Chess

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Kill All the White People
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Our club vs another club in May. I’m rusty af should I go full Hippo? 1500 USCF

Man tabletop is such a different beast. Everyone plays super weird shit in club. I have had like 2 normal games.

Just bust out some obscure gambits (not Englund) or fuck it, just play the Polish, no one knows what to do is that.
 
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Pterodactyl159

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Man tabletop is such a different beast. Everyone plays super weird shit in club. I have had like 2 normal games.

Just bust out some obscure gambits (not Englund) or fuck it, just play the Polish, no one knows what to do is that.
That’s what I was thinking, some crazy gambits. I’ll donate a pawn if it gets me out of a bunch of opening theory. I had a gambit account on lichess that was 100+ higher rated than my regular account.
 

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Kill All the White People
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I wanna play more OTB, but I think I've come to the conclusion that this is as good as I'm gonna get. I can't devote a shitload more time to training and theory and puzzles and deep analysis on games, I've got too many fucking hobbies. Gonna have to settle for 1500/1600 online and just be happy I'm better than 95% of players.

It does have its perks - you run into people every once in awhile who are like "oh, you play chess? I used to play a lot, I'll beat you around a bit" and then go 0 and 15 against you before you take pity on them and fold up the board.
 

Gankak

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It does have its perks - you run into people every once in awhile who are like "oh, you play chess? I used to play a lot, I'll beat you around a bit" and then go 0 and 15 against you before you take pity on them and fold up the board.

Im about an 1800 player, and I ran into a guy who "played in prison" and wanted to play me for 100 bucks a game and give me queen odds. I just laughed at him and said no
 

Furry

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Man tabletop is such a different beast. Everyone plays super weird shit in club. I have had like 2 normal games.

Just bust out some obscure gambits (not Englund) or fuck it, just play the Polish, no one knows what to do is that.
Playing weird shit evens the playing field if you don't study openings intensely and are good at tactics/endgames. So a lot of the A-players who are tactics focused basically trash on opening theory immediately, which is the sort of player that tends to show up at clubs. If you have a club with a lot of experts and masters you'll probably find more mainline game play going on.
 

Furry

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Ok I’m thinking chigorin-richter for white and hippo as black. I’ll only half troll.
I love the fred opening. 2. ... KF7!!! is an attack that throws a lot of people through a loop. It's completely trash, but fun to play.
 
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Khane

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New Doc is out on Netflix.

Nothing amazing, but good for non followers for sure.

I watched it, as a person who doesn't play or pay attention to chess it was kind of interesting. The biggest takeaway for me from this wasn't anything about either Hans or Magnus though.

It was that the guys who run chess.com are shifty, shady assholes. I wonder if that Dan guy realized that he let the cat out of the bag that chess.com will literally let you cheat if its good for them. They'll also apparently jump whenever Magnus cries to them.

Kinda sucks for you guys that play that chess.com has such a monopoly on online play.
 

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Kill All the White People
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I watched it, as a person who doesn't play or pay attention to chess it was kind of interesting. The biggest takeaway for me from this wasn't anything about either Hans or Magnus though.

It was that the guys who run chess.com are shifty, shady assholes. I wonder if that Dan guy realized that he let the cat out of the bag that chess.com will literally let you cheat if its good for them. They'll also apparently jump whenever Magnus cries to them.

Kinda sucks for you guys that play that chess.com has such a monopoly on online play.

Cheating is extraordinarily hard to deal with. The thing is, you don't even need to follow the computer moves the whole game. Just taking a minute or something to find the only move in a particular position is enough to sway a lot of games, in most online time controls, you have more than enough time to do that.

It's very telling that I have 3 Bullet medals from arenas (2 min and under games) and I lose 400 rating to absolute scrubs in blitz and rapid arenas. It's just too bad that bullet is complete shit if you actually want to get better at the game.