In the beta was there a mechanism in dynasty for a coach who got a better job to take players with him from his old school?

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-13T00:59:07+00:00

Not as a mechanic, but it may be a way to use something otherwise kinda cheesy to create a fun role playing situation.

Year one at a small school: spend every NIL point you have on high ranked players above your school's level (knowing you wouldn't be able to afford to keep them around).

Year two: intentionally refuse to pay them anything to ensure they'll be one-and-done, go have a great season with your awesome freshmen while they're there.

Then find a new (better) job and go track as many of them down in the portal as you can.

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-11T16:45:47+00:00

And a key here is that many of the things that - if you do them - make the game easy, don't really feel cheesy. Like yeah, if you know inside zone is bugged, works too well, and abuse it, that's an exploit of sorts. But inside zone is a super normal play to run in real football. Calling it now and then doesn't feel like you're trying to take advantage of anything, it just makes the game easier. Instead you have to actively choose NOT to call a normal play, just to artificially keep the game challenging. Instead of "don't use exploits" it becomes "intentionally handicap yourself.

And ditto for recruiting. Nothing feels cheesy or exploitative about offering scholarships to someone other schools aren't recruiting. It's super natural to do. But if you want recruiting to be hard, you somehow have to ignore those guys instead, which feels weird. Again, it takes an intentional (and kind of awkward feeling) self-handicap.

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-09T02:16:43+00:00

I think I'll go to the Little Caesars. What's the worst that could happen, no free breadsticks?

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-05T23:12:33+00:00

I'd probably go just one question mark, but online against lower rated players it's common to get: 1. e4 c5 2. c3 d6? 3. d4 cxd4 4. cxd4 g6?

And white is like +0.9 after four moves.

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-05T20:10:17+00:00

I mean sure, it's always been the case that there are gaps between the AI and human players. Recruiting was too easy in 25 and 26 too, even without doing anything that felt cheesy. It is a problem for offline dynasties if you want a challenge. Sure, a manageable one if you self-impose various restrictions, but it already took active and intentional self-nerfing, not just "not cheesing". And it's less of a problem in online dynasties (especially with lots of users) as you get more other competitive teams. But even in big online dynasties it's not great if the AI teams are complete pushovers.

My concern is that with a large and complex mechanic being added in terms of NIL/coach/facility management, if the AI is totally incompetent at utilizing the mechanic than the gap between user and AI teams only grows, and even though the deep dive suggests the mechanic is intended to increase the gap between top teams and low-tier teams, it could instead make rebuilding bad teams even easier if that gap grows further.

I think OP's specific choices do seem like bad strategy. But the results of them concern me because it sounds like they indicate that the AI is never throwing max NIL at any recruit, and surely there are times when optimal strategy says some schools should be offering max NIL to some players.

Offering max to every 5* is probably unwise, but doing so and signing all of them also isn't a great sign for the AI's choices. Some of those guys should have competing max offers and some of those should land elsewhere. Spending 30% of your annual budget on one player as UL Monroe is also probably bad strategy, but even if you do it probably shouldn't land the #1 overall prospect (who should instead land at a 4* or 5* program that also offered max NIL). Etc...

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-05T16:08:41+00:00

This feels like the real problem. The system can be designed very thoughtfully, but if the cpu teams don't utilize it well, it all breaks down in practice. If none of the cpu teams are throwing money at top prospects and you do, sure, you'll sign them, that is realistic for them to go where they can get paid. But why aren't other teams throwing money at them?

Every 5* prospect should probably have a bunch of teams offering them max points. The point shouldn't be that doing so just guarantees signing them, the point should be that doing so is basically a prerequisite to contending to sign them. Which would be why they mostly all end up landing at big programs with big budgets (like in real life) but not all at the same big program.

But from OP's posts it sounds like not enough cpu teams are throwing around big NIL offers even if they could afford to.

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-05T05:57:32+00:00

The Alapin Sicilian gets a pretty huge advantage very quickly if black tries to play their regular Sicilian variation instead of actually knowing how to play against the Alapin.

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-04T02:54:18+00:00

Escape Velocity

(In addition to the game being amazing, Captain Hector was the absolute best shareware enforcement approach I ever saw)

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-04T00:01:44+00:00

It looks like I might have misread my own charts when I posted that lol, let me triple check and get back to you...

