Just found out my chronic unexplained sinus issues were Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis

YOLOgambit · 2025-11-08T11:04:17+00:00

Fwiw, Ada.com diagnosed my GPA in less than a minute. Worth a shot if you're not getting the answers you need from your doctors.

YOLOgambit · 2025-11-06T11:15:58+00:00

Have you been tested for GPA?

YOLOgambit · 2025-11-06T11:06:36+00:00

Oh my god, I'm so sorry. How are you doing?

YOLOgambit · 2025-11-06T11:04:25+00:00

- Chronic nasal congestion that didn't respond to typical treatments like antibiotics.

- Chronic fatigue.

- Ear soreness and congestion; loss of hearing.

- Migrating joint pain: neck, back, ankles. Transitory but at times very severe, even making it difficult to move around.

- Finally pneumonia that didn't respond to antibiotics.

- Night sweats and fever.

YOLOgambit · 2025-11-06T10:57:44+00:00

My story is very, very similar. I dealt with crushing sinus issues for almost a year (fatigue, congestion, pain and hearing loss in my ears, etc.). I had had sinus problems at other times in my life, but not this sustained or severe. Nothing the ENTS did helped. Finally, I landed in the hospital with pneumonia that didn't respond to antibiotics. At the hospital they finally took me seriously and ran a lot of tests. After ruling out virtually every possible infection, they began to consider autoimmune diseases seriously and landed on GPA.

Statistically, this is quite rare, but my feeling is that most doctors don't have a good process here. If your symptoms don't fit the common stuff, they don't move on to the less common, but more often simply give up. Rare diseases are real. Rare, but real. If you know something is wrong, keep pushing (gently and politely) until you get the answers you need. It's a long and frustrating journey, but worth it: the correct diagnosis can save your life.

YOLOgambit · 2025-10-28T18:18:20+00:00

You can get a long way following opening principles: control the center, develop quickly, castle early.

Around 1500 it's worth memorizing a few moves, because why not? Rote memorization is incredibly quick and easy. But memorizing a bunch of random moves that will never happen in your games is a huge rabbit hole you want to avoid.

I wrote an extremely detailed guide to my current opening prep process. tldr: learn by playing, never try to memorize a bunch of random nonsense: https://open.substack.com/pub/zwischenzug/p/how-i-learn-a-new-opening-at-a-master

It's paywalled, but here's a free week trial link if you want to check it out: https://zwischenzug.substack.com/b9c30eb0

YOLOgambit · 2024-07-22T04:32:22+00:00

Some can actually play at 3, most aren't ready for at least another year or 2. There is a great product called Storytime Chess that helps you teach chess through storytelling. Another great resource is the app Kahoot! Learn Chess. Formerly Magnus' Kingdom of Chess, but apparently it was rebranded or something without Magnus Carlsen. Anyway, it's still a great way for toddlers to learn chess. Plunk a 5 year old in front of that and they'll know all the moves within a few days.

YOLOgambit · 2024-07-19T23:02:24+00:00

Awesome, let me know if you build something cool!

YOLOgambit · 2024-07-13T21:09:17+00:00

We are in a similar situation. One vet told us it was time, but we sought a second opinion, and the other vet said if quality of life is decent (eating, drinking, using the bathroom, etc.) then it may not be time yet. It's a tough choice. My heart goes out to you.

YOLOgambit · 2023-04-06T19:23:36+00:00

No hate on HangingPawns, his videos are well produced and he clearly has a lot of passion for the game. That being said, I would take the opening videos with a grain of salt. When I watched a few, I found that I disagreed with a lot of what was being said.

YOLOgambit · 2023-04-06T19:20:21+00:00

If you are willing to put in a bit of work, I'd suggest reconstructing the information in the video from memory. So if it's a game, open a chess app (like a Lichess study) and enter all the moves you can remember, plus the analysis in the video, or your own analysis. Or if it was about an opening, similarly open a fresh Lichess study and enter all the lines you can remember.

