That's a strong in if there ever was one.

The list of famous chess players you don't know might be shorter.

Multiple choice. I have had lunch in Hawaii with the following GMs:

Maurice Ashley
Irina Krush
Yasser Seirawan
Judit Polgar
Joel Benjamin

I guess I should hint that the answer is two of these people. I was going to try to make it an all of the above but then it'd be a really short list, lol.

It may or may not have been one of the weirdest lunches I've ever had.

Bonus: Who would not stop singing along to the reggae version of "Red Red Wine" that came on at some point in the restaurant?

PSA: Another IM Bartholomew GM Carlsen multicast bullet session. 4 games against multicast and a few against Yaacovn.

Well, FIDE done ****ed up. Maybe BJJ should start another list, "Prodigies made by ridiculous FIDE rules" or something like that.

https://ratings.fide.com/id.phtml?event=14926970

https://ratings.fide.com/individual_...iod=2015-04-01

Beat a couple 2400 guys, rest is vs 2100, 2200 players. +430 ELO, 2550 candidate master. I am just about to give up on this **** to be honest.

Isn't that just a typo and should say 2140?

Nope, sadly it's not. New fide rules where everyone below 18y.o and 2300 ELO has a K of 40 is just ridiculous like that.

That kid doesn't turn 14 until October. 7th highest U14 rating ever, as far as I can tell. Not the only such example, though this seems like the most drastic case I've seen so far. It is a topic I've been mentally pre-writing an article on for a while. I'll definitely publish something on the topic eventually. Probably soon.

That only happened because the guy got to have 6 months worth of games rated in one go. Otherwise he would have got stuck at 2300 or so, I leave it to BJJ to tell you the exact number. FIDE did change the rules to avoid this (more frequent rating periods and require interim reporting of results for long events), but they still allow exceptions for league play. Probably the right fix is to get tougher on this so that events are rated strictly month by month. This one is particularly weird because they clearly reported interim results (every 2 rounds is treated as a separate event) but they all got rated together at the end of March.

Yeah, the increased k-factor is definitely only part of the problem. Letting players gain the points they need to go from 2200 > 2350 in one event, and then rating their next event as if they started it at 2200 (so that they gain another 100+ points for a 2350 performance) is how they end up at 2450 when they should be 2350 (even with the higher K).

League results only compound this issue, and suddenly it's not just two tournaments strung together at the same "original rating", it's 31 games (in this case) leading to an absurd 426 point jump that's listed as having happened in "one month" when it obviously didn't.

ELO accounting. Interesting topic. I was just wondering this a couple weeks ago about a guy I played who entered our tourney at 1400+ corr. strength but by the end he was in the 1100s (mostly due to timeouts) but really I thought he was never 1400 strength and couldn't even understand why he got that high. Well he's playing 250ish games at once so I realized he can "recognize" his wins in strings and stave off his potential losses, much like publicly-traded companies manage their earnings recognition.

I also notice I do this. My rating had been climbing and so I was making moves quicker in games I thought I would win, and being slower on the 2 games that were not clear cut (Not so that I would hit a peak, but moreso because it is funner to win, imo.). So my rating hit a peak but I basically knew I had "outstanding liabilities" that hadn't been recognized yet. So my 1572 was a bit inflated in that sense. Like if there was a way to artificially smooth out gains and losses in ELO.

I suppose a more perfect way for this to happen would be for your rating to get adjusted after every move, so that you are gradually recognizing an increase/decrease in rating. Based on the computer assessment or whatever. The logistics of that are laughably complicated though, obviously. It would be funny, though, to make a blunder in a game and instantly see your rating drop by like 3 points.

Your accounting metaphors just made me so unbelievably happy.

lol this would be amazing.

I'm CPA exam eligible! Nerd alert.

Yeah, especially if you didn't notice it right away. You'd be like "WTF!? What did I just do!? ZOMG he's got Qxc4 Nf3 Bxb5+ Ke1 Rg8.... wait... no....that doesn't work.. WHAT THE **** I don't know what I just did!....I hope he doesn't find whatever it is. Or maybe someone just found a forced mate in my 79th corr game!? AHHHHHHHHH..." You'd just have to put tape over your rating.

