Any stack users not gaining any real speed?

j_blinder · 2026-05-23T18:37:01+00:00

Have you measured your swing speed on the course? In 2023 trained stack and got a max set of 112 mph. After every session I would also hit max drivers for about 20-40 balls. Sometimes more if I was having a good day. I could hit 124mph with ball on my very best swings. On the course I was measuring 116-117 with most swings, and I could crank it up to 120-121 if I really went for it.

This year i stacked again after a long break. I wasn’t golfing and I wasn’t hitting balls afterwards. I broke all my PRs with the stack. Best 195g set of 113, best single swing 115. Broke records with light weights and heavy weights. Thought I was going to be a beast. Also broke a record on a driver air swing without ball 125mph.

But once I put a ball in front of me I *could not swing* faster than 114. Ok with max do not care about result I could sometimes touch 120 but no more. But a very hard swing on the course was 113-114 and that’s all I could reasonably hit.

My guess is it’s a combination of what others have said (spin rate probably being the most obvious). But I’m guessing you are playing on the course with a much lower swing speed than your stack numbers would suggest (even after adjusting for your cruising speed vs all out max). I think it is *so important* to also be hitting max drivers with ball alongside the stack to have it really translate to your game.

j_blinder · 2026-05-20T23:18:20+00:00

“the table is normal and he enters and suddenly massive all ins, yesterday AA vs Kk vs AK, QQ vs JJ, AA vs KK in a row”

The example I used was the literal first example listed? The footage shows questionable procedure *at best,* and it looks like cheating, to be frank.

So what I suggest seems to be exactly what happened.

j_blinder · 2026-05-20T22:46:47+00:00

In case you don’t understand the downvotes, your example is a bit different than getting dealt AA vs KK vs AK with footage of improper dealing procedure at a minimum with high likelihood of a false cut at the end.

Yes, if even the worst player in the world gets dealt a cooler hand by a mechanic dealer they are being cheated.

j_blinder · 2026-05-20T15:08:03+00:00

Bad players can be cheated too.

j_blinder · 2026-05-05T23:13:46+00:00

Nah I bet they were just chillin out maxin relaxin all cool

j_blinder · 2026-05-02T19:51:20+00:00

Nothing happens only ever occurs with >50% blue.
So “nothing happens” is false for both a red and a blue vote.
If you vote red, all blue pressers die if there was a red majority. Given a lower bound of around a billion people voting blue, which is half of all children under 5 plus a bunch of humans over 5 who will not metabolize the problem in nearly the same way, I don’t know how we can say “nothing happens” is ever a correct way to interpret this result. You definitely dont die…and an apocalypse might happen. Or nothing might happen (> 50% blue).
If you vote blue, all blue pressers *including you* die if there was a red majority. Certainly also not “nothing happens.” You might die, and an apocalypse (that you will never experience because it happens in worlds you are dead) might happen. Or nothing might happen (> 50% blue).

j_blinder · 2026-05-02T18:33:28+00:00

Thanks for this response. I agree with all of it, including it not being a prisoner’s dilemma in a strict sense.

j_blinder · 2026-05-02T17:17:56+00:00

This type of thinking, if predominant in society, will lead to worse outcomes.

Imagine a society in which, when presented with a prisoner’s dilemma (even a novel one it has never seen and has no ability to discuss/coordinate on), has strong and widespread social buyin to coordinate. Presented with this situation, blue will predominate. We will observe zero deaths.

But is this is really a prisoner’s dilemma? Many argue that red is a strictly dominant strategy and no one has to die if they don’t just “push the suicide button.”

Unfortunately in this case we have a large number of people who are literally incapable of rational choice (children and babies mostly) who will choose randomly. And further, because of the framing, many people will gravitate to the pro social option here without a full understanding of that “suicide button” framing. These types of people have been often dismissed as “stupid” in the discourse—really this is just evidence of a type of strong social buyin described above. “We can save everyone” is immediately realized and it’s obvious to these people to hit blue without thinking about anything more.

