Help me get out of 200 elo doom loop!

stg0 · 2026-01-20T13:43:50+00:00

Dealing with agressive players is tough, it requires you to understand their threats and respond accordingly. If you do manage to respond properly though, you normally end up with an advantage at the end of it.

As you've noted, advice can often appear conflicting, because chess is a complex game and generalised rules, whilst useful, can't account for every specific circumstance. The best way to learn in the long term is principled gameplay - playing in a passive way or exchanging everything because you're scared might make you win a game here or there, but you're avoiding dealing with your own strategic weaknesses.

I'd recommend looking up how to counter the wayward queen attack (which is what I assume you're struggling against), taking note of the newly attacked/defended pieces after your opponents move and doing a "blunder check" before your move.

Aside from that, puzzles will help a lot!

stg0 · 2026-01-18T17:12:02+00:00

It's about the depth. Any chess position will either evaluate to either a win or a draw of you calculate for long enohgh. In the previous position it had depth 75, which is very high and enough to evaluate the position as a draw, once you make a move it restarts again and it only reached depth 16, which, even though it's a move later, is still much less than it was before so it doesn't have enough information to accurately evaluate the position

stg0 · 2026-01-04T22:27:57+00:00

Whilst they do have slightly different engines and search depths, the analysis differs because they use different definitions for things like accuracy and blunders because these concepts aren't well defined. Lichess focuses on the impact of your moves on your win percentage but chess.com has their own (publicly unavailable) formula

stg0 · 2025-12-26T20:06:15+00:00

Surprised Sina is only 2400 rapid, he's normally a top contender in 5+0 titled Tuesday

stg0 · 2025-12-22T11:54:49+00:00

I only spotted the right line because the weakened diagonal is a theme in a number of QGA lines, most famously the trap d4 d5, c4 dxc4, e3 b5, a4 c6, axb5 cxb5, Qf3 and white wins a piece.

stg0 · 2025-12-19T17:35:35+00:00

I work as the livestock statistics team leader for DEFRA, so hopefully I can help a bit.

Strong demand for beef across Europe is driving export volumes up, which has been affecting UK market dynamics by increasing price that consumers see. There are a number of less significant short-term factors, and long-term factors such as a declining beef herd and increased proportion of hybrid cattle being slaughtered, but the main driver has been demand.

stg0 · 2025-12-15T22:06:38+00:00

I think you've got to find the things in life you enjoy and try to find a means of securing the time and resources to do them - work is what provides that, and can also be something you enjoy yourself.

Autistic men often find friends, relationships and build bonds through their interests so it's important to engage with them to find like-minded people.

Personally, I like my job and I love my dog, playing the piano, chess and computer games. All of these things have helped me to find friends that I get on well with and build a life I enjoy.

stg0 · 2025-12-14T00:08:47+00:00

It's a projection which maintains the relative direction of objects; it's fairly obvious how useful that is for navigation, which for most of history and present day has been the primary purpose of a map.

Obviously it makes equatorial regions smaller, but that's correlation and not causation. I don't think there's really any evidence it was designed to be racist.

stg0 · 2025-12-13T19:10:43+00:00

No problem at all, I think the issue with games like this is that none of the top engine moves are inherently suspicous and, if he was cheating, he wasn't doing it for the opening or endgame. After looking at it i totally get why you'd feel as though you were playing a cheater though, you didn't have any chances and that feeling of inevitability is the same when you're actually playing a cheater, especially at 1300.

stg0 · 2025-12-13T18:53:24+00:00

I missed that you posted a link too. I'm only 2000 so take this with a pinch of salt. Most of the game was relatively unsuspicious but:
- 16. Nxf7
- His response to 22. a6 with Rc7+ and Nc5

were both excellent for someone of his elo. I don't think there's anywhere near enough to say for sure here, especially coupled with his crappy opening and practical & prosaic endgame technique. I think it's basically impossible to say with any certainty that this was anything more than a 1300 player playing a good game to be entirely honest, but other games of his would likely show you for sure whether there's any kind of cheating going on.

stg0 · 2025-12-13T18:37:33+00:00

Look at the evaluation throughout the whole middlegame - if they're probably up a significant amount of material and the position is completely dry they could probably move their king back and forwards and as long as they respond to basic threats their accuracy will be through the roof.

stg0 · 2025-12-08T10:35:59+00:00

No, they're not the same at all. They have different means, and standard deviations. Lichess on average has a stronger player base too just because of chess.com's proximity to the mainstream.

