gain tempo should also have some factor in the calculation

Also another thing to consider is how the defense of each piece changes as the shape of the board changes. The threats may change based on how the pieces move, and our goal is to be able to predict these in advance without having to actually calculate

It is good to “see the shape of a piece,” (for lack of a better phrase), or to view each piece not only as itself, but all of its possible attacking squares, as well as future attacking squares. For example, when I look at a knight, I see the 8 squares that it can attack - but also, I try to see if my knight is in any one of the “forking positions” with another piece (2x4, 2 apart, 4 apart, 4x4, 3x5, etc), because this means I can capture in 2 moves. For bishops, I look at all of the squares of that color, and for rooks or something of the like, I look at the cross it’s on, but then at open paths that aren’t blocked (or where silly captures don’t happen)

Undefended pieces

Whether pieces can capture back or not

The entire idea with this approach is to try to plan out the next 6-7 moves until a decisive moment is reached, but not by trying move sequences. The idea is to immediately identify all of the possible moves, all of the future moves, and then string together a few in a sequence that makes a lot of sense.

Let us briefly make a list of factors that we should consider and add up, and then try to establish a very primitive model that we will develop into something more substantial later.

Threats that gain tempo (checks)

Threats in general (including ones that attack 2 or more pieces)

Value of the pieces being traded

The squares which the pieces are traded on

The blocking/opening of lines

Moves that add threats or remove threats (or both)

I will append to this list later as I see fit.

An interesting thought just occurred to me - what if, to save time, as the game goes on (even whilst my opponent is calculating), to think of all of the pieces that we can capture in the next move or two “Marvel vs Capcom style,” (same with our pieces). Say, for instance, we’re playing the London system, and we are preparing the e4 pawn advance, and we have a knight on d2, a bishop on d3, and a rook on e1. Then, as e3-e4, I can think of that pawn as a pawn-bishop-knight-rook. Because whatever he decides to capture e4 with, I can immediately turn that pawn into one of those pieces. Interestingly enough, we can think of empty squares as that too...perhaps this will be helpful in calculating. Say I have a pawn on e7, and a rook on e1 - then I can think of the pawn as a pawn-rook, where if the pawn is captured, it can become a rook, and perhaps hit the king on h7. Or if we have a pawn-rook-queen on e7, perhaps we can turn the pawn into a rook-queen and checkmate someone...?

Interestingly enough, continuing off of this idea, if we have multiple pieces attacking a square or one of their pieces, we could think of that square in terms of our own pieces on that square. Say they had a pawn on d6, and we had a queen, a rook, and a pawn all attacking d6, we could say that d6 has pawn/pawn-rook-queen. So we could create a pawn-rook-queen on d6 as the next move. (Naturally, we would start to observe what queens can do on d6).

Perhaps that idea will come in later. 

A Very Primitive Model

It helps, when attempting to create something, or a method of any sort, to first see how we would deal with simple problems, before progressing on to more complex ones, and I shall attempt to do that here.

Let us begin with the simplest (and highly unrealistic) of all cases, which is two bishops (say the light squares) attacking each other, both pieces undefended. By starting with such a simple case, perhaps this will allow us to develop a system that lets us calculate more quickly.

The answer is obvious - whoever has the move ends up ahead.

This sheds light on another important factor - can the pieces capture back? Let us now take the exact same scenario, where the pieces cannot capture back. In this case, interestingly enough, one of two things will happen:

Both players capture

Both players evade capture

We quickly see that whether the second player can capture on the next turn is a very big deal, and also that whoever has the move is a very big deal. This is why checks are a big deal (and probably why they were invented in the first place) - the check provides us with an opportunity to “steal the move,” or “gain tempo,” as most chessplayers call it.

The next step is to add the defenders to the equation. Assuming both players have their bishops defended (say with rooks), then what will now happen is the “trade;” once player will capture the other player’s bishop, and the other player will capture back with the rook. Of course, the trade can be declined, as the first player can play a move that puts them out of the line of fire of the other bishop. 

