Hahaha, solid find Rei )

Just watched that game. Pretty cool stuff. I guess that is YKW he mentioned?

This makes me want to record a match I play with my ****ty rating and talk about my thoughts during the match. Might be funny and NSFW.

Yes.

(I'd naturally do it the SFW way, though; not swearing and not being emotional in general certainly makes the thinking process more effective.)

I already recorded a match but I played really poorly and it's just kind of embarrassing. I felt quite distracted by the fact that I was trying to remember to speak my thoughts - I left a minor piece hanging in a 10 minute game and never recovered. And it was a bit cumbersome as I had my camera mounted in front of my monitor and was like craning my head to see the monitor. lol. The guy was like 70 points worse than me and immediately challenged me to a rematch and I smashed him as black without all the distraction.

Maybe I'll post it anyway but I want to review it first. I'm also sick so my voice isn't very pleasing to the ear.

You can easily record something like this, though (priceless emotions!):

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

I'm not good enough to find that.

Downloaded Stockfish 6 and was curious how it would evaluate the openings on its own. Ran a quick evaluation of all 20 possible first moves, then a deeper evaluation of the ones that scored highest. The top 6 opening moves for white according to Stockfish:

1 Nf3
1... Nf6 2. d4 e6 3. c4 b6 4. Nc3 Bb4 5. e3 O-O 6. Bd3 d5 7. O-O Ba6 8. cxd5 Bxd3 9. Qxd3 exd5 10. Bd2 Nbd7 11. Rac1 c6 12. Ne2 Bxd2 13. Nxd2 Rc8 14. Qf5 Re8 15. h3 Qe7 16. a3 g6 17. Qc2 c5 18. Qa4
+ (0.16) Depth=33/44 0:26:37 2584 MN

1 e4
1... e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d3 Be7 5. O-O O-O 6. Bd2 d6 7. h3 Be6 8. Bb3 a6 9. Nc3 Nd7 10. Be3 h6 11. Re1 Rb8 12. Rc1 Bf6 13. Nd5 Nd4 14. Nxf6+ Qxf6 15. Bxd4 exd4 16. c3 dxc3 17. Rxc3 Bxb3 18. Qxb3 c5 19. Qd5 Qe6 20. d4 Qxd5
+ (0.15) Depth=34/43 0:14:19 1484 MN

1 d4
1... Nf6 2. Nf3 e6 3. c4 b6 4. a3 Bb7 5. Nc3 d5 6. Bf4 Bd6 7. Bxd6 cxd6 8. e3 O-O 9. Bd3 dxc4 10. Bxc4 Nbd7 11. O-O a6 12. Bd3 b5 13. Rc1 h6 14. h3 Rc8 15. e4 e5 16. d5 Nc5 17. b4 Nxd3 18. Qxd3 Qb6 19. Rfe1
+ (0.12) Depth=32/41 0:17:13 1660 MN

1 e3
1... e5 2. d4 exd4 3. exd4 Nf6 4. Nf3 d5 5. Bd3 Bd6 6. O-O O-O 7. Re1 h6 8. Na3 a6 9. c4 Bb4 10. Bd2 Nc6 11. Bxb4 Nxb4 12. c5 Bg4 13. Nc2 Nxd3 14. Qxd3 Bxf3 15. Qxf3 c6 16. Qb3 Rb8 17. Rac1 Ne4 18. f3 Nd2 19. Qb4 Nc4 20. Ne3
+ (0.12) Depth=33/46 0:15:35 1632 MN

1 c4
1... e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. Nf3 Nc6 4. a3 d5 5. cxd5 Nxd5 6. e4 Nf4 7. d4 exd4 8. Bxf4 dxc3 9. Qxd8+ Nxd8 10. bxc3 Ne6 11. Bg3 Be7 12. Bc4 c6 13. O-O Nc5 14. Nd4 Na4 15. Rfc1 O-O 16. h3 Nc5 17. Bf4 Be6 18. Nxe6 Nxe6 19. Be3 Rfd8 20. Re1
+ (0.07) Depth=33/46 0:12:51 1299 MN

1 g3
1... e5 2. c4 Nf6 3. Bg2 Nc6 4. Nc3 Bb4 5. Nf3 O-O 6. O-O d6 7. d3 Bxc3 8. bxc3 Bg4 9. h3 Bd7 10. g4 h6 11. Nd2 b6 12. e3 Rc8 13. Bb2 Ne7 14. d4 Bc6 15. d5 Bb7 16. Ne4 Nxe4 17. Bxe4 c5 18. f4
+ (0.05) Depth=31/41 0:12:03 1216 MN

Waiting for 1 e3 to catch on.

