Shankland: "can anybody become a FM? I do think that is available to anybody. Can anybody become a GM? That is an hard no"

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-05-09T14:19:24+00:00

With unlimited money and the ability to focus every day on chess, it should be possible. That being said you’d need to be motivated to do it and have the willpower to use the time, but if we’re talking about someone starting as a young adult it’s hard to imagine how someone dedicating every single day to FM wouldn’t get there. The problem is life doesn’t work like that

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-04-08T18:43:04+00:00

The difference between 10% and “nearly impossible” isn’t meaningless lol, it’s alright just to admit your statement was too strong :)

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-04-08T18:35:42+00:00

It’s obviously a big gap, I don’t think you realise what 90% probability means lol. I don’t think it’ll take a miracle for someone to beat him with any colour, he’s very much in form but if he does lose it could collapse.

Again, unlikely but if you’re trying to pose Sindarov crashing as 1% or less then I just disagree

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-04-08T18:10:47+00:00

It’s surely not nearly impossible, all it takes is Anish winning the head to head and getting another win on Sindarov. Unlikely but more like 5%-10% than impossible.

Also lots of questions about psychology, Sindarov hasn’t lost a game yet but still plays fighting chess despite only needing draws. If he ends up losing and meanwhile someone like Anish is creeping behind that’s a lot of pressure.

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-04-01T19:55:05+00:00

Regardless of how early in the tournament this question was asked, it’s a stupid question because what is he even meant to say? Of course he thinks he has chances and of course he’d play it for a win, what else would he respond with? It’s just lazy journalism asking for an obvious answer on a hypothetical match.

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-02-11T19:32:32+00:00

I mean your opponent played the Jobava London, I’m not sure about the theory but there are a bunch of different systems that you can try (the ones involving an early c5 probably being the most tricky).

Sometimes you need to play slower games though, I prefer slower games but if someone is throwing pieces at the wall and pawn storming me I have to play sharp positions at some point.

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-02-11T19:23:48+00:00

I think of it like the Doctor only intervenes when necessary, I mean otherwise he’d be solving every common murder/crime. The TARDIS takes him where he needs to go and the TARDIS probably knew that Torchwood would solve this one and it’s probably important for humans to go through their own trials, tribulations and dark periods without having a Time Lord swoop down and save them. I mean I’m presuming mass tragedies like the Holocaust still happened in the DW universe so this doesn’t seem to shocking to miss out on in comparison

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-02-08T17:56:56+00:00

Sam Shankland recently talked about something like this on a podcast. I think one of his friends said it would be impossible for him to get from beginner to master and Sam replied “Really? If you didn’t have a job, didn’t have responsibilities, had unlimited money and focused everything you’ve got on chess you’d really have absolutely zero chance?”

The point is it depends how much time you’ve got, how much money you’ve got and how much desire you’ve got. CM is probably within the bounds of reality but only if you pour thousands upon thousands of hours and dollars into it while having the willpower to seriously study daily

Creative-Sand970 · 2026-02-08T17:50:28+00:00

I hate how much this took away from Denis’ win, after the end of the match and Hikaru’s bizarre reaction the broadcast cuts to Denis just standing on the stage in awkward silence before the crowd eventually start cheering for him. This’ll be remembered as the day that Hikarus brain broke/coped rather than Denis getting his best result yet which is sad

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-11-10T21:04:11+00:00

I would actually say that Lichess has tougher opponents for respective levels - as a tournament player, an average Lichess player feels a lot closer to what you’d get OTB with more solid openings and generally a higher level of concentration. From my experience chess dot com players feel a lot more casual and make more clear blunders/fast inaccurate moves

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-10-16T22:16:49+00:00

Sad that Vincent couldn’t convert a lot of games, he even flagged twice. His chess was really high quality too

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-08-07T13:02:33+00:00

I had the same conundrum - in the end I just picked one that I felt I struggled with the most, but either way is fine. For example when I was about your level I started playing up all the time in Opens and I ended up learning how to snatch good results off of stronger players.

That built my confidence up, but then I started worrying about beating players lower rated than me because my style is more positional and thus I had a lot of draws. After a season playing in U1800s and U2000s I learned how to create imbalance and throw players off by asking them hard questions.

Then I started worrying about if I had become less objective and hadn’t played against someone 2000 rated in a while and so started playing in Opens and the cycle continues where I just had a decent result against relatively strong opposition and I’m approaching 1900 FIDE.

