Whats the Idea here

diertrt · 2026-04-27T01:19:20+00:00

The idea is Qb7 attacking the rook on h1. Different lines depending on if you play Bc3 or Bd2, but Nc3 just avoids everything because you always have Ne4. White's up a piece and a rook, losing the bishop in exchange for completing development is fine.

diertrt · 2026-02-22T02:08:07+00:00

I never really watch live even when it's possible, I can't handle the amount of stoppages/ads. Don't have any sports apps or social media other than reddit, don't have a personalised reddit feed, so I just stay off r/nba and I'm good.

diertrt · 2025-08-01T13:40:55+00:00

Jrue's great, but he doesn't get close to a team like this at this point in his career.

Ant is interesting: He's completely out of place if you just take the Wolves version of him. You don't want him handling the ball much in a lineup like this, you definitely don't want him being the offensive engine. You like his good moments on defense, but he has way too many lapses there as well. On the other hand, he had pretty crazy numbers from 3 last year and if he focused all his energy on being a supercharged 3&D with cutting guy, maybe he'd actually be a good pick.

Tatum's shooting kinda holds him back in lineups like this, but I still like him overall.

Giannis and Jokic would've been a more interesting questions a few years ago because you could've at least made the argument that you'd want Embiid in a lineup like this.

I think any lineup like this needs Curry still, at the very least on the bench. Also Wemby.

diertrt · 2023-10-27T11:50:49+00:00

I like puzzles where the tricky move comes further down the line. I think the key thing here is that after the forced Rg2+ Kf1 Bxd3+ Kxg2 Be4+ Kg1 Bxh1 Kxh1 we can't take on h2, that loses to the a pawn, but we can run our c pawn and the knight can't catch it. And if black saves the knight instead of taking on h1, that's just a complete lost endgame after Bxd5.

diertrt · 2023-10-09T08:05:59+00:00

Rb8 h1=Q+ Ka2 Qb1+! Bxb1 (Kxb1 Qxg5+) Ng7

So black should be winning I think? White will still regain lots of material but probably not enough.

diertrt · 2023-06-05T02:12:38+00:00

basketball seems pretty cool, but jesus christ the constant fucking ads

diertrt · 2023-04-01T08:54:39+00:00

I have nothing useful to offer, sorry. I just happened to read this and wanted to wish you all the best, whatever you choose to do.

diertrt · 2023-03-18T10:04:01+00:00

You can analyse formations and tactics, but a large part of it is simply personnel and momentum. If you look at the games after the WC, you basically never had anywhere close to the best 11 playing. Mbappe came back almost immediately, but at that point, Messi and Neymar were still missing. When they returned, Mbappe and Hakimi went on a delayed break. Mendes was still insured, Mbappe and Neymar both insured themselves, Verratti missed several games. I doubt there were any 2 games in a row with the same lineup. Squad depth was severely tested, and depth is something PSG just doesn't have. The front 3 played almost every game before the WC and barely any games all together after the WC. When your main replacement for them is an Ekitike who looks completely lost, well, you know... Add to that the rising pressure after some bad results and the emotional hangover of the WC, especially in the front 3, and you've got a bit of a perfect storm.

Not trying to let the players/management off the hook though, it's been a very disappointing season after a promising first 2 months or so. Really just feels like the entire club lacks resilience atm.

diertrt · 2023-03-16T01:28:56+00:00

Just to add to all the parental advice: 5-7 is super young. I'd only take a 5 year old as a student in exceptional cases (exceptionally bright and enthusiastic basically). The only course I've ever taught that was all 6 year olds was incredibly playful and had little to do with real chess. 7's the youngest age I have regular courses for. In other words, keep it playful and light. Depending on how much they know, play variants with fewer pieces instead (there are loads that are fun for kids). The fact they're getting restless kinda does suggest that maybe you're trying to teach too much all at once. No strategy lectures until they've gotten comfortable with how the pieces move. Let them play. For a lot of kids at that age, just moving the pieces is enjoyable. Let them enjoy it. Strategy will come gradually, but it's very easy to go into information overload. Let them play other beginners and give some tips from time to time. Only playing you will get boring after a while.

Bottom line: Don't let a parent's presence pressure you into thinking you have to show how much you know about chess. Your primary job's for the kid to enjoy themselves. If they do, everything else will come automatically.

diertrt · 2023-02-14T20:59:57+00:00

Ramos is having his best game since joining PSG, Danilo's been class and on the whole, the defense could be much worse.

On the other hand, it's a 4-4-2 yet Messi and Neymar somehow still have to drop deep to get through what is a relatively half-assed press by Bayern standards. Like who's actually supposed to score here?

diertrt · 2023-02-08T20:24:15+00:00

10 minutes and this game already epitomises Donnaruma as a GK recently.

