Chess

Finegold comes off as a mostly harmless jerk who is entertaining at least in small doses. That may sound harsher than intended. I could probably be described similarly, at least part of the time. I haven’t seen a lot of his videos but I like them. The one on blunders is memorable because it’s so true that I only win because my opponent screws up before I do.

harmless jerk is about right. He’s cocky af with bits of humor. He’s the same way when he does grade school seminars also lmao. There are videos of those also.

Yeah that’s why I said mostly. Some kids might be sensitive to his jabs. It bothered me a little to see that. Maybe he knows his audience well enough, idk.

I don’t think he does tbh. Social skills might be lacking. He is a grandmaster though so maybe he knows something I don’t know. If I was a kid at that camp I’d expect that. I grew up in a basketball town with a Bobby Knight like coach so dealt with much worse from 5th grade on.

Ha, a lot of people probably have similar stories. We had a small chess club in Jr High with a “coach” who berated me for blundering in a game I should have won. I’m sure he thought it was nbd but it was to me. I went out and found a book on tactics by Chernov*. I learned enough to regularly wipe the floor with those chumps but I was turned off to the game for a long time.

*Chernev. I think I still have that book.

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Once I’m not embarrassed by the naivete of my experience I definitely will ask you people questions. Give me a few months

I’ll probably ask dumb questions before then tbh. I lurked so hard in STT and MTT forums until I was winning before ever commenting or even asking questions. I had a 30+ percent STT ROI at Party Poker before shit got tough. Lurked until I was decent before ever commenting. Probably bad for optimal learning but whatever.

When I was somewhat decent I tried a blindfolded game or two. I could last 10 or so moves before the game moved into the midgame, and yeah…

I can understand a mind that can run a blindfolded game, can even understand a mind that can do 2 blindfolded games at once.

20+ blindfolded games at once is so fucking crazy

I like to drink scotch and play 1+0 because it reminds me of the pace of 24 tabling Stars back in the day. I’m around 1500 just purely based on speed. I’m not sure what I’m doing can even be considered chess.

Find me on lichess!

1+0 is pure instinct. Taking even 5 seconds on a single move puts you in a massive disadvantage

Watching Nakamura play 1+0 is absurd, he is unreal at it.

UnstuckPatzer has joined lichess.org, but the life goal is to become a premium member at chess24.com and troll Jan Gustafsson during banter blitz

I quit 1+0 years ago, my sense of it was fianchetto at least one bishop, pre-move 20 moves, then go for the most frivolous sac possible

I can’t find the exact quote but Koltanowski said it was dangerous and bad for your health.

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People learning the game or wanting to move from beginner-ish to intermediate should check out Silman’s articles on chess.com.

They’ll give you an idea of the type of things you should be considering, but you’ll still need to play lots and lots of games to allow pattern recognition to kick in.

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The free computer analysis on chess.com is very useful sometimes but I really hate it when you find out you missed a mate because of time trouble…so I won’t say that but will instead congratulate you on a very nice finish there. :sweat_smile:

Comedy in chess has a ways to go.
https://twitter.com/GrandChessTour/status/1168938400612855808?s=19

He’s left/liberal and staunchly anti-trump though so he’s all good.

Having fun at 3-0 for the first time in years. My patzer style150-type attack is at least entertaining…

I strongly recommend cassette and prana to take a look at the 150 attack if they play e4 and dont’t want to memorise too many variations against the Sicilian(s). It’s fully playable against the Nadjorf and Schevningen variations and like in the example here you can often transpose into variants of it from unexpected openings because it’s more of a formation than a strict series of opening moves.

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Atm I generally hate playing against e4 d5 because you have to take; maybe there are some interesting lines I don’t play but hard to create any interesting tension in the standard lines. And the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit just gives up too much advantage.