My chess dreams all involve me somehow stuck defending a bad position that I did not get myself into. The brain is probably trying to tell me something.

A year later, it is finally done!

(+24-0=0)

I should have joined a higher rated tournament. In my defense, the field was around 1400-1500 back then (I was~1400). Now the second highest rated player in the field is still <1600, while I managed to climb to 1800.

No interesting games to share, but this position was funny (I was White):

Position after 9...d5

So I'm guessing they developed 2 non-pawns and then subsequently moved them back to their original positions?

lol

Yeah very sophisticated maneuvering:
Bg7-Bf8
Nf6-Ng8

And last but not least:
d6-d5 (in consecutive moves)

Scott, that inspired me to play this bullet troll game earlier. He ran out of time. I had 30 seconds left.

17. Qxh7+ Kf8 is the highlight.

The dagger imo. Black was so shook.

White to play. Assess the position and decide on a plan.

My plan is to push all those pawns and end up with 13 bishops.

I will be helping officiate a middle school chess tourney tomorrow for several hours. It's 5 rounds of 20/0 with about 80 kids or so. Maybe I'll post a pic tomorrow but I'm wary of posting images of other peoples' kids online. It's pretty fun, actually, and really well organized.

If you care about my incessant Wei Yi rantings, I wrote some things and graphed some things.

Done this many times. It's lots of fun.

hey guys, question: would you rather fight 100 IM-sized carlsens or 1 carlsen-sized IM?

Ding Liren, age 22, elo 2757, is Magnus Carlsen's new second. Pretty sick.

Are either of them coached by Ditka?

FEN: N4k1N/q5pK/3p1pP1/1p3P2/1P4pP/p6p/2PP4/1B5N

White to play and win.

I was trying to compose a study -- by that, I mean I was aimlessly plopping down material on the board and checking if Stockfish found any !!-heavy sequences -- and after several dozen iterations, I finally settled upon this position. There isn't any subtle logic at play; I just decided to put knights in the corners. And the pawns . . . well, at least both sides have fewer than nine.

Anyway, it's an insanely complex position. The engine is huffing and puffing clouds of smog as it tries to make sense of it. So, attempt to solve it if you wish, but I can't promise that White actually wins or that a human can have any clue what to do. (Although, I don't attempt to solve hard studies regularly, so it's possible that I'm underestimating the regular solver's tolerance for mental self-mutilation.) I included the FEN in case anyone wanted to feed the position to their own engine.

I think blood immediately started gushing out of my eyes as soon as I actually looked at that position. So....I'm gonna pass on this one. Keep fighting the good fight Rei, but, yeah, someone else is gonna have to take a stab at it.

Hardest I laughed all week.

Here's a cool win by Levon Aronian, who is crawling back up from his local rating minima. It showcases many essential positional patterns, especially with pawns.

43....Nxg4 seems a massive blunder right?

Is the continuation this?

44.Rc8+....Kg7
45.Reg5+....K--
46.Rxg4

leaving white up a Rook and a much safer King.

Black is done anyway. White's impending clincher is 44. Rc8+ Kg7 45. Rg5+ Kf6 46. Rf5+ Ke6 (46.-Kg7 47. Rc7) 47. Rc6+ Kd7 48. Rcf6. Black is powerless to untangle himself. There are probably numerous other ways of feasting on his uncoordinated pieces.