also hi Yugoslavian, still on the market for coaches?

Hi Judit!

No, I have a coach I am relatively happy with. I guess I quite like our lessons and I really like the idea of the homework and work he is overseeing me do.

However:

1) It's usually unclear if a lesson is happening until the day before
2) I'd like help with constructing a weekly/daily routine but he doesn't seem to be able to do that (partially he doesn't believe in routines or goals of that nature)
3) He still hasn't provided analytics/statistics on the homework which it seems will be helpful to see if I'm getting better at it
4) He'll mention sending me stuff during lessons but forgets. If I remind him it's not an issue, he intends to, he just seems v busy.
5) We seem to have several ongoing conversations about general topics going on at the same time but none ever seem to get fully resolved to my liking.

All of these items (except #2) seem to stem from him being quite busy (he is in college and has a lot of stuff going on in general). However, I don't know if it's enough to make me want to switch since I'm not sure many of these things are an actual issue or just simply a bit frustrating or slightly missed opportunities.

Of the four legal captures I think only half of them win?

Two are instant wins, two are 2 rooks vs queen with a big pawn advantage.

My favorite part of r/chess is the 10 posts about "I just broke 1100 in ultrabullet on lichess" and "Finally broke 1300 on chess.com blitz!!!1"

Just ugh. Do these knucklemunchers not understand how awful it would be if everyone posted everytime their rating broke some multiple of 100? NOBODY CARES.

I can't for the life of me figure out why those posts ever get upvotes BUT THEY DO.

LMAO

Sounds like someone is salty about not hitting 1100 in ultrabullet. We can't all be penguinGM.

Yeah I must have - I even did it twice cause the evaluation didn't make sense to me. Oh well.

I thought this was pretty funny - disclaimer that I suck:

All I've heard in every single book I've read is "don't learn B+N+K v K because it'll never come up ever". So we get to this position and he can't save his knight (Kf3 Nd1 Ke2) which gets us to that exact endgame, but of course I never learned it so I play Kh5 to draw.

And stockfish gives me the "sweet blunder bro" that I don't wanna hear lol.

Why not take the BNK vs K freeroll instead?

It's not much of a freeroll with 2 minutes unless you've looked at it or know something to get started. May as well just offer a draw and save the time.

You can always sacrifice one of your pieces for the last pawn to secure a draw.

wat

Two minutes is plenty. In fact, 11 seconds is all you need.

Seriously though. Louis, you just don't come up with that sequence over the board. Grandmasters have failed to convert that position in long time control tournaments (with increment) on more than one occasion. You either know it or your don't, and if you don't, might as well draw and save the time, as Yugo said.

notsureifserious.jpg

(it's 15+15)

Didn't even notice that. Well, then it probably was useful as training. But probably only if the plan was to actually study the patterns involved afterwards. Still, no hope of actually checkmating in that particular game. If this was going to be a one-off game, still better to just offer a draw or whatever and spend time on something else.

Oh! There's a rook on d2 too! Somehow missed that when I set it up, lol.

Bonus, half the captures win *even if you remove one of your rooks from the board before making said capture*.

Top post on /r/ches at the moment:

I get a new chess clock for my birthday
[picture of chess clock]

That's it. No content, nothing. Just a damn picture of a DGT clock.

160 upvotes (90% upvoted).

I find it hard to hate on someone feeling great about getting a new chess clock or people thinking him/her feeling great is a good thing.

It may not be great or insightful chess-content, but it's hardly worth singling out as a problem.

It's a no content post. Same as what Gorgonian said, with people posting silly stuff like "I just broke 1400 Blitz on chess.com!!!"

This rule exists for a reason:

If 90% upvotes it, then it would seem like the majority is fine with those kinds of posts.

Either way - posting about it here isn't going to make a difference.

I don't really care either way - with all the terrible stuff I read every day on forums, I just find it hard to get upset about someone being happy about a new chess clock.

That's the problem. And my point.

It's not one guy being happy about his new chess clock. It's scores of people posting and upvoting random no content stuff that would be better suited on facebook, and that makes it harder to find the valuable posts. And we were just talking about this in here, so I gave another example. I wasn't and am not trying to change /r/chess by posting in here.

If you think random guy on the internet getting a new chess clock is worthy of celebration, then more power to you I guess, even though I think you're quite easily impressed. I'd have a hard time believing you'd still be celebrating, though, if literally EVERY random guy on the internet posted about his new chess clock, or his multiple-of-100 "milestone" online bullet rating.

Leave reddit chess where it deserves to be.

Out of this fat ****ing dr pepper drinking forum and in the trash.

I may have been hanging around on r/wholesomememes too much, but I still don't see the harm in someone posting about their new chess clock.

Also - I'm still rocking the DGT chess clock that I bought back in the '90s so I'm thinking about making a post about that on r/chess and see if I can beat 90% upvotes with it.

If I make it a "missed a very nice tactic while playing with my antique DGT"-post I'm pretty sure I'll break r/chess forever.

The entire point is that some of us would like a chess forum that doesn't allow those types of posts. We understand that you are ok with it and lots of others are, but it isn't what we are looking for. In fact, it is cancerous to what we'd like to see, because it encourages more no-content posting when those posts receive 230 upvotes and a high-effort high-content post like a game analysis receives 3 or worse gets down-voted (which has happened!).

Ideally, r/chess is supposed to be a higher content forum with places like r/anarchychess for those types of low/no-content posts. It is set up like that, rules-wise. Those of us that want it to be like and try to make it work that way get frustrated by this. It's not that we don't understand that these posts are popular, it's that the subreddit isn't supposed just cater to popular things.

Personally I report every post like this I come across and most of the time, they are removed eventually. For instance, I reported the post in question, and it does appear to have been removed.