Inspired me to go play some puzzles. Hit 2800! At this point, 3000 is the goal. Or maybe 2882 (highest actual rating achieved).
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Based on the puzzles I see, most of the suggested themes are nonsense
At this rate, you’ll exceed Magnus Carlsen’s actual rating
The follow-up for 1.
Summary
Qa5 is right. Follow-up being that if queen moves away again you can always go Bc4+ and Nxf7 forking the two rooks and ending up three pawns, if there isn’t something better from the attack given black’s exposed king
This is gonna be very long but I feel the need to vent here.
I just finished a Daily game today with someone who I suspect is a cheater. I had a 83 accuracy and he had a 96 accuracy (0 inaccuracies, 0 mistakes, 0 blunders) in a 22 move game.
The thing that pisses me off is that I met him in person at a chess event in DC this past Monday. He said he’s played for about a year but I could tell he didn’t know basic principles of chess. Some examples: He’d play the Smith Morra but didn’t understand the purpose of it and just took my pawn with his queen rather than c3. When I asked if he’s heard of the Smith Morra he said he doesn’t know names of any openings. I followed up by asking why he took with the queen, and he responded with “I wanna get my queen out”.
In another game he plays the Scandinavian defense, and immediately after exd5, Qxd5, d4, he plays Qe6+. His reasoning for that move was that he wanted to attack my king, to which I told him it’s probably not a good idea since I would just block it by developing my knight.
While teaching him during a hypothetical game, he made a suggestion of moving his f7 pawn to defend a piece (knight or bishop). I told him generally moving the f7 pawn is a very bad idea.
Fastforward to a few days later and he’s beaten me so handily? I doubt it, considering I played an untimed OTB game with him yesterday and I crushed him (he had only a king vs my knight, bishop, rook, and pawns). I looked at his most recent games which happened to 6 10 minute rapid games, all of which he won as a 600 rated player on Rapid with 90% accuracy or higher. The lowest was 92% and everything else was 96, 98, 99, and there was even a 100! He didn’t make a single inaccuracy, mistake, or blunder in any of these 6 games.
I know accuracy isn’t enough to tell whether someone’s cheating, since an opponent blundering can lead to easy captures…but looking through some of the games, there were some tactics that he found in the 10 minute games that even I (rated 2,000+ in puzzles) wouldn’t have found in even a daily game.
Next comes the time it takes to make moves. There were many games where even in the first move, it took him 15+ seconds. Obvious captures (rook takes queen) also took roughly 15 seconds and situations where he had only one possible move (opponent’s queen checked king in the back rank and the only eligible move was moving the knight back) also took like 15 seconds.
I’m gonna say his username here but if you’re curious, you can look at my profile and see a recent daily game I lost, and look at that game or his other games. I’ve played AA, rgrosz, and golfer many times on daily mode (all 1,600+ rated) and I’m pretty sure they’ve never had a game where they had 0 inaccuracies, mistakes, or blunders against me.
To rub salt to the wound, this guy has the audacity to tell me “good game”.
Does this sound like a cheater?
Yeah I’d be looking for a red X or whatever it is next to his username soon. Definitely all the signs of a cheater. I think there are a lot of insecure people that can’t help themselves. The anti-cheating system they have will probably find him eventually, but you can always give them a head’s up on it and they’ll check it out.
I have just recently gotten into 2 things that won’t make me much better but are vaguely enjoyable.
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Rated puzzles on the chess.com app. There’s 5 free a day, along with some other junk. They are compelling because the puzzles very gradually get harder when you win, and easier when you lose.
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Hikaru on Twitch TV. He’s fun to watch in a way not like unlike Queens Gambit. I mean, not like crazy intense sexy stares, but he sort bops his head to nice music, chats with the audience about random topics, and often thinks out loud which he further explains by drawing arrows all over the dang board in big blur while crushing speed chess.
Here’s a link I found a while back that I thought was interesting:
https://mbuffett.com/posts/chess_improvement_thoughts/
So in Group D, it looks like we only have 4 players right now. Nobody else seems to be joining, including some players that said they would and I’ve messaged them on chess.com and they have been online since I’ve messaged them. So I don’t know what to think. 4 is still okay for that group, and I can get another ‘free for all’ tournament going late in the year. That seem okay?
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If no one else joins and you’re not opposed, I can join D as well to make it 5 players. I don’t mind playing a lot of daily games.
So he plays 1 e4 e5 2 d4 exd4 3 Qxd4 and he plays Scandinavian? Sounds familiar… he might be a good player!
But seriously, yes, he should be reported.
His account has been closed by chess dot com. If I see him in person, I’m gonna tell him that if he cheating is not allowed, and if he does that again he is no longer welcome to my chess events.
Respect the game. Don’t go knocking my pieces off the board when you capture them (yes, he really did that).
Was this person 10 years old?
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Yeah, obvious cheating is obvious.
I’ve played over 100,000 games, and I believe I’ve had 5 games, ever, where I had 0 inaccuracies and a sub 10 centipawn loss.
Looks like I had one this September, and the one before that was September 2019.
I kicked him out of our group chat on FB; he is no longer welcome to any of my events. As an organizer, it’s my responsibility to make sure everyone is having fun and feeling comfortable. According to another attendee (she’s a beginner), he did the same thing of knocking pieces off the board during their game. In addition, he kept commenting that she was taking too long (it was an untimed game) and would make her doubt herself by asking “Are you sure about that move?” every single time she made a move. Dude sounds like trouble. Good riddance.
On another note, I crossed 2,100 on Puzzles!
I noticed that alvinaki is not in any of the four groups for the tournament.
Did he get left out by accident?
Or maybe he didn’t respond to any messages …
Gah! I’ve been reaching out to him as akial on chess.com this whole time. Though he did not respond to any of my messages here. Let me see what I can do.
It doesn’t look like I can add players or end a tournament early and start over…Does anyone else know if that’s possible?
Nope, it’s too late when it comes to daily tournaments.
Interesting thing I just learned about the Championship match next week. There will be NO increment until after move 60. Unusual.
The time control is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move 61.
This is what I look like when I have a chess puzzle I can actually solve:
From game 9: