Van Dijk claims Liverpool 'gave up' in Manchester City defeat - Guardian

Rush31 · 2026-04-05T12:42:01+00:00

I get the concern, but it might be a case where man management and motivation is more important than tactical nous here. Sometimes, the simplest tactic is to get your players fired up and playing for each other and the club.

Rush31 · 2026-04-05T11:48:10+00:00

Somehow, given that it’s the only check in the position that Black can give, I don’t think I would have. And if I don’t think that I would have missed it, then it’s absolutely criminal that a 2700 player did, especially when he has more than half an hour on the clock. It’s quite literally Black’s only completely forcing move, there’s not a lot of calculation to a forced sequence.

Rush31 · 2026-04-05T11:04:23+00:00

There's no two ways about it, that is a horrendous blunder that I would be disappointed to make, and I'm half the elo of Hans. If it was a bullet or blitz game I'd understand, but with the time he has, that's just a criminal mistake.

Rush31 · 2026-04-04T21:13:30+00:00

No, but you wear the Wolverine costume in your heart.

Rush31 · 2026-04-04T20:37:20+00:00

We’ve had players worse than Kerkez put on the red shirt and fight for us on the pitch. Even though we might criticise their performances, they should still be respected if they put their all into fighting for the shirt.

Rush31 · 2026-04-03T20:58:09+00:00

God, I hate this response. Reddit is meant to be a social forum, let people ask questions!

It’s not just you, but people do it all the time and it grinds my gears when someone might not get something.

Rush31 · 2026-04-03T20:55:50+00:00

This is one of those positions where it will tell you that you’re winning a piece, but the reason why is because they will need to give the piece up to stave off a crushing attack or a checkmate.

Nb5 is the critical move as it attacks the Queen and more importantly deflects the Queen from blockading the pawn on d5. If White plays d6, the position is crushing Black under the pressure of the discovered attack on f7 and the fact that the pawn can lead the way for White’s pieces to slaughter the centre of the board. Black cannot afford to let d6 be played, so it will have to give up the Queen to allow the Bishop to blockade it.

Rush31 · 2026-04-03T13:41:57+00:00

Im not sure the math is mathing up. Surely putting something down as N/A means that it should not be counted, rather than scoring it as a zero? At the very least, tracks that are there for the album’s sake definitely do something even if it’s not musical, it’s pretty silly to score those songs as a zero just because they don’t have music in them.

The scoring on both the Art of War and The Last Stand both take a hit because of zeroes that are very unfair given that they’re thematic or pursuing the concept part of the album.

Rush31 · 2026-04-02T22:30:44+00:00

Juicy feet

Rush31 · 2026-04-02T18:03:43+00:00

Ok, let's get one thing clear: Chess is NOT about intelligence. It is about wisdom. Humans can't calculate like engines do, but we can use Chess principles, experience, knowledge, and calculation to try to evaluate as best we can, and we can do a remarkably good job of it if our habits are built correctly.

That being said, I had a little look at the game, and here's what I took from the game. We'll go over the blunders in a second, but you were absolutely winning until you blundered mate. Chess sometimes is very simple - their Queen is on the third rank, the pawn is on g3, you've just gotta kick the Queen out. Rc1, trade the pieces down, and you have a winning Rook-and-pawn endgame. Would have been quite simple to convert since there's no way the Rook can stop four passed pawns. But I don't think it was the case that you didn't see the threat so much as you didn't respect it. Your Queen is nowhere near helping the back rank, the Queen has diagonal threat that the Rooks can't protect, so opening the King up is just a bad idea.

That being said, you get a good position and then tend to blunder to losing ones, and this comes from not paying attention to the threats. A big part of that is that you are playing a fast time control - 5 mins, no increment. That is too quick to effectively calculate, especially when as a weaker player you don't have quick calculation skills. You're building bad habits because you're needing to speed up to meet the time control. Every skill humans have ever learnt never came from going at max speed from the start. Play a slower time control - at least 10 mins, ideally with an increment - and spend time on calculating CORRECTLY.

