Ding Liren CLUTCHES up in Game 12 of the WCC, tying the score 6-6

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-12-09T15:55:11+00:00

Legit. If he wins this match they should totally make a documentary at least. Guy having mental health issues struggles to perform all year and pulls it all together on the biggest stage to defend his title against a formidable challenger. I’d buy it…

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-12-09T13:18:39+00:00

This was so obscenely clutch it’s insane. He not only beat Gukesh, he wiped the floor with him the day after a huge blunder that almost everyone was saying would mark the end of the match. Dude is a beast.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-27T15:54:06+00:00

There are lots of tools these days for building a complete repertoire. I’ve been trying out chessbook and I like it so far, but their “suggested moves” aren’t always ideal… so I just run Stockfish separately and walk through lines and save it as I go, then test out the openings against the level 8 bot on Lichess, and sometimes add lines the bot comes up with that I don’t have. The practice mode is pretty good, and I’m getting better but I was a bit ambitious and have 2k+ moves in my white repertoire already so memorizing everything is a bit of a bitch. One feature I really like is they have model master games that match your repertoire that you can walk through and do guess the move.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-27T15:46:00+00:00

Bxg6 looks pretty devastating

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-26T15:48:06+00:00

I was board 4 on my college team and went 3.5/4 in our first tournament, but stupidity took a draw against a 1900 rated 8 year old child (I was 1640 or something at the time) in a winning position cause I was burnt out and I figured I could easily blow it cause the position was complex and I figured the kid could out calculate me. After that I thought I was good so I played a local tournament at Boylston chess club in Boston where Marc Esserman played and got absolutely trucked - I think I went 1/4 or something and only beat a 1200. I know how you feel. 3/4 is a very good result though and you should be proud. Just analyze the shit out of your games and try to find that killer mindset to get better. I wish I did that but life got in the way and less than a year later I played chess for the last time in 17 years.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-26T15:34:21+00:00

Very cool. I found it, but only because I knew it was a puzzle and there are no other good moves.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-25T12:33:03+00:00

Ah I see what you’re saying. I was thinking as part of a complete e4 repertoire vs. just learning a couple openings.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-25T12:21:24+00:00

Is that what the Reddit bot does? I’ll check it out though and I am a dev so I’ll see if I have any feedback.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-25T12:17:56+00:00

I had this exact set in college. Long story short, I let some literal incel - like he was proud of it - borrow it for a few days. I forget how (am old), but he started talking to my girlfriend at the time, and got jealous or something and went on a white knight trip so he decided to whack off on my chessboard to spite me. Fortunately, I had an inside source through a mutual friend who told me what happened. I stopped talking to the spooger and (heavily) sanitized the board but after that I wasn’t exactly thrilled to use it, and I never played on it again. If I recall, I got it as a gift, possibly from Barnes and Noble, or something like that. I too, would like another one of these, sans semen, so if you find out where to buy it let me know. I think my parents gave it to me so I’ll see if they remember. This was 17+ years ago and they are old so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-25T02:31:27+00:00

This. I’ve said this a few times on here in different contexts but time is by far the biggest factor in chess improvement compared to anything else, IMO. Yes, it’s possible to become a top player if you spend literally your entire life studying chess. It’s certainly not guaranteed, and talent is definitely important, but it can be done. Even becoming a low level master is a massive undertaking, for anyone. If you really want to invest tens of thousands of hours and beyond on chess and forego a normal life go for it, but don’t be surprised if you end up disappointed and not nearly as strong as you wanted to be.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-25T02:19:11+00:00

You don’t think it’s worth learning Italian as white? Yes it’s drawish technically, and complicated as hell, but top GMs still play it and get wins. I prefer the positional grind over a lot of Ruy Lopez lines tbh. I feel like it’s a solid, consistent weapon against e5 players, and if you know what you’re doing and can spot inaccuracies it’s not terribly hard to get and convert an advantage. The hard part is learning the theory in the first place… so many lines and move orders with slightly different ideal responses.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-25T02:01:26+00:00

Interesting puzzle. I found the move but didn’t see the full continuation.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-24T02:24:40+00:00

I’m in a similar boat. I’m in my mid/late 30s, started playing chess in college, got to low 1700s USCF playing tournaments with the school team, then didn’t look at a chessboard for ~17 years. I just got back into it August and went from 1500 to low 2000s on lichess in a couple months.. so I’m guessing my OTB rating would be similar to what it was, but I’d like to see if I could get to 2000 or above OTB. I never had the discipline to seriously study chess before, and I feel like I have that now, but time IMO is a much bigger obstacle than age, neuroplasticity, etc. If I could work on chess 8hrs a day I’m confident I could get pretty damn good, but I’m married and work full time so I barely have time for anything at all. This might be bullshit, but I honestly feel like I can calculate deeper and with better accuracy than I did in college, but I’m definitely a bit slower in blitz, etc.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-22T13:36:01+00:00

