Chess is a nice game. I used to play it a lot as a child, I won a bunch of prizes, but eventually I grew bored of it. That happened around the time I had to start learning opening theory. Chess ossifies within your mind. What’s first a dynamic flexible game eventually becomes a matter of learning what the right first moves are.
I don’t have to solve that problem, it has already been solved. Bobby Fischer took shuffle chess and added a few rules, to arrive at 960 unique different opening positions. Essentially you just randomize all the first row pieces, while maintaining two requirements:
-The king needs to be between two rooks.
-The bishops need to have different colors.
Then you give black the mirror position. This is all it takes, to obliterate opening theory.
But now you’re still left with a different problem: White has the first mover advantage. The size of this first mover advantage can vary a lot, depending on which of the 960 different opening positions you end up with. It can be both larger than standard chess, or smaller.
The solution? We take the list of 960 openings and we narrow it down again, to just these:
BBNRKQNR
BBNRNQKR
BBRNNKQR
BBRNNQKR
BBRNQKNR
BBRQKNNR
BNRBNKQR
BQRNNKRB
BRKNRQNB
BRNBKNQR
NBBNRQKR
NNBBRKRQ
NQBBRNKR
QBBNRKRN
QBRNKRBN
QNRKNBBR
QRBBNNKR
QRKRBBNN
RKBBNQNR
RKBNNRQB
RKBNQRNB
RKBQNNRB
RKBRQBNN
RKNBBRQN
RKQRNBBN
RNBBQKNR
RQKNRBBN
These are all positions that the supercomputers deployed to solve chess find to have no advantage for white.
And if you ever find yourself growing bored of chess, my recommendation would be to check out the medieval ancestor of chess, Shatranj. You can play it against the computer here.
I love freestyle chess, also known as 960 or Fischer Random. It is indeed a big relief to be freed from the mountains of opening theory. I don’t play it constantly, only around 40 games total. In fact, I hardly ever play online.
When I first tried it I was expecting a really chaotic mess of a game but quickly discovered that wasn’t the case; it’s no more wild than standard chess, you get familiar patterns.
Yeah, some of the 960 positions bestow a huge advantage on White and I’d wondered about throwing those out, but you’ve winnowed it down to something like only 35. Very interesting.
The legendary Magnus Carlsen won the inaugural FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship in February of this year. It’s good to see the strongest player in the world winning chess stripped of opening theory.
That’s badass. I had no idea you got that deep into chess. I always wanted to but was pulled in other directions.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”
– Matthew 7:15-20
This is doubly hilarious because figures like Emperor Nero have traditionally been labeled the Antichrist by Christians, and Trump fits that archetype pretty well. (Nero was actually a populist who clashed with traditional Roman elites too.)
The Perennial Nero, he’s always coming back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Redivivus
I don’t think there really is or ever will be a singular “antichrist” in that sense. You have to remember too that this concept originates primarily from the book of Revelation, which was written by some guy named John who lived maybe 50-100 years after Christ and basically just had some weird crazy vision shown to him. The fact that “Jesus Christ” appeared to him in these visions an told him to write down what he saw, should be a huge red flag to people, because Jesus the individual would have completely left this false prison reality almost immediately after he died, never to return again – as this was the intended purpose of his teachings. This type of ‘visitation’ is very similar to what you see in NDEs or during e.g. alien abductions, where interdimensional demons will disguise themselves as loved ones or as religious figures such as “Jesus” in order to deceive people and get them to do their bidding or to comply with their demands and agenda. And for these beings, who are capable of running long-term psyops, confusing and misleading billions of people as to the true nature of reality would be very worth it, and… Read more »
Whoops, meant to reply to Cyber Viking.
It is possible, by the way, that at some point the beings running this place will attempt to enact some kind of staged “end-times script”. It’s not inconceivable anyway. But if that ever happened you should definitely take a sceptical eye to the entire thing.
The patient looks like Epstein.
There you go Charlie the Scorpion, Overmaster Radagast was nice enough to write a post just for you..
Indeed!
Hey Rintrah, is this your new escapism or was this an idea of your AI?
I had many moments of glory and heartache in my little amateur chess career as a weekend warrior.
One that stands out is having the honor to play a strong Russian grandmaster an official tournament game when he was touring the circuit and kicking ass. He destroyed Anatoly Karpov in a famous game at a time when Karpov was thought to be unbeatable and now here he was, sitting across the table from me! The mental battle was on!