Is it just me or does Carlsen get his knights on adjacent squares often during his games? It seems like he does but I've seen a drop in the bucket in terms of his entire log of games so maybe I'm just seeing it a lot.

Also, are there certain countries where the idea of resigning is, like, not a thing? There is 1 country in particular whose inhabitants seem to just let the clock run all the way out or just abandon their games instead of resigning. So many times (and basically just this 1 country) that I now just abort all games with players from that country.

Is this going to increase rating inflation even more? It seems wacky but as long as they don't award IM/GM titles just based on rating it doesn't seem like it will have too big of an effect on other players. Anyone who gets weird jumps will just fall back down to earth eventually, right?

It should have some inflationary effect because the increased k-factor only applies below 2300. So points get added to the pool when a 2200 youngster beats a 2400, but not removed when a 2400 kid goes down to a 2200.

That said, I think the overall effect is tiny compared to all the other inflationary/deflationary pressures.

I haven't analysed his games, but I find it a cool idea for board coverage because the knights can attack 16 squares together this way, while if they're placed on, say, d4 and e5, their scope is a bit smaller because they both control c6 and f3. In the endgame, knights placed on adjacent squares form a 'shield' forcing the opponent's king to take a long router, e.g. if they're standing on d4 and e4, then the king initially standing on e7 will have to go via f7-g6-h5-g4-f4 to approach them instead of the shortest route via e6-e5 that would be illegal.

Adjacent may have been the wrong word, because I basically meant either orthogonally adjacent or diagonally adjacent. So d4-e5 falls into what I meant. As well as d4-e4 or d4-d5.

I think it's fascinating and I seem to see it enough in his games that I was wondering if it's a virtue at the advanced level. I know down at my level it seems best to separate the knights and not welcome redundancy like you mention. (I think). But maybe at his level it complicates the position or becomes virtuous for some reason.

And here we go again. Gaioz Nigalidze, GM from Georgia who has won a very strong Al-Ain open not so long ago, has been caught cheating in Dubai Open. It really is at all levels of chess.. Disgusting

table from the Al-Ain Open that he won: http://chess-results.com/tnr149978.a...flag=30&wi=821

You will notice that in Al-Ain he lost to GM Tigran Petrosian. That is because Petrosian suspected him of cheating already then and Nigalidze probably felt unsafe to continue with his cheating ways and played the game without the outside help.

Fun fact? In Dubai, Nigalidze was caught red-handed while playing a game versus... Yes, the same Tigran Petrosian. We should put this guy on some cheater-detection squad for FIDE or something

I'm in the middle of my club championship and on Thursday I'm playing one of the players who I feel will give me the most trouble. I'm playing black and for this game I've decided I'll actually do some prep as opposed to my typical decide what I feel like at the board.

I've decided I'm going to play the Scandinavian so wanted to test some lines out. I decided to get some practice by playing loads of blitz games. But for some unknown reason it seems despite 2 days playing several hour long sessions, not one player on chess.com wants to play good opening moves.

Infact almost without exception the players decided as some sort of agreement that they would respond to 1.e4 d5 with 2.e5? apparently everyone wants to hand black the advantage on move 2.
Well maybe the advantage is a little strong. But it does let black equalize easily and lets him play favorable variations of mainline openings.


I dont mind people playing crap moves again me from time to time. But in every damn game and when I'm trying to test some specific lines?

That's weird if its happening every game. I play the Scandi too, and I've come across 2 e5 on chess.com more often than I'd expect but the standard exd5 is still the most common by a pretty good margin. I'm happy to see e5 though so I hope this is a trend. That is, I'll be happy to see it when I feel like playing chess again. Lately just haven't been interested in playing.

I play as black 1.e4 c5 2.f4 d5 and recently on ICC everyone is playing 3.e5.

Agreed. The only thing I can say is that Hou Yifan got robbed. She was 2298 and 12 years old and had to deal with a miserable 15 k-Factor when she made her move from 2298 to 2488 from the April 2006 to July 2006 rating lists. With the 40 k-factor she would have gone from 2298 to 2803 and should be the legitimate youngest player to break 2600, 2700 and 2800 and not those chumps, Carlsen and Wei Yi.

That's an awesome find on You Yifan. Would she have broken 2800 even if ratings were monthly, like now? How many events went into that span and how did their start dates line up?

multicast turned out to be a cheater after all.