On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years • Hacker News Board

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#251

Post by freeflight » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #190

znpy wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ test is bullshit and has been debunked a number of times. Nowadays anyone bragging about their IQ should be considered a moron and left talking to themselves. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3oUqKUx2o0 (first thing that came off my head)

a test in isolation cannot be bullshit. when people talk about iq test many people imagine the person believes an iq test is a rigorous measure of all intellectual talent. or course it is not that. but it is also wrong to suggest it has no meaning at all. it does have some predictive power. imperfect measures are not always useless, which is goof since all measures have some error.

> a test in isolation cannot be bullshit.

A test trying to measure something we can't even properly define is kinda flawed in it's whole premise.

As such the best an IQ test can do is measure how well somebody prepared for a test like that, but it will struggle to properly catch any knowledge or skill domains not covered by the test, of which there are a lot.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#252

Post by defertoreptar » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

_the_inflator wrote: post #36

windowshopping wrote: post #28

I did something very similar with an old strategy game called Age of empires II. Over the course of two years I went from a 1300 rating to 1850. I don't play chess, so it's hard for me to compare the scales, but I will say the highest players were rated around 2600. I think being 1850 put me around 90-95th percentile for active players-- there were less than 50 players over 2300, and only a few hundred over 2000. My…

Hey there fellow AoE II player! Cool, to hear from some decent player. What time did you play? Around 2002? Since I was a 2k player at the time, let me assure you, that the top dudes at the time (Koven, Sheriff for example) were already so called pro gamers who got payed/sponsored and they were exceptionally good. The true story is, that many folks above 2k+ did what was called "points trading" back then. Koven once…

As someone who was in the thick of it, what do you think could've been done differently to improve the problems with the rating system?

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#253

Post by unholiness » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

sharedfrog wrote: post #114

mpol wrote: post #74

Two small notes, this seems not to be an official rating. The 1750 is reached at chess.com it seems. I play at lichess, where I am around 1700. My official rating is currently 1437, my highest rating ever was 1583 two years ago. So there is definitely inflation at lichess, and I would assume there is inflation at chess.com. So claiming 1750 ELO when it is not an official rating seems somewhat risky. Another note, he…

> So there is definitely inflation at lichess I don't think it's inflation. Lichess simply uses a different formula (Glicko-2) than either chess.com or FIDE.

Glicko is just ELO with an uncertainty factor that speeds up down how quickly your rating changes if you've played fewer games. Actually, FIDE's implementation of ELO also has an approximate version of this, increasing its "k" value for new players and decreasing it for some thresholds of games played, ratings, and player age. Both these adjustments just affect how quickly your rating would change if your win rate changes. They do not your equilibrium rating at a particular skill level.

Lichess ratings are inflated not because of Glicko but because of the player pool. New players start at 1500 ELO in both Lichess and FIDE, but Lichess's pool of "new players" is a lot wider and has a lot more amateurs than FIDE's new players. The amateurs' points ultimately get spread around the player pool while they descend from 1500 to a more realistic rating, inflating the ratings of other players on the way.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#254

Post by dinkleberg » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #209

cupofcoffee wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please tell us more about your day to day life and why 2 hours of free-time is considered a luxury?

If you have a full-time job, family, friends, exercise, and have a hobby or two already - I'm not sure where you come up with two hours of free time per day after that. Are you literally scheduling everything you do? Are you sleeping less than 6 hours? Obviously, there's probably 2 hours per day in small intervals where I'm not maximizing my day. Because of this, I recently picked up guitar, and this is nice for the…

Of course you can’t just tack on another hobby that’s 2 hrs/day when you’ve already got others. There are sacrifices with everything. If you want to take up chess as a hobby you’ll need to make room by doing less of another hobby or something else.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#255

Post by david927 » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

cambalache wrote: post #239

david927 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Save your bishops, bishops > knights in most endgames That's funny because I found the opposite to be true if it's a single bishop / knight endgame. > You won't improve by playing blitz. It will just take longer. A single five minute game a day over coffee will work, if that's all the time you have for.

> That's funny because I found the opposite to be true if it's a single bishop / knight endgame. No matter what you found, it has been statistically proved that a Bishop (against a Knight), and especially a Bishop pair is stronger than a Knight/Knight or Knight/Bishop .

Wow, I didn't know that! Thanks so much.

Bishop pair is clear, of course, but I literally would look for a single knight/bishop ending (where I would have the knight), thinking it gave me the advantage. Maybe it was a placebo effect. Ha! Thanks again!