What’s interesting though, is that if the rooks will be attacking each other after recapturing. An easy scenario of this is to image white’s bishop on c3, white rook b3, black bishop f6, and black rook c6, with white to move. (Note: If we examine the bishops as “bishop rooks,” (to be elaborated upon later on), we quickly see that the trade is neutral for white if white is to move, but favors black). If white chooses to capture the bishop, then black will reply by recapturing. Awesome. Take the same scenario, however, and imagine it was black’s turn - black takes the bishop, but cannot recapture with the rook on c3 because of the c6 rook - he will lose a bishop and rook for just a bishop. Not worth at all. So white’s only move is to flee with the rook after the bishop falls.

In that scenario, however, black is attacking the bishop twice, so I suppose that wouldn’t matter. Is it theoretically impossible to have the defending pieces intersect if they are not already attacking the other piece? I will have to look into this. It seems like no, however...

Here’s an interesting scenario: Pawn-bishop vs pawn-rook. Say white’s pawn is on d4, with the rook on d3; say Black’s pawn is on e5, with the bishop on g7. Ahhhh, yes, the bishop indirectly attacks d4, so that would be a second order threat. So technically (as we will see later), black is attacking the pawn with a “pawn-bishop,” and white’s pawn is a “pawn-rook.” This significantly favors black, because if black has the move, he can potentially earn an extra piece if white is dumb enough to recapture with the rook. If it is white’s move, they trade.

A brief interlude to summarize what we have learned thus far:

For trades where the pieces are attacking each other, whoever has the move wins the trade if they are undefended

For trades where the pieces are attacking each other but the player who does not have the move has his attacked piece defended, then it will be even (assuming the pieces are of same value), neglecting the effects of the board after those moves

For trades where the pieces are not attacking each other (they are attacking other pieces on the board), it will come out even so long as the number of threats are the same.

If one has more indirect threats than the opponent, then they will win a piece.

The next step, naturally, is everyone having a bunch of undefended pieces all attacking each other, with none of the attacks overlapping. A very simple example would be two rooks attacking each other, and then the light square bishops and the dark square bishops attacking each other.

Both players have 3 threats, but all of those threats are returnable as well.

It is not too difficult to see that whoever has the move will come out on top, because since none of the moves overlap, assuming capture-capture-capture, the player with the move will have captured 2 pieces, whereas the other player would have had the opportunity to only capture one. Perhaps it might be useful to either split pieces attacking each other into a separate category, or not count them at all? We shall reserve judgment for now. In this case, it makes sense to capture the rook first, removing the most valuable piece from play. Then, it’s black’s decision to decide which bishop they want to keep, and they will capture with that bishop.

Interestingly enough, if both players have 4 threats in this situation (say the other two rooks were attacking each other, in an area that does not intersect with the other rooks or any of the bishops), then the player with the move has the advantage, namely because he can choose which bishop to keep.

We’ve now dealt with trades where all of the pieces can capture each other, and the conclusion is as follows:

If the number of trades is odd, the player with the move at the beginning of the trade wins

If the number of trades is even, then the player with the move will not be up a piece, but can choose which piece to keep

Let’s add un-connected defenders to all of the squares. That way, we don’t have to worry about anything else. 

If there’s only one of each, either a trade occurs, or a trade doesn’t occur, and we have to consider whether the defending piece is under fire as well. If there are two of each, it doesn’t matter which piece is taken, but the second player will always capture the more valuable piece. The first player would do wise to capture the more valuable piece, unless there’s some sort of move available that could add or negate a threat.

So I suppose the defenders of the pieces is somewhat irrelevant if they are not connected.

We shall now discuss two final topics before wrapping up this discussion - when the values of the pieces are different, and when there are simultaneously pieces attacking each other, and attacks where that is not the case.

One thing is for sure though: unless you have a very good reason, never capture a defended piece of lesser value.

Anyway...let’s look at a really simple example when the value of the pieces are different. Of course, if there is no consequence, we want to capture the piece with the highest value first, whilst simultaneously avoiding our highest value pieces being taken.

An interesting thought just occurred to me - what if instead of keeping count of the amount of threats, we keep track of the amount of different types of threats there are as well? (And the amount that they have?) Perhaps that might help us clarify the position.

Maybe that would help us in the next discussion...

