Be brave, be honest to yourself and stop this trush talkings!!! Everybody know that i am very good blitz player, i can win anyone in the world in single game!
The BongCloud is pretty hard to play. I prefer the "Wandering King" (a.k.a "The Fred", or when playing mirrored moves as black "The Fried Fox") which is:
1. f3...
2. Kf2
It's not quite as bad as it looks, and at my level (~2000 lichess blitz/bullet) can generally serve its purpose to get people out of book and into novel middle games. (I also play blitz Chess 960 which is even better in this regard.)
That's true. But the Wandering King invites strong tactical aggression because the king is so enticingly exposed — which is super fun to play against!
In fact, the king isn't suicidally exposed, it's about as well defended as the king is during the Steinitz Gambit, which also involves an early king move under the main line.
I like playing the Steinitz too, but opponents rarely go along with it. Same with King's Gambit in general, people generally just play to defang it and trade trade trade down to something drawish. Yuck. I hate drawish chess.
I don't like the Bongcloud so much because it's even more cramped and I find it hard to play out of. But it could also be that it transposes into King's Indian / Queen's Indian lines I don't like so much, rather than Steinitz Gambit wildness.
There is a hysterically funny "opening manual" that popularized the Bongcloud, no longer at its original site since the author now sells it on Amazon, but mirrored here under its original CC license:
It is written in a completely deadpan style but is full of inside chess jokes, e.g.:
"Although both Botvinnik and Tal experimented with the opening, it was not until the Bobby Fischer took it up in the early 1960s that the opening found an exponent. Unfortunately, the Bongcloud in Fischer’s hands was so devastating that the games were short and unmemorable, and none are recorded in My 60 Memorable Games."
That was a very famous incident, try searching "fischer nigel short bongcloud". Someone played several games against Short and won them all with horrible openings using 2 Kf2 and the like (not Ke2 iirc). The person knew some Fischer trivia so there was wide speculation (including by Short) that the mysterious opponent was Fischer himself. Consensus these days was that it was some prankster using an engine. This was in the era before powerful engines were that widely available, so they weren't people's immediate thought, but they existed.
I'd never heard of bongcloud before but searching YouTube for "Fischer Short" yields many videos discussing this apparent incident. One from a popular channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9p2PrsKWY. Great story.
I like to believe that there's a mysterious and excellent human opponent on the other end. I find it difficult to believe an engine could have such a terrible opening, then go on to defeat a top blitz player. This is just my speculation.
> I find it difficult to believe an engine could have such a terrible opening, then go on to defeat a top blitz player. This is just my speculation.
It's more the other way around. Short was a world championship challenger. There is no human in the world who could beat him with such an opening, except for the possibility of a mysterious Fischer with expanded powers gathered during his time away from the mortal chess world. An engine could also do it, of course, and that's a far more likely explanation. A human operating the engine picks the opening, then lets the engine take over after a few moves.
Carlsen often plays it while streaming (at least earlier this year, hasn't been streaming much lately as World Championship approaches this month). A good way to effectively give his opponents odds, keep his rating lower so that matchmaking is quicker, & avoid giving away information about what he's playing seriously
Does it serve some purpose by immediately taking the computer or human opponent out of opening book play and make them start burning compute cycles on the very next move already?
It kind of does, but there are arguably better ways of doing that.
You are effectively putting the opponent in a clearly better position, but giving him the task of converting it before any pressure has been built up. That can throw people off.
Though it seems to becoming a popular fad these past few years, so your opponent just might be booked up on it a bit and then you are in trouble. Giving your opponent time to think in an objectively winning position is rarely a recipe for wins.
For humans it might occasionally throw off your opponent psychologically, but it rarely actually works. Computers will, however, always find a refutation very, very quickly and then you're just in a worse position.
With humans, it depends on the level of play and the time controls. You are sacrificing positional soundness and initiative to neutralize opening preparation (assuming your opponent hasn't prepped for the Bongcloud specifically). Taking your opponent out of book is a greater advantage with short time controls.
I don't play crappy openings to win, though. I just want to play a wide variety of novel middle games, and if I have to sacrifice 100 rating points to get people out of book, that's a bargain. Because otherwise loss-aversion takes over and chess is all about playing for the draw.