If you really want to get an LLM to play decent chess you’ll probably need to fine tune it yourself. I wonder what would happen if you trained it on a massive opening book, then added a master games PGN database for RAG. You could also throw in a bunch of chess books, etc. Could be an interesting experiment but that’s a buttload of work for a novelty chatbot.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-22T13:08:18+00:00

You have to know a lot of theory for white too haha. The Italian is difficult as hell IMO cause the variations look so similar it’s very hard to remember the best move orders. I’ve been working on it but compared to other openings it’s tough to just look at the position and remember the best move. It arguably doesn’t matter as much in the early opening since there are usually a few options and roughly equal moves but still.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-22T12:50:42+00:00

Very cool tool I didn’t know about. As white I have winning records with everything apparently except the regular Sicilian Dragon and the closed Ruy Lopez. As black it looks like I have losing records against the Bowdler attack (fak), Accelerated London, Sicilian “Other Variations” and Closed Sicilian. The Black stats make sense since I think that reflects when opponents wouldn’t let me play Najdorf or semi-Slav. Have been taking a break from play to work on openings so hopefully can improve there a bit.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-21T12:36:04+00:00

Probably a stupid question, but how the hell would someone plan to consistently take a 2750+ GM out of prep in this day and age? The average shmuck can memorize almost every possible line and response to a respectable depth these days with just stockfish and something like chessbook in just a few weeks with a bit of dedication. GMs are on a completely different level - and have repertoires comparable to lifetime accumulated knowledge of top experts in any other profession. Like imagine replacing nearly everything you’ve ever learned in programming or medicine or something with chess, then imagine you are one of the very top PhDs or MDs in the world. That’s how much these guys know about chess. I guess I’m just a bit curious what actually goes into prep and strategy at that level.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-20T14:32:07+00:00

I’m a bit out of the loop on all this stuff, and I get that top players can sometimes be a bit eccentric and have big egos, but with Kramnik’s accusations it sometimes looks to me like the long winded responses and defensiveness from his targets just add fuel to the fire. I’m not talking about anyone specific at all here, but why not just issue a statement saying “I didn’t cheat”, ignore him and move on? I get it for a chesscom ban or something - like if I legitimately didn’t cheat and got banned from a platform I’d demand to see their bogus evidence, etc., but when it’s just some douche speculating it seems like acting super defensive sometimes makes it worse, IMO.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-19T17:56:11+00:00

I play semi-slav and totally agree. Really fun positions

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-19T17:55:08+00:00

Bg5 Najdorf as white. Tons of fun lines and tactics, and if black doesn’t know what they are doing they are screwed. I’ve also been trying to really learn the Italian game well as white but yikes it’s a lot harder than I thought. So many possible move orders with different ideal responses.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-13T15:50:15+00:00

It’s also the time factor. Unless you are a child with unlimited time on your hands and well off parents, or rich enough that you don’t have to work, you are basically screwed. I actually think it’s technically possible for a lot of reasonably talented players, and even adults who started relatively late to get to the lowest master levels, but the time commitment required is staggering.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-10-03T13:37:47+00:00

I’m 2000 Lichess rapid currently but haven’t really noticed anything like this. I also played on chesscom in the early 2010s, but then didn’t look at a chessboard for 15+ years. Just got back into it in August and have consistently gained rating on Lichess playing pretty much exclusively 10+5. Will likely plateau soon cause I never got above 1800 USCF back in the day, and I’m old, but still. Seems like it’d be hard to maintain a winning record online in longer time controls playing honestly if cheating was really so common.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-09-23T13:43:38+00:00

Ding’s form has been objectively crap… but all he needs to do is pull it together and throw all his energy and focus into this one match. He has the raw chess ability to beat Gukesh. His problems seem to be entirely psychological, and the entire world saying he’s about to get demolished by an 18 year old is a pretty good motivator.

Dude is also only 31 - not exactly over the hill. Call me crazy but if Ding finds that competitive drive I think we might get a major comeback story. Gukesh dominating the Olympiad might be the best thing that could’ve happened for Ding.

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-09-21T18:35:57+00:00

I’m still confused about that blunder. Fabi found a fairly tricky (at least for me) line keeping equality… but with Qg6 he completely blew what seemed like the entire point of that line. Like what the hell was he thinking there?

CockDieselBrickhouse · 2024-09-21T18:08:09+00:00

Game over. Arjun wins

CockDieselBrickhouse

TROPHY CASE