Yeah, I don’t think that standard. Maybe for NO. Only places I’m familiar w/ are Boston and NY.
I think that’s how it works in Washington Square Park. The hustlers charge you to play them but if you win you don’t have to pay
I played a dude for $5 there a very long time ago. But it was just a straight bet. He won easily. Not as easily as ChrisV won that game he posted, but still no sweat.
Maybe I ran into one of the lower level ones.
I can imagine famous-ish dudes doing what you describe, but then it’s not really “hustling”.
Was listening to Fabi talk about preparing during the Olympiad and whether teammates are reluctant to share information about things like opening prep knowing they’ll be playing against each other in upcoming events. I found it interesting he said that chess openings evolve so quickly that what you discuss one or two months ago will scarcely be relevant any more.
The super GMs have teams of people going through every conceivable line with engines and they’re always finding new ideas deep in the openings. It is really interesting how a whole lot of what separates the top players is finding a position that you’ve seen before that the other guy hasn’t.
Yeah, you’re right, but that kind of sucks, imo.
I think Fischer definitely had the right idea with chess 960.
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With computers these days people would sort all 960 starting hands into categories and come up with strategies on how to play each
True, but I think it would the shift the emphasis from memory to over the board play at least a little bit.
Position from a bullet game I played just now. White is better already but only one move is crushing, what is it and what are the followups? (It’s not a forcing line, but it should be pretty clear that everything is winning).
Spoiler contains hints but not the answer:
I thought this was interesting because I gave it to a couple less-strong friends of mine and they couldn’t get the answer given unlimited time, whereas I was able to play it in bullet because it was the very first thing I considered doing.
en passant?
Black’s move was h6-h5.
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Gave that an honest shot, in a fast game I would have played g6, assuming opponent would play f6 or xg6, but Bf6 turns out to be a strong defense. I considered the correct answer for a sec, like wouldn’t it be cool to open that diag and threaten something, but my mind wandered more towards making some kind of Laskerian sac with Bxg7, but I didn’t find anything. In these sort of puzzles I often find it hard to think of the correct continuation when the opponent’s next move isn’t forced; like sure if d5 and Bxd5 the Q on d4 looks good, but if instead of Bxd5 the move is d6 then the attack is different. Anyway, nice move otb.
Yeah I added a note that it’s not a forcing line. In bullet I obviously didn’t calculate what happens if he doesn’t take, I was like “that has to be good for me, I’ll figure it out” but I think if you see as far as g6 in the takes line and see that Qh4-h5-h7 is basically unstoppable, you can go back and figure out that Black also has no good alternative to capturing on d5.
Not following, but sounds like big drama. What’s going on?
https://twitter.com/GrandChessTour/status/1566856732831367168?s=20&t=oTnkzR-Xli_x1BxBGlKsLw
It seems that the implication is that Magnus thinks Niemann cheated, but I don’t know why specifically he would think that (other than he lost, ldo).
Ok so the good gossip must still be in the works. Meanwhile MC stirring the pot with the yt he posted.
The word is that a number of top players are skeptical about Niemann’s recent meteoric rise. Niemann’s rating was stable at just under 2500 for the two years up to December 2020 and he only attained the GM title in January 2021 after crossing 2500, now a year and a half later he is rated over 2700 on live rating. That’s a hell of a jump, the gap between basic GM and super-GM is substantial. Niemann has also been banned for engine cheating by chess.com at least twice in the past year and was allowed to just create new accounts.
In the post match interview he claimed to have looked at the line played in the game that morning, which is odd as it’s a fairly obscure line, he claimed to have prepped 20 moves deep based on a Carlsen - So game in this line, but Carlsen has actually never played this line before. He then screwed up this “prep” multiple times when going through it, including hanging a bishop in one move.
In Hikaru’s stream today he was agreeing with Magnus that this looks suspicious, and maybe I’m imagining it but Nepo looked like he was skepticalfacing here also, watch from 1:09:
https://twitter.com/GrandChessTour/status/1566867536809021441
The Grand Chess Tour implemented additional protections against cheating today, including RFID scans and a 15-minute broadcast delay.
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Both Hikaru and Eric Hansen said that Niemann’s postgame analysis was incoherent and not a 2700-level analysis, and it was the first one that had been done with the engine off.
In the game today Niemann had a close to winning position against Firouzja after Firouzja blundered on move 19, but they drew.
I saw Magnus’ tweet before watching video of him saying that but still.
Fabi careful to say nothing just now.
but what could be the long con here? i mean i understand some speculation that he got a hold of Magnus prep for this match. But if his analysis is incoherent and people are skeptical of his rise how can he be cheating long term?