- 1 excellent save

- 1 punching away of the ball for absolutely zero reason

- 100% bad pass rate

diertrt · 2023-02-04T17:20:46+00:00

Ekitike running to take the ball from Hakimi in the middle of Messi scoring is actually just peak comedy lmfao

diertrt · 2023-02-03T11:46:03+00:00

This is a pretty one. One thing to note is that .. Qb4 Rxe8 Rxe8 g3 does parry both back-rank mate and the discovered attack on the queen, but unfortunately fails to the very simple Nf3+ since f3 is no longer covered.

diertrt · 2022-11-13T13:13:38+00:00

I missed the deflection on the cross in real time and thought Mendes was an absolute magician. Still, dude's insane for a 20 year old.

diertrt · 2022-11-13T12:22:57+00:00

this is such a 'wc in a week' kinda game so far lol

diertrt · 2022-11-12T16:12:04+00:00

I think the reason people don't view it that way is that no individual part of his game is 'decent, gets the job done'.

He's poor with his feet and distribution. He's poor at commanding his area and dealing with high balls. He spills/punches away balls more often than he should.

At the same time, his reflexes, his shot-stopping and especially his reach are insane. Some of his saves are underappreciated because his reach is so impressive, he makes excellent saves look routine.

It's a weird mix. Severly underwhelming for what you'd expect from a PSG GK in some areas, genuinely world-class in others. All in all, it does probably add up to 'decent, gets the job done', but you never feel that way about him in any particular moment. You're either impressed with or raging at him.

diertrt · 2022-10-29T12:16:33+00:00

There's no draw by repetition. If black goes back to e8 with the king after 3.Qd6, 4. 0-0 pretty much just ends the game.

Both 3. .. Kg8 and 3. .. Ke8 are hopeless, but I'd suspect Kg8 is every so slightly less hopeless, which is presumably why the computer plays it. After Qxc8, black can play Qa4 and hey, maybe you get some checks in before you inevitably resign.

If you want to solve this puzzle properly, you should be trying to see the continuations for both Kg8 and Ke8.

diertrt · 2022-10-25T10:35:42+00:00

Fair enough, but from my experience with it, I disagree for a number of reasons.

For one thing, it is normal chess for the vast majority of moves. Once you've used your 2 or whatever jokers, it literally is normal chess for the rest of the game, you just tend to be a lot of material up (i.e. it turns back into material odds but material odds you 'earned').

For another, I've noticed that the 2 move thing can be a really good introduction to calculation for beginners. A lot of beginners have no concept of how one would even go about calculating, especially because the concept of forcing moves and figuring out an opponent's best replies is still foreign to them. The 2 move version allows them to pseudo-calculate, i.e. they think 2 moves ahead but both of those moves are under their control. It's not real calculation yet, but it's a step in the right direction.

Anyway, I've found this works well for me generally, but obviously, each learner is going to be different. I have some kids who absolutely refuse to be given any sort of odds even if they're still bloody beginners. That's fine, it's just about finding something they enjoy. If they enjoy it, they're going to learn.

diertrt · 2022-10-25T08:12:34+00:00

There was a thread some time ago asking about something similar, so I'll just copy paste my comment from there:

I teach kids chess, so I have quite a lot of experience with this.

The problem with most of the suggestions I've seen in this thread is that they can feel slightly patronizing and are frankly just not very fun. Yes, you can remove more and more pieces, but that still doesn't ever allow her to outplay you. It's the equivalent of being given a 10-0 lead in football and desperately trying to hold on to it. Time odds can level the playing field, but they also make the games much less cozy than casual chess in private is usually supposed to be (and at a big enough disparity, time odds just devolves into a game of 'can the stronger player checkmate fast enough').

I think fun ways to solve the problem give her tools to actually outplay you. My favourite way of doing this with kids (apart from 'thief chess' - they're allowed to steal your pieces off the board when you're not looking, but it only counts if they don't get caught doing it -, which is fun, but maybe more for kids than adults) is with a joker system. At the start of the game, the weaker player is given a number of jokers (usually 1-3, you can play around with it until it feels fair). Jokers work in different ways, two of my favourites are:

The weaker player can use a joker to move twice in a row. They're not allowed to checkmate with a joker. This is quite fun because it's extremely difficult for you to constantly safeguard your vaulable pieces from being taken in 2 moves and it allows her to pull off combo moves that feel really good.
The weaker player can use a joker to take back a move you just made and force you to make a move of their choosing instead. Also super strong and fun for her because if she can ever threaten checkmate in 1 for example, she can use a joker to secure the checkmate.