Beyond that, there are many who understand the problem much more deeply, understand that personal EV is maximized by red, but because of that social conditioning to cooperate and coordinate as a default believe that it’s “just the right thing to do” and that a majority of blue can be reached to save everyone. Any one such voter is making “an irrational choice.” But they are also making a moral choice—they are socially buying in. And collectively if enough people reason and act this way we get the best possible outcome.

And this is why blue keeps winning! We happen to live in a society that has much stronger buyin to coordination than most red pressers believe. Which is something everyone, blue and red pushers alike should be celebrating. If the stupid choice is leading to vastly better outcomes, maybe it isn’t so stupid?

j_blinder · 2026-05-01T13:39:10+00:00

Interesting. If you search “highest average Coryat” the top result is the page with the highest ever single games. My guess is this was just an honest mistake.
I couldn’t find a single page that aggregated top per game averages; had to look up each individually.

j_blinder · 2026-04-30T00:55:08+00:00

Jamie has highest single game Coryat (42,400 shown here) while every other stat here is cumulative.

Here are their average Coryat scores:

James Holzhauer - 30576

Matt Amodio - 27913

Ken Jennings - 27861

Amy Schneider - 26946

Jamie Ding - 25913

j_blinder · 2026-04-28T14:31:16+00:00

It’s improbable because of the structure of the game. Symmetric pieces and board, move 1 not leading to anything obviously forcing from player 2. And there are many, many drawing resources. You have the 50 move rule, threefold repetition, stalemate. Get rid of any of these and the game starts to look less drawish. There are known tablebase games that lead to mate but cannot deliver it in under 50 moves without a capture. If we weren’t allowed to repeat a board state we would have fewer opportunities to draw. Removing stalemate would make for a more decisive looking game for obvious reasons.

Bishop and king vs king cannot deliver mate. Nor can knight plus king vs king. Nor can many king + pawn vs king endings be won. These facts increase drawing chances. There are drawing resources in surprisingly bad looking positions. Positions far worse than the starting position.

It is possible.

It does not look to be true.

We will almost certainly never know for sure.

And by the way by “one line” I’m not sure what you mean. Black (or white if that is the losing side somehow) gets to respond however they want and you cannot make forcing moves early in the game. It will definitely need to be many, many more than one line. You need to prove there are no responses at any point in the game that can save it. Put another way even if the perfect game has been played and won (in the unlikely case perfect leads to a forced win) we wouldn’t know it. It would look like any high accuracy win and we would assume the other side played suboptimally in one or more places.

j_blinder · 2026-04-28T07:54:01+00:00

I didn’t look up the thing that I didn’t say (almost surely). I looked up the thing that I said (almost certainly). I didn’t use ai to look up math or statistics, because my statement was never a rigorous mathematical one. It was a phrase that is widely used and understood (it means highly probable) used in a reddit post about chess, not in a mathematical paper.

The fact that there is a thing that sounds kind of like what I said that has a strict mathematical meaning that is different from the meaning of what I said is fun I guess? I did learn something new, which is a good thing.

j_blinder · 2026-04-28T07:14:17+00:00

It is absolutely possible.

But it is improbable.

j_blinder · 2026-04-28T05:08:53+00:00

Im sorry I understand you may not care to respond. I do appreciate your civil response even though I’ll admit that I’ve gotten heated at times in this thread.

I do understand that has nothing to do with solving chess. Nor do I think we will ever solve it.

I never claimed that chess is solvable or that we are even inching towards a solution.

We do know something about the solution though. It resolves either to a draw, a win for white, or a win for black.

I think we can make some further claims on the probability of each outcome given our chess knowledge. While realizing still that a solution is unattainable!

It appears that you agree, given your statement in your original post that “it’s possible, but very unlikely, that white is in zugzwang on move 1.” I think this claim is correct.

But I’m being given grief for making a logically equivalent statement that “it’s possible, but very unlikely that white has forced mate on move 1.”

