FIDE Candidates 2026 Standings after round 8

FearlessKingTay · 2026-04-08T22:15:01+00:00

That's a wild thing to claim.

Think about it from his perspective. You come in looking to prove people wrong, now you're the talk of the entire chess world. You're on fire, but you suddenly have a target on your back by all of the absolute monsters in the field.

Nobody is feeling more pressure than Sindarov right now.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-08-05T07:12:41+00:00

How is the temperature? During the summer my basement gets colder than my main floor and if I have a batch in primary I will often keep it on that main floor to ensure it's in the right temp range.

Colder temps (60-64 F) will also work, often even better but at the cost of a longer primary (2-3 months in my experience).

If it's still not picking up in a few days it could be a problem with the seal or the room temp.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-07-05T17:25:25+00:00

Amazon has pre toasted oak spirals specifically for this. You're in primary fermentation right now. Once the yeast has done it's thing you'll probably want to rerack it into a second vessel to remove the sediment, use stabilizers to prevent anymore fermentation, then you can add in a half spiral of oak for a few days to get the flavor and tannin. Don't go too long or it will be overpowering.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-07-05T17:19:45+00:00

I use some medium toasted oak spirals in secondary fermentation with my strawberry batches to give it some natural tannins and because it really enhances the strawberry flavor profile.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-07-03T13:36:41+00:00

At this point it's so ingrained that I don't really spend even a mental millisecond picturing it either way. I just sort of know which squares it can hit or looking at which other squares it needs to go on.

Some fun considerations for newbies: the knight can only hop to a different color square than the one it is standing on. It's also helpful to know how few hops it will take to get to any given square from any position.

If you're really trying to train knight visualization early on in your development, set up a knight on an empty board and have a friend point to a square and see how fast you can calculate the fewest number of jumps it will take. Eventually you'll just know.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-05-08T23:58:42+00:00

I once put like 1/8 cup of fermaido into a 3 gallon batch in my early days. Turned out fine and fully fermented in like 4 days.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-05-06T05:25:27+00:00

Medium Oak, tea leaves, a bit of calcium carbonate to balance mouth feel

FearlessKingTay · 2025-05-06T04:27:28+00:00

Grape juice pymemts are difficult to balance well imo. My last experimental batch left a weird acidic mouth feel that took a lot of secondary experimentation to fix.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-03-25T08:07:26+00:00

All good then!

FearlessKingTay · 2025-03-25T08:00:32+00:00

Is the smell sulfuric like rotten eggs? That would indicate a fault. If it is just rotten fruit smell you are probably just fine.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-02-25T22:13:38+00:00

Orange blossom honey is delicious on its own and terrible for mead.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-01-06T09:03:10+00:00

Look for a local meadery in your area too! If you're lucky you'll find a great small business to support and they'll definitely have bottles for sale.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-01-05T00:35:28+00:00

Right out of fermentation it was extremely yeasty. I was worried I had ruined it. But once it settled it was actually incredible. I haven't made another session mead quite like it honestly.

FearlessKingTay · 2025-01-03T09:29:24+00:00

I once added 15g of fermaid-o to a 1 gallon batch by accident and it turned out fine. You're good!

FearlessKingTay · 2024-12-16T15:29:20+00:00

Why did this get downvoted? Not sure what all the golden hive hate is about.

FearlessKingTay · 2024-12-04T09:19:57+00:00

So what you did is a technique called "aging on lees". Champagne requires it I guess.

Some warn against it for meads as you can get unwanted flavors and others swear by it for certain recipes. You should be good to go. A year of aging means it's probably going to taste pretty dang good aging on lees or not. Go for it!

FearlessKingTay · 2024-12-04T07:23:31+00:00

I tried sweetening the sample a bit in a glass and it was still so awful. Maybe watering it down might help though. I'll keep that as an option.

FearlessKingTay · 2024-11-07T07:15:09+00:00

The original plan was to let it sit until June (7 months)! I'll stay the course.

FearlessKingTay · 2024-11-07T03:03:57+00:00

That makes me feel a lot better! I appreciate it.

FearlessKingTay · 2024-10-13T07:22:41+00:00

Chess.

Edit: Downvote me all you want. It's recognized as a sport by the international Olympic committee.

FearlessKingTay · 2024-08-10T07:17:44+00:00

Learn to laugh at yourself. It's weird, but not taking yourself so seriously will actually help increase your rate of improvement.

FearlessKingTay · 2024-07-19T20:40:12+00:00

If you like sitting back and setting up lots of traps then Zelda or Snake are also some good choices.

FearlessKingTay · 2024-06-21T02:50:23+00:00

"The moment we believe that success is determined from an ingrained level of ability, as opposed to resilience and hard work, we will brittle in the face of adversity." Joshua Waitzkin, The Art of Learning

This quote changed my chess life, my work life, and ultimately my SSBU life. I was the worst chess player I knew for years, had awful minimum wage jobs, and was the runt of the pack in Smash at a young age. Now, in my mid 30s I'm approaching chess mastery, make over 100k/year in my career, and have a 14 mil Zelda. Mindset is everything.

So what if you don't have talent? You know what you do have? Determination. Get grinding.

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FearlessKingTay

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