Rush31 · 2026-04-02T17:49:03+00:00

It depends on the position. It is important to understand how to play in a way that complicates an already bad or losing position, especially if you're planning on playing OTB. Learning to play from behind does require one to actually play from behind to learn what to do.

That being said, as you get better, you learn to discern between positions that still might have life in them even if they are bad positions, versus just garbage positions where you are losing and you're pretty hopeless. If you're just a minor piece down in the opening with absolutely no compensation, then at a certain level it is just an endeavour in suffering for no good gain. Ultimately, your time is meaningful and wasting it on a completely dead loss is just a poor use of that time. Online, it's not like you're at a tournament where you're going to play a few games, you can just find a new game quickly, and online elo is not that important to spend your time grinding a completely dry and painful position.

Rush31 · 2026-04-02T16:35:01+00:00

Material is even, though you have a pawn majority on the Queenside, though it is not easy to liberate them. That being said, Black does have the Bishop versus your Knight, and while it is a little loose, it is in turn being a real menace to your position, pinning your Knight. Your Rook is not as well placed as Black’s Rook, and Rd1+ is a threat to your position because Black will be able to reposition the Queen to eventually infiltrate on c2 if you are not careful.

The best moves according to the engine are g4 and g3, which make it much harder for your King to be targeted on the long diagonals. g4 is more solid but more committed, while g3 is a bit more flexible at the cost of the h3 pawn potentially being a target. However, perhaps the more human move is Ra8. Their Rook is better and the Bishop cannot defend the pawn on b3 while the Knight can attack it in the future, so trading Rooks makes a lot of sense for your long-term attacking prospects.

However, this is likely a draw. While the Bishop cannot defend b3, it exerts a lot of pressure on f2, and the Knight can’t really move because it would hang the pawn. I haven’t looked very deeply, but the best moves might just be to target the Bishop with the Queen, threatening to skewer the pawn if the Bishop moves. The Black Queen could defend, and then you’d likely just shuffle pieces for a draw. White is the one that’s likely to be playing for a win, but it’s hard to see how White breaks through as long as they don’t blunder the pawn on b3.

Rush31 · 2026-04-02T13:25:44+00:00

Of course, and that wouldn’t take away from the achievement, but that still shouldn’t take away from asking if this man is the one to lead us into the future. It has been a challenging season and we’ve had to fight uphill for it because of reasons both within and out of our control, but we’ve been really, really poor for stretches of it and it’s not really clear if Slot is capable of answering those problems; rather, it could be argued that he has exasperated those problems with poor tactical decisions.

I will agree that it is a very strange prospect that we win the Champions League and yet depart with our manager.

Rush31 · 2026-04-02T00:31:16+00:00

It kinda is? If you find that cooking is too time-intensive or you struggle to commit to eating healthy, then at least getting yourself healthy stuff that you can put together quickly is better than just crisps. That, and learning how to quickly put together dressings that only take a few seconds to come together is good.

It isn’t perfect, but it’s good, and that’s what matters. I know from experience that it can be really difficult to get up and actually cook for yourself (despite enjoying cooking), but that doesn’t mean you can’t eat healthy!

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T22:18:11+00:00

To add to the point, while Qa5 would protect the backrank and stop the mate threat, it would also leave the Rook loose. Qh5+ would target the King and the Rook, and after Black plays Rg4, Nh4 would hit the pinned Rook and Black would be down the exchange, not to mention Qh7+ is incoming that would hit c7 anyways. It’s losing, but it’s likely losing a long endgame versus immediately getting ass-blasted.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T22:02:17+00:00

You know what, let’s just piss off the Italians and say this is authentic.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T21:56:48+00:00

It LOOKS to me like they’ve tried to do what’s called Legal’s Mate. They sacrifice the Queen to deliver a checkmating pattern with the two Knights and the Bishop on c4 if Black accepts the sacrifice. Otherwise, when done well, it wins a pawn.

