http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess2/diary.htm --> Entry 393 (though any entry is a good read). These tablebase studies are awesome in their incomprehensibleness.

Kyle,

My advice to you:

Examine all forcing moves.
Look at all checks and captures.

Does that idea that the dtm is doubling with each subsequent man added to the board mean that we're wrong about the starting position? That it isn't theoretically drawn, but rather a forced mate in something like 20 billion moves? Give or take a few orders of magnitude?

In the French, black inevitably finds a way to attack d4 more times than I can defend it.

I moved first *and* d4 is inherently protected in the opening position by the queen.

Therefore, the only way black could have more attacks on d4 than I can defend is to play an extra move or three.

Extra moves are illegal.

Therefore, the French is illegal.

QED.

French banned forever.

Grischuk, Mamedyarov, and Adams seem to be the consistent ~2750+'ers who are good but don't get much attention for it.

Grischuk experienced a rating leap in 2010 that he hasn't really looked back from -- although he reduced his volume noticeably after rising to the Candidate Super Duper De-Duper GM level. I'm curious about what he got better at. (Okay, winning and not losing, of course. But I mean process-wise.)

Mamedyarov. It's like no one even knows he's ultra strong except tournament organizers. There isn't much fanfare for him at all. I wonder too what he did to rise from fledgling 2700'er to perennial 2750+'er. Maybe just grow older? People hit their intellectual peak, wrt raw brainpower, at age 25 or so, I've heard. I'm excited about the prospect of becoming smarter. It makes one wonder what the future holds for Carlsen and Caruana. Or maybe they are destined to be overpowered Ponomariovs.

Micheal Adams is so obscure I don't even have a blurb for him. Sorry Mickey.

hi wlrs

is it true that you are this cat?



i did some detective work! i think it might be true because there are only two accounts located in "dragging a hippo from a marsh", and one disappeared when the other appeared.

or maybe you ate him?

Haha, that's a good allegory of what I was doing at that university for 8 years The underpromotion at move 6 is so amazing.

Not at all, there can be drawn positions (for which DTM is undefined) with any number of men, they aren't considered in this idea.

Also, it tells nothing about the complexity of the initial position, which might be much simpler than the hardest 32-man position.

An interesting question is whether there are initial Chess960 positions won by either side.

2700+ blitz with commentary (Vallejo Pons)!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrwVEOe1Q4o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuTp1otDXmI

Obscure?? Mickey narrowly lost a match for the World Championship (to Kasimdzhanov, in the tie-breaks) ten years ago, and has reached the semi-finals on two (3?) other occasions! He has a low variance style, and will always be incredibly strong as long as he keeps playing.

But that's required knowledge in England.

Well, it's true that I happen to be English, but there aren't many players in the current top 50 with a similar pedigree.

I didn't say he hasn't had a successful career. For a decades-long top-20 mainstay he receives surprisingly little attention, which was the point all along.

That's just the way he likes it. Another English player, Nigel Short, is probably a decent comparison as someone who has had a similar career, but they're completely different personalities and one of them is far more comfortable being in the limelight.

Go Grishy!

Random thought: there is a world championship match starting in four days and nobody has bothered to start a thread on it.

Cause we know you will and it will be an epic OP so we are waiting.

I was fooling around with a quick blitz game against a weak engine (5|0 for me, but the computer moves instantly, so the time control is effectively faster), and I dropped a pawn to a silly tactic but ended up equalizing and then winning with a one-two punch of even better tactics. I liked this game.

http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game...r.php?id=97403

Wei Yi has officially qualified for the next World Cup, scoring a clear first place in his zonal tournament (top two qualify).

Also he's back into the live ratings (recently expanded to list top 100) with the result. 96th highest rating in the world (and still only 15 years old).

Grishy gets there with a win over Gelfand! 2803 in the live ratings now!

To be determined whether he'll end up with a *published* rating over 2800 or not...

hi Judit! It is I, the forum crash ate my previous account

3/3 now!

BTW, is he drinking whisky? Beats OJ!

Spot Black's best idea.