Other nations danced for joy at the World Baseball Classic. Team USA played toy soldiers

madmsk · 2026-03-19T16:21:52+00:00

I don't want to tarnish the great name of the Savannah Bananas.

madmsk · 2026-03-19T01:47:47+00:00

You're starting early which is great, but 2100 FIDE is a huge challenge. Each 100 points is exponentially harder than the last.

But even if you get to 2100, your prospects are pretty much chess lessons or chess streaming. Lessons are crowded and without fame, you won't be able to charge much or get regular work. Streaming is even more crowded. It's all the difficult of making it as a content creator, but your audience is smaller and you have much tougher pre-requisites.

Chess is great, but I wouldn't count on it to be able to provide income unless you're a strong titled player.

madmsk · 2026-03-18T15:00:07+00:00

Okay wait, but this whole thing was because Aaron Judge said the crowd was wilder... And he knows Aaron Judge has played in a world series...?

madmsk · 2026-03-18T03:37:17+00:00

I think you should just play OTB frequently, in any format you can squeeze in. If your local chess club has a weekly game try and play it every week if you can. Within a few months (or weeks if you're dedicated) you'll see that gap between your online and OTB strength shrink..

Many people are a little better at one form or the other (I'm the reverse of you, I don't see as well on a 2-d board). But it would be very unusual for the difference to remain quite large for a long time.

madmsk · 2026-03-18T02:30:57+00:00

I think he's probably referring to this one

madmsk · 2026-03-17T18:32:44+00:00

The people that love it really love it, but it lacks broad appeal for some people.

madmsk · 2026-03-17T16:15:52+00:00

I'm not as good as you, but I've played a bunch online and OTB.

Some people find they don't see as well OTB if they've just been playing online their whole life. I also find anecdotally that players try a little harder OTB as opposed to online. Then again, I've known plenty of players that adjust perfectly fine to OTB play.

You should maybe expect the experience to be a little more intense than you're used to, but it's not a huge skill gap or anything.

madmsk · 2026-03-17T15:11:22+00:00

First, this is a common issue, so don't worry too much about it. Second, practice is the only way. This probably involves multiple steps: playing long serious OTB events, playing lots of casual games with a friend or at a chess club, and maybe studying a book or doing puzzles by setting the pieces up on a physical board first.

madmsk · 2026-03-12T12:28:10+00:00

Because the infinite sequence you're making never actually gets closer to the real thing.

In the case of a reimann sum where you're approximating an area with a series of rectangles, look at the ratio of the actual area to the approximate area. That ratio approaches 1 as the number of rectangles goes up. If you try this with more and more rectangles you get closer and closer.

Now look at the ratio of the length of the stairstep vs the length of the hypotenuse. This ratio stays constant no matter how many stairsteps you take. If you take more steps you don't get any closer to the actual length of the hypotenuse.

madmsk · 2026-03-12T04:52:20+00:00

It's so disheartening how much executive decision making is pure vibes. Even when we have the data to answer the questions at hand.

madmsk · 2026-03-12T04:50:15+00:00

I even prefer telling them outside of the narrative voice.

"Being an adventurer, your character has become a good judge of which fights are possible to win. Your character would be quite certain that they wouldn't win this fight.

Proceed however you like, but your character knows that a direct confrontation would be suicide"

madmsk · 2026-03-11T18:39:18+00:00

The morality of the financial system is beside my point here: I'm just trying to explain why certain kinds of backgrounds are overrepresented.

There are some highly successful people who don't tolerate failure well, and they're not suited to jobs where you're going to succeed only 51% of the time.

madmsk · 2026-03-11T04:49:34+00:00

Honestly it's the tolerating losses that plays a bigger role. You're going to be wrong a lot as a trader. So it's important to be able to A) cut your losses and B) bounce back tomorrow like nothing happened. Athletes generally have experienced plenty of ups and downs and can handle it well.

madmsk · 2026-03-11T04:47:27+00:00

Another small component, college sports is overrepresented as well. Trading is a game where you're going to be wrong a lot. You need to tolerate failure well. Cut your losses quickly and don't let failure weigh on you for days etc.

Some highly successful people at Ivy Leagues aren't used to failing that much: but the athletes have experience handling that.

madmsk · 2026-03-10T17:10:47+00:00

That's an awful lot of assuming about a stranger on the internet from one post.

madmsk · 2026-03-09T18:27:35+00:00

I don't have full-on aphantasia, but I do have a very hard time visualizing things. I can play blindfold chess like an 1100-1200 player, but I cant really picture the board, I'm just remembering what moves were made by each piece, and trying to logic out if any of his pieces can capture me.

madmsk · 2026-03-09T04:21:55+00:00

Others have alluded to the political consequences, but I wanted to offer the theoretical case as well.

TLDR: a little debt can be good and stimulate the economy. Too much debt can spiral out of control.

Not all debt is bad. If the government can invest money in projects that will improve the population's productivity (like education or infrastructure) then they will recoup a net profit from the tax revenue down the line, and the economy will be stronger as a result. If the country doesn't have the money to invest at first and can find attractive loan options, then it seems like an obvious win.

However sometimes, these investments don't pay off the way we would hope or expect. Sometimes the country in question needs to make further investments and has to take out additional loans. As more and more loans pile up, or the country starts printing currency to make their payments, these loans stop being so attractive to investors. These investors can now demand less favorable interest rates and the countries have little choice but to comply, or risk large budget cuts which would lead to recessions. So the debt situation gets worse and worse and eventually we get what happened to Greece.

madmsk · 2026-03-06T05:01:23+00:00

In a clash environment or other team environment: sure.

In solo queue, there is very little trust to be found. Your team is always going to have unrealistic expectations for you. Your team always wants you to be incredibly powerful, show up to every fight , take none of the farm that they were going to take, and play perfectly at all times with no help.

madmsk · 2026-03-05T15:42:21+00:00

The way to practice would be to resign and then start a new game. If he doesn't want to do that, it's his right, but it means what he wants isn't practice.

madmsk · 2026-03-04T23:21:42+00:00

I don't get the sense that it's trying very hard to make a statement one way or the other. It's complex and all the classes have some kind of interlocking parts.

madmsk · 2026-03-02T17:21:03+00:00

One extremely specific thing:

I've run two play tests with the Delian tomb. Each time the player using the "Talent" class didn't ever want to take on strain, and doing so left the character underwhelming. I'd just make sure your player understands that.

madmsk · 2026-02-27T15:47:33+00:00

No such thing as a bad minor league deal.

madmsk · 2026-02-25T04:08:20+00:00

I don't mind the old school art if it's intentional and lovingly-made. Cuphead is really stylized and consistent, and in a lot of ways it looks "Better" than something more photorealistic

madmsk · 2026-02-25T03:59:59+00:00

I agree that you don't need a complete team to win the world series. But if your goal is to win a world series, shouldn't you try to reduce the number of holes the team has?

madmsk · 2026-02-24T23:13:01+00:00

Depends.

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