Cennydd

I want some of whatever O’Higgins took before the tournament

Black has 20 legal moves after 1. e4. Eighteen of them have names. The only two that don’t are the best move and the worst move.

I once spent ten whole minutes reviewing my Morra → Alapin transposition before playing a known Morra player. Was mildly useful. That’s as far as I’ve ever taken prep.

Quite - if I’m hauling my ass over to Iceland I’m not prepping obscure Sveshnikov lines in my hotel…

+1 for the Classic. Although one game a day makes it quite a long trip!

Image of chess pieces overlaid with text: 'Walthamstow chess meetup, last Sunday of the month. Sunday 29 June 2–5pm. Lord Palmerston pub garden, E17 5JN. Free to attend. Boards and sets provided. All ages, abilities, and dogs welcome (children must be accompanied by an adult).

I’m helping start a chess club here in Walthamstow. Anyone in North or East London, you’d be most welcome at our monthly meetup next Sunday 2–5pm (Lord Palmerston, E17 5JN). I’d be grateful for any shares too – we’re eager to ensnare new people in the clutches of this maddening game, etc

Book: Philosophy Looks At Chess, edited by Benjamin Hale.

So… does this belong on my chess shelf or my philosophy shelves?

Félicitations Yosha!

After my final classical game of the season, I’ve ended up 25 ECF points higher than in September. Not huge progress, but given my dreadful start (three losses) I’ll take it. Hopefully I can push on next season. Bit of rapid and blitz until then.

💪

Oh shit, no way?! Yeah, I played in my regular cohort after like a whole season of playing up. Let me know when you play another London-ish one, be great to say hi!

Lost a 77-move epic in rd4 against the eventual winner who was unrated but ended up with – and I shit you not – a performance rating of 2129, after which I understandably bailed on rd5 to drink some beer and contemplate my life. Fun game but fucking hell man

fuck yes lichess

fuck yes lichess

LCL Weekender rd2 and 3: two wins with Black. The first, a prolonged (metaphorical) strangulation of a small child. The second, a pleasing technical win, winning a pawn with a nice zwischenzug and picking my way through an awkward knight and pawn ending. Joint leader overnight.

Also nice to bump into a follow Dojo–er, who’s playing up in the U2000, and with whom I did some game reviews a few months back.

Lucky to escape with a draw in rd1 of the London Chess League FIDE Weekender. Good opening against lower-rated player but overpursued, with my opponent finding a tactic that left him well ahead. Luckily he missed the critical continuation and it fizzled.

Chess.com game review. Coach says 'A nice even game' but the graph tells a different story: White blundered and Black was totally winning but blundered back. A nice even game it was not.

'A nice even game.'

Ye olde weightlifting skeleton meme. ‘My body is a machine that turns [picture of the Sicilian Rossolimo from Black’s PoV] into [½-½ Drawn by agreement · Draw]’

75-move rule, although it’s very rare of course.

Fr fr - ‘Eyesore’ remains a banger to this day

I agree that it is.

Gave the Duolingo chess course a go. Awful font, awful AI voices, awful prompts giving the puzzles away. Awful.

rip chessfeels, the goat

Not much, since these are mostly team matches and there are still games ongoing. Managed to get postmortems at a couple of the tournament games though.

Another loss last night.

Rating deficit versus my last ten opponents: 127, 130, 256, 170, 296, 549, 319, 6, 123, 134. Being constantly outranked is good for learning, I guess, but it’s demotivating… really want to smash up some 1200s right now.

YouTube video by unARTigNYC Xiu Xiu & Deerhoof playing Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures live in 2010

Had to decline a free ticket to see Xiu Xiu tomorrow because I’m playing top board against Enfield 3, chess is pain :( :( :( youtu.be/kKF3DF-TvrQ?...

fighting is like a game of chess. each blow yiou land on your opponents head is like a chess piece (Knight, bishop, etc) and then he dies .

Think ‘if he moves this bishop here it’s game over for the king’ while drawing an arrow on a big touchscreen.

(I’m persisting with the series entirely because my wife appears to enjoy me yelling things like ‘play …h2 for fuck’s sake!’ and ‘yeah, this guy can’t play chess’ and/or pausing the recording to try to look up everyone’s FIDE ratings.)