A small beat: in this correspondence game position, I chose the psychologically wrong recapture.



34... Rxe6 35. Qxd4 Re4 would have led to a deadly drawn endgame due to the total pawn structure balance.

Instead, I thought it would be better to get the rooks off, to trigger a stereotype in the (100 points higher rated) opponent's head ('almost all Q+4P vs Q+4P endgames are drawn, let's shake virtual hands').

After 34... fxe6?! 35. Rxd4 Rxd4 36. Qxd4 Qc7, he declined my draw offer (presumably due to my worse pawn structure and the facts that I was moving slower and had dropped an exchange in a silly way in our other game) and proceeded to trouble me for 26 more moves, during which we never gave each other a chance to convert to a won pawn endgame, though our queens did attack each other for many moves, and the game ended with me giving a perpetual to save the mental energy.

I regard his draw rejection as a personal offence.

Here's another video featuring the same plugin, with non-lagging but quiet sound (turn the volume up).

Chess and poker combined in a single tournament? Seems relevant to this forum's interests...

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/tourna...i-150689.shtml

Actually, Simon A. mentioned there is a very active 2+2'er - shimmy - who is an IM and a Zoom PLO100 SNE. Thanks for sharing!

Also, radoom is an Omaha/8 MTT grinder. RoundTower is a prominent PLO player. Rei Ayanami said he also specialises in it. I'm a PLO fish but even worse in other forms of poker. That makes me wonder if there's a causality between playing chess (at a decent level) and with 4 hole cards, or if I'm just too impressed by coincidences - blinded by the confirmation bias.
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I didn't think that a 100-point rating difference is that big qualitatively. It seems to me that almost any opponent rated 100+ points lower (except BJJ) has fatal leaks, while any opponent rated 100+ points higher discovers fatal leaks in my game like an x-ray

That Las Vegas chess tournament seems incredibly flawed. Part of what keeps poker players coming back to donkaments is that they always stand a chance, with chess it seems like the best player wins too much. What is the payout structure for chess tournaments usually?

FYP, most of my volume has been at 200 and 500 this year.

Sounds like I'm gonna be bottom seed in the chess at this rate. Should be good fun, and the poker will be a 2-card crapshoot so everyone has a chance.
This precedes the strong Pokerstars-sponsored Isle of Man International Chess Tournament, for which I hold even less hope
radoom is a 2-card hyper-turbo STT grinder IIRC.

Sorry, I stand corrected. But I wasn't talking about this year only; your previous SNE runs were more impressive grinds.

Ah, that's where I saw him in the lobby; now I recall it. I had just searched for his name on 2+2, and billygstar's SCOOP'2012 rail showed up where he was playing H/L, probably chasing the leaderboard. Actually, Radoom has an old 2+2 account 'Rado'.

The only time when I faced him was the $109 6-max PLO 2nd chance in WCOOP'2013.

Congratulations to your progress thus far.

Chess isn't as hard as you think, especially if you're doing the right work and thinking about the game.

When you do tactics training take a moment to pause and consider how the tactic works - break it down to its essential elements. Don't just do tactics, but understand them. And you'll be more likely to create them in your own games.

I didn't. HUNL is my "specialty"; I'm just learning HUPLO at this point.

I imagine there are plenty of chess players that are also strong chess players. Doesn't Alexzander Grischuk play quite a bit of PLO?

Also the chess/poker tournament seems fun. Not something to take all that seriously though. Kind of a great way to take a chunk of skill out of chess.

Grischuk and Svidler both play PLO on Stars pretty regularly. Grischuk sometimes plays the nosebleeds, Svidler I've played at 3/6 but not seen him higher. Not gonna out their screennames as I don't think they're publicly known. There are at least 3 other IM+ chess players who are SNE that I'm aware of, would be surprised if there aren't more, I'm a bit out of touch with the Hold'em and STT/MTT worlds.

Yeah the combined event is just a bit of fun and hopefully can generate some decent publicity, 15 minute levels for the poker, LOL.

I think I'd be more interested in a version of the chess/poker where poker was first, and finishing chip stacks determined how much time your opponent got on the clock.

(You'd have to play the poker for just a set amount of time, more cash game style than tournament "try to eliminate everyone" style. Anyone who busts out gives each of their chess opponents 20 minutes on the clock, while players that have chips left give their opponents subsequently less time down to a minimum of something like three or five minutes, based on how large of a chip stack they accumulated. Depending on the size of the overall field, and the length of the poker segment, maybe if you accumulate more than 10x the starting amount, your opponents get 5 minutes? 9x=6min, 8x=7min, 7x=8min, 6x=9min, 5x=10min, 4x=11min, 3x=12min, 2x=13min, 1x=14min, less than starting stack but not busto=15min, and that way there's a pretty steep penalty for busting out?)

