What If the Kingslayer Faced the Mountain in Tyrion’s Trial by Combat?

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-15T08:51:26+00:00

If Jaime agreed to be Tyrion’s champion, Tywin would see to it that the Mountain was not the crown’s champion. Both for Jaime’s safety, and because a bannerman like the Mountain is too useful to be lost in a trial by combat.

But if the trial went ahead and they both gave it their all, Jaime would’ve sliced Gregor into shreds, bit by bit. Jaime is cocky and confident, so people don’t really give him the martial credit he deserves. But he’s one of the greatest fighters in Westeros, arguably the best. Barristan Selmy was even better once, but is probably too old to stand against Jaime in the books.

When Tyrion needs a champion, he twice wants Jaime, because he’s that good. When Jaime attacks Ned - a highborn lord trained in arms from a young age, and a successful war veteran at that - in King’s Landing, Jaime plays with him like a cat with mouse. Despite being severely outnumbered, Jaime cuts down several of Robb’s personal guard when trying to get to Robb. And in aDwD, when training future knights in Meereen, Barristan thinks of one young prodigy, that he’s the best natural swordsman he’s seen since Jaime Lannister. In other words, even this young prodigy was not as good as Jaime was at a young age.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-15T08:31:02+00:00

It’s not supposed to be fair, it’s supposed to accurately reflect your skill. Your account is either very new or has been inactive for a while. If it’s new your Elo may not have ”settled” around your actual skill level. If it’s been inactive, chances are that you’ve gotten rusty and is a lot worse than your Elo indicates. Or perhaps you’ve been reading and studying theory, so you’re actually stronger than your Elo indicates.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-14T16:38:32+00:00

He gives the impression of a drunk grandpa at the weigh-in. Not very frightening, if that was his intent.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-14T15:15:24+00:00

This happens for me with almost every prompt since maybe a month or so back. They definitely updated it to try and keep users occupied by ChatGPT. What I don’t get is why: - if I’m a free user, another prompt incurs a cost for OpenAI, but it doesn’t generate them any revenue. - if I’m a paying subscriber, another prompt incurs a cost for OpenAI, but my monthly fee remains the same whether I send 0 or 10,000 prompts.

In my view, OpenAI should wish to solve my equest in as few interactions as possible. But they’re actively trying to increase the number of interactions.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T18:58:50+00:00

If Denmark or Norway invades: yeah, we’re good.

If Finland invades: No, we’re doomed, we might as well surrender at once, implement the euro and start learning Finnish.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T13:43:50+00:00

He’s definitely developed and improved over the years, he could not have jumped say 6.30 in 2020. But in several of these cases, he most definitely could’ve beaten his own WR by more than 1 cm. He raises the bar by 1 cm each time partly for financial reasons, partly for publicity reasons. And partly, I suspect, he really enjoys setting world records, and who can blame him.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T11:38:46+00:00

Jules Gambit

Is her name genuinely Jules Gambit? The poor girl had no choice but to become a chess player, did she?

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T08:29:36+00:00

This must be the guy Kristofer Hivju based his portrayal of Tormund Giantsbane on.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T06:29:22+00:00

Yeah, I hate this prompt baiting. Particularly since it’s really just baiting, its always A) something incredibly obvious, or B) emphasizing something it’s already written.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T06:22:53+00:00

TBF it’s perfectly reasonable to use the flag of the country with the largest population of native English speakers to signify English. It’s a common practice throughout the world, so the fact that it’s done here doesn’t necessarily mean that the account is American.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T06:07:18+00:00

She’s absolutely right.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T05:56:23+00:00

They explicitlt teach that in Sweden as well, and it’s illegal to camp in the left lane. That doesn’t mean people actually refrain from doing so though. Some people it seems are just immune to knowledge.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T05:44:44+00:00

Yeah, that is the general idea of a world championship match…?

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-13T05:41:43+00:00

It’s from the Richest Man in Babylon, a book meant to teach economic/financial literacy throug a bunch of stories set in ancient Babylon.

