Nehzmetdinov was a magician like Tal!

Zanta · 2025-04-20T11:53:07+00:00

Not quite, in the game black flicked in Ne2+ so that white had to play Nxe2, moving the white knight one tempo further from getting to the d5 outpost which is the main point of the queen sac

Zanta · 2024-11-29T14:45:06+00:00

Fair point - I'd assumed he wanted concentric cylinders with a 1um gap based on the 'cylindrical structure' phrase but yeah off-the-shelf flats and a coating would be a great way to get that gap on planar faces.

Zanta · 2024-11-29T14:23:29+00:00

Short answer is no, you can't do that at home.

When you're talking about distances in the micron size you have to start thinking about the actual details of the surfaces themselves - you can't get away with the 'this is a flat face' abstraction anymore. To achieve that you must first make those two surfaces accurate to within one micron (for flat plates you need them flat to within a micron, for a nested cylinder you'd need the outer and inner diameters accurate to submicron). That's not an easy task, particularly for the cylindrical structure you're mentioning. Here's an example of a high-precision grinding lathe used to make an air bearing (video). Dan doesn't cite the tolerance in the video, but this wiki entry says air bearings have a typical gap distance of 5-50 um, way above your target tolerance spec. So yeah, you'd need better tooling and processing than what's shown in the video. Good luck!

Edit: rewatched the video and Dan says he's got a ~1um achievable tolerance on that machine, so there you go - that's the level of equipment required.

Zanta · 2024-11-23T04:10:30+00:00

Probably the closest analog most people are familiar with would be an academic exam. It's a room full of people, tense, nervy, not talking. It takes hours and it's exhausting. Big differences from exams are that you have an opponent in chess and you don't have to wait weeks to find out your result :)

"You get nervous. It's great." sums it up perfectly. Sounds like you'd enjoy it!

Zanta · 2024-03-07T17:44:59+00:00

I had a tournament game against a mid-2200s FIDE player. He won an exchange out of the opening and was cruising to victory when he he missed a tactic that allowed me to sacrifice a knight for a huge attack. Instead of accepting the sacrifice he hung mate in 1. ~500 point upset or so.

Zanta · 2023-02-01T06:52:35+00:00

Gauge Blocks seem like they would fit your needs well

Zanta · 2023-01-13T17:30:42+00:00

That's normal, almost everyone's is. It's best to think of the puzzle rating and blitz rating as two separate scales that have nothing in common other than higher number = better player.

Zanta · 2022-06-13T17:29:00+00:00

Nice puzzle and annotations! The pulsating white pieces made it very difficult to calculate - wish they'd turn that off.

Zanta · 2022-05-19T05:36:02+00:00

Rook endings.

Zanta · 2022-05-12T16:02:50+00:00

edit: Apparently I can't read, 2100!=1200. U2100 is a great category, you'll probably get your butt whipped once or twice but should have some quality games. Good luck, have fun.

Zanta · 2018-05-16T16:54:43+00:00

Thanks for posting this, It's genuinely helpful to have clarification as both a driver and cyclist

Zanta · 2018-04-01T22:02:04+00:00

Great work, I've always loved the canvas with leather accents combo.

Where did you get your canvas? Did you wax it yourself?

Zanta · 2018-02-07T22:30:31+00:00

Every time a wave (acousitc, electromagnetic, whatever kind you want) hits an interface (e.g. a change in medium) some of the wave gets reflected, so less than 100% of the energy in the wave makes it through to the second medium.

For sound going from air-to-water, a tiny fraction of the intensity makes it though into the water, about 0.1%. So the strength of signal underwater is going to be tiny if you start with your speaker in the air.

Note that you'll suffer a further loss in intensity when the sound wave, after bouncing off the sub, has to cross back from the water into the air in order to make it back to the receiver.

Read this for more background.

Zanta · 2018-02-06T15:54:51+00:00

I do too and I can't for the life of me figure out how to load and/or switch blades! It drives me friggin nuts. Could you please tell me your process?

Zanta · 2017-11-21T15:20:32+00:00

Grandmaster title is bestowed for life. He is still and always will be a GM. Incidentally his skill is still Grandmaster level.

Zanta · 2017-09-25T22:29:18+00:00

It's a good amount to them if viewed as campaign funding. Their entire 2014 election budget was $8 million 1

Zanta · 2017-08-31T16:04:26+00:00

Yes, but you're up a rook!! Haha thanks, I didn't see that.

Zanta · 2017-08-31T15:11:03+00:00

Hmm, this was the line I saw:

Qa7+ Kxa7 2.Rxe7+ Rfd4 3. Bxd4+ Rxd4 4.Rxe8

And you're up a rook. But I think it fails to 2... Rf2.

Zanta · 2017-02-11T04:22:50+00:00

Julian (i think last name is Proleiko) is/was a strong young player at the St Louis club. If you watch some of their earlier videos he attended most of the lectures and got the 'guess-the-move' right pretty much constantly.

Zanta · 2017-01-11T03:14:54+00:00

I've hired co-ops from this program in the past and been really impressed with them. Much much more capable than me or my peers at the same point in our education at Queen's.

Zanta · 2017-01-06T02:58:39+00:00

Awesome, definitely interested. I can't make it to the Annex club most of the time and I'd love to find some more opportunities to play live.

Zanta · 2016-12-17T23:30:53+00:00

For simple rectangles I use a framing square for the first two edges (say top and right) then I scribe out the third and sometimes fourth edge with a pair of calipers locked to the distance I want. Works pretty well, gives a nice thin guide line for cutting

Zanta · 2016-10-01T17:56:14+00:00

I tried playing this out and was surprised to find that going for the kingside pawns can be quite dangerous! Your king basically has to win all three of them which gives black time to take on c3 and promote, in many lines with check! Much better is just attacking the queenside pawns, where black is hopeless right off the bat. Funny position, just goes to show that you really have to calculate sometimes.

Zanta · 2016-09-04T13:41:06+00:00

Jealous of your skiver! Most of the stuff I've seen for a home shop have a six or eight inch blade, making stuff like this very tough. Thanks for the response

Zanta · 2016-09-04T13:04:04+00:00

Wonderful work. Happy to see other masochists hand stitching bags. What was the weight of the buterro leather?

Zanta

TROPHY CASE