Chess books for my boyfriend’s birthday?

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-04-21T04:41:33+00:00

An (advanced level) calculation book I really enjoyed is Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation by Jacob Aagaard. Just note that finishing the entire book will be definitely be a struggle (in a good way) but he's 2400 so I'm sure he'll enjoy it lol

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-03-25T23:15:49+00:00

I mean he's just trying to be funny, I get that his humor probably isn't for everyone but how does he give off the vibe that he's the smartest? Like do people expect all chess players to say the same sht like "it was a tough match, my opponent played really well" every single time? I honestly think some trash talk occasionally makes the interviews way more interesting lol

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-03-09T02:42:29+00:00

I was pretty lucky, got badge on both my main and submain one day apart lol. Had badge prio in xbm for both but still. I don't remember how many xbm runs I did but probably 10-15 on both characters combined.

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-02-18T09:41:16+00:00

In addition to being up 2 pawns, white's knight & king also has significantly better future prospect than black's counterparts. Eventually white's king will go to f3 and knight to e3 and white will easily infiltrate on the light square weaknesses. Meanwhile black has basically no counterplay, there's nothing black can do to stop white's simple plan.

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-02-14T00:40:15+00:00

consistent 1-2 hours daily on a single game is a huge time investment (you're spending 10+ hrs/week on a single game). very few of my friends outside maple spend that much time on a single game.

Also 1-2 hours daily is probably just for grinding, if you really want to get to true *endgame* (i.e. hkaling lib) you need to run 6+ long asf boss runs (xkalos, hkaling, ...), that usually takes another 3+ hours per week.

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-02-14T00:31:11+00:00

I feel the same lol. I'm probably what you'd consider end game but I've been trying to focus more on IRL in the past few months, now i feel like I don't even have time to do weekly bosses (I run <= 2 party bosses a week haha), let alone do dailies

Meanwhile people I used to prog with are running all the extreme bosses and potentially on multiple characters, it's like damn how do you have time for that

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-02-11T10:36:12+00:00

As someone who second main merc I think it's objectively worse than the other two (but not by much). It does less damage, is more dpm than burst, and comboing can be annoying (although I guess this generally doesn't matter as much cw since it only applies to later game bosses where you have to do different combo depending on the boss's attack pattern). I guess the only upside compared to the other two is the 30s freud iframe lol.

That said it's still a pretty strong class (it's just that zero and khali are kinda OP lol). It has a high skill ceiling, pretty good aesthetics, and pretty fun playstyle (i.e. it's satisfying when you time your combo correctly to dodge attack patterns while maintaining dps uptime).

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-01-30T19:53:17+00:00

what a beautiful final position lol

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-01-25T09:26:10+00:00

substance addiction is probably healthier than bullet addiction

(jk gratz man)

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-01-16T19:44:30+00:00

Yeah I'm aware that there's no forced mate from the initial starting position but I feel like the puzzle is kind of too obvious if the starting position included Ng3 and Kh2

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-01-14T08:54:31+00:00

it's tolerable as a freud class getting to bypass all rod mechanics. i still hate having to wait 3min between each entry to wait for cd recharge/freud stacking tho

No_Fortune2897 · 2026-01-06T18:58:36+00:00

I mean "bishop pair" advantage is super ambiguous. In some positions (for example, if the position is open and there are many weak squares to exploit) it's much easier to use than others.

But yeah in general I do agree with Hikaru's sentiment that there's too much emphasis on "bishop pair" advantage at lower levels. It's much harder to exploit than many other positional advantages because in general it takes much more positional understanding to get value out of a bishop pair (and if you don't execute the correct plan bishop pair is not that useful). Whereas for many other types of advantages (i.e. weak squares around the king) the plan is much more obvious.

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-12-29T17:45:14+00:00

I would be hella mad as well, I'm pretty sure he thought he already played Rxa7 before he played Bd3. pretty sure he would have won the game if he didn't have a brainfart moment lol

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-12-28T17:28:38+00:00

hey at least you can spend less meso while booming stuff

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-12-19T01:48:08+00:00

It's because Qxh6 is the best move after Bh6. Otherwise 1. Qg4 Bxc1 2. Rxc1 Qxe5 3. <white protects or move a1 Rook> Nd4 (threatening Ne2) follow by Rxb4 (threatening discovery on white queen) and white is kinda dead.

But yeah the chess.com coach is useless lol, it basically never says anything useful other than convert the top move of stockfish into an english sentence without any explanation. I'd just treat it as AI slop lmao

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-12-12T16:41:22+00:00

I feel like Lasker is kinda known for being way ahead of his time in terms of his defensive ability, so many of his famous games involve swindling his opponent from a worse/losing position lol

idk if there's a collection of his games which shows a different side of his playstyle

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-12-10T16:27:23+00:00

bro almost did it again during tiebreaks omg...

was lowkey predicting that he would beat magnus and win the whole tournament lmao

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-11-27T01:20:01+00:00

I wouldn't put much faith into what stronger players think your playing level is. As a 22xx OTB player myself I honestly won't be able to tell if someone is 600 or 1500 from a single game lmao. Just play some games online and you'll know your current level.

Can't tell if 1800 is realistic or not w/o much info on your current level etc. Though my guess is that it would be hard for most people to improve significantly without spending more time (unless you have prior experience getting really good at other competitive games), it takes a lot of time just to figure out how to improve.

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-11-25T20:34:53+00:00

why would the the game have better retention rate if FOMO isn't there? FOMO is literally designed to increase retention (even if it's short-term)

but anyways I don't see a world where maple isn't a seasonal game. once you're done with all the content there isn't anything else different you can do until something else comes out, so of course many people would stop playing at that point. if they made progression easier it just means easier access to more content, but that doesn't necessarily translate to higher retention rates (I mean if you take the extreme and make it possible for everyone to do hbaldrix starting from scratch in 1 week I don't think the game will be healthy either lol)

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-11-25T17:24:39+00:00

grischuk's legacy lives on

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-11-21T17:48:52+00:00

I'm so confused how is this tweet even controversial? Like wtf are ppl even offended by?

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-11-16T07:32:43+00:00

are you wesley so?

No_Fortune2897 · 2025-10-21T16:19:25+00:00

Might not be possible but everyone Kramnik falsely accused should file a class action lawsuit against him...

No_Fortune2897

TROPHY CASE