People are taking this whole "get your opponent out of the opening prep by playing bongcloud" way too seriously.
One of the first things you learn as a beginner chess player is how to play against awful openings. It's not like good people have forgotten their opening principles.
But from my perspective, playing someone who's in the mindset of punishing my awful opening sounds exciting!
If you measure exclusively against the metric of "how to max out your rating", then yeah, weird openings aren't very helpful. But if your metric is "how to dredge wild tactical games out of opponents, even if I lose more often", then weird openings are generally superior.
Of course the better way to neutralize opening prep and experience more wild games is just to play more Chess 960.
Both players had already qualified for the next round. It’s also a rapid tournament. The stakes weren’t high which allowed them to goof around a bit. It was probably good publicity for chess & both players.
I was a bit disappointed by the game - it would be interesting to see a reasonable lets-try-to-win game from good players for a double bongcloud (since that, unlike an unilateral bongcloud, should be roughly equal and playable seriously), but it was just an agreed draw after the second move.
Well, the last normal move was the actual double-bongcloud, after that it was just the draw process.
> Why would anyone play 2. Ke2 if they wanted to win?
In order to have a fair (though whimsical) game from an unusual starting point; it would be interesting to see the game that develops from that position.
The first part of your comment is just goalpost-shifting, the second part not answering the question. (Your 'starting point' is after 2.. Ke7, which black would never play if they wanted to win.) Anyway, bye, sorry I got into this.
One might imagine it'd be a draw after the fifth move, but the position after 1. e4 e5 is different from the position after 5. Ke1 Ke8, because of castling rights. So the threefold repetition doesn't occur until after 6. Ke2 Ke7.
It's not in master database, but there's a few on YouTube/Twitch. 99% though, it's: 1. e4 e5 2. Ke2 Ke7 3. Ke1 Ke8 and then just become non-castling chess.
hah someone did this to me, developed their rooks while I took over the center and dismissed the guy, I got destroyed. obviously I still live in blunderville but man I learned a lesson that game.
One tactic is to leave the rook on the wing where the opponent castles and advance the rook pawn, trying to trade it away.
Of course you can also do this if you just castle on the opposite side from your opponent. But the point is that you can also use this technique with the Bongcloud.
Also, arguably one of the most famous bong clouds of all time came from Magnus Carlsen to win a blitz tournament last year against Wesley So: https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/chess24-banter... . Carlsen turned a losing position into a stunning victory with a daring sacrifice.
I often play the bong cloud as a way to give a weaker opponent a handicap. It also works pretty well at psyching out a player who tries to stick to the book moves, but I've been consistently demolished when attempting the opening against anyone 1800+ on chess.com.
This a great video, after Hikaru Nakamura played and won with the Bongcloud opening, where Magnus Carlsen (world #1) is interviewed about the usage of the Bongcloud and he trolls the interviewers:
No, the king has minor advantage in the center by supporting the center pawns. Nakamura's bong cloud "Speedrun" to 3000 is genuinely entertaining. Init he uses e3 instead of e4 due to it being "less terrible."
tcec-chess.com (site of the Top Chess Engine Championship) actually ran an all-bongcloud tournament once, between 8 different engines iirc. Some engines were stronger than others but all were very definitely way stronger than any puny human. As expected, white lost most of the games, but there were some draws and I think white have actually managed to win one. Idk where the scores are now though.
This hints at the delight of the meta-game of chess. It’s something the DeepMinds of the world can’t grok, and part of the game’s appeal. To cloud the mind of an opponent can not only provide an advantage, sometimes it in itself is a win.
Many chess engines has contempt factor. If the engine thinks the opponent is better it will try to simplify the position; and if it thinks that the opponent is worse it will try to complicate the position.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] thread1. f3...
2. Kf2
It's not quite as bad as it looks, and at my level (~2000 lichess blitz/bullet) can generally serve its purpose to get people out of book and into novel middle games. (I also play blitz Chess 960 which is even better in this regard.)
In fact, the king isn't suicidally exposed, it's about as well defended as the king is during the Steinitz Gambit, which also involves an early king move under the main line.