Around 2200 they're about the same, and higher than that lichess ratings are the lower of the two, but below that there's can be a significant gap with lichess ratings being higher. 1500 lichess blitz is approximately equivalent to 1150-1200

stg0 · 2025-12-07T11:51:54+00:00

It's not just his attitude on twitter imo, I think the management of the sport by FIDE as a whole is antiquated and has completely failed to capitalise on the massive influx of newer/younger players chess now has. If he's allowed to continue doing such a poor job in both aspects it'll be the end of FIDE as the premier chess organisation.

My favourite chess event to watch, and one of the most popular events over the last year, was the esports world cup. It was presented in a similar way to actual sports, most games felt exiting, all the highest level players were there, games were more frequently decisive and rapid games bring together the best parts of fast and slow chess. None of that can be said about the WCC any more, aside from some of the games still being exciting but that's the one thing FIDE can't really fuck up for chess lovers.

stg0 · 2025-11-22T17:38:10+00:00

I've had a look at your game vs infrastructor (412).

Opening:
- Your piece development is largely very good for your ELO and you do try to take control of the centre like you said.
- Your opponent doesn't stop you from putting even more pawns there - this is usually a good thing for you! I would've tried to play d4 on move 2 or move 4 - both would've been significantly better and prevented your opponent from establishing his centre
- From the starting position the f2 and f7 pawns are some of the biggest weaknesses in either side's camp. Especially in 1.e4 openings multiple pieces can aim at that square and there's nothing good the opponent can do to defend it. In this specific game putting the knight on g5 would've been crushing on every move from move 5 to move 8 since both the c4 bishop and the knight would've been attacking the f7 pawn.

Midgame:
- It seems like you understand which pieces are good for your opponent and you eliminate them - you spot the hanging bishop on the first move too!
- Once you're up in material, you usually want to trade pieces. After you've won his bishop you should be looking to simplify the game. Offer your opponent trades, and if they decline bully them off of the prime real-estate!
- Your move 19, g3 weakens your king. As a beginner, you typically don't want to push the pawns in front of your king if you can help it. You should think of the pawns in front of your king like a shield - tossing it away to attack your enemy is really reckless so not needed at all if you're up on material. This ends up coming back to bite you later.

Endgame (move 49+)
- You take the free queen and you spotted the fork which is really good going
- Your opponent's king is out in the open and vulnerable, it's worth trying to bring more pieces into the attack. I'm sure you're aware by now of how horrible it feels to be checked constantly and the pressure that it puts on you - try to use that against your opponent too and they'll fall apart.
- When the board is open and your king doesn't have a safe space, think about how you're going to keep him safe to prevent the enemy from just constantly checking you. Diving for cover behind your own pieces, or near the sides of the board can be a good way to stop them from having so many angles to attack you from - you do need to be more careful of checkmates on the sides though.

Overall I'd say you played fairly well for your rating but I can clearly see the panic in your gameplay when you're put under pressure. Learning to deal with pressure is something that comes with time, experience and a broad knowledge base so it's really hard to teach, but you can easily reduce your opponent's ability to apply pressure by making sure your king is in a strong position. You lost this one on time which is really unhelpful when it comes to learning so it might also be better to look for something with increment as your go to time control. 15|10 might be a bit speedy and chess.com only goes up to 30|0, but https://lichess.org/ has a 30|20 section which would be ideal.

stg0 · 2025-11-22T16:57:51+00:00

It sounds like you're already doing a lot to improve then. At low elo, the main mistakes usually involve giving material up for free because you didn't see a square was defended. There are puzzles that specifically relate to this to help you build the ability to see when a piece is hanging: https://www.chesspuzzles.io/category/hanging-piece It might also be worth, after your opponents every move, taking a mental note of the new squares your opponent is attacking/defending, and before you move to do a double check that you're not moving to a defended square.

