Playing chess with a handicap

Hello everyone,

I have a friend who is rated around 800 Elo on chess.com. She loves to play chess with me and she wants to improve her skills and become a better player. We have played several games on chess.com (Usually, we can't play on a physical board because she lives thousands of kilometers away from my house).

The difference between her rating and my rating is enormous. I'm a strong player and she merely knows how to move the pieces.

It makes me wonder, if there is a handicap system on chess.com (or any other chess website) that allows the stronger player to surrender a certain piece? For example, I want to start the game a rook down, or even without the queen, so that my friend will have chance to win against me. Our games would be more interesting and more productive (in terms of improving her chess) if we could play with a handicap settings.

I have not yet found a handicap settings on chess.com, but maybe I missed something.

Thanks in advance!

Mr. Frankenstein

i’m afraid that this is not a function.

Try agreeing to not move a certain piece.

The best handicap you could give are : 1. Pawn move 1 square only 2. Mate her only with pawn checkmate 3. Queen exchange is end of game (you lost) 4. You can't promote to queen. Removing a piece seems not a function yet of online interface.

Can you believe that on the biggest chess site in the world they still don’t have the option of specifying a position to start from? Awful.

just go easy on her and give up your pieces as quickly as you can

i just found out but you can also go to lichess because you can easily do that there

press menu (top right) and press board  editor and just remove the pieces you want

Lichess

 

Did before, with many requests nothing happened. So easy, so useful, so lazy.

I'm not sure if it is still a function but, if you can manage it, you can play in blindfold mode. The pieces are hidden and you interact with the board the same way you would normally.

It's pretty fun as well.

you can start at a certain postion by clickling play friend and go to type and scroll down to analysis board

Or just start normally... And give her free pieces. See if she can actually see your (planned) blunders. That, to me, looks like a good tactic training.

That’s how I’ve been doing it recently, waiving up my queen to an intentional blunder the 2nd or 3rd move of the game, then playing to win from that point on.

“giving up my queen” (not waiving up) 🙃

Can she not just try to practice more and endeavour to play better?  If you keep making it easy, then she'll just remain at the same level. It's a nice thought to help someone the way you're doing, but maybe in the long run it's not a good idea. 

It's possible to set up starting position without queen, rook or knight after all. Just enter FEN.

 

I started this game sans queen with FEN:
rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNB1KBNR w - - 0 1
But after a few moves I realize neither one of us can castle either side while we should legally be able to.. What is the reason?

i see the reaon now... after the w it should read: w KQkq - 0 1

apparently KQkq means castling allowed both white and black on both K and Q sides

MrFrankenstein пишет: Hello everyone,I have a friend who is rated around 800 Elo on chess.com. She loves to play chess with me and she wants to improve her skills and become a better player. We have played several games on chess.com (Usually, we can't play on a physical board because she lives thousands of kilometers away from my house).The difference between her rating and my rating is enormous. I'm a strong player and she merely knows how to move the pieces.It makes me wonder, if there is a handicap system on chess.com (or any other chess website) that allows the stronger player to surrender a certain piece? For example, I want to start the game a rook down, or even without the queen, so that my friend will have chance to win against me. Our games would be more interesting and more productive (in terms of improving her chess) if we could play with a handicap settings.I have not yet found a handicap settings on chess.com, but maybe I missed something.Thanks in advance!Mr. dgbvjbc

whoever recommended lichess.org/editor --- well, I tried it and the FEN it generated would not work in setting up a custom game in chess.com --- apparently the code it used at the end was not readable by chess.com --- how I got it to finally work was to use a desktop PC and access through a browser, using chess-com analyzer, and manually replaced Q with 1 to create a game where I play white without a queen.