Yeah, I meant a female top-ten player.

I forgot how to multiquote, but to someone who asked something along the lines of "why would he need to be rated if he doesn't play" - well, he certainly does not want/need to have any rating, but we were having a discussion ITT on what makes a "chess player".

The person I've described does not fit the "chess player" criteria that most of us seem to adhere to, yet as far as chess skill/knowledge/understanding/whatever you wanna call it goes, he is massively strong. So, how to name him, since some of you think that the term "chess player" does not apply? That is what I was meaning to ask

YKW do you realize that you end every post of yours with the "smug" smiley?

Well, you are.

"Chess guru" would fit just fine then.

I think he is actually just trying to be nice in case he is accidentally being smug since English isn't his first language. :/

Smug isn't something I can ever remember thinking YKW really ever does so I think it's an online lost in translation issue.

Maybe

In all seriousness though, I legitimately did not realize that putting a smiley face at the end of a post can be interpreted as "smug". Why is it interpreted as "smug"? Is it interpreted as "smug" by a majority of people, or is it just your pet peeve? If so, I am sorry, I just like to do it cause I feel it adds certain warmth to the post and shows that I am not being combative or something like that.

Gotta say I am a bit confused by this.

It is not my pet peeve.

There are many different smileys that convey different meanings.

is the smug smiley though.

Maybe mix up your smiley game or post multiple smileys is my suggestion.

I was under impression that "" is just the absolutely most regular smile there is, I have no idea why are you interpreting it as smug!

If anything, the one with sunglasses I would label smug (I really wanted to put a smiley face here but I am now self-conscious about it, thanks!)

WTF are you on about? Hit the "Quote" button in one of YKW's posts. He uses the most standard of standard smileys, the colon-closed-parentheses one.

WTF is smug about that?

YKW, it is not "The Smug Smiley". You're not coming off as smug. Thanks for your participation in these threads.

Oh, and while you're here, I recently watched a John Bartholomew video in which he mentions that he went to UDT. You went there, too, if I'm not mistaken, right?

Any stories?

I, too, would be interested in any stories, although I'm not sure there are any.

Normal smiley:
Smug smiley:

That's great.

Dog is thinking "he touched the pawn, now he has to move it!"

He did move it.

Omggg that's amazing.

Is that Judit Bowlgar's protege?

Been checking in r/chess everyday to get news and general thoughts about the candidates, and apparently people think it’s somehow worthwhile to be posting their missed mates in two.

You guys weren’t kidding. Horrible.

Woohoo, 1410!

I guess I still suck

I'm in a weird place where I'm way better than my friends who casually play chess, but I get trashed when I play anyone who is remotely competitive at it.

That test was fun, there were a lot of complex positions where I felt there were no clearly great moves

There were a couple of times that they tried tricks, but I "got them," though, which was satisfying.

You certainly don't suck! I don't remember the cutoff but you can probably walk into a grocery store and rate to almost always be the best chess player there! I like thinking about it like that and I am basically a King among Pawns all day every day.

Got 1878 on that test which was a bit of a surprise - for quite a few of them I didn't see anything and just ended up making (seemingly) reasonable developing move to get on with it.

I've never had an official rating (only played online) and it's been years since I took chess seriously, so I don't think my actual rating can be above 15-1600 at most. I would've taken 1300 as a reasonable estimate without a second thought.

I did study chess a lot about 20 years ago though and I've always loved chess problems/positions and have a lot of books with those, so I guess that may give me an advantage for this kind of test as a lot of them involved known themes. I'm pretty good at finding those when I know they're there to be found - I'm really bad at seeing them during actual play though.

That's pretty universal. Everyone is better at finding the move in a problem than in actual play, so I would like to think that whoever made that rating tool accounted for that somehow.

Yea, just saying the gap might be bigger for someone who've focused a lot on those type of problems over playing.

Speaking of chess puzzles - I love retrograde problems (though I don't think they're beneficial for improving your play as they're more puzzles using chess rules as the 'framework').

For those unfamiliar with those - instead of finding the best move or planning ahead, you have to puzzle out what has happened in the past. Typical problems would be "What was the last (x number of) move(s)", "On which square was the queen captured", "Is castling still legal" etc.

Common to all problems is that the moves leading up to the position must have been legal chess moves - not necessarily good or rational ones though.

The book Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes by Smullyan is a very good one that starts off teaching retrograde puzzles before moving on to some pretty tough ones. Absolutely recommended for puzzle fans - though it may or may not be to the liking of those just "in it for the chess".

An example:

White has just moved - what was the move?