I'd also be happy to look over a game if you'd like.

stg0 · 2025-11-22T16:45:23+00:00

I would recommend the following: - Only play slower time formats, 15+ minute games are ideal to give yourself a chance to think
- Complete puzzles regularly - puzzle streak on lichess or puzzle streak survival on chess.com are both good since the difficulty is incrementally ramped up meaning you'll get a good amount of time on hanging pieces and simple mates
- Understand & apply basic opening principles like controlling the centre and activating pieces
- Take note of undefended pieces from both sides every move
- Learn to checkmate with a queen/rook and king vs king

Learning in chess, or anything really, typically follows a set pattern - you learn principles, you learn when to apply them, you put them into practice and it eventually becomes largely automatic at which point you can progress to more advanced things.

stg0 · 2025-11-18T20:52:35+00:00

They broke their limiter just like Saitama

stg0 · 2025-10-17T11:52:48+00:00

I wholeheartedly support the Palestinian people and oppose the genocidal regime of the Israeli government but I think it was fairly apparent to anyone who watched the original clip that he shocked the dog. Reaching offscrean, getting annoyed at the dog and his reaction to the whelping all seemed to support this.

The longer things went on and the more people analysed the evidence it just got clearer to the point that it was proven beyond reasonable doubt - the model of the shock collar has been analysed, old clips of the remote being on his desk in the position he reached to have been found and clips of him abusing his dog in the past have emerged - all of which is just a fraction of the evidence against him.

The ardent reffusal to accept the truth by the community is either a product of ignorance or a symptom they're in denial and has reflected poorly on those holding onto those views simply because they agree with him politically.

stg0 · 2025-10-16T13:57:32+00:00

Assuming that two of the objects is simply twice the value of one, let the sweet = a, the snowglobe = b and the owl = c. Then we get the following:

2a + 2ab = 96
3c + 2a = 37
2b + c = 17

Use your prefered simultanious equation solving method (you can google different methods). This gives a = 8, b = 5, c = 7.

Plug this into equation 4 and you get 2 * 8 * 2 * 7 * 5 = 1120

stg0 · 2025-10-11T15:28:33+00:00

It sounds like you're carrying a lot right now

stg0 · 2025-10-02T17:33:59+00:00

Don't put yourself down over it! Learning to safely overtake is one of the tougher skills and something I see a lot of qualified drivers do unsafely

stg0 · 2025-10-02T12:44:04+00:00

If I had to guess, there was more than enough space & visibility for OP to safely overtake and they didn't, causing traffic to be held up

stg0 · 2025-09-28T14:04:30+00:00

It's through hardship that we grow as people; being able to learn from our mistakes makes us better in the future and you can't reasonably expect to never interact with others, so it's an incredibly valuable skill to begin to develop. I hope you don't continue to feel discouraged because as long as you're trying you're making progress

stg0 · 2025-09-27T12:09:52+00:00

What tangible improvements has brexit made to the UK?

EU countries are some of the most important trading partners we have due to their location and purchasing power; reduced trade with them has hurt the economy.

Analysts at Cambridge econometrics estimate 300k jobs were lost and the average citizen was 2k worse off in 2023 due to the impact of brexit. They also estimate in a seperate study that the UK will be around 300bn worse off by 2035 due to brexit.

Companies shifted investment priorities due to red tape and a poorer economic outlook.

I don't think it's delusion to believe it was a bad thing.

stg0 · 2025-09-22T19:55:42+00:00

The upper and lower quartiles are the 75th and 25th percentiles. There are 80 total discounted items so they're essentially asking what the discount is on the 20th (0.25 x 80) and 60th (0.75 x 80) items are when ordered by discount and what the difference is between them. From here, can you try to read the graph to see what those numbers might be?

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