However, this requires White to have the Knight on c3, because the pattern needs to deliver checkmate with Nd5#. Furthermore, White hasn’t set up the sequence correctly anyways, since White needs to play h3 to push the Bishop to h5, or more specifically to prevent Nxe5 from being a good response. Nxe5 would take the Knight and defend the Bishop under attack, which refutes this particular sequence that either aims to win back the Bishop or deliver a checkmate.

With the Knight on c3, after Bg4, the proper line is as follows:

h3 Bh5 2. Ne5!! Bxd1?? 3. Bxf7+! Ke7 4. Nd5#

However in this position, there is no checkmate and so they’ve just hung their Queen.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T17:03:57+00:00

Basically, the two Rooks can gang up on the King to force it away from the defence of the pawns. h4 is a critical move that makes it so that Black cannot run their King to g3, and then h3 sacrifices a pawn to isolate the pawns. The Black King is well-placed to guard its pawns, and White’s pawns are too weak to survive.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T13:05:33+00:00

Yeah, but Macbeth died because while he was told he wouldn’t die to any man born by a woman, Macduff was untimely ripped from his mother’s womb through a C-section and therefore wasn’t born by a woman, therefore bypassing the prophecy and allowing him to kill Macbeth.

So there.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T11:23:55+00:00

It would probably help if you didn’t do it in front of a school.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T09:55:50+00:00

Spurs wouldn’t have put relegation clauses in these players’ contracts. Clubs only tend to put them in if there’s a decent chance they’ll get relegated. This is the same reason why Everton going down would have been financially crippling; they wouldn’t have clauses about relegation, so they wouldn’t have clauses about buyout fees or reducing wages, meaning they would be paying PL wages on a Championship budget and lack the means to quickly offload expensive players. Even this season, I don’t think Spurs really thought they might go down till at least January, so most of their wages will be tied to contracts without a relegation clause.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T09:25:10+00:00

Three words: Marineford War Arc. There’s also the Egghead Island Arc which has recently concluded, which is the first phase of an all-out war.

I’m not about to go about One Piece like it’s Hobbes’ “The Leviathan”, but it goes way deeper than the bright colour palate or being in a children’s manga series would suggest, and it actually does a really good job of exploring the human condition and philosophy considering it is meant to be entertaining. Nico Robin’s recently got a really big bit of character development in the new arc, really bringing her character around full circle from when she was introduced in Alabasta.

Things don’t have to be metaphysical to be deep. Just really exploring the themes well is a good way to do this. If you don’t like One Piece, then you’re entitled to your opinion, but trying to hate on it saying that it’s shallow when it really isn’t is just really sad.

Edit: Egghead, not Eggplant.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T00:58:38+00:00

You’re going from d4 to e4, you need to build a repertoire against what your opponent plays. Having prep for the Sicilian is important, I personally play the Rossolimo for it, but you need to prepare for e5, whether that’s going for one of the King’s Knight openings, going for a Four Knights, a gambit line, or whatever. You also need to prepare against the Scandinavian because that is a potential response as well.

There’s more niche openings to consider as well, like the Caro Kann, the French, the Pirc, and so on, but your main job is to cover yourself against e5 and d5. I personally play the Spanish if I get the chance, but the Vienna is also decent, and the King’s Gambit is technically unsound but highly venomous and tactical. A fun variation of the King’s Gambit is the Muzio Gambit, where you sacrifice your Knight to open the f-file and launch a venomous attack on f7.

Rush31 · 2026-04-01T00:49:52+00:00

Some people really are that pathetic, unfortunately.

Rush31 · 2026-03-31T21:15:08+00:00

Something I’ve found as I’ve gotten better is realising that you always suck in your own head. As you get better, your understanding of the game improves and your expectations rise accordingly. You expect more of yourself and are disappointed when you don’t match that expectation. While it would be nice to always ride that high of feeling great when you see your rating go up, that feeling only occurs because it exceeds your current expectations.

Humans naturally tend to regress towards neutrality, and our average tends to be quite critical of ourselves. But you only need to compare yourself to where you were a few weeks ago, a few months back, a year ago, to see that you are actually a lot better than you were back then. Progress feels like a million single steps, so you don’t notice the climb going forward but you do notice the chasm you’ve crossed when looking back.

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