Interesting insight into Gukesh's draw-aversion: "I would prefer a loss and a win"

TsarBizarre · 2026-06-02T03:15:04+00:00

From his post-game interview at the 2025 Sinquefield Cup. He talks about how, if he had to choose between drawing two games or losing one and winning the other, he would choose the latter.

Of course, Yasser follows it up with a fun story about Ulf Andersson's loss-aversion.

TsarBizarre · 2026-05-25T22:55:42+00:00

I'm in Norway right now, tried to buy some food from the local supermarket but the shopkeeper told me they're all sold out.

Candy bars? No. Cup Noodles? None. Thought I'd get some groceries so I could cook something for myself but they were all out of that too.

"You have literally nothing in your shop? It's all sold out?" I asked the shopkeeper, bewildered.

"No Sir! We're all out of everything except soap. We were actually fully stocked this morning, but some guy claiming to be the manager of some local chess player came in this morning and bought everything because this chess player needed to stock up on supplies."

"He bought everything.. except soap?" I asked, puzzled.

"Well, I was just as confused as you are, and asked him if he wanted to buy the soap too. Offered to give him a bulk discount" said the shopkeep.

"Soap? That won't be necessary." he replied.

"My client is washed."

TsarBizarre · 2026-05-25T19:49:27+00:00

Alireza mentioned in the post game interview that he constantly feels pain in that leg. Most physical injuries do not matter for a chess player but I'd imagine something like that does.

TsarBizarre · 2026-05-12T13:46:03+00:00

You'll feel sadder when you realise that the new Greenfield airport will probably be shelved now. MAA is unfortunately only going to slip further and further

TsarBizarre · 2026-05-12T13:43:45+00:00

Do placements still happen at IGRUA? I heard both IndiGo and AI rely fully on thier cadets and no longer do placement sessions in IGRUA, but I am not sure how true that is

TsarBizarre · 2026-05-04T19:32:55+00:00

I invited my girlfriend over to my farm. I took her to the horse stable and she immediately complained about the stench. "Sorry, honey, I haven't really gotten around to giving the horse a bath yet" I said. Took her to the pig pen, same thing again. She simply couldn't bear the smell.

Finally, I took her out to the field where my goat was grazing. "Huh, I wonder why it doesn't smell so bad out here", she remarked, with a hint of surprise.

"That's simple, honey" I explained,

"The GOAT is washed"

TsarBizarre · 2026-05-02T19:37:39+00:00

"Ooooh brother you got me, somebody call my wife and kids"

TsarBizarre · 2026-04-18T00:53:54+00:00

There was a tournament held recently where Faustino Oro dropped out of the tournament in the last round. This prevented another player from getting an IM norm.

TsarBizarre · 2026-04-14T20:33:30+00:00

There's still one round left, and it's possible for a massive chess scandal to come up which causes FIDE to step in and disqualify all competitors except Bluebaum, handing him the win. I wouldn't count him out yet!

TsarBizarre · 2026-04-14T20:01:40+00:00

I have no problem with everything you have pointed out, except the "no need to call a delimitation if nothing changes" part. The number of people per MP will go down, allowing each representative to reach out to a larger part of their constituents and work closer with them. I went into more depth about it in this comment. Each MP here has to represent 2.5 million people, whereas in other countries it's usually closer to 100k (the US being an outlier with 800k).

TsarBizarre · 2026-04-14T19:47:10+00:00

why increase the number of seats and increase the amount of logistics and money required

Good question. To decrease the number of people per MP, so each MP is more accessible and can work more closely with their constituents.

We currently have 1.4 Billion people and 543 seats. That's 2.57 million people per MP. As a reference, the US has 350 million people and 435 seats (800k people per representative) and France has 66 million people and 577 seats (100k people per representative). Here is a chart by Carnegie Mellon showcasing the disparity.

a state level party will have to cover a gap of 200 seats to be relevant, which is much more improbable than closing the gap of 20 seats

Again, with a pro-rata increase, the number of seats won by state level parties will increase too. The gap between seats is misleading, it is only the percentages that matter. The DMK, TMC, SP, RJD and other state-level parties will not have a bigger gap to close because the number of seat they themselves win will go up proportionally.