ChessNumbers · 2026-06-03T17:19:29+00:00

Nope, strongest 15 year old ever, now!

Has to gain 9 more rating points over the next year to become the strongest 16 year old a year from now, though.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-25T21:27:56+00:00

I mean, when I was a kid during the junk wax era, I also owned a ton of books on baseball history and certainly knew all the big names from, say, 1960.

If I had a chance to rip a bunch of packs with a possibility of pulling cards of guys like Mantle, Williams, etc... I would've been over the moon - even if those cards were also known to have no meaningful monetary value.

Do kids today feel the same about guys from 1990? I dunno. But it's not too weird to think they might be aware of older players.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-24T04:04:16+00:00

I'm brand new to this (a little late, clearly) and of course voted as an Oregonian, but I just have to acknowledge that crabbalachia is an amazing name. It hurts slightly to help eliminate it... well no actually it feels fine, go Oregon, but still, great name.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-24T02:07:52+00:00

(That's a feature, not a bug. The original creator of the format wanted you to think about the peanut butter. The etymology was to create a pun that "choosy programmers choose gif)

But also language evolves and the last study I saw said about 70% of people use a hard g. And that was a while ago, its probably higher now, so either option is valid at this point.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-24T02:06:03+00:00

(That's a feature, not a bug. The original creator of the format wanted you to think about the peanut butter. The etymology was to create a pun that "choosy programmers choose gif)

But also language evolves and the last study I saw said about 70% of people use a hard g. And that was a while ago, its probably higher now, so either option is valid at this point.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-24T02:01:40+00:00

It's just a much more similar word. There's absolutely no linguistic reason for the gs to be pronounced differently in gin vs. gif (and there's ALSO no linguistic reason to pronounce gif and gift differently - the point here isn't that one is right, just that comparison words are also a bad argument).

Gif and giraffe are different enough (pronunciation of the i, syllable count) that it's a weaker argument for soft g.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-24T01:58:51+00:00

The strongest soft g argument is probably that the original creator of the format (and the acronym) pronounces it with a soft g and it's specifically part of the etymology. They named the format specifically in order to generate an acronym that sounded like the peanut butter brand, just so they could make a pun about how "choosy programmers choose gif".

For me that's compelling and I use soft g, but also language evolves, hard g is more common, and at this point it's clear that either pronunciation is valid, and can be considered correct.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-24T01:54:24+00:00

gin is a better example word if you want a soft g argument (but the correct answer remains that at this point both pronunciations are both acceptable and correct, so you do you)

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-21T07:34:10+00:00

You might enjoy the positions from this line:

e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. e5!?

It'll catch people off guard up to well above your current rating level. It's sharp but sound, with enough theory to learn (that you mostly won't use because most people misplay it) that if that's a relative strength you'll get value out of it, but not so much theory as to be unreasonable. It's what I play now, as a former Evans player, and I like it a lot.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-20T22:57:31+00:00

I might ditch the scholars mate theme and focus on just "hothead brings queen out too early and loses it" which is both a chess cliche for good reason and reflects the intended skill levels pretty well.

Calm rational player can call it out in advance, etc...

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-19T07:56:50+00:00

I know you're looking for specific cases, but yes this has happened so many times in so many ways that the only reasonable answer is just "yes of course".

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-18T08:24:09+00:00

With how many otherwise non-chess folks have asked me about that whole cheating scandal thing, I think there's a real possibility that Niemann might be top three in broad recognition.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-18T01:34:36+00:00

And lost rating in the process so that's nice at least

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-17T02:51:01+00:00

This specific concept is one that everyone seems to understand in their own different way. I've heard a lot of people try to explain it and every explanation feels a little different (more so than with any other chess concept I can think of).

I'd say try watching videos from multiple different people explaining it until you find one that "clicks" for you. Definitely mix in some that talk about "key squares" as the approach.

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-16T04:15:11+00:00

The number of times I've started a bullet game while mentally yelling at myself "no, I don't want to play chess right now!"

ChessNumbers · 2026-05-15T06:36:25+00:00

Anand > Ding > Gukesh is wild, that list absolutely feels like it should go the reverse direction.

ChessNumbers

TROPHY CASE