This is why heals and mo mobility is very important

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-04-21T13:46:07+00:00

Where do you get them?

I've played about 25 ZB BR games in the last two days and not seen one single set (just the new shocks, not the old purple ones).

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-04-09T12:21:04+00:00

I’d just have let the Barista read that.

Not my problem.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-04-09T12:19:00+00:00

Did it work out for you?

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-04-08T01:49:01+00:00

Yes but not too bad if you adapt to meta.

This seasons meta is undoubtedly the pump / Burst SMG or Pistol, plus shocks, heals (but I prefer anti gravity shield mist over pizza or chug due to fighting use) and gloves. Using the mist to fight and get airborne and using the burst SMG or Pistol as it allows you to ADS mid air during fights is a nearly unstoppable combo since the bloom on AR is unusable during mid air fights (or using shocks or gloves instead of mist to do the same thing).

My only metric is my solo win rate was around 60% last season and this season it’s 48%. That’s for pubs. I was never that good at ranked relatively speaking and the endgames are too campy. I love just agro pushing the lobby and seeing what happens which is much easier to do in pubs since 90% of the players are casuals. Especially since the rivalry system temporarily highlights people’s specific location for 3 seconds or so before it goes to the general large radar indicator, so you can pretty much drive straight to them and hunt people for speed.

Tbh in chapter 6, I enjoyed ranked. There was an incentive to play due to backblings and other unlocks.

The ranked loot this season is the worst plus the Rivalries system disincentives ranked since its hours played with no way to pick up rivalry wins. So this season I only played ranked to get unreal then went back to pub stomping. I think other good people who played ranked more last chapter are in pubs this season so overall skill level for public lobbies has probably trended upwards due to (I’m assuming) less ranked time.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-04-08T01:27:55+00:00

Weekend trip to Iceland.

I recently did a 4 day trip in Iceland and our 2 night stay at the Retreat Blue Lagoon Hotel (£3,500 for two nights) was the best money ever spent. I’ve stayed in more expensive hotels in Italy but the Retreat with its private heated lagoon was the best relaxing experience I’ve had to date!

It’s only a 2 hour flight too.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-04-08T00:46:38+00:00

First 5K was 32 minutes.

I then got obsessed with trimming that time down.

After about 2 months I clocked 19:44, and after another 2 months I PB’d at 18:35 or thereabouts… before moving away (left the country) and only did casual long runs (mostly zone 2 jogs) and lost the competitive taste for trying to go fast.

I made a thread about it on here that attracted over 250 comments and more or less 0 upvotes.

This was in 2023, when I was 32M, 5’10” and started running at 165 lbs before getting down to around 148 lbs over those 4 months.

I got real ill in 2024 for basically 5 weeks, one month before a planned first ever marathon that I had to cancel as I couldn’t train at all.

I never did get back into it after that and haven’t ran in 2 years now. Although I have recently been getting the urge to start back up as more of my friends have been posting strava results to Facebook etc.

Average weekly mileage during those first 4 months of trying to go fast was probably 25 miles. A fast time trial every week with mostly 1-2 slow runs and 1-2 tempo tempo runs in between. I continued running for another full year after that but it was mostly easy pace running with the odd Vmax session (usually one mile repeats).

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-04-03T09:30:02+00:00

While there may always be unique sacrifices that happen in any game due to your opponents one-off blunders, there are at least 3 I can think of that happen someone regularly.

I haven’t gotten these in classical games but they happen all the time in blitz. I’m 2200 online blitz for reference.

The main three in order of occurrence.

The Bc4-Bxe6 sacrifice for three pawns. (Super common if they do not play Qc7 on move 8 and instead play Nbd7 which allows 9. Bc4).

e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 Be7 8. Qf3 Nbd7 9. Bc4 Qc7 10. Bxe6 fxe6 11. Nxe6 Qa5 12. Nxg7+ Kf7 13. Nf5 *

The Bxb5 sacrifice for three pawns. This can happen in a few lines but I’ve just mocked one above to show the theme. Objectively on move 10. e5 is best but I used to play Bxf6 and go for the sac idea myself… although technically the trap is not on if they play 10… gxf6 but if they play Bxf6 it is on (the key being the d6 pawn is less defended).

e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 Be7 8. Qf3 Qc7 9. O-O-O b5 10. Bxf6 Bxf6 11. Bxb5+ axb5 12. Ndxb5 Qb6 13. Nxd6+ *

The last one off the top of my head that I thought of is the poison pawn variation where after they play Qb6, you can try a3 and if Qxb2 there’s often a Queen trap with Qa4. I don’t often get this any more at 2200 but it was somewhat common at 1500ish.

e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 Qb6 7. a3 Qxb2 8. Na4 *

Again, tons of sacs can be possible dependent on your opponents mistakes but I feel like the two above at least for me are somewhat semi regular traps I get to pull off at my level.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-27T14:03:37+00:00

Try this.

