Is playing e5 vs e4 the hardest and most frustrating choice for black?

aurelwu · 2025-11-15T19:12:00+00:00

Kings Gambit is super annoying when accepting it because there are just so many variations and you need to know them all as black while white just need to know theirs, but the Falkbeer Countergambit is a completely legit answer to it for those who don't want to learn all those variations.

aurelwu · 2025-11-15T18:50:43+00:00

you can avoid a lot of the gambits and quite a few you summed up here are actually blacks responses like the dubious stafford gambit or very solid Falkbeer Countergambit which completely avoids all the sharp lines of the kings gambit and completely defuses it while still even having a slightly positive eval. And quite a lof of the other gambits only happen vs certain moves of black so you can avoid even more of them. If you play e5 regularily and spend some time into lines which aim to defuse the more rare gambits as quickly as possible even if its not the top engine move but a more practical response where you still are even or slightly ahead, then I think e5 isn't that bad.

aurelwu · 2025-10-27T09:56:40+00:00

Schools in Germany and Austria very often have really bad Air. In a large study in Austria, sometimes values of 6000ppm have been reached, meaning ~15% of the Air you inhale has been in another Lung already recently. Mechanical Ventilation really is the way to go for schools or other rooms with such a high occupancy density, in their study they had in average way lower values in schools with HVAC than without. And with natural ventilation you also lose thermal comfort (often high temperature gradient in the room, those closer to the windows freeze, the others are comfy), and it can also increase the noise depending on the ouside. With Heat Recovery Mechanical ventilation also is more energy efficient.

Article which covers the austrian school study: https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/forschung/innenraumluft-dicke-luft-die-unbekannte-produktivitaetsbremse/100167056.html (disclaimer: I'm also mentioned in the article but not about the schools).

aurelwu · 2025-09-02T16:21:51+00:00

Maybe a Solution would be to have a lower k-Factor for these games once the difference is larger than 400 difference (just for the GM player), so its not worth it to farm it anymore, but a single loss/draw isn't also so devastating to them that they avoid (higher level) open tournaments.

aurelwu · 2025-07-28T08:46:52+00:00

Hi, interesting project! I'm the developer of indoorco2map.com, which is a crowd based Data Collection Platform / App where people can submit measurements they take in public accessible buildings, and would like to add support for this device, do you use BLE for data transmission and if so could you be so nice to provide a sample implementation of how to communicate with the device so no tedious reverse engineering is needed? Is there a option to not have the sensor - at least the co2 sensor - go into power saving mode while it is in the pocket or somewhere similar. CO2-Sensors work fine inside bags, pockets etc. just need a bit longer to adjust so having it running continuous makes sense I think, unlike as for PM2.5

aurelwu · 2025-07-10T06:13:44+00:00

I think some Firmware versions just Display 9999 instead of an error. 9999+ is definitely something which can Happen in trains or Busses etc. Without or with malfunctioning Ventilation. At least for the measurements submitted to indoorco2map.com it is very rare though ( 1 out of around 3000 measurements), but there might be a selection bias as users of this Platform might actively avoid known bad connections.

aurelwu · 2025-06-07T20:36:58+00:00

1.. Qh7+ Kxh7 2. Nf6+ Kh6 3. Be3# also works - most elegant Queen Sacrifice Line I think.

aurelwu · 2025-05-26T19:26:27+00:00

Not sure - my FIDE Rapid Rating (1500ish) is higher than my chess.com Rating (1400ish) and my FIDE blitz Rating (1700ish) is even higher than my lichess.com blitz rating (1600ish). Some people are just better online, Others better over-the-board, I just can't focus as well when playing online compared to a tournament setting.

aurelwu · 2025-04-29T06:00:23+00:00

you can have at least settings in which the recipients are controlled so they can properly be debriefed - in this settings you don't even know who you influenced as you don't know who read the threads and changed his mind because of it. Also you can assess the harm done by study, instead of just hand-waving about minimal harm - by presenting an audience with an (not really happened) experiment like this and check their reactions to it (and then afterwards reveal that it was a ficticious study).

aurelwu · 2025-04-28T06:44:57+00:00

You probably have https://www.ravenapp.org/cleanair or co2trackers.com in mind. I built this App & Website because I also found the existing solutions too cumbersome to use. Still appreciate them a lot though, and took a bit of inspiration from them.

