Bold.
I tried this out of desperation (having booked up on it the previous night) in a total mismatch against FM Sowray once. Everything went swimmingly until he took me out of book on move 12 or something and after 3 or 4 more super accurate moves on his part my position fell apart lol. It was horrible.
Iāve heard itās not theoretically sound, so thatās not surprising. At 1400 level it usually ends up with quick development for black and white playing in a completely unfamiliar position as a QGD player.
I vaguely remember a weird QR on a7 that I didnāt like and dropped it in favour of the Kingās Indian, which Iāve loved ever since.
Yeah agree on both counts. I still like agadmator but his recaps drag a bit sometimes as he lays out really obvious justifications for moves. āMaxime plays g3, preparing to fianchetto the light squared bishopā yeah man I know why heās playing g3, move along. The good thing about Levyās fast pace is that it suits both people who just want to be dazzled by stunning moves and people who can keep up with whatās going on without every move needing to be explained.
I donāt really get why Hikaru is popular, heās repetitive and not that interesting. He weaves a bit of an illusion in that he plays and explains what heās doing and youāre like āoh yeah makes sense chess is EZā but if you stop and think critically, heās glossing over a fucking ton of plausible alternatives and not explaining why theyāre worse or donāt work, meaning youāre not really learning anything. The only stuff Iāve enjoyed from Hikaru is his analysis of super-GM games, for example Kasparovās immortal, where he provides insights into how super-GMs think that can only be provided by a member of the club.
I play the Budapest as my main line against 1. d4 2. c4. Itās fine but I wouldnāt say I love it or anything. Itās not theoretically unsound, as in itās not a serious disadvantage for Black or anything, but at top levels itās trivial for White to obtain an edge and thereās just not a lot to hope for for Black. I play it because I canāt stand playing in symmetrical pawn structures. I play the Scandinavian against e4 for the same reason.
Nothing quite as pleasing for black in a Najdorf when white has even less of an idea about itā¦
Now the queenside stuff is rare, good work
I just found out that I am the top climber in the Dutch national rating in 2021 
In potentially related news, nobody plays OTB anymore and my club was one of only a handful who were late in reporting the games from the 2nd half of 2020.
Been meaning to ask for a while, but in tribute to my wife just coming out of her office concerned because I said, āoh shit,ā really loud because Iād let someone trap 4 of my stones ā¦ does anyone else try and play Go?
(Seems the best thread, apologies for non Chess content)
Been on lichess for a few weeks now based on a suggestion here. What sort of ratings do you folks have?
Embarrassing, lol.
I mostly play on chess.com and I just broke 1500 rapid a few days ago. My lichess is also around 1500 rapid, but it was there when I was at 1200 chess.com so I suspect if I went back to lichess for a while it would be like 1700 maybe?
I was stuck at around 1200 from August until December, and have been both studying more and been on a bit of a heater since then. Been getting a lot better, but still suck.
I play it as white, thoughā¦after Qa5 Kb1 black often misses the trick Nd5 (which is even more effective in a non-Dragon when he often loses a bishop on e7)
Couple of inaccuracies but I wanted to get his Bg7 off, and exchanging minor pieces for R+P to isolate his b pawn before g5 seemed like an ok way to achieve that and get the mass of passed pawns even if the chess.com engine docked me a couple of percentage points lol.
Thatās a really nice mate.
Maybe we should have an Unstuck tournament.
Edit: Canāt believe I didnāt write donkament.
This sounds like fun, though some sort of handicap system should be used to even the playing field. Maybe something like 1 extra (or fewer) minute per 100 rating points difference between players.
Iād be up for 5 min games and you spot worse rated players a minute for every 100 point (rounded) rating difference. Iāll make a signup thread at some point and see how much interest there is.
If anyone has an opinion on how exactly the time thing should work (maybe restrict time for the better player for big diffs) and whether it should be round robin or swiss or what, weigh in. Latter depends how many ppl we get I guess.
Interested in what other players think, but my 2p:
Personally Iām ok with 5 mins but anything less than say 3+2 is far too often a loss on time. Old brain = slow = meh.
Handicapping is good but not sure 100 points is that significant - variance in my rating easily spans that over a week, though that could just be me or chess.comās rating system, idk.
So maybe aim for a floor at ~3+2 and a much higher ceiling (15? 20?) and work out a rating-based formula from that to penalise the higher rated and reward the lower, because at the extremes a, say, 1900 (I think there may be one or two here) with 5 mins is going to crush an 1100 with any amount of time imo and it wonāt be a lot of fun for the latter.
Round robin would be most fun for all I think, if doable.
We would want this to be fun so people want to do it again some time.
Yeah I think with the time rules the most we can hope to achieve is create a situation where people with gaps of 200, maaaaaybe 300 rating points can be competitive. Iām around 1700, maybe 1750 on chess com and Iām just going to destroy an 1100 basically regardless of time rules and thereās nothing reasonable to be done about that. I donāt think itās that hard to calculate rating performance, right? We could have a handicap winner for whoever outperforms their rating the most.
I agree 3 2 is a decent base, maybe 5 0, but 10 0 would be OK if there are a lot of people who find blitz too fast. I also agree round robin is the most fun.