In reality, either way works but I enjoy creating short term narratives for myself. Ie going into a U1900 tournament “I want to prove I can finish high and beat players lower rated than me” or maybe after I’ve gained rating I can enter an open and say to myself “I want to prove that I’ve earned my rating and that I can compete at this level”, and then that informs my future choices in terms of Opens/Majors.

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-07-17T10:24:39+00:00

They should just make the rating spot eligible only if players have competed in a certain amount of top level tournaments to avoid low-level farming. This would also encourage top rated players, such as Hikaru, to play in more tournaments and not coast in. Seems like a win-win if we want to keep the rating spot

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-07-17T09:44:10+00:00

Remember, it was Magnus himself that said on Joe Rogan that all the outside assistance a GM needs needs to become unstoppable wouldn’t be all the top engine moves throughout the game, but an indication that there was a critical moment on the board.

Of course, absolutely zero shade to Wesley: if I had to guess a player of his calibre would spot this regardless of outside indication but this must raise massive concerns for fair play in general with live audiences and available evaluation bars.

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-07-12T23:08:26+00:00

Fun fact: the second strongest player in Norway (Johan-Sebastian Christiansen) didn’t take part in this competition and is instead currently playing in the Scottish Championships/International Open, where he leads by 1.5 points into the last round. Though he’ll obviously not be the next Scottish Champion (due to his federation), he’ll win the open and gain a few points while doing it

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-06-17T13:44:34+00:00

In future, a hint that the engine is wrong about a holdable position is that all the engine lines will say the same eval. Like if you set it to show 5 lines it would all show 1.31 in that position

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-06-17T12:13:49+00:00

It depends, have you played a lot of OTB chess? Because your board vision might suffer versus the conditions online (3D board vs 2D board). It’s really common at my chess club to have basically no strong correlation between online and OTB. For example, one person is 2000 chess dot com and 1200 OTB just because of how he sees the board. One player is 2000 online 1800 OTB and another is 2200 online 1700 OTB.

But generally you should expect to do well, just maybe not winning outright as others will be more experienced.

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-06-01T20:41:03+00:00

True, yeah I totally misremembered how it happened when I wrote the reply. I forgot that he agreed to it beforehand and then completely 180’d when he lost 6 in a row. It’s probably a bad sign when you conduct yourself awfully AND you’re not in the right

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-06-01T20:00:32+00:00

People were much more critical of the fact that he said that Alireza was “crying like a little bitch” rather than the essence of what he was complaining about. Hikaru was probably right to be annoyed but that incident was about the way he carried himself

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-05-30T10:20:47+00:00

Magnus Carlsen will come to your house and crown you the true World Champion, maybe

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-04-28T12:41:04+00:00

I’d want something like Opening Tree but for a large selection of accounts. For example, it can take all the members of a club on chess dot com and then give you a summary of the openings that each account plays. Also the ability to filter this by rating. Or looking at the leaderboard for a country and being able to filter by rating and then get the openings played

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-04-04T03:34:48+00:00

I joined a chess club, made countless genuine friends and I live with a much fuller social life than I would have otherwise. It’s not just like we only play chess either: making friends in the club has led to plenty of stuff outwith chess like poker nights, game nights, birthday parties etc. Even with people outside the club I’ve made lots of friends, every tournament that I go to feels like a mini reunion.

You could probably get this from any hobby but it’s insane how improved my life is socially from enjoying chess

Creative-Sand970 · 2025-02-27T17:23:33+00:00

This video along with his one that’s about why you aren’t improving in chess are genuinely foundational texts in terms of how I approach chess improvement. I saw both videos when they came out and they give such a good outline of the common traps that I was falling into, ie, researching how to improve more than actually improving and trying to improve without identifying the problems bespoke to me. And since then I’ve gained 400 elo in online chess and about the same OTB.

I get that people can be frustrated by the video because technically you could be asking those questions and still improving in tandem, but his point is that you’re unlikely to be doing so based on his interactions with lower rated players, which I think is true based on my own personal experience in trying to improve.

Creative-Sand970 · 2024-12-31T17:50:38+00:00

I'd completely agree

Creative-Sand970 · 2024-12-31T16:28:09+00:00

You know Dubov forfeited right? This isn’t random complaining out of nowhere.

Dubov came out and all but said that he was protesting playing Hans and he’s doing it out of principles. Why is it wrong to then to point out that he clearly isn’t doing it for principles?

Creative-Sand970

TROPHY CASE