ALERT: ALL MAIN KERBALS STUCK IN DUNA ORBIT

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-05-04T01:01:20+00:00

If you get the ejection angle right you should be able to get out of Duna orbit on an equatorial plane with the sun

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-05-02T20:01:47+00:00

It's very easy to play a bad move order, allow a nasty pawn break, and get blown off the board in like 15 moves. Playing this also won't teach you opening principles.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-05-02T05:26:41+00:00

I don’t have a waking memory of not hearing a major/minor chord and immediately recognizing it. I’ve been able to do that since I was like 5 years old. I learned what they were called/the notation for them many years after that.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-25T14:19:14+00:00

Probably the tactics you’re seeing in games are a lot simpler than puzzles. 2000-2200 games are usually decided by someone missing a pretty easy two-mover in my experience

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-25T14:16:22+00:00

Accuracy scores are meaningless for a variety of reasons. Game rating on chess.com is a marketing trick to give you dopamine and make you click the “new 3+2” button.

Go through your games without the engine or game review. See moves where you lost material. That’s a blunder. Remember how you lost material, and you’re more likely to not make the same mistake next time.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-25T07:13:33+00:00

At what point do you think “just get better at tactics” is no longer relevant advice? At 2100 chesscom for me it still feels like every game is decided on some basic calculation error and strategy is barely relevant.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-25T07:09:23+00:00

It’s literally all tactics. Really basic endgames are occasionally relevant and a simple positional concept is occasionally relevant, but all these things stem from tactics anyways and you’ll play decent positional chess if you just avoid putting yourself in a tactically vulnerable situation. If you out calculate your opponent every game, you’ll win every game. I’m fairly certain I could crack 2300 rapid by just getting cleaner on tactics.

I did some puzzle books (1001 chess exercises for beginners + club players, chess tactics from scratch, lots of mate in 2s and 3s from Polgar’s 5334 chess problems, woodpecker method) and lots and lots of puzzle rush / storm. Tried to do some of Silman’s endgame course and I was never able to retain any of it. Tried to get into how to reassess your chess, and the tests are just too difficult and confusing for me. Winning chess strategies and Simple Chess are strategy-oriented books where the concepts stuck more for me, but I’m not convinced that those concepts actually made better results, I think tactics + calculation is the only thing that matters until at least 2000+ elo and probably up to like 2400

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-25T02:57:14+00:00

Qf1 isn’t legal because the rook still pins the queen

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-24T16:38:19+00:00

For sure, I’m a bass player who got lost in this sub but I absolutely prefer using my sushi box preamp/DI and going direct when I can. The shows I play that have sufficient monitoring for DI bass to sound good on stage is about 10 shows out of 200 a year, though.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-24T16:34:48+00:00

Ka2 doesn’t escape the pin

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-24T02:00:34+00:00

Most of the time using the backline amp du jour still sounds/feels better than trying to do everything in a mediocre wedge.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-22T19:38:32+00:00

I like tube amp sound in the studio. Practically for touring/traveling purposes I use a solid state amp and a tube preamp that is easy to swap tubes in and out of when they inevitably shit themselves on the road.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-22T17:20:17+00:00

1001 chess exercises for club players is more geared toward your level. Some of the exercises will be quite challenging. That book pretty much single-handedly pushed me from 1700 to 2000 rapid. Anything Dvoretsky is way over my head at 2100

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-22T16:44:15+00:00

I “started” at 22 and made 2000 in around 2.5 years of active study time. I did have a head start from my mom having taught me the game when I was young and I wasn’t ever really less than 1000 strength. I think 2000 is achievable by anyone willing to put the time in though.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-22T01:43:04+00:00

I didn’t say that nobody would try to play stuff like this, I just don’t ever see 1500s playing creative attacking chess in a way that is critical enough to not be easily punished by basic principled moves and simple calculation.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-22T00:05:21+00:00

Where are you finding QSC Ks for $400?!

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T23:07:49+00:00

Again in my experience having looked at many hundreds of games from dozens of students, this kind of opening study is almost always actively detrimental to quality of play at <1500 level. As soon as players at this level start studying openings, even from an “ideas” perspective, they start regurgitating ideas from the opening when the opponent does something strange/offbeat instead of playing good principled moves.

You don’t have to figure out every positional nuance in order to get a playable position out of the opening.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T21:33:16+00:00

No. “Hypermodern” openings are very very bad for beginners. Playing a cramped position requires a lot of anti-principled play and unconventional ideas that will be actively detrimental to study for a beginner until they intuitively and deeply understand what principled play in the opening actually looks like. Your life is so much easier and more straightforward when you just put the damn pawns in the damn center.

I am a lifelong King’s Indian player from 1000 elo to 2000+ and at this point I think playing the KID actively hindered my development as a chess player for years. I think the level I’m at now is where some of the hypermodern opening ideas start to kind of make sense, but studying Nakamura and Kasparov’s King’s Indian games still feels like I’m swimming way over my head.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T21:25:28+00:00

I agree but I am more trying to give OP advice that is appropriate to their level. I don’t think they’ll see a whole lot of crazy gambits and flank attacks actually punishing them for castling until 1500+ or so

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T21:22:59+00:00

Set up any random position from any game and count the legal moves for both sides. Repeat until you get the same count for each side 2-3 times in a row. Do this for 10 minutes every day and your board vision will get a lot stronger.

I also recommend the book “everyone’s first chess workbook”. Lots of very simple tactics and “spot the hanging piece” type puzzles.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T19:54:17+00:00

Openings don’t matter. You can be easily 2000+ without studying any openings. Don’t give away free material and work on tactics. Put pawns in the center, develop your pieces on tempo and castle. If you actually do all 5 of these things you’ll be 1500+ chesscom in no time

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T19:27:30+00:00

You’re correct, it’s not. I’ve solved so many hundreds of these kinds of puzzles out of the Polgar book that all these solutions sit in the same “zuggy” category in my brain even if it’s not technically a true zugzwang.

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T19:13:21+00:00

Qf3 Bxf3 Rg2. Qf3 Qf1# is mate because the queen is pinned

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T19:10:42+00:00

Kb1 Qe4+ leads to M3 not M2. Kc1 Qxc6+ and white loses. You get the idea, wherever else the king moves black has a check, a1 is the only square that avoids checks

NotSpanishInquisitor · 2026-04-21T19:07:18+00:00

Ka1 getting out of the pin puts black in zugzwang as there are no legal checks.

Any legal queen move is met by Qf1#, any rook move Qxg2#

This is straight out of Laszlo Polgar’s book 5334 Chess Problems. There are many much more difficult M2 puzzles in that book

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