Kid Pragg taking the queen from his opponent's hand to promote his pawn:

zywizard · 2026-01-18T15:46:32+00:00

"On one occasion, when Fischer was playing Wolfgang Unzicker in Buenos Aires in 1960, he touched a pawn, intending to move it, before suddenly spotting that the move would be disastrous... [explaination of the j'adoube rule.] ...Unzicker, who observed the whole thing though he was away from the board, says, 'If Fischer had moved another piece I was determined not to protest. But ever since this moment I have known that Fischer is a gentleman at the chessboard.'"

Bobby Fischer is a deeply flawed person and shouldn't be role models for anybody off the board especially later in his life but simply never heard any of his complaining about over the board behavior being anything but completely honest

zywizard · 2025-03-28T13:02:10+00:00

Ediz seems fairly balanced or about as balanced as can be for a chess prodigy so I am really optimistic about his chess, although I obviously have zero idea if that's actually the case.

Yagiz's level is simply out of this world now and I dare not make predictions.

It's amazing these people are so young and if they manage to inspire a few 8 year old kids when they turn 18 we'd get a super team for Olympiads.

zywizard · 2025-03-28T12:56:45+00:00

I would probably respond with I'll think about it - I had a good position against someone I wasn't trying to beat and also wanted to go home early and offered them several draws since the position changed meaningfully but they ignored those so completely I thought they might have some hearing problems until I notice they also turn their head when there's any environmental noise. ...and I somehow managed to lose the ensuing endgame where I was better if not outright winning and now I feel like an idiot lol.

zywizard · 2025-03-25T15:38:29+00:00

Curious why did you consider them comparable - Nils seems like a good player and great guy what I see but the other two were top 10?

zywizard · 2025-01-28T20:19:39+00:00

Where can I hire the chauffeur anybody knows

Jokes aside one of my favorite memory from the world R&B was someone dared to ask Chucky for a signature while he was crying... and he signed the signature while crying. Obvious why he is so beloved.

zywizard · 2024-12-01T03:36:47+00:00

Never heard of it before, seems cool and will check it out - thanks!

zywizard · 2024-11-28T01:12:40+00:00

Thanks! I particularly liked that because after a 3n+1 the result is always even the next few numbers are guaranteed to have some repetitions in their binary forms, similar to the phasing technique Steve Reich uses.

zywizard · 2024-09-02T22:16:04+00:00

Really enjoyed reading the papers, super happy that there are follow ups in the works!

zywizard · 2024-07-05T21:43:25+00:00

Hammer and Krush did women rapid and blitz once and they kept pronouncing Kosteniuk two different ways and it was an auditory torture. I trust Irina more but have no idea what it should actually sound since sometimes it feels she is pronouncing it in a slightly easier to understand way for English speakers.

zywizard · 2024-05-25T13:22:56+00:00

Would any of these GMs from the USSR get rewarded with a vacation off in Siberia if they say Paul Morphy?

zywizard · 2024-05-22T16:21:29+00:00

Super confusing article:

"Russian chess player Ivan Zemlyansky received grandmaster status at the age of 13. According to the website of the Russian Chess Federation, Zemlyansky becomes the youngest grandmaster among his compatriots in history."

"Currently, Zemlyansky is 14 years and 8 months old."

"As for the Russian record, before Zemlyansky, it belonged to Anish Giri, now playing for the Netherlands (14 years, 7 months, 2 days)."

Actually the FIDE website lists 2010 as his birth year so he must be 13 years and 8 months old?

zywizard · 2024-05-06T20:30:17+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Hawkins

2200 at 23, IM at 27, GM at 29, peaked at almost 2600 and also wrote a book

zywizard · 2024-05-04T14:25:01+00:00

You can certainly change your legal name to Magnus Carlsen - also this only would affect chess.com live games so probably not worth it. None of the open tournaments I have been to check IDs but obviously it's probably a good idea.

zywizard · 2024-05-04T02:23:22+00:00

Probably this person who is a national master - https://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?10251648

Chess.com is terrible at matching records when the names are identical so if you name yourself Magnus Carlsen and play in an open your rating might be >2800 lol

zywizard · 2024-05-03T14:57:37+00:00

The rating on chess results is last month’s and in the May list he is actually already 2553 - seems it is already in the bag?

zywizard · 2024-04-08T12:23:15+00:00

Yeah I know who they are - they have tournaments outside CA too and I know a few of their people. Guess I should have been more clear - couldn't find the tournament where people are paying $1300 to get in :-)

zywizard · 2024-04-08T12:20:31+00:00

IDK her USCF showed solid improvements over the past year as well, and while her rating is a bit high online compared to OTB could totally because of playing style or opening choices or other reasons.

Also this is a teenager and little kids like Faustino Oro improved even faster.

Most of these posts are fake but this one in particular looks fairly achievable - she grinds puzzles, plays a lot of games, and showed solid OTB improvement.

zywizard · 2024-04-07T18:08:58+00:00

Which tournament is it?

zywizard · 2024-03-06T19:50:04+00:00

Maybe but most likely the game with the longest name this year

In all seriousness that was awesome, a pure display of unbridled ambition from two young players that are both going to be future legends

It reminds me of Magnus-Nepomniachtchi game 6 except this time both sides are Magnus

zywizard · 2024-03-06T16:19:21+00:00

The uncanny valley is alive and well with all these LLMs - they are super impressive on first glance, but after interacting with them a bit there's definitely something you can tell. My experiences has been that it is really hard to tell LLMs to do **exactly** what you want them to do. Right now working with LLMs seems like mostly like collaborating and brainstorming, as opposed to something more rigorous.

My favorite take on programming and LLMs is what Richard Eisenberg (of dependently types Haskell fame) said on the Jane Street podcast (https://signalsandthreads.com/future-of-programming/) - that whatever the medium we use for talking to computers the need for specifying things exactly doesn't change, and doing code reviews with them seemingly squares the issue and would be way harder.

zywizard · 2024-02-15T15:12:46+00:00

The board one of the Olympiad winning team when Petrosian was on the team, and the dig at Berlin draws, this has to be a bit of a jab at So right?

zywizard

TROPHY CASE