Thanks! Nice pull!

I heard from a coach who worked in India that those youngsters are very strong for their age because of dedication and a brutal training regime, featuring predominantly calculation. Later, they get surpassed because they lack chess education. Apparently, the strongest Indian players get a very solid financing from the state and are reluctant to pass on knowledge, because every 2.600 ELO player would threaten their position. We'll see if this is true...

I didn't know that Einstein played chess. This game is great.

Robert Oppenheimer's position got blown up.

I believe there are some Einstein quotes that pertain to chess. FWIW looking through his games I'd estimate he had a strength somewhere in the 1600 region.

I believe I posted sometime that I would gladly pay money to listen to Peter Svidler talk about chess (or any subject, in fact). Turns out that chess24.com lets me do exactly that. Of course there is much more to this site, with lots of videos. Seems like they selected the male presenters according to ELO and the female ones according to (perceived) hotness. There is also a tactics trainer. So I invested the money that I'm saving since cancelling the chess.com premium account in a one-year membership. I'll keep you updated as to if I think it's worth it.

Comeback No. 17, engage

Never been to chess24.com before, very interesting. Pretty steep fee for the premium membership. So far can you tell it's worth it? What made you want to cancel chess.com? Just asking out of curiosity.

I can't stand the graphics.



It isn't the festering dog vomit that is BabasChess, but it's a nonstarter imo.

In

Thoughts on this position? Black to move after 14. c3

I have some ideas, but want to hear others.

It looks as if Black's queen fell off the board.

#@$#@$, I never get those right on the first try

and the numbering is backwards

It's been awhile.

I canceled chess.com because I didn't get around to watching the videos. Of course that could be a reason against joining the next video site, but ehhm...whatever. I also cut down my chess.com games to 2-3 team matches at one time, which cancels the need for a premium acc for playing purposes. The ad and vacation issues can be circumvented by using the mobile app. No idea why they make this available for free accounts.

I've watched one Svidler video so far and I have to say it was kinda underwhelming. Maybe he's better at live talk, dunno. He showed two one-sided (which he admitted to himself) Tal games (against Gurgenidse and Tolush) and went through the variations extremely fast. It was just an intro to a longer series on Tal so I expect that to get better.

I have to concur with Rey that the board graphics are substandard, however I can get used to pretty much anything so this wasn't a major distraction. Also the usability of the site is not that great.

Holy **** is that Kyle?!

Wei Yi just broke into the top-100 list, per 2700chess.com's live ratings. 2654.1 (putting him at #99) after his 11th round win at the World Juniors.

Two rounds left though... hopefully he stays top 100. It will make my life easier to know they're tracking his results and posting them for me. No more need for alerts here on the forum that he's playing such and such event, as long as he stays in their tracking range.

?!

BabasChess can be very attractive.

The default options.

Agreed on them, but it would be foolish to stick with them

Thanks. I'll be curious to see how it compares to chess.com as you use it more.

Kyle, could you post the move order to get to that position? Did you exchange for white's DSB on e3?

Here is the game to that point:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=96670

one time i was in a tournament and a queen fell on me, even though i'm not a chess piece. it scared me so i fled right into the middle of a game that was being played and knocked it over. the tournament director picked me up and made me set up the board again from scratch, even though it wasn't my fault. it's been many long hours since that happened, but i haven't forgetted it.

have any of you been victims of injustice at tournaments?

Once, I guess I was about 19, I was watching a game and it was an opposite colored bishop ending. One guy was three pawns down, and resigned. I showed him how he could have set up a blockade and drawn. He quietly grabbed me by the shirt and growled, "Don't ever do that again". No one else in the tournament even noticed.