Let’s say we had two double trades (undefended), and then two non-attacking trades. Then, the player with the move has the slight advantage, as they can decide which piece to trade off. Interestingly enough, the player with the move can actually take one of the non-double trades, allowing the second player to choose which of the double trades he wants to commit to. If the second player decides to save a piece, the first player will be up a piece, after the second capture, player 2 can only hope to gain 1 capture. So a capture is essentially forced. If player 1 takes on the first move, player 2 is essentially forced into taking, unless he has a tempo gaining move. Since both players only have 3 threats each...

Tomorrow I will try to come up with a system that correctly encapsulates this idea.

[isaacfigueroap]

Recommendations to buy and sell Cyber Security Stocks

Summary:

-        Buy HACK ETF close to the support line of the uprising trend and have a tight stop loss. Don’t expect the gains to be as large as in 2016.

-        I would wait for price consolidation in Fortinet (FTNT). So, I prefer to go long with a lower price or only in the breakout of the 37 level.

-        I would day trade FireEye (FEYE) in the short side and Check Point Software (CHKP) in the long side. Too much risk to hold a position through the day.

-        Gigamon Inc (GIMO): I would try a long swing position close to the 29-30 level with a very tight stop loss right below 28.

-        Buying the dead cat bounce may be appealing, but at a lower price in Palo Alto Networks. Patience is needed.

-        I might short Proofpoint (PFPT). I am waiting for the signal.

-        Today: I opened a small short position in CYBR (trading the range, and probably make a follow up in my short after that) and I closed my short in FEYE (but I might day trade it again next days).

    I want to focus my attention on one sector with one of the best stock performers (price) in 2016: Cyber security.

As heads up, I practice Fusion analysis (Fundamental and Technical) but my methodology usually starts with a top-down technical analysis view.

I think that cyber security is the next area in technology that needs real consolidation (industry and stock price). Meaning: more M&A activity and more price consolidation of many public stocks that have run nicely in 2016. Don’t get me wrong, I think this sector has a great future, but there might be a bumpy road ahead.  

According Cybersecurity Ventures, worldwide spending on cybersecurity-related products and services is expected to top $1 trillion for the 2017 to 2021 time frame. Cybersecurity Ventures have also announced the Q1 2017 edition of the Cybersecurity 500, a global compilation of 500 leading companies who provide cybersecurity solutions and services. The next table shows only 8 of these companies -out of 500- and their ranking. These companies will be the focus of my analysis; the best part is that they are part of the top 44 of Cybersecurity Ventures’ ranking, have stock liquidity, a market cap over $1 billion, and interesting technical charts.

Source: http://cybersecurityventures.com/cybersecurity-500/

In regards to price consolidation, I follow the ISE Cyber Security Index which started at the 100 level in December 31 2010. As of February, 28 2017, its index total return has a price of 287.33, implying a CAGR of 18.67% (or annualized return). This is an index that provides a benchmark and is composed of companies that develop hardware and/or software that safeguard access to files, websites, and networks.

Source: https://www.ise.com/etf-ventures/index-data/ise-cyber-security-index-hxr/

The ETF HACK has tracked this index since November 12, 2014 with an expense ratio of 0.75%, 34 holdings, a market cap of $7.4 billion and a quarterly re-balancing with “modified equal weight”. 7 out of the 34 holdings are the stocks that I am going to analyse. See the following chart with the highlighted stocks in yellow, with the exception of Gigamon, which is not included in the HACK ETF.

Source: http://www.purefunds.com/purefunds-etfs/hack/

Since November 12, 2014, the return on the Index has been 8.28% annualized and the ETF HACK has been 7.14%. The difference of 1.14% can be attributed to both a 0.75% and a 0.39% of tracking difference. In the same period, if you had bought these stocks individually, instead of the ETF, you would have had the following annualized net returns (not including dividends): GIMO: +44%; PFPT: +28%; CYBR: +19%; PANW: +16%; FTNT: +15%; CHKP: +12%; IMPV: -4%; and, FEYE: -37%. As you can see, since the ETF was launched, this sector is still in consolidation and hasn’t gone above the last high that occurred in June 2015.

Created chart based on data from www.purefunds.com and Yahoo finance

The HACK ETF is still on an uptrend. You might want to consider going long once it goes to the support of the uptrend. For now, I have some long and short ideas for some of the stocks.

Let’s start the individual analysis in the same order as the last table (highlighted stocks in yellow), shall we?