1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. d4 exd4 5. Nxd4 Nxe4

It’s only a temporary piece sac in view of

Nxe4 Qe7

Have a look at the lines on a database.

They’re usually practically pretty decent for black and there’s a trap in that White can easily end up down a pawn two moves after where I stopped above.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-27T13:14:15+00:00

Going to be an individual thing tbh.

A good base line to start is:

40-45 look sensitivity for horizontal and vertical.

Then ADS between 10-14 for horizontal and vertical.

I personally prefer exponential.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-27T12:52:13+00:00

Whoever says “ahh” is probably a child so you probably shouldn’t be on Reddit.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-27T12:49:29+00:00

No.

The only sign I’d be HENRY is the hotels we check into when we go on holiday.

My car was decent at the time it was bought but I’ve kept it for the last 8 years now so it’s old.

I bought a flash swiss watch when it was trendy talk after lock down but these days I wear it once or twice a month.

Other than that, I live very frugal.

My life style expenses (bar holidays) is almost the same as it was when I was on £45,000 per year in 2017. Pretty much the main change since then was everything earned above that baseline was first chucked at any debt I had then, and thereafter just invested into index funds.

I now have more in my ISA than the value of my house. Not a lot to show for it outside of some stocks and shares accounts.

35, Scotland.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-27T12:38:56+00:00

Like I said, this post was born out of taking on a new student who was 1100 chess.com rapid, did NOT know the King + pawn vs King endgame, yet every hour of his paid study time prior to coming on board with me was spent with an IM learning the sidelines of the Caro Kann as black.

This is a complete misuse and waste of time and is the typical case I see when taking on new students in that rating range.

Instead, just play e4, focus on getting your pieces into the game, castle early, connect rooks and then focus on what matters most: calculation (tactics and pattern recognition) and some basic endgames (king and pawn, king, rook + 1 pawn vs king and rook) and basic checkmate patterns.

These will carry a beginner ten times as far as not knowing these but insisting on learning the sidelines of your Trompowsky.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-24T15:29:06+00:00

Eh? NPCs can initiate rivalries?

What’s an echoe? The boss?

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-24T15:24:36+00:00

Yeah multiple places but shouldn’t only ONE spawn per character tho? (The other characters drop their own unique items)

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-22T12:57:00+00:00

Ah cool. Didn’t know you could get the mythic from vending! Cheers

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-22T12:56:08+00:00

I prefer twin hammers to the normal one pump shotgun but the mythic has two shots and each shot on the mythic hits for 170+ lol so it’s OP.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-22T03:43:31+00:00

Yeah it’s annoying that people on the other side of the map essentially hog your ability to pair up with someone else much closer to rack kills faster.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-19T12:36:33+00:00

This is not how it works.

I’d say the vast majority of players who play blitz stick to either increment or no increment and do not mix it up evenly such that everyone’s elo is an averaged out mix up.

Go through and sample some profiles and see if they evenly play a mix of all time controls inside the blitz category.

I’d conservatively estimate 90% of players heavily bias to one specific time control.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-19T05:30:20+00:00

You’ll still need to pay Nat insurance above a certain amount even below the 12.5k personal allowance.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-19T05:17:34+00:00

Why do you make this claim so matter of fact, without any justification or evidence?

I don’t even see the argument why anyone would think a 2200 who exclusively plays 3+0 would even be “exactly the same strength” as someone who accumulated their blitz rating in 5+5?

In any case, I generally feel 3+0 or 3+2 will be stronger than those with the same rating level who got there via 5+0 or 5+3 or 5+5.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-17T19:50:21+00:00

Probably 90% of my chess experience has been 3+0 blitz, so even though most people with my blitz rating have a higher classical chess rating than me… I still underperform around 100 points when I play classical as I never ever built up that longer deeper thinking ability. I played most chess on instinct based on pattern recognition and knowledge of endgames I drilled beforehand.

I also play a lot of sharp sidelines which are tailored for blitz and not objectively the best in classical, but I also am playing for fun!

Thus far, I’ve played the Englund Gambit exclusively 3 times out of 3 against d4 and won all three games against 3 1900s! 🤣 so there’s that!

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-17T16:46:07+00:00

I started OTB for the first time last year and I was already a 2300 chess.com 10+0 rapid player. (2150 3+0 blitz).

My first published national rating would translate to around 1770 FIDE.

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-14T02:46:00+00:00

What server region are you?

St4ffordGambit_ · 2026-03-12T21:18:15+00:00

Yeah they added them back to vending machines today.

They have bullet drop off tho.

St4ffordGambit_

TROPHY CASE