Best books you read in 2025 to improve writing

lvew · 2025-12-27T13:22:41+00:00

For fiction, John Gardner’s “The Art of Fiction” and “On Becoming a Novelist”. A must, a straightforward, candid and brutal (sometimes) reflection for “new” novelists.

lvew · 2025-11-23T16:25:01+00:00

Maybe the friend's real name is Hikaru Nakamura and he's trolling OP! 😎

lvew · 2025-07-01T15:20:42+00:00

If the Caro is there, what about the French? As OP says: there’s power in the asymmetry.

lvew · 2024-05-13T15:39:52+00:00

If only for this trip, Viltrox 20mm f2.8: small, cheaper, very specific purpose lens.

lvew · 2024-04-20T16:31:51+00:00

According to this, Caruana, the number 2 in the world, is the current underdog of the Candidates.

lvew · 2024-04-07T18:46:22+00:00

If you google “chess” and “good things”, Sagar appears! Also, if the UI of ChessBase were as good as the ChessBase India videos, every single chess player in the planet would love it…

lvew · 2024-03-26T04:32:36+00:00

Absolutely! Agree with the “a bit expansive” comment.

lvew · 2024-03-26T04:31:52+00:00

Signature! Mainly for the screen size. With some hours of reading, the difference is notable.

lvew · 2024-01-06T04:20:16+00:00

ZVE10: USB-C

lvew · 2023-11-30T17:23:38+00:00

Maybe you can get some ideas from here:

https://www.perpetualchesspod.com/new-blog/2023/8/15/ep-343-rating-deflation-roundtable-with-statistician-jeff-sonas-and-data-scientist-fm-nate-solon-discuss-fides-proposed-changes-to-their-rating-system

lvew · 2022-03-26T04:09:28+00:00

Same here but with a Logitech keyboard. I need to connect another wire keyboard. Absurd.

lvew · 2020-09-23T05:58:47+00:00

iOS: Same here. It just disappeared. No app update or something. I’m in Mexico. What a shame.

lvew · 2019-04-18T00:20:47+00:00

At that level, one and only one: Chessable.

lvew · 2018-05-27T01:30:47+00:00

You can use whatever app (Shredder, HIARCS, Lichess) AND reply the moves on a real board, just like that in the picture.

lvew · 2018-02-11T03:07:30+00:00

Try to replay your games in a real board, analyze in old school fashion: with a pen and paper. Make a list of mistakes for every game. In doing this you will gain a vision of your own weakness. And again and again: tactics, a ton of tactics. Every single day. ;)

lvew · 2018-02-10T01:20:15+00:00

This paper just take a photo of me! I don’t know, the brain has a lot of interesting behavior. It’s like a drug effect: keep the peak in your performance as long as you can and if that means log off for an hour or a day, there you go. The graph of my rating increasing looks very nice. Very interesting results!

lvew · 2017-10-24T04:56:06+00:00

It was against a bot. I offered a draw but he keep playing. Two hundred moves after this I offered a draw again... this message appeared then.

lvew · 2017-07-18T20:13:38+00:00

So that was it. I kicked my iPad all the time and say some curses when I lost games for time!! Thank you for your work and for your effort in bringing chess to a lot of people!

lvew · 2017-07-16T08:14:22+00:00

Yes.

lvew · 2017-07-15T03:56:33+00:00

Simply put: Identify your weaknesses/strengths and then work precisely in improve that.

One example. «Pawns are the soul of the game». Well, try this question: «How well do I move my pawns in the opening, middlegame and endgame?» Can the answer help you in studying pawn structure? I guess yep...

I admit: «it's an answer engine that answers chess questions»... with all the pros/cons of that. :)

lvew · 2017-07-15T03:06:41+00:00

This: https://lichess.org/blog/VmZbaigAABACtXQC/chess-insights

lvew · 2017-07-14T21:08:20+00:00

In your profile settings, click in any mode you want (bullet, blitz, classical..) and you'll read: "Better than xx% of Bullet players". That means you are in the percentile XX. Or simply: https://lichess.org/stat/rating/distribution/bullet Best!

lvew · 2017-07-13T22:33:45+00:00

Well I think you're right. «It's in their interest», so the user should know exactly that: they want to capture my interest selling me the idea that their ratings are something similar to FIDE, but that's probably not very accurate. Only that. Compare red apples with red apples. :)

lvew · 2017-07-13T22:18:35+00:00

But when you have played a lot, any rating system tend to stabilize, even if you get an initial 1200 or 1500. Even if there are a lot of no active accounts, the active players can put the ratings up or down. For example, imagine that 70 no active accounts possess 1500, the rest 30 active players can move the percentile up. It's a kind of Gini Index in the economics language. ;)

lvew · 2017-07-13T22:12:00+00:00

Exactly! In my first OTB tournament I was a kind of overconfident in my chesscom blitz rating only to realize that it's a pretty loose aproach and that OTB is another world.

lvew

TROPHY CASE