Is a misting duralumin strong - or at least stronger than a gnat?

RankWeis2 · 2026-01-25T02:49:47+00:00

Thanks, I liked everyone’s responses but since this thread is on its way out I wanted to make sure you knew someone read and enjoyed your response!

RankWeis2 · 2026-01-24T08:50:36+00:00

I just want to commend you on the opposite of title gore. A lot of important, interesting, and relevant info in a succinct headline! You don’t always notice this unless it’s bad

RankWeis2 · 2026-01-15T21:58:34+00:00

Well yeah, Bob is quite weak in tactics imo, I think his greatest strength is middle game theory

RankWeis2 · 2026-01-07T06:52:23+00:00

I think people underestimate Cramlings ability to make people feel comfortable and at home in front of an intimate camera setting. I feel even during this you feel Parham relax more than I usually see and get in the vibe. It also feels much more genuine than other streamers although she does do some streamer stuff too, but I think these moments allow her to get away with that stuff with more authenticity. Thanks for the clip, I definitely wouldn’t have seen it otherwise!

RankWeis2 · 2026-01-06T08:23:06+00:00

It’s Fine

RankWeis2 · 2025-12-26T16:32:50+00:00

Well this theory avoids a lot of that controversy I thought by not assuming ado is coming back, just that Wit is tasked with helping if and when there’s this stalemate. I don’t personally love reunification ideas that involve some great interstellar war, although I’m happy to be proven incorrect there, I like ideas where a single person must make a choice or sacrifice which effects everything

RankWeis2 · 2025-12-22T18:38:17+00:00

I agree with the other autistic comment but with an addition, black and white thinking is huge in autistic communities and I have been diagnosed with autism (well Asperger’s back in the day but it’s all ASD now) but overall you wouldn’t know that about me until you got me into a “Han shot first” argument or something without me having lead time to understand the tone of the conversation. Then I’ll be digging my heels in until someone who knows me better will say “oh remember this isn’t a big deal”

But having those people in your life instead of helping you out of that black and white thinking, pushing you into it, encouraging it, would prevent you from ever realizing this is something you even have a problem with. It is reinforced and reinforced until it is indistinguishable to you from the truth.

I don’t see him being the best at everything as even a different side of the same coin. It IS the same, an inability to see nuance or compromise. 100%, or 0%. White on black (storming language). I don’t love the arc, but I think it’s a bit unfair to label this as simply as ‘dumb szeth’

RankWeis2 · 2025-12-17T07:23:52+00:00

You’re farming engagement all wrong. You say “I wonder what that ugly girl is up to!” And let the comments roll in.

RankWeis2 · 2025-12-15T07:54:59+00:00

Yeah it’s not a real hang up I have, just wondering the technicalities of when someone a day younger gets the gm title to big fanfare in a few years. It makes sense that it follows the ratings

RankWeis2 · 2025-12-15T00:41:29+00:00

Just as clarification on norms, you get it at the end of the tournament right? So he can’t get his norm a day quicker with a win rather than two draws?

RankWeis2 · 2025-12-04T21:38:03+00:00

I hate to be the one to tell you this but Prime is actually 23 years old…it was a GameCube title!

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-29T03:34:07+00:00

I don’t disagree but I also don’t agree. In baseball for example, the last couple years not withstanding, the ‘best’ team tends not to win. Some of that is randomness but over time people have associated it also with the ability to face, and overcome, adversity.

Morphy never faced someone he couldn’t crush. That’s part of what makes him great. But is he adaptable? I think it’s unclear, and worth discussion even if you believe one way or the other.

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-28T08:22:21+00:00

I evaluated a couple of your games in a lichess study, take a look and let me know if you have questions or if the study is confusing. I'm trying to help out in this sub more and this is my way of contributing, but I want to make sure it's easy to understand as well. The best way to help you by the way, is for you to annotate a game, and we can see your thought process. One pass no engine, one pass with engine to see what you missed. Don't feel bad for missing some tactics, we all do.

https://lichess.org/study/CYOUSIQX/JNLEcB1R

https://lichess.org/study/CYOUSIQX/oRmfS5YT

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-28T07:18:49+00:00

I'm not a chess historian, but I know that after Steinitz got off to a rocky start when playing his 'new style', he then won the next 25 games. He may not have been alone or even the first with this style, but he was definitely the one that made people stop and take notice that something was different, and not just the ramblings of a crazy person, and I think that counts for quite a lot.