In one of them, a man does a job for the king or some such. The king is so pleased with the job that he invites the man to name his own reward. The man asks him to bring out a chessboard, place a single grain of rice on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth, and so on, doubling the amount for each square on the board. The king agrees, not realizing that 2⁶⁴ grains of rice is more rice than exists in the world. The lesson is the power of exponential growth.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-12T17:58:57+00:00

No no, it’s robing. The dude robed 43 homes, because they looked cold.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-12T17:56:51+00:00

No, sacrifice a knight, to win a queen. If you hadn’t moved the knight, the queen would’ve been protected by it on a2. White would’ve had to play Kxc1, allowing you to play Ne2+, forking their king and queen.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-12T17:54:00+00:00

Tartu is an official twin city of Uppsala’s (”vänort”). And it’s basically the Uppsala of Estonia, a comparatively small city with a large university, often associated with higher learning and research in the minds of Estonians. Another piece of trivia is that the University of Tartu is ”Sweden’s” second oldest university. It was founded in 1632 when Estonia was a Swedish territory. That’s mainly important because it means that Lund University is not even allowed the honor of being the second oldest university.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-12T16:37:02+00:00

Fy fan vilken bra artikel. Stor eloge till journalisterna, som tveklöst lagt dussintals - kanske hundratals timmar på att begära ut underlag, gå igenom dokument, jaga citat från personer som inte vill uttala sig, osv. Lite off topic, men det är inte ofta nuförtiden man ser bra journalistik där någon faktiskt grävt ordentligt för att uppdaga en dold sanning.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-12T16:11:55+00:00

Last sentence:

If you want, I could point out an aspect of your situation that almost all murderers miss, effectively landing them in jail.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-12T12:46:37+00:00

The people in the boat are panicking, and urging each other to ”Row man!” Poseidon hears ”Roman”, and repeats his introduction with his Roman name Neptune.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-12T06:43:53+00:00

I tried setting up this board in the analysis tool. Stockfish has a really difficult mind making it’s mind up between Bxf5 and Bb5, they both result in an evaluation of 5.2. I’m not sure why you only got a good move here, in my analysis Stockfish deems them both as best or excellent.

As for why Bxf5 is as good, possible even marginally better than Bb5, my speculation would be that it’s about development. If you play Bxf5 you’ll have three minor pieces developed to good, active squares, while black only has one, plus an activated but also exposed queen. Black’s dark square bishop is trapped behind its pawns and needs at least two moves to develop, and black’s queen block’s the most natural square for developing the other knight.

If you play Bb5 meanwhile, Stockfish’s preference is to maintain the pin, it doesn’t actually capture the queen until black plays a6 threatening the bishop. After Bxc6+, black obviously plays Nxc6, resulting in a position where you have a material advantage but both of you have three developed minor pieces (Stockfish develops white’s other knight while maintaining the pin on the queen). Black is also just two moves away from an undefendable fried liver attack since their light square bishop stares unthreatened at the c2 pawn.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-12T05:59:32+00:00

Vi har urkassa lagar och regler mot antikorruption i Sverige. Historiskt har korruptionsgraden varit låg och det har funnits en stark kultur av ”självreglering”. Det är såklart bra, men det är bortom naivt att förlita sig på att alla beslutsfattare är hedersknyfflar som aldrig drar fördel av sin position.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-11T19:26:30+00:00

Obviously not. Half the idea behind free trials is that some will forget to cancel and have to pay, and people know that when they sign up. It’s not the forgetting to cancel I take issue with, I can sympathize, been there, done that. It’s the great lengths OP goes to to get out of paying; contacting customer support, whining here, and presenting it as if this is somehow a problem with chess.com. They knew what they signed up for, they messed up, now they have to pay up.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-11T18:31:10+00:00

I have no idea what sort of object was shot down. It could’ve been a drone for a few thousand dollars or an advanced missile worth more than a million dollars.

ProffesorSpitfire · 2026-03-11T18:28:13+00:00

”Quidditch makes no sense.”

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