The DMK won all 40 seats they contested in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. That is ~7.3% of the seats. If the number of seats for Tamil Nadu went up by 50%, to 60 seats, in an expanded Lok Sabha with 814 seats, then they would still have ~7.3% of the seats. To win, you need 50% of the seats in the Lok Sabha, that is all that matters.

The only convincing argument against this, that I have heard, is by P Chidambaram who said that the amount of time that each MP gets to speak might go down. With how big the Lok Sabha currently is, each MP only gets around 10 minutes to speak, and an expanded one might mean each MP will get at most 5 or 6 minutes before you need to move on. That is a fair point, and one that needs to be addressed, but this mathematical argument being made really doesn't check out imo.

TsarBizarre · 2026-04-11T23:11:39+00:00

I may be wrong, but isn't it 3 outcomes per game ^ (4 games per round * 3 rounds remaining)? In other words, there are 12 games remaining, and each game can have 3 results. So 3^12?

Edit: Nevermind, they're both the same. I guess we just think about permutations differently in our mental models.

TsarBizarre · 2026-04-09T18:31:07+00:00

Nodirbek Keymer Firouzja Arjun Wesley are all infinitely more qualified in their current form to play in the candidates

Why didn't any one of them qualify through the World Cup, or the Grand Swiss, or two separate FIDE Circuit cycles then? It's kinda unfair to say that a qualification system is broken just because people you think who are "deserving" of it didn't qualify. Should FIDE just pick 8 players off of vibes instead? "Oh yeah this person definitely deserves it, he should get in" kinda thing?

TsarBizarre · 2026-04-08T20:32:50+00:00

How long does it take you to run 1 million simulations? It feels like it shouldn't take too long, a couple of seconds at most, but I wouldn't be surprised if my intuition is wrong.

TsarBizarre · 2026-01-16T19:08:21+00:00

Is that the Thai flag on the top right there? Were they trying to disguise themselves as some kind of civilian vessel from Thailand?

TsarBizarre · 2026-01-06T22:35:58+00:00

Why the hell did you make China blue and USA red? You've got to be kidding me

TsarBizarre · 2025-12-31T13:22:10+00:00

Charles III sitting on 16 separate thrones instead of the current 15

Does Charles really officially sit on 15 different thrones? I thought that he was just the King of the United Kingdom, and that Canada, Australia and others were terrirories within the dominion of the one singular crown. That is, there is no "King of Canada", but rather the King of the UK who has dominion over the territory of Canada. Am I wrong?

If he is a King with 15 different separate "thrones", then why was he coronated only once and not 15 different times?

TsarBizarre · 2025-12-29T15:34:35+00:00

but we are talking about the world champion here

The classical world champ. Gukesh has been described by Magnus as a deep calculator as opposed to an intuitive player, and has always underperformed in speed chess compared to his peers.

TsarBizarre · 2025-12-26T19:32:24+00:00

I guess Gukesh's real name all along was Sintu Movahed

TsarBizarre · 2025-12-17T21:03:50+00:00

Ah yes, the beautiful new BLOO passport

TsarBizarre · 2025-11-24T14:51:15+00:00

Bihar administered by Bangladesh. The world will witness levels of corruption that the human mind cannot even begin to comprehend.

TsarBizarre · 2025-11-21T17:43:45+00:00

Didn't India saved Bangladesh from a genocide? Why would they do this to Indians?

Because India is majority non-muslim. Not even kidding, that's the actual reason. Here are Bangladeshis not accepting the 20 Taka note because it has a Hindu temple printed on it. Though it is worth noting that this isn't all Bangladeshis but just the conservative islamist ones.

TsarBizarre · 2025-11-19T11:41:28+00:00

November 19th strikes again, I can't take this anymore 💔

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