1-  Fortinet:

FTNT has a bullish structure trading above 20, 50, and 200 moving average (weekly chart). It jumped after reporting earnings in the beginning of February. Right now, it is trading close to the lower price after the gap which is dangerous for the bulls because MACD is giving a sell sign and RSI is showing weakness. Also, it is trading very close to a resistance level where it got rejected right after the gap up. However, it is difficult to call for a short in this bullish chart structure.

Depending on the markets in general and the ISE index, 36ish might be an area of consolidation (current price), but if the price continues lower, the mid 33s is a level to watch. However, if the price pushes higher next week to a price above 37 with high volume, the stock might reach close to 42. Earnings are going to be reported on April 25th.

It is important to notice that the EV/revenues are at 4.2, above only Gigamon (3.06) and FireEye (2.46), and below the other 5, which make this a cheap stock. I would be a buyer in case of a breakout to the upside above 37 with a stop loss at 35.90 and a target of 42.

2- Check Point:

The fundamentals seem very good in CHKP, but technically speaking, it is trading in “profit taking” area if you were long. Congratulations! if you were long, but, this is not an area where I want to be buying. Please see the resistance in the monthly and weekly charts. In the daily chart, the MACD has given us a sell signal, but MACD in the monthly chart just gave us a buy signal.  Let’s search for more evidence.

The EV/revenues for CHKP is the highest in comparison with the other 7 companies at 9.17, followed by PFPT at 8.99; indeed, a very expensive multiple. Also, the forward price to sales ratio is at 9.29 followed by CYBR at 6.34 and PANW at 6.19 (even with the last PAWN sell off). However, I cannot blindly go short, remember “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” That is why, if I had to do something with this stock, I would go long only in a day trading style to capture some momentum -if there is any left- but I wouldn’t hold any position through any day. Earnings will next be released on April 19th.

3- Imperva:

IMPV has one of my favourite setups. If you see the EV/revenues chart, it looks divided into 2 groups with the bottom group led by IMPV (4.32) followed by FTNT (4.2), GIMO (3.06), and FEYE (2.46). My point here is that the 4 in the bottom group haven’t overlapped with the 4 in the top group -at least since April 2016- which means that the top group (CHKP, PFPT, PANW, CYBR) has stronger and better fundamental reasons to be more expensive than the bottom group -see the last chart of EV/revenues with all the historical multiples.

In the next chart below, IMPV looks ready to break the support. Please see the weekly chart and how some ugly red candles in 2016 pushed the stock lower with some dead cat bounces forming a nice declining resistance. IMPV is now close to testing the support, even RSI and MACD confirm the same pattern. I might try a swing short soon, even before we break the support (the red line uprising). The stop loss is very easy to see - the red declining line or the 50 level might be interesting. The risk is that we have a range in the trading area between the 2 Fibonacci levels: 1: 1(53.33) and 0.618(39.87). As long as you define your target levels and stop loss levels, it should be fine. These types of charts can give you no less than a 3-1 reward-risk; this is why it is one of my favorite setups where I am biased to the downside. Even the 20 and 50 moving averages are trending lower.

In regards to the “percentage of shares outstanding short”: IMPV and PANW have had an increasing trend of 8.6% and 8.7%, respectively, over the last 5 years. FEYE and PFPT are the only ones above with over 14%. This gives me more confidence for a short trade case. I.e.: Short at 42 with a 32 target (the 32 level is a 0.382 Fibonacci level; below that, it would turn into a very bearish situation). A stop loss of 45.33 would be appropriate for a swing trade.

4- Proofpoint:

PFPT has a bullish chart, but I don’t see much upside in the short term. Notice the pattern forming in the weekly chart which might be a H&S to be confirmed only in the 70 area. Furthermore, it is being rejected from the 1.618 Fibonacci level (83), and it is approaching to the 1.382 level (75). This stocks is really a strong candidate to be short, but I don’t recommend that trade against the uptrend, unless you know what you are doing. It requires a lot of discipline and experience.

To enforce my idea of being short, the “short percent of shares outstanding short” is still trending up and has the highest percentage in this group: 15.75%. Likewise, EV/revenues are 9.15, just below the CHKP at 9.19; both are the priciest multiples. CYBR and PANW follow with 7.00 and 6.24 respectively (PANW used to be at 8.5 before last week’s sell off).