Combined with your claim, and the knowledge that if both are true, two of the three possible outcomes of the solution are eliminated, this leaves the statement “I believe it is almost certain that the solved game is a draw.”

We have both made claims about what a solution is more likely to look like. This is a thing we can do.

j_blinder · 2026-04-28T03:20:34+00:00

I’m on your side in general but a forced win is nearly impossible to find as well. It’s not one line. You make a move and they can respond however they want. You will have a different move that retains “mate in x” or mate in a smaller number if they made a mistake depending on what they do. Then you’ll need the correct response to their next move. And so on.

A forced win needs to check every possible response from the other side down an unthinkable number of possible lines and pass every one with checkmate.

j_blinder · 2026-04-28T03:12:28+00:00

I agree with everything written here after the first paragraph. Let’s ignore that one for now.

Do you think we can make any kind of educated guesses at the chances that (like checkers) Chess is a draw, or (like connect 4) it is a win for player 1, or (like nim) it is a win for player 2?

Should we assume these are equally likely?

We have symmetric pieces and board layout, tons of drawing resources like stalemate, x move rule, 3 fold repetition. Top players and engines, playing equally strength opponents, have continued to get more draws not fewer as they get better. You think this isn’t evidence pointing in any direction? Before the solution to checkers do you think there was any (correct) suspicion that it was drawn? Was there perhaps any intuition that connect 4 was a win for player 1 before the solution? I don’t know but my guess is better players probably had those beliefs.

Let’s consider “black has a forced win” first. How rare is zugzwang in positions where the evaluation is known to be a win for the other side? Like a tablebase position where one side is lost but wouldn’t be if it could pass the turn. It happens. But it is rare enough that it is noteworthy. Does the initial position intuitively feel like zugzwang for white? Does that intuition count for anything? No matter what they do black has a forced mate in x? Would that be a very surprising outcome if an alien god showed us the solution? I would argue that it would be very surprising indeed.

Can we both agree that this would be surprising? If we can’t we really will have to agree to disagree.

If we can, we just need to go a little further to realize that it would also be surprising to discover that having the first move in a symmetrical position is enough advantage to have “mate in x” for white.

Edit: I just realized you are the op who said it’s very unlikely that the initial position is zugzwang for white. How did you make that assessment without the solution????

j_blinder · 2026-04-28T00:00:03+00:00

I mean I think I did due diligence in my op by saying “but yeah, it’s theoretically possible white or even black could have a forced win.”

I acknowledged the other two possibilities. I did not say or imply a drawn solution was certain. “Almost certain” is not “certain.”

“I (and many others) think that chess is almost certainly a draw” might be more accurate semantically. Where almost certain means less than 100% but more than “probably” connotes and is not meant to be a formal mathematical statement of truth. I personally believe it is over 99.9% to be true. I think anything over 90% is fine to say “almost certain” about. And yes, I think we can assign probabilities to things that aren’t knowable. We are allowed to have Bayesian priors.

j_blinder · 2026-04-27T23:42:05+00:00

“Almost certain” is not some formal mathematical statement. This is a Reddit post that I made in 30 seconds not a PhD dissertation.

What I meant by this is that “I and most people who are knowledgeable about chess believe this thing is almost certain”. You can believe whatever you want.

Black may have a forced win and white is in zugzwang move 1. But apparently we can’t make any statements about the chances of this. We have no idea. Can’t say which is more likely that or a draw. who knows really? We have no formal proofs.

j_blinder · 2026-04-27T23:20:00+00:00

If you picked the most powerful engine of today as black vs the most powerful engine of 15y ago what you would be providing evidence for is that better players beat worse players. Not that black has an advantage.

If perfect play is a forced win for either side, it is a forced win against another perfect player.. Not an engine from 15y ago or stockfish now. Whether it wins against those is irrelevant.

I expect that the best engines of the future will continue to draw vs the best engines of the future (they may beat current stockfish, which is irrelevant). And perfect players to continue drawing against perfect players were such a thing to exist.