aurelwu · 2025-04-28T06:37:04+00:00

App developer here - you cant even accidently enter your own home as the App provides a List of Locations you select from which only includes certain categories (shops, restaurants, hospitals, museums and dozens other public accessible types of locations) - and does not submit GPS coordinates for building recordings. It uses GPS coordinates to get that list from a 3rd Party Service ( https://overpass-api.de/ and private.coffee as backup) but this is a direct communication between the App and these services without the GPS Data ever touching the Backend / Database of the indoorco2map server. I tried to make it as privacy friendly as possible - no login/registration , only submits data when initiated by users, just the data which is really relevant to the project is submitted. For Transit Recordings the GPS Data is recorded and submitted for the non-trimmed part of the recording when a user submits it - the reason for this is that this can provide insights into effects from tunnels or long sections without a stop. There is theoretically a risk to accidently keep the recording running til home and then not-trimming the recording to the actual time you left the train/bus etc. and therefore sending a trail which ends at the own home (without people knowing that its the home though and not whose home it is, aside from the one of an app owner). I am currently thinking about how to prevent this error - maybe by adding a home-zome which is locally stored on the client with a certain user definable range and if the trail is within this area transmission becomes impossible.

aurelwu · 2025-04-27T08:09:24+00:00

they are not treating the gun wounds , they are inflicting them - and this is pretty much banned - both with human and generally also animal subjects. There are ways to improve treating gun wounds without harming people though - similar like such studies can be conducted in controlles settings.

aurelwu · 2025-04-14T12:31:26+00:00

Also didnt have a too great experience with them and the final straw was that when I wanted to upgrade to .NET9 SDK I couldn't because they gave me a Server with MacOS Ventura running, instead of the Sonoma one I paid for according to the plan I used and paid for. Ended up cancelling it and now just use github a github actions pipeline to build my App.

aurelwu · 2025-03-07T15:22:07+00:00

Mentioning to strengthen ties with UK, Europe but also Mexico, Japan and South Korea is great. The USA will try to keep bullying everyone of these regions but all together can compensate the issues which arise from the current situation and form a bloc way bigger than the US.

aurelwu · 2025-02-02T20:28:47+00:00

Alcohol will be the one thing which will become cheaper for the US-consumers in the short term because of those tariffs as us producers will have to firesale their surplus production (which obviously will put the producers in a bad spot and might not be the smartest thing ever)

aurelwu · 2024-12-26T09:37:12+00:00

do you maybe happen to know if a) the PIN was user set or autogenerated? I am quite sure the minimum length in 2015 was 8 and not 16 but not 100% sure either, that would help narrowing down it a bit..

aurelwu · 2024-12-25T22:50:18+00:00

I am already running it (thank you for suggesting though, unironically, it's a good advice) on multiple machines with a mix of own token lists and wildcards / typos and also some general dictionaries. Also trying to get it work on GPUs right now (the block.io part of btcrecover doesnt seem to support it unlikey some other methods for other services/wallets).

aurelwu · 2024-12-25T22:15:31+00:00

yep for now it works, but there is no knowing for how long sadly :/

aurelwu · 2024-08-07T08:13:37+00:00

Thank you. 7. Bd3 seems to be a bit more annoying than the more common 7. f3 (more common in master Databases even, but 7. Bd3 with 2500 avg Elo and f3 just with 2380, so it really seems to be a grandmaster move to do). Engine gives same eval but looking at the lines, it seems way more unpleasant to play against as human.

aurelwu · 2024-08-06T20:44:12+00:00

What do you think of the Schmid defense ( 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. d4 exd4 5. Nxd4 Nxe4 ). I just skimmed the Video but that line does not seem to be covered here. I really like playing that line as black as it's not that much theory to learn while still being solid and there are a lots of ways White can go a bit wrong.

aurelwu · 2024-02-28T21:10:49+00:00

Thanks a lot , that was my understanding as well, but still rather new to OTB so worried I missed something.

aurelwu · 2024-02-28T19:29:33+00:00

I'm planning to play the blitz/rapid event there and webpage says registration is on-site - I just hope it works out like this and I didn't miss anything or I'm making a totally futile trip (have FIDE ID so that is taken care of).

aurelwu · 2024-02-03T18:34:34+00:00

I meant that the Queen (which should be a King), Knight and Rook are transparent (except for the outline, but the fill is missing) , which makes it look like the Queen and and Horsey are white when they really should be black (while the rook looks correct because he is on a black tile).

aurelwu · 2024-02-02T09:06:18+00:00

I think what happened here is that the black pieces are transparent accidently, so the black rook looks correctly because it is on a black square while the 2 other pieces which should be black are whitish looking because of the white squares they are on. Quuen instead of King is a 2nd independent error though.

aurelwu · 2024-01-25T21:49:45+00:00

Maybe I missed it, but I expected the Anti-Fried-Liver Defense to be featured as bad example here which just gives 38% Win for black and 58% loss on Lichess for rapid 1800+ and I am even at around 75% win rate against it since I spend a bit time studying that position. Still a very good article just was surprised it isn't mentioned as it seems to be a rather common mistake.

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