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How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

gautamnarula.com

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Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#101

Post by EdwigePelagia »

V-2 wrote: post #89
EdwigePelagia wrote: post #8

who is this guy and why should i take him seriously? he doesn't explain why his advice is worth a damn

He seems to be a Class A player: http://chess-db.com/public/pinfo.jsp?id=3012928544 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system#United_States... Also have a look at: http://www.amazon.com/Chess-For-Novice-Player-Beginning/dp/0... (Eidtorial Reviews / About the Author) That's not bad at all. I think he's perfectly entitled to give advice to beginners. They don't really need it coming from a GM, for the same reason…

I actually agree that a GM is not necessarily the best teacher. But there are people with decades of TEACHING experience, and they are the best teachers.

He's certainly within his rights to go around saying you should listen to him. Just like every other useless self-help blogger is.

The fact that my calling out his authority and credibility seems to rile up so many people says something about the crowd here. The crowd here is anti-intellectual, anti-credential, anti-experience, and anti-expertise. The crowd seems to be a lot of overpuffed young men who read Paul Graham essays and feel superior to others... for no reason.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#102

Post by EdwigePelagia »

phaus wrote: post #71
EdwigePelagia wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does HN operate on a kindness and friendliness economy? If some blogspam hack writes in a very kind tone but peddles complete unauthoritative bullshit should we coddle him so as to not hurt his feelings? All he because he wrote with "kindness". This isn't a nice lady smiling at you on the street and telling you about her knitting technique. This is fucking blogspam by a complete amateur who has self-proclaimed himsel…

Blog spam is for generating ad revenue or gaining attention for a product. This guy isn't selling anything, and there aren't any ads on his site(at least none that I see on my iPad). If you don't like what he has to say, that's your perogative, but that doesn't make his article blog spam. The guy's been on HN for a year and a half and that's the first time he ever posted anything from his site. He likely just found o…

>Instead of complaining, wouldn't it be more productive to take your own advice and post some of the resources that you found useful?

No. Pointing out the low quality of this article is pretty easy and helpful. It's not like the opportunity cost of my very simple (but powerful) criticism is precluding me from making my contributions to the world.

I think we should all spend a lot more time shooting down people who don't deserve attention.

I'm sure he's a nice guy. Maybe he's a great friend and sincerely loves his mom. If these things make you uncriticizable on HN, no wonder the place is full of trash.

P.S. It's blogspam because he's selling his book.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#103

Post by EdwigePelagia »

jsmeaton wrote: post #87
EdwigePelagia wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone asks an obvious question, the interpreter of the question has two paths to choose. (a) Assume the author is very stupid and then tell him the very stupid and obvious answer. (b) Interpret the question as rhetorical. People who take (a) are the type of people who think they're smarter than everyone else, but who are actually, in fact, dumber. Usually they lack empathy, are undersocialized, and probably sh…

> are the type of people who think they're smarter than everyone else, but who are actually, in fact, dumber. Usually they lack empathy, are undersocialized, and probably show on the autism spectrum. Projecting? Everything about both of your comments (above) suggest you fit this model perfectly. In the opening of the article the author says: > many people mentioned that they enjoyed playing chess but quit because of…

You've completed missed what I'm saying. I'm saying the best teachers for brand new chess players are those humans who specialize in rapidly training new chess players. The people who should write books on chess training are the people who have been doing it for 20+ years and actually have some authority. These people DO write books but apparently they're less interesting than some 19 year old posting his completely untested, unrefined, invalidated hunches. It's low quality content in a field where there is a LOT of high quality content.

