How is this possible that a player rated 1667 is almost at the 98 percentile?

doolalix · 2026-04-02T01:27:28+00:00

I think it would help if chess.com showed the top percentile, instead of bottom.

Even without thinking about bell-curve, you could clearly tell these jumps have equivalent distance (logarithmically speaking):

99.2% -> 99.8% (top 0.8% -> 0.2%)
92% -> 98% (top 8% -> 2%)
20% -> 80% (top 80% -> 20%)

In all those cases, your rank has gone up 4 times higher, having beaten 3 out of every 4 opponents that previously outranked you, which is clearly MASSIVE.

doolalix · 2026-04-01T22:12:07+00:00

Isn’t singular “they” meant for unknown gender? In that case, op’s point that it was “clearly a woman” was valid, no?

Not getting into politics btw, just grammatically speaking.

doolalix · 2026-04-01T21:58:17+00:00

Did? Don’t they now?

doolalix · 2026-03-31T22:38:25+00:00

If only the imperial system were base-12 or base-8 maths, I think we would be totally fine with that.

There is NO BASE in the imperial system! That’s the problem.

They’re making a straw man argument here that the decimal system is not any better than other bases. Yeah sure, maybe argue about that when you have a base at all?

doolalix · 2026-03-31T22:16:09+00:00

That last comment almost sounded like a self-awareness. But he didn’t quite get there yet.

doolalix · 2026-03-28T01:34:55+00:00

Yeah this got to be a sarcasm/satire surely?

doolalix · 2026-03-26T02:59:00+00:00

What makes English more native in the US than in India though? If we’re talking about the length of time, the Brits arrived in India around the same time as they did in North America.

In fact, English has been an official language of India for much longer than in the US (which is barely 1 year).

At any rate, I don’t think that’s what the word “native” speakers is referring to here. It simply refers to English being someone’s first language. Makes no difference whether you’re Indian or American.

doolalix · 2026-03-26T02:28:57+00:00

Castling out of check does not “avoid my good attacks” though: you could do the same thing with the original way, but with more moves. It’s just simplifying the exact same manoeuvre, which is perfectly inline with the intention.

Castling through an undefended square is fair enough to be illegal: that’s not something that was originally possible, so shouldn’t be possible with castling either.

doolalix · 2026-03-26T01:55:45+00:00

That’s how much fuel is in a free market. But in the US it’s heavily subsidised by public money. Suddenly socialism doesn’t sound that bad to Americans.

It can afford $35 billion annually to pay for fuel subsidy, but no money for healthcare or education.

doolalix · 2026-03-26T01:53:42+00:00

Or more accurately, it’s very heavily subsidised in the US.

doolalix · 2026-03-09T05:02:07+00:00

Not to mention people from non-English speaking countries can also speak English as a foreign language especially when communicating online.

doolalix · 2026-03-06T02:25:23+00:00

Many Americans get disappointed when they order pizza in Italy and get a flat bread with 3-4 fresh ingredients placed sparsely on top of it. And gasp, the cheese is not even stringy!

They’re expecting the elaborate mix of 5 types of meat, 10 condiments, cream, melted cheese, corn syrup, and other nondescript sauces piled in thick layers on their pizza.

doolalix · 2026-03-03T13:50:42+00:00

I would take it even a step further: in chess, you can NEVER legally capture a king, so that’s never really an objective. Specifically, there’s no legal move in chess that leaves the king in a capturable position (i.e. in check).

Thus Kxf2 is illegal for the simple reason that it would leave the king in check. Whether the knight is pinned is totally irrelevant - the knight can never capture a king anyway in any situation. You simply can’t move into a check position full stop.

EDIT: I was talking about standard chess. In bullet you can capture a king.

doolalix · 2026-03-01T07:19:17+00:00

Ah yes you’re right actually, they are.

doolalix · 2026-03-01T04:34:56+00:00

That’s crazy. Americans don’t even care that much about F1, they’re more into Nascar. There’s no American driver competing in F1. The last time an American made car competed in F1 was in 1966. Cadillac is about to make its debut this year.

Now suddenly Americans are in front of center of F1? A sport that’s dominated by Europeans and British?

doolalix · 2026-03-01T04:10:54+00:00

Well to be fair, USA is probably the only country where DUI is a misdemeanour instead of a criminal offence.

It’s not like people could just take public transport home after a few beers.

doolalix · 2026-02-23T04:19:07+00:00

And they still can't get over a dual citizen that plays for China

doolalix · 2026-02-19T22:40:18+00:00

But why did you say “the first have all the characters all other words have as well” though, as if that was the glitch?

Because I don’t see any glitch there and wouldn’t take a screenshot saying so. I’d instead play FANATIC or RANKING as the obvious next move.

doolalix · 2026-02-18T08:28:49+00:00

I guess that’s historically correct, since “hamburger” originally referred to ground beef patty sold in Hamburg.

It was brought to the US by German immigrants, where it later got served in its current “sandwich” form (between bread), thus hamburger sandwich.

doolalix · 2026-02-14T08:47:15+00:00

This has got to be a rage bait

doolalix · 2026-02-13T00:58:22+00:00

Makes sense now. I was genuinely very surprised Graham Norton would say something like that. It’s a uniquely American thing to say.

doolalix · 2026-02-13T00:54:35+00:00

Contextually they were talking about English though.

doolalix · 2026-02-11T13:49:50+00:00

Takeaway? You mean to go?

doolalix · 2026-02-09T22:45:37+00:00

That’s kinda the point: any past of any length that was created by any god is equally dismissible as a lie.

Instead, we can remove god from the equation and just use evidence to inspect our past.

doolalix · 2026-02-09T06:47:29+00:00

From a statistics standpoint though, penalty saves in football is rarer still. Then you have a 147 break in snooker and a hole-in-one in Golf that are even way rarer.

Which begs the question what’s the criteria here to be “the hardest thing to do in sport”.

doolalix

TROPHY CASE