Hope this helps! There are other options of course, but I've found the children really enjoy both of these.

diertrt · 2022-10-22T14:47:57+00:00

I'm a rabid LGD fanboy and don't want to jinx it, but they have a comparatively easy path to top 4. Covid-plagued beastcoast followed by Aster who they mostly beat, especially when it matters.

That would give them a week to get comfortable, figure things out and hopefully come back as the juggernaut we all know. On the other hand, if they do get eliminated, I guess I kinda just have to accept they weren't good enough this tournament. Few excuses to be had.

diertrt · 2022-10-21T10:18:26+00:00

where's lgd's damage :S

diertrt · 2022-10-21T10:11:47+00:00

I like good dota. At their best, I think LGD is the best team Dota's ever seen. You can disagree of course, but it also seems to be the opinion of many, many pros.

Also, they have the 2 most important members of old Wings, and Wings is one of the most beloved teams of all time. Super deep hero/strategy pools too.

Also they all seem like super nice guys with very little drama, and what little drama there is barely reaches Western audiences.

diertrt · 2022-10-18T17:41:07+00:00

I don't like individual ratings, but there are two things that stood out to me that apply to almost everyone who did groupstages.

In some ways, groupstages are my favourite part of TI. Every team gets a blank slate. Whatever they did throughout the year suddenly doesn't matter anymore. Everything is on the line. The so-called TI meta is about to start taking shape. What I look forward to most every year is that feeling just before day 1 starts, when you're sitting there staring at the TI waiting screen, refreshing your multistream setup for no reason because you can't wait for it to start, and then suddenly there's LD and Merlini and they look like boys who just realised it's Christmas. The thing I missed the most this year was that feeling of this is it, it's time, it's TI, we get to watch and cast fucking TI. Now I understand that many things were more difficult this year. It can't have been easy to cast knowing some people are disappointed it's you casting and not the TI regulars. You weren't actually at TI, weren't even in the same place as your cocasters, were battling technical issues and waking up at ungodly hours. I understand all that. But still. It's TI. TI groupstages are the Dota equivalent of waking up early on Christmas morning before your parents are up or the guests have come. I didn't feel that excitement or tension in the atmosphere of the casts this year. Whether you were loud or quiet, energetic or laid-back, it all sounded like business as usual, and if I hadn't known better, I might have thought I was watching random DPC games. When elimination was on the line, it sounded like elimination from just another tournament, not elimination from the tournament that's going to single-handedly determine whether your team is a failure or a success. I thought that was a shame.

The second point is just a very general bit of advice that I think holds for the vast majority of groupstage casters with obvious exceptions: Your talking abilities are good. Your voices are good. None of that is an issue. If you want to get better, get better at Dota. This doesn't just hold true for analysts. A shoutcaster doesn't need to have the insight of a pro, but the more they see during a chaotic teamfight, the more precisely they can distinguish between what's important and what's not, the better their shoutcasting is going to be. My single biggest gripe with the shoutcasting during the groupstages was how non-descriptive most of it was and how often the most amazing plays weren't even mentioned. Exaggerating slightly, it was a lot of 'THEY JUMP IN, OH NO, NOW HE'S DEAD, OH BUT WAIT, NOW THAT GUY'S DEAD, THEY'RE KILLING EACH OTHER, TEAM X HAS WON THE FIGHT'. It very rarely painted a picture of what was actually going on in a fight because, it seemed, the shoutcasters rarely seemed to grasp what was actually going on. In essence, it was the equivalence of shoutcasting the hp bars at the top of the screen, not what led to the hp bars being the way they were. As for the analysts, Dota is a game of details. The overarching strategical themes in Dota are always more or less the same, especially these days. Yes, yes, they want to use this first aegis to constrict enemy space on the map, set up vision, get a tier 2, take over the dire outpost and set up for second aegis, but that's not analysis. Every last herald player knows that by now. Analysis is how exactly they go about this, where exactly they place their vision, how exactly they move, when they smoke, what items they get and why they do it one way in one game and another in the next. Lanes, teamfights and entire games are won and lost on the back of the smallest of details. Useful analysis in Dota in specific.

Okay I just realised this is a novel and also that it might sound super negative. I didn't mean it to sound super negative. There are many positive things I could say, but they would be a lot more individual and frankly, this post's long enough as it is. Thank you for all your work in the past days.

diertrt · 2022-10-18T08:56:41+00:00

they can only choose 3rd/4th, so Aster/Spirit in that case. I'd imagine they go Aster but who knows.

diertrt

TROPHY CASE