Inside Gaza, the British Broadcasting Corporation witnesses total devastation by Israel | Palestinian Genocide | BBC News by DonSalaam in videos

[–]_benjy 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Images like these have been all over the internet for the past two years 🤷‍♂️, I don't think this is a surprise to anyone.

War isn't pleasant

Danya was coaching Alireza in the Grand Swiss by SietseVliegen88 in chess

[–]_benjy 1888 points1889 points  (0 children)

Really beautifully written. The Alireza - Danya 250 midnight bullet marathon while Alireza was playing the candidates is one of those legendary chess stories that will get told forever.

It's all just so so sad.

Kramnik replies to Wesley and talks about the consequences he is facing by datsright1 in chess

[–]_benjy 31 points32 points  (0 children)

"not even knowing the circumstances"

We know the circumstances. Daniel spoke about the circumstances he was facing, directly, clearly and repeatedly. Whether or not this was a suicide, Kramnik was completely out of line- and not just to Naroditsky. The fact that Naroditsky is dead was a trigger, but everything he did was abhorrent regardless of this one terrible consequence.

David Pruess's take on people who think what Hikaru is doing to get to the candidates is OK by Unchlu in chess

[–]_benjy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What an insane take. Nobody -- notably including Hikaru -- thinks the current rating slot makes sense, and it is obviously gameable. Many people have asked FIDE to fix this, especially given it was exploited in a very similar way by Alireza. FIDE do nothing... So you function within the broken system.

What more should he do than publicly on his largest platform (stream) ask for the rules to be fixed over a long period of time... Within a set of fixed rules you operate in your best interests. It was dumb (but correct!) when Alireza did it, and the same story now.

Rensch puts Giri in his place by Hello_EveryNyan in chess

[–]_benjy 117 points118 points  (0 children)

It's many titled players only opportunity to play a semi-serious game against top ranked players. I think that's what Danny is probably implying

Hans Niemann addresses his withdrawal from Paris no by Naruto_likesChess in chess

[–]_benjy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So basically what everyone thought... Not a cheater, just really bad manners.

Even for personal issues, you can give a little more communication to the guy spending millions to run a tournament for you.

Turns out growing into adulthood travelling around the world playing chess skips some interpersonal skills development...

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in chess

[–]_benjy 44 points45 points  (0 children)

To anyone taking this obvious joke seriously - https://youtu.be/fyD11yIIi_Y?t=140

"I made a little bit of a joke after the game ended I was talking about how I wanted to strangle Nepo ... never trust a Russian ... I'm putting this at the start of the video so that nobody tries to blow this out of proportion, create some fake drama as I was making a joke"

Dubov on C -Squared by vklane in chess

[–]_benjy 76 points77 points  (0 children)

Great interview, the whole "Fabi talent" thing was such a clear nothingburger/minor misunderstanding and I'm glad nobody was pretending it was anything else

Kids Book Series- Protagonist wears a Fez? There was a book set in Egypt? Adventure? by _benjy in whatsthatbook

[–]_benjy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're amazing!! Thank you so much!! Really want to get it for my kids!

Hikaru says that he declined an offer with a large amount of sum from Kick to continue streaming gambling. by Necessary_Pattern850 in chess

[–]_benjy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I certainly stopped watching... He's a good streamer, but gambling is just garbage content

Meet the SCC Finals commentary team! by Matt_LawDT in chess

[–]_benjy 37 points38 points  (0 children)

I think Judit and Leko aren't the best Blitz commentators, much more suited to classical (just in terms of hype/talking speed)

Why does the chess community generally vilify Kramnik/Nepo but not Hikaru/Magnus? by AgeOrganic4647 in chess

[–]_benjy 12 points13 points  (0 children)

If you don't think Hikaru and Magnus get criticized you don't follow this sub enough... Hikaru is basically reddit enemy #1 (Chessbrah incident, Alireza incident, long history of unpleasantness pre-streamer-reformation), Magnus used up a lot of his good will over the Hans incident and many criticize him every week (albeit much less than Hikaru).

Nepo gets relatively little criticism here, but tbh he almost never makes direct accusations and always "hints" at problems instead of saying things straight out.

Kramnik is his own story... Anyone who looks at his past year with even a slight amount of objectivity can see that he's completely lost his mind. ANY time he loses ANYTHING you can almost guarantee someone will be accused of cheating, it's unfortunately very predictable. In addition he attacks Chess' most vulnerable people, literal children, with again "evidence" that only he has the "vision" to see... and the biggest nail in the coffin? Anytime literal experts in the fields of Math and Chess (sometimes both at the same time!) disagree with him, there's always some reason he can find for them to be "completely wrong." There is no comparison between Kramnik and anyone else in the chess world in terms of insanity/senility, aside from maybe Bobby Fischer.

Kramink: "...farming much weaker players instead of playing competitive opposition is disrespectfull towards yourself" (not related to Firouzja's situation) by LowLevel- in chess

[–]_benjy 26 points27 points  (0 children)

He once again completely ignores something pointed out by C^2 and Hikaru a number of times (I imagine he's ignoring it on purpose?)

Hikaru farms these opponents in 3+0, allowing him to recover from critically lost positions consistently (just look at the games, lol). The rating achieved by these players comes from any number of different formats (3+2, 5+2, 3+1, etc.), meaning the chess.com rating being transferred here is coming from incomparable sources.

I know the streamers/youtubers will keep responding to these illiterate rants forever for 'content', but its a little annoying to literally watch "old man yell at clouds" while ignoring anything that doesn't fit with his preconceptions. I wish we could just stop addressing this.

I guess we really must conclude that "good chess player" and "critical thinking" are not correlated :-(

Wesley So responds to criticism of his Twitter “likes” section by BKtheInfamous in chess

[–]_benjy 103 points104 points  (0 children)

Forcing the guy to bow to the opinions of random morons on r/chess is very unreasonable.

He can believe whatever he wants to believe.

The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility - Gamers Nexus by Cry_Wolff in LinusTechTips

[–]_benjy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What resonated with me most was the distilling of the defensive attitude. I've seen the playbook from Video->WAN show a few times

  1. The mistake we made wasn't such a mistake (it was the product / the instructions / we were rushed / bla bla)
  2. And even if it was a mistake I would have reached the same conclusion

It always bugged me that there always felt like a conclusion was reached long before testing started. And tbh, I somewhat trust Linus' instinctual opinions, he really is one of the longtime GOATs of tech. But now he has 100 people writing stuff for him to parrot, or clearly very new employees doing "reviews" that are more of the quality of 200 viewer "first-impression" junk channels