I like playing the Steinitz too, but opponents rarely go along with it. Same with King's Gambit in general, people generally just play to defang it and trade trade trade down to something drawish. Yuck. I hate drawish chess.
I don't like the Bongcloud so much because it's even more cramped and I find it hard to play out of. But it could also be that it transposes into King's Indian / Queen's Indian lines I don't like so much, rather than Steinitz Gambit wildness.
http://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1401479151063.pdf
It is written in a completely deadpan style but is full of inside chess jokes, e.g.:
"Although both Botvinnik and Tal experimented with the opening, it was not until the Bobby Fischer took it up in the early 1960s that the opening found an exponent. Unfortunately, the Bongcloud in Fischer’s hands was so devastating that the games were short and unmemorable, and none are recorded in My 60 Memorable Games."
Bwahahaha ;)
> Nigel Short played against a strong player on Internet Chess Club who used the opening; Short suspected his opponent of being Bobby Fischer.
> English Grandmaster Nigel Short dubbed the opening an "insult to chess".
So...I wonder how the game against Fischer (?) went.
I like to believe that there's a mysterious and excellent human opponent on the other end. I find it difficult to believe an engine could have such a terrible opening, then go on to defeat a top blitz player. This is just my speculation.
It's more the other way around. Short was a world championship challenger. There is no human in the world who could beat him with such an opening, except for the possibility of a mysterious Fischer with expanded powers gathered during his time away from the mortal chess world. An engine could also do it, of course, and that's a far more likely explanation. A human operating the engine picks the opening, then lets the engine take over after a few moves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_6Zl1jNWYQ
But this is Magnus Carlsen we're talking about.
I mis-remembered the Bongcloud as: 1. f3 2. e5 Kf2 (i.e. “fianchettoing” the king :D), but that is apparently called the Hammerschlag.
https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chess_Opening_Theory/1._f3/1...
Brilliant
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_6Zl1jNWYQ
[2] https://www.chess.com/leaderboard/live/bullet
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26502198
You are effectively putting the opponent in a clearly better position, but giving him the task of converting it before any pressure has been built up. That can throw people off.
I don't play crappy openings to win, though. I just want to play a wide variety of novel middle games, and if I have to sacrifice 100 rating points to get people out of book, that's a bargain. Because otherwise loss-aversion takes over and chess is all about playing for the draw.
One of the first things you learn as a beginner chess player is how to play against awful openings. It's not like good people have forgotten their opening principles.
If you measure exclusively against the metric of "how to max out your rating", then yeah, weird openings aren't very helpful. But if your metric is "how to dredge wild tactical games out of opponents, even if I lose more often", then weird openings are generally superior.
Of course the better way to neutralize opening prep and experience more wild games is just to play more Chess 960.
After the sixth move, by my count. And why would anyone play 2. Ke2 if they wanted to win?
> Why would anyone play 2. Ke2 if they wanted to win?
In order to have a fair (though whimsical) game from an unusual starting point; it would be interesting to see the game that develops from that position.
It won! Such fun.
Of course you can also do this if you just castle on the opposite side from your opponent. But the point is that you can also use this technique with the Bongcloud.
Also, arguably one of the most famous bong clouds of all time came from Magnus Carlsen to win a blitz tournament last year against Wesley So: https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/chess24-banter... . Carlsen turned a losing position into a stunning victory with a daring sacrifice.
I often play the bong cloud as a way to give a weaker opponent a handicap. It also works pretty well at psyching out a player who tries to stick to the book moves, but I've been consistently demolished when attempting the opening against anyone 1800+ on chess.com.
There is nothing impressive about beating Wesley So according to another chess meme that became popular last year:
> "w"esley "s"o is nobody for me, just a player who are crying every single time when loosing
https://en.chessbase.com/post/cheating-controversy-at-proche...
You can see the games related to the controversy here:
https://www.chess.com/member/tigranlpetrosyan
i.e. 1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 Ke7 3. Qxe5#
https://youtu.be/qATl41Ofjuo?t=1013 (Hikaru talks about the trolling)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gACRA8b8gTU (Base video where Magnus trolls the interviewers)