*But results may vary for reasons I don't entirely understand. I've gotten slightly different results from same depth searches of the same position. Depends on the contents of the transposition tables? Slight randomization built into the evaluation function?

Happy this series is finally starting. Long vid, so I'm watching in chunks.

Very nice! Thanks for sharing that one, Rei

Not sure if posted, but our own QuantumCage is playing in the European championship in Jerusalem. So far he is straight up beasting!

http://chess-results.com/tnr157274.a...wi=984&snr=138

Whoa!!! Major thanks for posting this, and major kudos to QC for that start! A win and a draw against two 2670 GMs? DAG!

We'd better get a trip report on this after it's all said and done, no matter what happens from here on out.

Did y'all play through his win against Grachev today? Pretty wild game.

So Tomashevsky has steadily maintained a rating of roughly 2715 (low point 2695, high point 2740) for over five years now. There is absolutely no discernable upward trend in his ratings during that span. However in that range he has played four events that could potentially have served to help him qualify for a shot at the World Championship. His performance ratings in those four events?

2011 World Cup: 2800
2013 World Cup: 2813
Baku (2014-15 Grand Prix, leg 1): 2792
Tbilisi (2014-15 Grand Prix, leg 3): 2969 (through 9 rounds)

Can a chess player be "clutch"?

I wouldn't know, but looking at Giri's recent performance one can definitely conclude that a chess player can be "dutch".

QuantumCage alert!

Chessbomb's absurdly useless engine analysis (LOL @ depth 15) just marked GM Zaven Andriasian (2612) as having made a questionable 19th move, and has QC evaluated at +1.01 as I type this!

Edit: well, I have no idea if the super low depth analysis was actually right or not, so I don't know for sure what the following actually means to reality, but QC didn't play the recommended response, and now after his 22nd move he's about -0.7 at depth... wait for it... 13! Ah chessbomb, you really don't care about giving accurate evals to games only one person is watching, do you.

Looks more fun to be black, tiny material deficit but white's king is weak. I think the main value of the engine analysis in a game like this is to tell you if someone blundered a piece. A better engine at a deeper ply wouldn't help, since the players can't play like computers in this position

Looks like he turned down a repetition and black got very active, shame

This is true about the purpose of the engine, of course, but depth 13 is low enough to not necessarily even serve this role properly. I'll bet you could find some relatively low rated problems in a tactics trainer app (problems any IM or better would get 99% of the time, usually quite quickly) that Stockfish can't solve until a depth higher than 13.

So a piece could BE hanging, and that engine may or may not have been able to notice.

Clutch might not be the best word but if we assume those 4 events were the ones he cared about the most during this time then it's possible he just prepared much harder for them than the others (even in relation to his opponents). Like Angel Cabrera in golf I think he only gets his dick hard for The Masters. Or it's a sample size issue.

**** yes

as white i played re1 here. lichess is saying to play rf1, to which black should reply rf8. why wouldn't black trade the rooks off in that spot? it seems like he would then have enough time to get the d pawn to support the passed e pawn, and that seems crushing to me. i'm obviously missing something, but what?

After the rook exchange, d5 is met by b4! To prevent White from creating a passed b/c-pawn, Black has to play cxb4 (then White plays d4) or c4 dxc4 dxc4; in both cases, the e-pawn drops and White wins. (If White creates a passed b/c-pawn, the Black king is in its square, but White then creates a passed g/h-pawn as well and wins using the 'trousers'.)

I've been working on some videogame music lately. This is fun.

Increased k-factors strike again: Vincent Keymer (Germany), born in 2004, just gained 152 rating points from a single 9-game tournament. Now rated 2364 on the March rating list.

If his birthday is 3/1/2004 or later, then I believe he is now the highest rated U11 player in chess history, but if he was born in January or February (and is not U11 anymore) then he still trails Illya Nyzhnyk (2377 rating published when he was 11.02 years old).

Any sleuths out there able to find me young Mr. Keymer's birthday?