***Official SSSH LC/NC Thread for July***

[SurpriseDaNuts]

Originally Posted by shuinthehouse

read it when it first came out after reading review in Newsweek, was interesting because at the time I was living more or less in the area it takes place, in Brighton section of Boston maybe a mile from Boston College and fairly close to the Alston line. Difficult to find anyone to discuss fun facts or interesting concepts from the book with as not many have ready it. I think it got an uptick in readership after author's suicide.

Well David Foster Wallace is a really fascinating person. He has some interviews on youtube where he is really quite candid and honest. Not many people read him because he doesn't dumb it down. He has a huge problem with a book or story not challenging the reader and that was one of his fears about America. I found out about him through these interviews and had to read one of his books. Infinite Jest was the most popular I found and have been reading it the last couple months.

[ReasonableGuy]

You guys who like DFW might like Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It's not really "like" Infinite Jest but there are some similarities.

Just mentioning it because I read it a week or so ago and really liked it. Spent a lot of time thinking about it and discussing with people.

[Unguarded]

How am I so ****ing terrible at chess? It really tilts me. I own at like every game that isn't chess, yet at chess I am just beyond awful. I don't understand it. I have spent about as much time trying to get good at chess as I have spent on poker, yet I hover between 1100-1200 in 5-minute games on ICC (for those of you who don't play chess, this is really horrible... like bottom 15%) . I haven't improved in over a decade.

Chess tilt is 1000x worse than poker tilt. Losing a game of chess to a low-rated opponent (which happens to me well over half the time that I play) just makes me feel straight up stupid. Chess is objectively a really fun game, but for me it always turns into a futile attempt to prove that I am not an idiot.

On the bright side, it forces me to appreciate my poker skills. Chess is such a humbling experience. There is no bumhunting in chess. Just constant rape.

[Unguarded]

Oh, and any reports on the LHE action on Revolution Gaming? For those of you who haven't been following, Lock Poker bought out Cake and they combined their player pools.

I am especially interested in the 10/20+ action and hearing how the rake compares to Merge.

Thanks!

[BigBadBabar]

10/20+ action very sparse/nonexistent

3/6 4/8 5/10 6/12 8/16 pretty decent thought

rake is better than merge pretty sure

pretty sure there are good teaching materials out there about chess...i'm only okay, but i would think working on tactics problems a lot, and trying to figure out how to understand/compare/prioritize some of the main strategic things (space, initiative, etc), would be pretty useful. i'm sure some of the strong chess guys who post in here can provide more input. honestly i'd guess at the 1000 or 1200 level most games are decided by tactics ie someone drops a pawn or a piece or more

[that_pope]

Originally Posted by Unguarded

On the bright side, it forces me to appreciate my poker skills. Chess is such a humbling experience. There is no bumhunting in chess. Just constant rape.

The online chess I played in the '99-'02 time range there were bum hunting. But that is because I played on ladders.

[spacegod]

Chess focus should almost be entirely on tactics for lower level players. The reason I had hard time staying with chess was getting into openings, which was just far too tedious imo. Completely killed the fun of it for me. Running repetitive patterns at Pac-man and Donkey Kong for 5 hours a day on the other hand...

Originally Posted by Unguarded

Oh, and any reports on the LHE action on Revolution Gaming? For those of you who haven't been following, Lock Poker bought out Cake and they combined their player pools.

I am especially interested in the 10/20+ action and hearing how the rake compares to Merge.

Thanks!

I think I am gonna try it since the lower game rake doesn't look so awful. I'm hesitant to jump into 10/20 just because I wouldn't be surprised if I deposited and never saw any of the money again. LMK if you wanna stake me though!

[anfernee]

UG, and others that like tactics puzzles, chesstempo.com
The site also have endgame puzzles as well.

[that_pope]

Originally Posted by spacegod

Chess focus should almost be entirely on tactics for lower level players. The reason I had hard time staying with chess was getting into openings, which was just far too tedious imo. Completely killed the fun of it for me. Running repetitive patterns at Pac-man and Donkey Kong for 5 hours a day on the other hand...

Same for me. That is how I lost a match against some untalented mexican in the state junior high championship because he played some trick opening that I wasn't familiar with and got brutally raped. It ended a horrible ending to the tourney after I started out 4-0 and beating one of the top 5 players in the state (finished 4-3). That tourney was pretty much the end of my serious chess playing days.

Near the end of my career, I would be running good if I could get into the middle game with even position and would be the favorite based on stronger tactical ability. Memorizing openings is boring IMO

[Unguarded]

Ya, working really hard on tactical puzzles now... maybe that will finally help me improve. Tactics, tactics, tactics seems to be where it is at. I used to do dumb stuff like study openings a lot when I didn't really know how to play. I also studied endings a lot, but at my level it rarely lasts til a close endgame. The good thing I did was study GM games. I read all of Alekhine's book. Right now, I am working on Bronstein's Zurich book.

I had never studied on an online tactics site until this week... amazing how many more problems you can go through than when using a book. I am on chess.emrald.net which seems pretty good, but chesstempo is prolly better.

Trying to do something like:

50% tactics
25% playing
25% studying annotated GM games

Will let you guys know if I hit 1300!

[spacegod]

Kind of sucks that chess matches are front-loaded in that respect, i.e. openings. Maybe Elo can chime in. I also don't see how playing the turbos helps to develop your thought process. Seems more like something you should do after you've played a ton and developed solid tactics. Playing blitz or w/e would be about like me trying to 8 table PLO or Stud8--haven't played enough to do all of the routine plays without thinking.

FWIW, I think you could gain much more notoriety by attempting to set the Donkey Kong world record, which has to be way easier than becoming even a 90th percentile chess player.

[DatKingCole]

Start playing a real game like haxball.

[pig4bill]

Aren't their chess bots all over the place? Seems like online chess would be terrible.

[spacegod]

GOAT music video

Warning: Jingoes gonna hate.

[anfernee]

Originally Posted by pig4bill

Aren't their chess bots all over the place? Seems like online chess would be terrible.

doesn't seem like a big deal as there's no money in online chess.