If the article was targeted at expert chess players I wouldn't have said anything. Because expert chess players don't need to be told that there are better experts than 19 year old newbies. The fact that the article is targeted at beginners is what motivated me to speak up--beginners might not realize just how much quality information is out there and that they don't need to settle for the afternoon musings of a newbie.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#104

Post by EdwigePelagia »

adamconroy wrote: post #79
EdwigePelagia wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone asks an obvious question, the interpreter of the question has two paths to choose. (a) Assume the author is very stupid and then tell him the very stupid and obvious answer. (b) Interpret the question as rhetorical. People who take (a) are the type of people who think they're smarter than everyone else, but who are actually, in fact, dumber. Usually they lack empathy, are undersocialized, and probably sh…

Your reply sounds a bit fishy. Your second sentence "he doesn't explain why his advice is worth a damn" is inconsistent with a rhetorical question. I agree he doesn't have much cred by the way, and his method is nothing new or special. But I think his advice is generally sound for an uneducated player who wants to improve.

I actually phrased my comment in the style of a marker who is marking some academic work, like an essay. The norm here is to address your points to the content of the paper itself and not appeal to outside information.

So my comment is more clearly saying, "This essay would be stronger if you used evidence or authority of some kind to back up the assertions you are making." This is actually a polite way of saying "You don't know what you're talking about and shouldn't be proclaiming yourself an expert on this topic."

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#105

Post by V-2 »

EdwigePelagia wrote: post #101
V-2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems to be a Class A player: http://chess-db.com/public/pinfo.jsp?id=3012928544 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system#United_States... Also have a look at: http://www.amazon.com/Chess-For-Novice-Player-Beginning/dp/0... (Eidtorial Reviews / About the Author) That's not bad at all. I think he's perfectly entitled to give advice to beginners. They don't really need it coming from a GM, for the same reason…

I actually agree that a GM is not necessarily the best teacher. But there are people with decades of TEACHING experience, and they are the best teachers. He's certainly within his rights to go around saying you should listen to him. Just like every other useless self-help blogger is. The fact that my calling out his authority and credibility seems to rile up so many people says something about the crowd here. The cro…

Of course these are the BEST teachers, but

a) Not being the best doesn't mean you're not good enough

b) In his piece he actually recommends young chess players to learn from numerous books authored by accomplished and highly experienced chess teachers such as Seirawan or Silman.

Which part of his advice exactly would you call out as useless?

"The fact that my calling out his authority and credibility seems to rile up so many people says something about the crowd here. The crowd here is anti-intellectual, anti-credential, anti-experience, and anti-expertise"

You yourself did not back up your criticism with any credentials (we don't know who you are and why we should pay attention to your objections), not to mention that you didn't even point out any particular flaws in the article. Thus your comments (as of now) have no expertise value by your own standards.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#107

Post by notacoward »

nathancahill wrote: post #11
peterwwillis wrote: post #2

> Error establishing a database connection For the love of god people. Please stop requiring a database connection to serve static content.

It's running on Wordpress. Do you know of static site generator that is similarly easy to use for non-technical people? I use Jekyll, but when I tried teaching it to someone I realized that the learning curve was too steep and switched them to Wordpress.

What about http://scriptogr.am/ or http://calepin.co/ ?

Also, I think the problem is needing a database to serve content, not to generate or store it. Many people would be happy with a system where the database is needed only by the author, generating static pages from the database content and then serving those even if the database is down. I even wrote a bunch of scripts to use Wordpress as a static site generator, before I switched to Pelican. With a little more work I probably could have turned that into a turn-key solution that would still insulate readers from database problems.

Re: How to Get Good at Chess, Fast

#110

Post by scott_s »

EdwigePelagia wrote: post #102
phaus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blog spam is for generating ad revenue or gaining attention for a product. This guy isn't selling anything, and there aren't any ads on his site(at least none that I see on my iPad). If you don't like what he has to say, that's your perogative, but that doesn't make his article blog spam. The guy's been on HN for a year and a half and that's the first time he ever posted anything from his site. He likely just found o…

>Instead of complaining, wouldn't it be more productive to take your own advice and post some of the resources that you found useful? No. Pointing out the low quality of this article is pretty easy and helpful. It's not like the opportunity cost of my very simple (but powerful) criticism is precluding me from making my contributions to the world. I think we should all spend a lot more time shooting down people who do…

Plenty of people submit content that also has a relationship to a book. If that content has value unto itself, then it's not blogspam.
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