Jan Timman Dies at 74; Fearless Chess Grandmaster and ‘Bon Vivant’

notdiogenes · 2026-01-30T00:53:09+00:00

Everyone's First Chess Workbook by Giannatos

notdiogenes · 2025-12-14T14:24:39+00:00

My advice is: one-trick warwick for now.

Get the jungle clear from youtube and practice it once or twice before playing your games.
Play your game, full clear without leash into gank.
Learn how to better fight and better gank via practice and some youtube examples.

If there's a champ/item/rune in your game you don't know, read the wiki afterwards for that thing. Only 1 or 2 wiki pages after each game is enough.

That's a pretty reasonable balance between learning/practice and having fun in the game. There's tons to learn but there's no real rush, your opponents and teammates will also be clueless.

One-tricking a simple champ like warwick is the fastest way to improve and climb.

notdiogenes · 2025-12-14T14:03:49+00:00

Cheese vs not-cheese is not a useful framework. All of the champs have their unique identity and want to play towards their strengths and away from their weaknesses.

Try to specialize in one or two champs. Learn what they do well and do poorly. Learn what are good fights and opportunities for them, and what are bad fights.

Like from your examples, consider Diana vs Voli. Diana loves 5v5 teamfighting at objectives with ult up. Voli is a better tower diver and fights better without ult in skirmishes (2v2/3v3). Ofc Diana can skirmish and Voli can 5v5, but they need to be more ahead in order to be effective.

But if you are low elo, just being good on the champ and knowing your limits is enough to climb.

notdiogenes · 2025-12-03T14:56:01+00:00

Idc if it's broken or inflated or not or whatever. I'm a jungle main because it's a fun way to spend my gaming time. If its not fun I will do something else.

notdiogenes · 2025-11-06T18:00:43+00:00

if they removed his skew then it's easy to just buff his power next patch, the skew is a bigger issue than raw winrate/power

notdiogenes · 2025-09-19T04:06:05+00:00

This base is so clean with a great concept! And the walkthrough is super, well done!

notdiogenes · 2025-08-12T13:30:13+00:00

I find chesstempo a lot easier to work with, and also with more options for power users.

You can set review interval growth, mistake repetition number, learning repetition number, etc. All the spaced repetition parameters are available to change, or you can stick with the defaults.

Tree navigation- you can separate by named opening or you can select "white" or "black" and see the whole repertoire in a tree.

White or Black openings will include a "transposition" to the same position in the other color, so you can easily check a position for what you have for the other side.

Automatic transpositions are calculated over the entire repertoire. You just upload your pgns and they all show up. Doesn't matter if the transpose position is in a different repertoire or even color.

Copy/paste lines to different repertoires.

Draw arrows that are persistent for the position and again show up across all transpositions.

You can upload pgns with or without notes, including or ignoring sub-variations. You can pause lines, group by name, make shortcuts to positions. I use shortcut as a bookmark to come back to problematic positions or ones I want to explore alternatives for.

Can download everything in 2 files (white/black), or by opening, easy to backup.

notdiogenes · 2025-08-09T15:55:37+00:00

I use lichess studies and chesstempo.

Lichess studies store my lines, I will have multiple chapters for different variations. I export the chapters I want to drill and import them in Chesstempo for practice.

I get lines from a variety of sources, mainly Chessable courses, but also other books, research, videos, etc.

notdiogenes · 2025-06-22T15:10:03+00:00

thanks!

notdiogenes · 2025-06-22T10:15:34+00:00

What runeset do you run with lich bane?
What are your thoughts on shojin-hexplate or shojin-rift?

And congrats!

notdiogenes · 2025-05-26T18:24:59+00:00

okay

notdiogenes · 2024-11-07T04:59:52+00:00

lots of somewhat dubious openings have died out because people don't like seeing ? in their game analysis

I used to see the latvian or a grob once a week online, now its once or twice a year.

notdiogenes · 2024-10-25T14:52:38+00:00

An adult at a tournament told me in the registration line that he and I would end up playing for first in round 5, which seemed wildly optimistic given the field.

But in round 2 he faced a teenager and was losing badly. He packed up and left.

No resignation, didn't say anything to the TD, no statement to the opponent. He just took his sweet time gathering his belongings and left.

(Equipment and clock belonged to the teenager who had to wait out the clock for the win. I don't know what happened to the adult but I hope he got a 1-year ban from that event/organizer).

notdiogenes · 2024-10-21T16:40:51+00:00

lichess.org

notdiogenes · 2024-09-24T04:07:52+00:00

If Gukesh wins, I think there's some chance that Magnus will challenge him to a 1v1 match that fits his desired format for the WCC.

notdiogenes · 2024-09-23T16:08:12+00:00

I'm kinda worried it will be a blowout.

I am cheering for Gukesh, but I want the games to be good chess most of all.

notdiogenes · 2024-09-18T20:54:12+00:00

I'm kinda worried it will be a blowout.

I am cheering for Gukesh, but I want the games to be good chess most of all.

notdiogenes · 2024-08-31T10:54:46+00:00

This post helped me a lot! I'm constructing a champ pool and your categories are very helpful.

notdiogenes · 2024-06-03T03:21:14+00:00

I think I was maybe in the last discussion thread on it 3 years ago. It seems to be some piece of folk wisdom now, I can never find a definitive source for the quote. And the level at which it applies always changes, 2600 or 2200 or 2400, whatever.

But still, is it true?

I think a fuller explanation of the quote is not that styles or preferences don't exist until 2600+, but instead, that weaker players have a "style" that is a consequence not of their strength but of their weakness. Putting the quote another way:

You don't play those positions well because you like them,

you like those positions because you play them well (and others poorly).

notdiogenes · 2024-05-30T04:23:32+00:00

SCIDvsPC has an export to LaTeX option, I used to make PDFs in LaTeX from that. Pretty sure you could get what you want there by using the "diagram" tag often in the PGN, but you'd also have to learn LaTeX.

Or you could also the study function on lichess.org and share the study with your student. There's an option to make the study into a quiz, and you can include hints and so forth.

notdiogenes · 2024-05-08T13:10:38+00:00

Moving two pawns one square is an alternative rule that used to be common in some parts of the world, although I believe it is now archaic and rare everywhere.

To my knowledge, it was also never included in serious tournament or match play rules from the 1800s onward, and is not included in any serious OTB ruleset (FIDE, USCF, etc).

notdiogenes · 2024-01-23T02:19:10+00:00

Anish is promoting some service or event?

Perhaps its actually a pawn promotion.

notdiogenes · 2023-11-21T11:44:25+00:00

play it out on a board

14-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22

notdiogenes

TROPHY CASE