The daily chart also shows weakness in the price which is confirmed by an important bearish divergence in the RSI and a lower trending MACD. This stock has great potential to continue even lower, as I mentioned above, if a H&S pattern is confirmed in the 70 area, it might take us to at least the 60-62 area. This is why, I might open a short position (swing trade) between 80-83 with a tight stop loss of 88 and a target of 62; I would take partial profits around 75ish, 73, 70 and 62. Again this is a risky trade.

5- CyberArk:

CYBR is consolidating between 45 and 59, We see a deceleration of revenues quarterly YoY (not only CYBR, the other 7 stocks, see the following chart). The EV/ revenues are the 3rd most expensive at 6.95 and the forward P/S ratio is the 2nd most expensive at 6.34 out of the 8 stocks (see those the charts above). This stock is still having its 20 and 50 moving average slightly pointing to the upside. So, I might be biased to play the stock on the long side with a small position around 45, if that level is broken, 36ish would be level to watch. But, if it breaks out above 55, I would also go long.

However, because fundamentals lag technicals, I would take a short position below 45 with a target of 37 - important levels are 45ish and 36ish (Fibonacci levels). Also, use RSI as a resistance in the weekly chart and RSI and MACD in the daily chart. Use them as confirmation for any trade idea. There is still too much indecision about the stock price on the chart.

6- Palo Alto Networks

I would like to start to trade PANW on the long side as a mean reversion trade. Meaning: capture a very possible decent dead cat bounce. However, I would not pay more than 112 and I need to see some stabilisation in MACD and RSI which could take days because the violence of the fall can take some smaller deeps soon. Some targets are 123, 131 and 143; I would use the targets accordingly, i.e.: HACK performance, the strength of the market, and new catalysts. Again, MACD and RSI in the weekly chart need to keep their supports, otherwise I would not open a long position and would probably search for arguments for the other side of the trade, such as a price below 110. However, it is possible that the volatility in PANW will fade away after the last big move the last week.

See how important it is for PAWN to keep the support price at 112 in the daily chart. Also, wait for evidence that stochastics is turning bullish because, as I said, this would be a mean reversion trade. Keep in mind that the “short percent of shares outstanding short” is still trending up just like IMPV. So be careful with any long position.

In regards to EV/revenues and forward P/S, they are 6.25 and 6.19, making PANW cheaper (the last time it was at these levels was in 2014). But in comparison with its competitors, it is right in the 4th most expensive EV/revenues out of 8 which is a more neutral position.

7-     FireEye:

The structure is bearish for the weekly and daily charts. Right now, I would day trade FEYE on the short side with a 2 to 1 defined reward-risk. I.e.: short it at 11.15 with a target of 10.65 and a stop loss of 11.41.

I would recommend being long only if there is news that infers that revenues will increase in the near future, or right after earnings with good results. See a bullish divergence forming in the daily chart for the MACD and RSI. More importantly, be long if the price goes up above 11.50 with important volume. Don’t be a hero right here. See price action and revenues quarterly YoY decreasing. I need facts to change my view. No guessing or gambling.

8- Gigamon:

I would try a long swing position close to the 29-30 level with a stop loss right below 28. If GIMO goes lower, I would try a long position in the low 22s and I would be more aggressive at that level. Firstly, the weekly chart shows an uptrend, with a strong support at 29ish which is a Fibonacci level (0.618). The other Fibonacci level is in the 22s (0.382). Secondly, GIMO’s EV/revenues at 3.06 are at one of the cheapest levels (after FEYE at 2.72).

There is catch though; RSI is breaking its support and MACD is turning bearish in the daily chart. This would tell me to give it some time around the 29 level, because it might need some consolidation. Money management is key for this type of risky trade idea.

Remember the 44% return since November 2014? This is the only one which is not included in the HACK ETF, but past returns don’t necessarily mean that we are going to have the same ones in the future.

Both technical analysis and fundamental analysis should be used with an open mind and taken with a grain of salt. They both should be applied as arts, not as exact sciences because the markets have a lot of randomness driven by many brilliant minds, including computers, insiders, and probably some manipulators. The only way to beat it is to have a method that gives you a good reward-risk ratio.  Good luck!