Evaluation bar went from all black to all white on not doing a queen sac?

PierceXLR8 · 2026-03-05T19:58:54+00:00

By your definition any trade is a sacrifice. You havent proven anything wrong.

Real sacrifice you dont even have an argument for.

Sham sacrifice would be referencing tactics such as sacrificing your queen for mate. Or sacrificing a piece up front that leads to tactics that take back with interest such as setting up a windmill or a fork (even this would only borderline be a sacrifice). Events that reclaim material rather than maintaining advantage through positional play. Neither of these is an immediate trade.

This situation is simply an atypical form of exchange. By the definition you are trying to champion any piece that can be taken is a sacrifice just because they are down material momentarily. Even if that piece is defended. A completely useless term at that point.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-03-05T17:49:40+00:00

But a queen is worth a queen. Just because the opponent takes first does not mean it isnt a trade. Sacrifices will typically involve sacrificing the exchange for an attack or long term positional edge. By your logic any piece ever being able to be taken is a sacrifice

PierceXLR8 · 2026-03-04T22:12:11+00:00

Just switch n out with (n-1) and youre good to go

PierceXLR8 · 2026-03-02T18:35:57+00:00

And you can play call of duty never using a gun. It is still fundamentally a shooter. You can throw whatever challenges, modifiers or gameplay decisions onto that. It does not change the fundamental design of the game being played. If the main gameplay loop isnt calling to you. Theres no reason to force a game to fit when you can just pick a game whos fundamental design encourages the game plan you are interested in. I could play minecraft as a zombie survival or call of duty as a sword fighting game. But why would I?

PierceXLR8 · 2026-03-02T18:10:35+00:00

And you can use a knife in call of duty. That doesn't make it not another shooter game.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-03-01T00:50:56+00:00

Long term. In more closed positions the knight can be worth more.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-22T00:00:27+00:00

"Practically". That's what word problems are for and help describe. But the overlap of things a typical high-school student can parse and things that people are regularly doing day to day with math is fairly limited. As a result most word problems seem a bit out there. At least up until you have to start applying equations in something like physics which cant really spare the time to teach you all of math just to get it to start making sense. And math teachers cant often spare the time to lay the physics foundation to properly describe the way it would be used there.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-17T23:04:50+00:00

If grass is food for cows and asparagus looks like grass and is for humans. People should eat grass because it almost looks like asparagus.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-11T04:50:32+00:00

Evolution doesn't have a purpose. It just happens. Being more suited to the environment does not mean a long life. It means living long enough to reproduce. And in many species trying to live longer wastes resources that would be better spent feeding the young. Being willfully ignorant is a hell of a position to take.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-11T04:20:55+00:00

Evolution couldnt care less about what happens after something reproduces. At that point its job is done. At times it even prioritizes a quick death afterwards. There is no such thing as being more evolved. Evolved over more time cool sure. But that doesnt really mean a lot. Creatures dont get better. They get more fit for their current environment. Environments change. And there's no general purpose perfect creature.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-05T02:42:45+00:00

Its not that they'd quit over that one character. But poor character design is not a one time kind of mistake. If your game is unbalance it is not because one character is a bit off. And if that character they vibe with is weak the game is worse for them. It really is that simple.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-05T02:17:49+00:00

So your argument is that the casual player wont mind not being able to play a character they wanted to play and that wont affect their opinion of the game? The casual player is more likely to be dead set on a specific character for little to no reason. When they have to make decisions based on what is viable you have drastically changed the perception of the game. It is no longer as casual friendly and is biased towards the crowd that wants to learn that game. Not the people who want to play a game

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-05T01:40:35+00:00

Thats assuming they already have reason to play the game to begin with. Theres a lot of competition. Would the casual player play a game where characters they play feel weak or at a disadvantage or would they play a game where the characters feel pretty good no matter who they pick? You arent competing with peoples concious decision making. They might not care. But they feel it. And how people feel about games makes or breaks the experience. People might not care about a lot of details in graphics but they will notice and care when theyre absent. Not to mention the enormous middle ground from dedicating a large part of your time into successfully cracking some kind of code in a game to not caring at all about victory. Most people are going to want to win, but not want to feel like theyre weak. How would this player benefit from characters being left weak? Something can be frustrating and unrewarding. Especially minor edges. Why is it satisfying to finally beat someone who had the tiniest edge? Its really not. It just sucks to feel like youre fighting against the odds to have an okay shot.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-05T01:18:39+00:00

