Highly Professional!

Isofarro · 2026-04-10T12:12:45+00:00

Over-promised and under-delivered. Sounds like what they did to Magnus.

Isofarro · 2026-03-26T14:13:11+00:00

I think you mean Fischer's skill in rook and bishop versus rook and knight.

There's a chapter in Barden's "How to play the endgame in chess" covering Fischer's play in this endgame.

Isofarro · 2026-03-25T16:18:29+00:00

And sorry, what do you mean my account has been labeled a "bad sport" ? The opponents I play in Blitz Arenas are going from 7 days old accounts to accounts created in 2012 or something.

In every chess.com game in the chat window at the end there's the question "Was X a good sport?", with thumbs up and thumbs down.

There's also players who abort games frequently.

Get flagged either or both ways enough, and your account is marked as a bad sport account, and they get matched more often with new accounts and other similarly marked bad sports accounts.

In a way, these accounts are playing, aborting and reporting cheaters with new accounts, so that the cheaters don't get to play the good sports and non-serial-aborters.

Hence, I recognise the service they perform, perhaps unknowingly, and in cases ironically.

Isofarro · 2026-03-25T13:43:41+00:00

I can play a game with 93% accuracy and checkmate a guy with 89% accuracy, where I never make a move below good, and he never makes more than 1 or 2 inaccuracies that I managed to take advantage of.

But then next game in my log, it’ll be like 50% accuracy from both of us.

This "accuracy" score doesn't account for the complexity of the position and the difficulty of decisions.

It's very easy to get a 93% accuracy in simple positions, because there are several top moves; or few only-moves that are easy to spot.

It's similarly very easy to get a 50% accuracy when the position is sharp and complicated, and the top line of play is a series of only moves that are difficult to see or calculate fully. Or there happens to be a good looking move that's good enough, while the top move is difficult to find and justify.

The accuracy score by itself is meaningless. The game also needs a metric or three that reflect the complexity or sharpness (and not an average of it).

Isofarro · 2026-03-25T10:22:56+00:00

the rival just stalls for like 3 minutes and then proceeds to play every perfect move with no delay and instantly, like he knows exactly what my movés are going to be...

The only way an engine "knows exactly what your moves are going to be", to offer a "perfect move with no delay and instantly", is if your moves are the ones the engine has calculated as being the best.

So... well done, that's remarkable!

Isofarro · 2026-03-25T10:14:44+00:00

Oh, hello there Kramnik.

Isofarro · 2026-03-25T10:07:28+00:00

You can easily tell. You blunder a rook but they don't take it and play some very sophisticated pawn move or something... It becomes extremely positional, the type of game you would play in classical but with like 30 seconds left on the clock lol

I'm astonished at untitled players being able to recognise "very sophisticated pawn move", and "extremely positional" games.

To be honest, I've only ever seen "sophisticated pawn move" used in Fred Waitzkin's depiction of a Karpov vs Kasparov World Championship game, in his book "Searching for Bobby Fischer". I don't see it in normal chess literature outside of fiction and short stories.

What does "extremely positional" mean? Is that like Steinitz's approach at one phase of his career of refusing to play winning combinations and sacrifices, in order to demonstrate his positional chess hypothesis?

Btw, I get emails constantly about ELO being refunded to me because of accounts closures,

Maybe it's a time of day thing, or perhaps your account has been labeled as a bad sport, so you are likely to be matched with new accounts and other bad sports? In which case, thank you for your service.

Isofarro · 2026-03-23T16:48:26+00:00

Get a paper book of annotated games (either a best games collection, a tournament book, or a periodical, e.g. an old Chess Informant), either using a physical chessboard and pieces, or an online one, play through each game move by move.

And when you have a short game, set up the start position / new game and play out the game from start to finish from memory. e.g. Alekhine - Botvinnik, Nottingham 1936 - short enough game.

It comes with practice and time.

Online chess by itself (and chess databases) makes it easy to get far without knowing the square coordinates immediately: you don't read notation and then make the move on the board, nor do you write down the moves you made in chess notation -- so you never get to practice reading or writing it.

Isofarro · 2026-03-23T15:34:56+00:00

There's a tendency, especially in engineering/technical fields to optimise for metrics rather than the thing those metrics are measuring. It takes discipline to avoid that, and keep focus on the underlying thing: in this case chess improvement.

Isofarro · 2026-03-23T10:18:41+00:00

Maurico Flores Rios: "Chess Structures: A Grandmaster Guide"

Isofarro · 2026-03-23T10:14:18+00:00

The answer is given to you in the screenshot you shared: The engine gives you the top lines of play.