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#256

Post by aerovistae » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

_the_inflator wrote: post #228

aerovistae wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

T90 to me is such a confusing phenomenon. I've never understood why a low-rated player who (to me) did not have a particularly entertaining personality was the most-subscribed AoE2 player on twitch. Is he actually good now? How high-rated is he compared to Daut and Viper and so on?

He already beat Viper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tkf-BMMq-8 T90 is doing great. Also improved massively his commentator skills. Give him a try! :)

Ah, yeah, I kind of meant in a serious match though. In that match viper made 3 docks on a land map and no feudal army.

As T90 himself said, "The trouble with playing viper is that if viper memes me, and I win, people just say oh T90 isn't good, viper wasn't trying. And if I lose, well, T90 can't even beat viper when he's not trying. So it's a lose-lose situation." Too true.

I see he is #96 on rankings right now though, that's terrific. Being able to beat #1 isn't the only measure of success and I don't mean to imply otherwise.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#257

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

emerongi wrote: post #136

Trufa wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a huge fan of lichess for playing and analysis but I think for tactics, it’s the one place it’s lacking, it’s always too easy for me for some reason and I go to chesstempo instead. Does anyone else experience this? By the way, when I say easy it’s for me that I’m an average player.

What is your puzzle rating? As a novice player (1300 rating), the puzzles are plenty hard for me personally.

Disagree. I'm a 1500 player and get 2100 on the tactics, which is obviously not representative and means something is up.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#258

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

nebulous1 wrote: post #183

Trufa wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a huge fan of lichess for playing and analysis but I think for tactics, it’s the one place it’s lacking, it’s always too easy for me for some reason and I go to chesstempo instead. Does anyone else experience this? By the way, when I say easy it’s for me that I’m an average player.

The puzzles on chesstempo are much better but the interface is much worse, particularly on mobile. Honestly the puzzles on chess.com are better than lichess. The lichess ones just seem to have limited scope, I'm not sure why. That said the interface is good and if you're finding them too easy then your puzzle rating should be rising to the point where it's offering you puzzles you'll find more challenging.

> if you're finding them too easy then your puzzle rating should be rising to the point where it's offering you puzzles you'll find more challenging.

I'm at 2100 puzzle and they seem to sort of level off.

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#259

Post by freeflight » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

hackerNoose wrote: post #103

sedivy94 wrote: post #31

Highly, highly recommend "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix. Like wow.

It's not very realistic when it comes to the chess, except the actual games. I also found it frustrating that they obviously were inspired by Bobby Fischer whose real life would have made a great story, but decided he wasn't hollywood friendly.

The show is actually based on a book by the same name published in 1983 [0], never read it myself. The chess moves in it are apparently taken from Fischer and others, but it doesn't credit Fischer in any other way.

Which is kind of weird considering the show did even the comparing the protagonist to Paul Morphy thing that also applied to Fischer.

The book also tackles themes like drug addiction and feminism, but I found the show's take on these mostly pointless and superficial. Her drug addiction is never depicted as a struggle, she performs well drugged as well as sober, more of a comedic air to it than serious affliction.

It's also slightly historically revisionist when claiming there were no female chess clubs in the US back then, when there actually were whole female national championships since the late 1930s. The show also claimed how in the USSR women would never play against men, completely ignoring the history of Nina Alexandrovna Bluket [1], who's life would probably have made for a way more interesting and authentic story than a gender-swapped Bobby Fischer.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queen%27s_Gambit_(novel)

[1] https://www.chess.com/blog/Spektrowski/pioneers-of-soviet-wo...

Re: On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years

#260

Post by alasano » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #137

hannofcart wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I advocate the same (teaching kids) Poker for the same reasons you mentioned (certain self-control and tactical/strategy concepts) but this is often greeted with controversy anytime I voice it. Learning to weigh the odds, exercising patience, taking calculated risks in the face of incomplete information, making allowance for the vagaries/emotions of your opponent all seem like great skills that would help one in life…

Poker is great. The other big thing it teaches is that luck is real. A hand can be played perfectly, and the player can still lose. Long term, the better player will win, but any player can get sucked out on any given hand. Losing in this way is tough, but a great lesson.

That's definitely a great lesson from poker which translates to real life.

Winning or losing in the short term is insignificant when compared to consistently making the best decisions possible with the information you have.

If those decisions have a positive expected value, you will end up a winner in the long term despite any short term variance.