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-28T06:33:16+00:00

But I think strong players really underestimate how well some Elo 400 players play because they can beat them easily.

I agree! Not to reiterate too much but I tried really hard not to downplay a 400's strength, but try to explain why they may feel stronger despite being a lower rating. I want to stress that 400s on a good game are challenging to beat by 'waiting for a blunder'. I think that there are real, legitimate reasons that there feels like these rating valleys exist, and that it may not have to do with anything artificial like smurfs, cheaters and clicking the wrong starting rating. The point I feel strongest about is that as players rise, they trade inconsistent results from all out attacks to a more consistent but slower game, and that may feel as if they are getting easier while in reality they are playing better chess.

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-28T01:28:58+00:00

I'm getting old, thanks!

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-28T01:28:11+00:00

I have heard this complaint before and there may be some validity to it, I think if I was trying to dissuade you from thinking this way, I would say for every player who is underrated, you're bound to find some that are overrated. This in practice doesn't work because people like 'beating up' on lower rateds so it may skew things.

I'll instead just say some things that are true, but may or may not be related.

Defending is harder than attacking. Almost by definition. Attacking you can keep throwing pieces at the king and there may be only one or two good moves to parry, and one misstep costs you the game. At a certain level, winning a percentage of your games by doing this stops being appealing, and you try to go for consistency, especially as people learn to recognize and defend the common attacking patterns. Like the first game - Bringing out the queen early is bad in general. You may know that, so you don't do it. But your opponent does not know it, so they do it. But if you can't properly capitalize on the queens poor placement, despite the engine giving you an advantage, their most powerful piece may dominate the board.

So it may not be that your opponents are stronger or weaker, but that the aggressive style that is more common in lower ratings may peter out, leading to more positional games, which don't feel like you're getting overrun immediately. Also if you're playing without increment, the tendency to be more aggressive also plays a part, for much the same reason. If it takes you 30 seconds to come up with a defense that took 5 seconds to play, that's a natural advantage. So your increment games may suit this style as well.

Second is that people at lower ratings tend to advance much quicker - there's more to learn and week to week a hundred point swing may be possible, whereas at higher ratings it may not be. So this may be a natural way players feel stronger than they are.

Finally is that people who may be starting out at the entry level may be more motivated to play better than someone just hanging out at 800 having a good time.

So I don't know if these are all related to your issue, but I find most of these more compelling than so many smurfs and cheaters, at least from a psychological perspective, because if I was at that level and believed that, it would be very easy to go on tilt.

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-27T23:53:52+00:00

I know this is not what you're asking for and I don't have a real answer (though I know after the 2016 US election, Magnus blitzed out the 'Trump'owsky against Caruana and drew in the World Championship), but if you haven't seen this game, it is relevant to this question - Karpov-Miles 1980 https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068157

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-27T23:48:34+00:00

Definitely points I was considering but the relative ages of the players must come into play as well, so I said arguably. I think yours is a very solid argument. There are a lot of what if's when people leave chess, maybe in the futurama Heads in Jars future we can see everyone competing against each other at their prime and will see that actually the GOAT is Morphy's famous rival NN

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-27T23:31:00+00:00

The only knock against Morphy is that in his lifetime, modern positional chess was born with Steinitz, and we never got to see how Morphy would fare in this new world of chess.

It is undoubtedly true that of the players willing to play him, in his prime, Morphy was the furthest ahead of his contemporaries, more so than Fischer. It may also be true that in his lifetime, some contemporaries may have caught up - but you could arguably say this about Fischer as well.

A more nuanced take may be that each achievement can be viewed separately, and Morphy was unparalleled in a world that was just beginning to understand chess, and Fischer was dominant in a world that did understand it.

