You probably win a whole rook, it's hard for him to find a square for the queen

I remember when an engine was determined to prove to me that bishop+ wrong rook pawn was +3 as apposed to 0.00

I also had a game with B+N+K vs K+N that the engine was claiming was won for the B+N

I've been reading the Dutch Boyd book: poker tilt.

He said that he or the reader if they played Kasparov a trillion a trillion times that you'd win a game by sheer dumb luck.

I disagree completely. I don't think a complete novice (who just knows the rules of the pieces and nothing more) ever beats Kasparov in a game.

At least by ratings, wiki tells me that if players are rated X and Y, the expected score for X is 1/(1+10^((Y-X)/400)). So if Kasparov is 2800 and our novice is 1200, Kasparov is expected to score 99.99%. I wonder if this rating system breaks down at such extremes.

It does.
And I'm not even talking a 1200.

I'm talking a guy who just barely knows how to play.

The Finnish rapid team championship tournament (20 minutes + 10 sec/move) began today with a renewed format (two days, six boards, two alternates allowed compared to the old system with one day, four boards and one alternate). They were hoping to get upwards of 20 participating teams and got... eight. Quite anticlimactic.

Anyway, QuantumCage is playing for his team (TuTS), which isn't a surprise, but another team (KymS) has Jeff Sarwer on its first board, which may be. He has started with two losses, but they're against a 2480 and a 2500. The tournament can be followed here, but it doesn't seem like there are any live boards available.

Well, how many ways are there to lose a game?

Could he lose via accidental disqualification? Lose on time if he gets the runs in the middle of the game? Or has a stroke?

If there are enough ways to lose then I'd say yes, over a trillion trials, he will lose one to a drunk monkey. But it will almost certainly be an anomaly like dying mid game, or killing himself because he has to play a 1200 player a trillion times. Even him hanging a Queen might not ever be enough to lose straight up.

But I find most of what Dutch Boyd is and says to be pure crap. Why are you reading a Dutch Boyd book? Isn't he the degenerate who drank his own piss for a small sum of money?

That formula is an approximation, used because the ratings system was implemented with 1970s technology. Using the normal distribution function of Excel I get 99.9999964%. The real world surely has "fat tails" though. The 2800 could be expected to have a heart attack or stroke more than once in ten million games.

The chance of a random move generator winning a game from a 2800 is astronomically smaller than either of these. I've seen estimates that there are an average of 1.7 "good" moves per position, and finding these consistently from an average of 30 moves per position for 40 or 60 moves gives numbers like 10^-50 or 10^-75.

3 reasons:

Friend recommended it.

It has good reviews.

I enjoy burning small amounts of money on fire.

That was really fun. Looks like he could use a few days of sleep though.

"I've earned a new badge: GM Killer. How proud am I. Words cannot describe."

Hahahahaha great quote. And what a fantastic video. Svidler is always great in online commentary at tournaments, and this is no different.

Thanks Rei, for the link.

I had no idea until watching him commentate the world championship matches. He's pretty much GOAT commentator in so many ways.

I also really loved the part at the end where he loses to IM Trent and goes off for a solid couple of minutes about how much that will suck b/c he knows he's never ever going to hear the end of it, lol.

PSA: IM Bartholomew played multicast a few more bullet games tonight.

multicast is Carlsen right?

It hasn't been confirmed but yeah that seems to be what a lot of people think. A shame that he timed out in 2 of the 3 games, 1 of which was crushing. I was surprised to see his rating in the low 2700s, since it was up at like 2850 a while back. He must have had a lot of timeouts or he's messing around with weird openings or something for practice.

I like the analysis after the 2nd game (IIRC), where John said he basically played 15 engine moves in a row. Starting with a knight-for-pawn sac in the middle of the board. Madness.

This is a pretty funny April Fools prank. Fairly elaborate, at least. I lol'd.

If they want to earn money from it, they need to publish a pay-for-view video series by Judit Bowlgar!

Lichess was sold.

The April rating list is out, and our latest absurd result from the increased k-factor rules is Nodirbek Abdusattorov.

Now he was already historically highly rated for his age. Last month, at the age of 10.45, the youngster from Uzbekistan was rated 2263. This was the fifth highest rating ever achieved at or before his age.

But then he played two more tournaments (18 total games) in Tashkent, and despite not actually beating any players rated higher than 2380, managed to gain over 200 rating points and bring his own rating up to a stellar 2465! This is not only the highest rating ever achieved at or before his current age of 10.53 years, it's the highest rating ever achieved before the age of 12! If he actually manages to justify this rating in future events, and continue to gain rating points, he has a year and a half to continue padding his U12 record.

White to play. All comments and the solution are in the spoiler.

I used to always open 1.e4 but now I like 1.d4 better. However for some reason after ...d5 was played I always played Nc3, attacking the pawn. Never bothered to look at the book until last night when I realized that's like the 5th most common 2nd move, and far from the best 2nd move (c4 I think, going for Queen's Gambit). lol.

So now I'm going to try 2.c4 and learn the Queen's Gambit opening. There's a YT video on it showing what kind of variations to expect. But it looks like 1.d4...d5 2.c4 is a pretty strong opening for White.

The c pawn almost always needs to be used in queens pawn openings to apply pressure to the center. With a couple of exceptions the knight will usually end up being misplaced on c3 if you move it there before pushing the c pawn.


and yes 2.c4 is a very sound well tested move and has been considered best for for centuries.

Put it this way. When you play 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3, you're attacking an undefended pawn and your main pawn break is d4 which isn't too hard to get in since the d file is backed up by the queen. on 1.d4 d5 2.Nc3 is attacking a defended pawn and now you cant really get in the e pawn break since the e file is where your king is. so its best with queen pawn openings to put pressure on the center with c pawn, its better to use a wing pawn when attacking a center pawn anyway.

This is kind of what I was starting to notice. Especially lately when I've been actively trying to castle opposite my opponent (so, queenside). They start pushing their queenside pawns and my knight is just kind of in retreat mode and it's just blocking my c pawn from getting out to help build a better pawn wall connected to the d pawn. At the very least it felt like I was wasting tempo. Glad I looked into the book.