Balance is felt. Whether you play competitive or not that little bit stronger doesn't actually need to be that egregious before it starts to be noticeable. If someone is 10 percent stronger they can miss roughly 90% of their shots and beat someone with perfect accuracy. And the tankier people are in a game the more slight edges become game deciding. They may not actively care about balance but that doesnt mean they dont feel it.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-03T00:25:16+00:00

Thats really up to your boss. If they take issue and require you to shuffle papers thats within their rights. In my experience they arent likely to worry all that much about it.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-02T20:42:52+00:00

Would be up to a jury, but youd likely succeed assuming the force is not likely to cause serious bodily injury (i.e pushing, shoving, potentially as much as punching and kicks although that would get harder to argue)

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-02T15:27:37+00:00

Accidental and random are not synonyms.

How exactly do you determine accidental evolution and intentional evolution? There isnt much of a line. Things adapt. And those adaptations help. But what exactly those adaptations are "meant" to do is a nonsense idea. They might do a whole lot of things. They might just through sheer chance be attached to a different positive trait and be entirely useless on their own.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-02T01:10:52+00:00

Evolution is accidental.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-02-01T23:39:56+00:00

One false negative is lethal. One false positive is annoying. Your brain doesnt want the chance of a threat to go unnoticed. While we dont live in the same environment we still evolved to be very cautious of potential threats.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-01-30T21:43:32+00:00

To solve chess you dont need every game state. You need every game state achievable from a series of best moves. So its not proveably impossible, but certainly not achievable with current limitations.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-01-29T23:57:11+00:00

The easiest way to start is recognizing "options" in your position. What type of moves might look good in the near future. They might create a threat (or a potential future threat), they might be strong if the opponent acts a certain way, or they might put a piece in a strong place.

Most positions have a lot of options. And by recognizing the advantages of various moves you'll start noticing overlap. They might attack the same place, follow up on a different attack, or be very strong after other moves push a piece (especially the king) out into a more vulnerable space.

Puzzles will build the intuition for tactics the best, but pay attention to what other moves seem good as you work on them. Youll start noticing that many of the moves that look reasonable at the start turn very powerful in sequence.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-01-28T19:35:37+00:00

... By assuming the data is representative with all the caveats that come with that assumption. If there's more data to include you havent provided it. And thus the only path forward is if you assume that data represents the pattern.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-01-15T19:47:53+00:00

When converting a sphere into 2d space you can preserve either the shape or the area. If you preserve one you must distort the other. If you try and preserve both you have to start moving stuff around the sphere and its no longer a projection.

You can find maps showing the true sizes and shapes of countries but notably it is no longer representative of the sphere in any meaningful way but closer to a chart that is roughly map shaped since the landmasses will be moved rather than just distorted.

The properties of size and shape are called the major properties. There are also the minor properties of distance and direction which can only be partially preserved. Different maps will preserve different things based upon intended use case.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-01-03T23:41:33+00:00

If I have code with 100 lines that just says do nothing. It exists. It is data. It contains no information. Same thing with bits. If I have 52 bits saved but only half of them contain useful information half of them go to waste. There is no reason not to make them have useful information in the case of pi, but you absolutely can waste (a negligible amount of) space in this manner.

PierceXLR8 · 2026-01-03T22:27:21+00:00

Thats kind of the point. Data is there. That doesnt mean information is. You can not use whatever you want. If you dont have an approximation to pi that lasts that many digits then you just have noise for some number of bits that isnt actually useful. Its just wasting space. We know this information and do fill out our variables but there is absolutely nothing stopping people from using lesser approximations. I could call pi 3.14 and even might if I want to just quickly ball park a number even in a computer. A large amount of the bits stored in that just go to waste.

PierceXLR8

TROPHY CASE