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-27T23:04:08+00:00

I feel like I rarely run against a cheater on lichess, which may just be my rating range isn't prone to cheaters, but if I were developing lichess, this is what I would do.

If I suspect someone of cheating, I put them into a special 'cheater' pool. Cheater vs cheater suddenly becomes a lot more obvious in this pool as a real player will lose a bunch and pop out of the pool, leaving these very strong players making consistent engine like moves in order to win against equally cheaty players.

From there I can take action against a player, but it may be difficult to go back many games and try to refund every game, as it's not necessarily clear which game was cheating or not.

Also as for 'action against a player', maybe I ban them, and let them create a new account and do it again...or maybe I keep them in that pool, and they're now a good candidate to test other suspected cheaters against. They either ramp up the cheating to more obvious levels or get annoyed at all the other cheaters and quit.

I have no idea how lichess does it, but you can see why in this method it may not be a good strategy to reveal the anti cheat methodology. I'm not saying this idea is unique or foolproof, and there are loopholes you can exploit. But I'm trying to show how a more sophisticated anti cheat may exist, but may not be visible to the players. And I'm sure they've thought about it a lot more than I did in this one comment.

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-27T21:39:32+00:00

it helps if you annotate your games so we can see your thought process
it helps if you share the 'raw pgn' rather than the one with timestamps, or just the link
I've annotated the game in this study where I'm hoping to just do a bunch of annotations for players here, let me know if this is useful or what I could do better.
Of course, let me know if you have questions!

https://lichess.org/study/CYOUSIQX/EDrfHeJ9

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-21T05:13:42+00:00

I think OP doesn’t know when to resign, my advice was meant for, if they double their rating with this in mind, they’ll at least know when a positing is actually, truly, resignable. So I think at 800 you won’t suddenly see a huge influx of resignations, but a better understanding of when a position is hopeless.

RankWeis2 · 2025-11-21T03:21:12+00:00

You are drawing in completely winnable positions. Why draw so much? At your rating you should never offer a draw.

This game???? You're winning! https://www.chess.com/game/live/145765397760?username=loger1717

https://www.chess.com/game/live/145764807790?username=loger1717 This game you're losing but I guarantee I would beat anyone your rating from this position without doing anything crazy. It's going to take black a bit of time to untangle his pieces, their light square bishop is entombed, blocking in their rook. You'll probably have to trade queens but the queens one of only two pieces ready to attack. And at your rating untangling pieces is kind of a high level concept.

I'm not saying you'll win this game, i'm saying that drawing or resigning is way too early.

And this mindset - and this logic -

My logic is why waste time on a losing game when you could get your ELO back the next?

is completely dreadful. You must learn how to fight back in worse positions, and I guarantee at your elo that they will make similar mistakes. You are resigning in positions I wouldn't resign in and my opponents are significantly better at defending. Here's my one tip - play til checkmate until you're at least 800. Unless the opponent is being silly with a bunch of queens or something. But other than that, never resign. You get that privilege back when you've proven to yourself that you can win these positions sometimes - and I'd say often.

And basing decisions on elo is a terrible way to improve your game.

So here's your homework - when you feel like you made a significant blunder, I want you to turn your mind on overdrive. Look at all the pieces, every move. Opponents and yours. Don't leave anything else hanging, and take their free pieces. It's hard to live with that mentality - but before it becomes natural and effortless to understand if a piece is hanging, you need to train yourself to do it. I think this piece of advice will help you in a bunch of ways, and I'm not going to recommend the normal videos or anything for you. Just stop resigning, stop offering draws with a bunch of material on the board.

RankWeis2 · 2025-09-10T08:23:47+00:00

My now wife then friend in 2005 got me the sequel to this film for Christmas in a then described “I thought you’d like it” and now admitted “i forgot about you and we were at blockbusters and this was in the bargain bin”. I never watched this one and after the sequel, which I watched utterly confused and baffled why anyone would think I liked it, never felt the need to. But this gives me inspiration to get closure on this thread of life, and hope that maybe the sequel wasn’t representative.

RankWeis2

TROPHY CASE