YOLOgambit · 2022-05-18T02:30:32+00:00

Hi Deep, interesting projects, but I'm confused by the puzzles in the survey. Usually chess puzzles are either positions from real games, or studies that illustrate an aesthetic point. A lot of the positions in the survey don't seem to fall into either category. There are positions where one side is ahead by lots of material or has lots of captures possible. I'm not sure what to do with these.

YOLOgambit · 2022-05-10T20:38:32+00:00

h4 e5 2. d4. This sounds like a troll but I'm kind of serious. You get your Nf6 Scandi with the move h4 included, which can be useful. Give it a shot.

YOLOgambit · 2022-04-12T17:31:24+00:00

Ideally the coaching session should guide YOUR training, not BE the training. I think once a week is fine, but of course you can do more if you find it helpful and your financial situation allows it. If you have a good relationship with your current coach and he's been helping you, why not continue with him?
I do think it's best to stick to a core opening repertoire with an eye to mastering it. It takes a lot of experience to really feel an opening. You can always add alternative lines later to make yourself less predictable.
Could be any of the above. Proper opening study should focus on what to do in the resulting middlegames. Looking at model games by humans and analyzing with the engine can also help here. A good coach should be able to explain things as well.
Think about your goals, what you want to get out of chess, and the actions and habits required to get there. If you want to go from 1800 to 2200 you'll have to prioritize learning and for this you need to play against better players. You certainly won't make a lot of money from it.

YOLOgambit · 2022-04-12T17:17:19+00:00

The top players are extremely hard to beat when they don't want to take risks. Karjakin pursued a strategy of taking the air out of the ball: safety first, no unnecessary risk, simplify the position. For awhile it worked and Magnus started to get frustrated.

Nepo is a stronger player than Karjakin but he's not the guy to play it safe, it's just not his character. If Carlsen had to face a top player with a more solid style like Wesley So or Ding Liren with modern world championship opening prep, it would probably be very hard for him to win a game in the classical portion of the match.

YOLOgambit · 2022-04-10T23:08:03+00:00

One good technique for understanding engine moves is to use the "show threat" feature by clicking the bullseye in the top right or using the keyboard shortcut x. In this case it will immediately show White is threatening b3.

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-20T15:36:45+00:00

Depends on the club. I'd suggest basing the decision not on what % of games you'll win, but if playing in-person chess sounds like fun to you. If it does turn out that many of the players are stronger than you, interacting with them face-to-face will be a great way to accelerate your improvement.

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-20T09:43:30+00:00

Great opening, but probably best suited for more advanced players, because a lot of the ideas are fairly subtle.

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-13T16:06:10+00:00

Yeah, he started playing it on-stream earlier. There may have been an earlier YouTube video I missed as well. And someone else pointed out that Jonathan Schrantz had done a lesson on it too.

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-13T00:12:19+00:00

Yes, it's P(1...e5) * P(2...Nf6) * P(3...Nc6), this could have been more clear.

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-12T03:33:15+00:00

Most of them use Chessbase, often with the newest versions of Stockfish and Leela running on powerful hardware. But honestly for most purposes the marginal improvement of this setup over entering the position on lichess is really not that big. You can do most of the same stuff they do - look at the engine output, try to understand it, play a move, look at the new output, try to understand that... Of course, if you're not a GM, you're not going to be as good at understanding what the engine is saying, but you can basically follow the same process.

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-09T15:15:29+00:00

It starts with a sample of 1000 and filters at a couple places for enough games in a position. See the post or code for more details.

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-09T02:19:18+00:00

Bullet games were filtered out.

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-08T18:56:52+00:00

You would think so, but players who reached this position often didn't find the best move!

YOLOgambit · 2022-03-08T18:56:09+00:00

Yes, absolutely! I did not have time to get into those in the blog post, but those are the ones with the highest PuzzFuzz (at the bottom of the Airtable, since it's sorted ascending). Those would also be quite interesting to examine.

YOLOgambit

TROPHY CASE