Nova Daily - 14 June 2025: 10 minutes of brainstorming

Hi!

Exactly two months ago to the day, I decided to write a text on inspiration. I sat down for about 10 minutes and came up with a list of 28 topics. It may have been more, but this was the speed at which I was able to type the ideas into a text file on my phone. The version presented in my blog was worked out properly.

Several of those topics were off-limits for what I wanted to write over the last two months. Cheating is a rewarding topic, but writing about it is rather precarious. Celebrities might be its own topic one day, but I'm not exactly motivated by it because it's usually a more fun read to have something delightful, engaging, and fun, and my dislike of them could make for a very bitter text. Besides, they are doing their stuff in their own way and have success with it. If I apply the "Live and let live" idea, I should just shut up about them and acknowledge that they're in fact doing a good job keeping chess popular. No matter how much I hold some of them in derision.

Quite some of the topics did find their way into my blog, and I feared that my pool of topics might dry up a bit. So it was time for:

10 minutes of brainstorming

I decided to sit down and jot down everything that crossed my mind. I got a list of 40 different topics within those ten minutes. I'll be honest with you, though: one of these 40 topics was already on my mind before it, and I decided to put it in the place of one thought that I won't bother you with.

1. The question about methods: "Does it work?"
2. The idea of pragmatism
3. My thoughts on AI-generated text
4. Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa
5. Rameshbabu Vaishali
6. A whole generation of Indian rising stars
7. My favourite chess-player
8. Popularity contests and polls
9. Chess journalism
10. Doing book reviews
    

    

11. Author and CC Director of News and Events Peter Doggers
12. Peter's book The Chess Revolution
13. Arne Moll's The Center Game
14. Openings
15. Badly written books
16. Pet peeves in books
17. My thoughts on blogging
18. The BlogChamps and Blogger Awards contests
19. Deciding to judge for The Blogger Awards June
20. Criteria by which I'll judge blogs
    
    

    

21. Twitch streams
22. Words On Stream
23. Languages
24. The New In Chess magazine, and the inspiration for topics that that could bring
25. Detective series
26. Fun television shows
27. Bingewatching series
28. Pokémon
29. Pokémon members at BlogChamps
30. Speedruns
    
    

    

31. The YouTuber JRose11 and his solo runs in Pokémon games
32. The PogChamps event
33. The Dr.Lupo cheating scandal
34. The YouTuber Karl Jobst and his video on the Dr.Lupo situation
35. Witch hunts in chess
36. Poorly executed scams
37. Hilarious scams in history
38. How to write your text
39. Sitting still, alone in a room
40. Brainstorming

And thus, after 40 topics, my brainstorming has gone full-circle.

Some topics keep coming back because I'm occupying myself a lot with it. I can see a pattern about these, which is content. Writing takes up a lot of mental space, and so do different multimedia outlets such as YouTube and Twitch.

The topic of TBA and my judging for the month of June will be its own blog. But of course I'm only going to start on that one after my work on it will be finished. So far I'm still enjoying reading the texts, and we're currently at 10 submissions.

If anyone feels inspired to write something about any of these topics: please take them away. I'll be looking forward to seeing your text!

Yesterday's game

Yesterday's game turned out to be far from perfect. On several occasions I messed up or chose the wrong plan, which made my position worse and maybe even borderline lost. However, you know the Tartakower quote about who wins the game of chess:

The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.

- Savielly Tartakower

And so it was.

What can I take away from this game:

1. I should remain true to my repertoire. There were several ways to transpose into Caro-Kann territory if I had traded on d4 and pushed d5 straight after. Panov positions can crop up in many different opening variations, and this fact alone proves that it's worth learning the Caro-Kann.
2. Engine's best isn't always human best. The idea to sacrifice the f-pawn on f4 and make the kingside completely static was best according to the engine, but I wouldn't have done that idea unless I wanted to make a draw or unless I'd be able to find a way in.
3. In the endgame, be stingy with pushing pawns. Look at the way Carlsen treats endgames.