This was last century, before the age of computers.
I employed my weak defense that I had just been trying to learn and emerged out of the opening and middlegame in decent shape. We got into a juicy endgame that I believe I should have drawn, but I somehow mucked it up and had to resign. So you could say he beat Karpov worse than he beat me, and at least I got his autograph on my scoresheet.
Who was the gm you played? I once was in one of those simultaneous matches where a Russian star played a whole bunch of us. I was young and still possessed some brain cells, and was the last man sitting. From that point I was quickly destroyed. I don’t recall his name. He was a Jewish emigre.
There was a flood of Soviet GMs to the west after the fall of the USSR.
I don’t want to identify but he was not Jewish, he was big and blond. He didn’t just leave – he defected in spectacular fashion.
I actually played this GM two tournament games, had Black both times and did sort of OK both times. This other game came to what I knew was a critical moment and I just could not figure it out after a long 45 minute think, chose the wrong path and got punished. He was soooo talented and much better at calculating than me!
I never saw Fischer but I played two people who played him.
Somebody told me he got a draw against Mikhail Tal in an exhibition game.
I would have framed that scoresheet and mounted it on the wall.
From Chess
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgc_LRjlbTU
Have you seen Magnus matches against grandmasters?
OT: more data regarding female desire for choking during sex.
https://x.com/lizzystarrrdust/status/2030788104790139117?s=46
It’s not a function of women trying to please their men’s desires.
It’s not a function of women being seduced by pornography.
These putative “reasons” are what prudes and masculinized figures like Big Bird and Karen use to obfuscate a deep and embarrassing aspect of female sexuality.
Maybe not them, but most women.
And there is a tension, I have observed, between the masculinized women, and the feral women.
If you look closely, you will see this tension.
Guess which one reproduces?
Like many here, I am a sensitive LSWM.
My sex with former partners has been uninhibited, creative, sensual, kinky, even “nasty”
But I never treated my female partners with the degradation they seem to desire in their hearts.
I hate this world.
And so should you.
Scottish women will literally strangle you or punch you in the nose if you refuse to strangle them:
turn off my gas, carol
Yup. Any female who isn’t interested in the fantasies of an aging dude who isn’t getting any must be uptight or a dyke. Lol. That is the kind of imaginative analysis that I have come to expect on this site.
^ a perfect deflection.
Your reply is elegant in it’s female-coded DARVO
Hit a nerve?
No, I’m autistic. I’m not all that sensitive. I just wish you would write about something interesting instead of your boring fantasies; I’m about your age and believe me no-one wants to hear about the fantasies of anyone who is old enough to be their dad or mom. I’d rather read about whether the U.S. is going to do a ground invasion of Lebanon. That is my bet; it would be Trump threading the needle, although not in a good way. The other thing that interests me is whether the lack of jet fuel in Europe will so reduce travel to and from the U.S. that there will be plenty of jet fuel in the U.S. for domestic travel.
The problem that you inevitably get is proving consent – when the choked foid changes they/them/his/her mind and does a DV or rape allegation on you when daddy finds out about the kink.
Bonus points when it is BBC.
Just for the record — since you, like Big Bird — seem intent on consciously misreading me (despite my efforts at being articulate):
These are not “fantasies”
They are laments.
Nah, most such anecdotes related by men are fairy tales.
https://x.com/aliciakearns/status/2043917413876674975?s=46
Read the comments.
And get your head out of your ass.
Karen and Big Bird:
“La La La I can’t hear you!!!”
But this is, naturally, the genesis and origin point of the religious impulse.
I get it.
One recurring theme I notice from reading the comments on these various Twitter threads — apart from the obvious fact that “sexual choking” is a kink requested by women far in excess of the men who are willing to provide it — is that when their male partners balk or express reservation at the request, the women who are requesting it contemptuously denigrate their male partners as not a “real man”, sometimes comparing their male partners’ “inadequacies” to former lovers who were willing to indulge.
Volumes could be written about this, the implications are enormous.
But I get the sense this blog is not the place for it.
The consistent downvotes on my comments regarding this topic are interesting, in their own right.
I haven’t been inflammatory or emotional. I’ve merely reported a fact of reality with the dispassion of a proper journalist.
And yet, the flailing and motivated desire to minimize this reporting is diagnostically significant.
Lesson in there, for anyone who cares to contemplate it.