Then winners determined entirely on the chess results, but if you crush at the poker you can have a huge time advantage in the chess. Seems a lot more fun to me than playing a whole bunch of chess just to get a relatively small bit of extra chips.

^Yeah I tend to agree there's a better way of doing it, but haven't given it much thought. I think Jen Shahade is involved with the design, but obv. options are restricted as time is limited.

Perhaps the poker should be HU in some form, as chess usually is?!

Yeah, it should be HU if it goes after chess. As is, poker skill will prevail because, according to the ICM, the value of each chip in a stack (and hence of each point in the chess tourney) falls as its size (the tourney score) grows.

Edit: lol, I didn't see at first that the starting stack size range is from 8K (for a total chess loser) to 13K (for an absolute scorer). Then the chess part is worth almost nothing

To become a strong chess player, first become strong. After that the chess playing is easy.

Haha yes I think that being strong will assit is in being a strong chess player, my theory is that if you have massive muscles you can easily intimidate yoiur oppnent into making a blunder.




But yeah, obviously meant poker players :P

I think he meant being strong mentally, but not only at poker.

An old friend and Finland's #1, GM Nyback (who among other things has +1 =1 -0 against Carlsen from two Olympic games) at least used to play PLO (semi-?)professionally and has a 9th place finish from a WSOPE PLO event. Doubt he'll play the tournament though.

As a mid-high NLHE pro, if I lived in Europe, I would happily 0-5 the chess portion knowing I couldn't fully make up the EV in the poker portion just for the thrill of playing some masters in blitz.

You guys might be surprised how weak the chess field is - any poker pro/chess enthusiast, or casual player of both, probably has a couple hundred pounds to spare for what could be a once in a lifetime experience.

Man, now I wanna fly there!


Edit: you also definitely can't have chess last with poker determining clock. After poker there would likely only be 1 or 2 players with a real shot at winning. If a GM/IM comes out of the poker with a good stack it's over.

This is pretty epic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3NnPlY9nfQ

Bullet chess with a life-sized board! (Rensch vs. Ramierez)

Hahaha what a great idea

Speaking of PLO, and of poker in general, if watching epistemic wastelands spread is your thing, look for blocker talk in the strategy forums. A couple of recent offenders (context of the OP is going to be necessary, obviously):

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15.../#post44557148

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/38.../#post44556901

The recent trend is to reduce the rationale behind every decision to blockers -- and terribly at that -- and ignore everything else. It's like no one even attempts to quantify anything or figure out what players' ranges are. It's just blockers this, blockers that, blockers blah blah blah blockers. It's a lolfest.

The second post doesn't come to a bad conclusion, apart from misreading positions; KKT7 can indeed be classified as a low-priority semi-bluff in that spot. It ignores 80%+ of why that is the case, however, in its single-minded, reductive trumpeting of blahblahblahblockers.

That was the most effort I ever put into a single chess game.

Move fifteen was the first "real move" of the game, with 15. Qd2 being a novelty iirc, so I butchered the analysis, as I suspected I did.



15.-a6 turns out to be fine, because after 16. bxc4 Bxe5 17. dxe5 Rxc4 18. Rad1 with pressure on the d-pawn, a position I wanted to avoid, I have lines like 18.-Qc7 19. Nxd5 Nxd5 20. Bxd5 Rc2 21. Qd4 Rd8 22. e4 Rxa2.

I didn't even consider following 15.-Bxe5 16. *xe5 with 16.-Qd7. I was focused on ideas like 16. dxe5 Bf5 (17. Nxd5 c3, but I didn't like this line because White can play 18. Qd5 instead of 18. Nxe7+?!). I'm not sure why I rejected 15.-Qa5.

On move nineteen I thought my position was kind of bad, at least statically, and that I needed to find active play or get squeezed. Hence the rush of major pieces to the c-file, which made me think of a bunch of clowns hopping out of a buggy.



But Houdini disagrees with that assessment and wants to improve slowly, and likes 19.-a5, allowing White's knight to get to d6. 19.-a5 20. Nb5 Nf5 21. g4 Nh4 22. Nd6 apparently isn't too bad for me. *confused* I guess I don't understand positional chess at all, lol.

rofl