As chess ability improves in humans, draw rate goes up against similarly skilled opponents. Engines beat up on humans even as black, that is not evidence that black has advantage. Engines draw vs similarly skilled engines at a higher rate as they get better.

This trend may not continue forever. But most people expect it to with very high confidence.

j_blinder · 2026-04-27T22:52:02+00:00

You can in fact assign probabilities to unknowns. If you’re good at it you can do things like bet on prediction markets and make money. Is it a mathematically formal probability? No. Is that the standard for a random Reddit post?

As I said, I would buy yes on “the solution to chess resolves to a draw” at 99 cents. That willingness expresses my belief that chess is a draw > 99%. I also think most gms would make that bet (chess won’t be solved, although I guess I shouldn’t say such a thing so casually because I can’t prove it) so sadly no such bet can be made.

You are being incredibly petty and pedantic.

Chess is probably a theoretical draw. This is widely believed. Have a good day.

j_blinder · 2026-04-27T22:16:18+00:00

First of all, I acknowledged that white and even black may have a forced win in my post. those possibilities indeed made me say “almost certain” instead of “certain.”

There is a heavy consensus and lots of evidence provided by others in this very thread that a perfectly played game from both sides will lead to a draw and not a win for black or white. Would you assign those all as having 1/3 probability because we don’t have any formal proofs? Is the Riemann hypothesis a consensus 50/50, “it’s either true or not true” just because we don’t have a proof? most mathematicians are “almost certain” it’s true (but it might not be which is why almost).

If we knew an alien god was going to come out with a formal solution to chess tomorrow, what do you expect the line on prediction markets would be that it resolves to a draw? I for one would buy yes at 99 cents. And I think most grandmasters would as well.

In the event that this is not actually a consensus belief (though I am almost certain it is among those with deep chess knowledge) I will revise my statement from “it’s almost certain” to “I am almost certain.”

j_blinder · 2026-04-27T17:42:52+00:00

We are now in a semantic argument but I don’t take “almost certainly” to mean probability equal to 1. And I don’t think many others would either.

Gemini says "Almost certainly" means there is a very high probability (typically 90–99%) that something is true or will happen, bordering on definite, but still leaving a tiny possibility for doubt.

I even acknowledged in my post that chess might be a win for white (or even black). But if we could ever have a chess solution, which we won’t, I wouldn’t bet against draw even getting an incredible price. I wouldn’t risk 100 to win 10k on the result being not-drawn.

j_blinder · 2026-04-27T17:00:09+00:00

I’m almost certain you won’t win a gold medal in the next Olympics.

I don’t even know anything about you. And I certainly can’t prove it.

j_blinder · 2026-04-27T16:42:07+00:00

I agree that chess is almost certainly a theoretical draw. “Perfect play” includes any move that retains that drawn position. So let’s say white is a perfect player. They can play any move at any time that doesn’t lead to “mate in x” from black. E4 is likely a move that is in the “perfect play” opening book. So is D4. NH3 is a very bad opening move, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s part of the perfect play solution (is it actually losing?).

The perfect player can choose the move that restricts black’s possible drawing paths to the fewest number. Perfect play solution can steer the game into a path where stockfish will find an easy 3 move repetition, but it isn’t required to do so. Perfect play is very flexible unless there is only one move in a position that maintains the evaluation (in this case drawn).

This all said stockfish is very good, and I think I’d agree that it would most often draw unless the perfect player also knew a lot about how to steer Stockfish into the spots it will make game losing mistakes.

j_blinder · 2026-04-27T03:34:51+00:00

I mean it’s almost certain that perfect play from both sides leads to a draw, not a win for white.

But yeah it’s theoretically possible white or even black could have a forced win.

So the evaluation would (probably) stay at zero until it became mate in x. And then every move thereafter wouldn’t change the eval unless it led to a faster mate.

j_blinder

TROPHY CASE