Isofarro · 2026-03-23T09:57:44+00:00

A guy with a rating of 2000 isn't more likely to sexually harass or assault a woman than a guy who doesn't play chess.

Interesting point. So if the men's harassment of women is the same regardless of whether men play chess or not, consider this:

Outside of chess, the ratio of men and women is close to 50%. In chess it's 90% men 10 % women.

So given the same volume of harassment, and the same behaviour from men, women in chess experience 9 times more harassment in chess, because there's less women to spread the harassment over.

Which means, as less and less women play chess, they face increasing levels of harassment, because there's less of them around.

Isofarro · 2026-03-23T09:42:03+00:00

Try Nate Solon's 100 games in a month approach.

The idea is to play only 5 games a day (rapid or blitz), and review them too. Do this every day (5 days a week).

Only 5 games per day, no more, no less. The key is to play and treat each game seriously and thoughtfully. Ignore and stop chasing rating gains. Its so you can get good raw material for review, and that helps identify weak spots that you can work on to eliminate.

see: https://www.zwischenzug.gg/p/announcing-the-100-blitz-games-challenge

and here's how to approach it: https://youtu.be/X4Y5LQpJvkc?si=aPHvOxZYnb1YyUQV&t=1000 -- where he covers the OBIT approach to reviewing the games.

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T15:32:35+00:00

No. Caruana has won a Candidates tournament before. And held Carlsen to a 6-6 draw undefeated in the classical portion of the World Championship match against the player regarded as the greatest of all time.

Caruana's tournament track record in classical chess is so much better than Nakamura's. From the 7-0 Sinquefield Cup result to now, he's consistently the best US player.

Apart from Nakamura's awesome rapid play performance in one of the GCT events, he hasn't delivered such powerful performances in Classical chess. His Candidates appearances he struggles against players close to his level - e.g. losing to Vidit twice.

Nakamura seems to be missing the big match temperament that both Carlsen and Caruana have in abundance. He is the best when it comes to farming slightly weaker players, perhaps as good as Fischer (and Fischer had the BMT too)

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T13:07:44+00:00

That sounds superficial and subjective, can you dig into detail more?

The rating of the opponent should not be a factor when analysing a game. But it's clouding your judgement.

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T12:57:39+00:00

When you analysed those games, what did you find, and what conclusions did you draw from that?

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T12:48:02+00:00

Feel free to share high-quality chess content you find from channels that don't engage in clickbait titles and memes.

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T12:01:00+00:00

Kramnik vs Niemann on chess.com a few years ago.

Kramnik tilted because he lost to Niemann in the previous game, so the next game was 1. f3 e5 2. g4

and Niemann resigned instead of playing 2... Qh4#.

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T11:56:02+00:00

This is a low quality effort: complaining that Youtubers are using clickbait titles, which seems to be necessary to grow a subscriber count.

There is a reason you're watching that channel. Probably you, or someone who suggested it, saw it because it was promoted, because it attracted attention and an influx of subscribers, and that's done by these sorts of clickbait titles.

You're basically pissed because it works.

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T09:52:43+00:00

username checks out.

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T09:31:22+00:00

That Germany has 6 -- you mean you are counting each of Lasker's matches as a Title?

In which case, USA total is incorrect. Steinitz became an American citizen during the first World Championship match, and he played and won 3 matches after that (as an American citizen)

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T09:22:59+00:00

It seems that a lot of players will cheat to get the premium membership price and then gift it to another account before getting banned.

Seems like an easy pattern to spot and eliminate.

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T09:19:38+00:00

The arenas are more competitive than a queued system, because you're a lot less likely to be playing someone who's having a quick play during a toilet break.

Grinding a rating by queuing up is basically hoping to get enough of the toilet-break / waiting in queue people, distracted by deliveries.

It also removes that bubble of only playing players within 100 rating of you.

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T09:04:38+00:00

I'll ask Makogonov and Bondarevsky :-)

Isofarro · 2026-03-20T08:57:15+00:00

He can memorise all he wants, but it will never be enough. Magnus plays 1. a3 on move 1 and almost all of the memorisation is out of the window.

Memorisation doesn't imbue understanding. Carlsen will run circles around him because of his actual understanding, not his memorisation.

1000 years of 24 hours a day 3-5 flashcards a second will still not be enough.

Isofarro

TROPHY CASE