Nova Daily - 27 June 2025: Speedrunning
Hi!
From everything that I've ever said about going slow, taking your time, and my derision of the selling of nonsense like quick success and shortcuts to greatness, you wouldn't really be able to tell that I'm actually a great fan of quick. There's one branch in particular that I find very entertaining. In a way this branch is a great example of everything that I have been talking about.
Speedrunning
Speedrunning is one of the most insane niches of the world of video gaming. What speedrunning basically means is that you try to beat an entire game from start-up to staff-roll in as little time as possible. This is to add an extra layer of challenge to a game, and it keeps the game interesting for people who would otherwise have grown bored of their own old games.
Any video game lends itself very well for speedrunning, but one of the videogames that I like to watch most of all is Pokémon. As a one-player adventure game, you start with one Pokémon, and you catch and train more of them as you get further on your path to beat the toughest trainers in the Pokémon League and become Pokémon Master.
You can keep training up your little buddies until you've maxed out their levels so that they will be able to beat every team with ease. It takes the challenge and the fun out of it, so Pokémon enthusiasts have come up with many ways to make the game more challenging, like, doing it with as few battles as possible (minimum battles), or with the extra limitation that you're no longer allowed to use your Pokémon once it faints (Nuzlocke), sometimes even with a level cap. There's even a Pokémon YouTuber called Jrose11 who has made it his goal to finish the games using only one Pokémon for all battles throughout the entire game. Although Jrose11 strictly speaking isn't speedrunning the game, he is stretching the game to breaking point in his own right.
Speedrunning is such a popular and fun pursuit that the communities have started hosting events like AGDQ (Awesome Games Done Quick) and SGDQ (Summer Games Done Quick). In collaboration with Twitch, Chesscom has its own versions in Chess Played Quick events.
In order to become as skilled as some of these people are in beating the game as quickly as they do, they have spent an awful lot of time on the grind. And even then, success is never guaranteed. Especially RNG (the randomness programmed into the game to make its gameplay less predictable) can make or break a run. Before he became a sponsored YouTuber, Karl Jobst has spent maybe thousands of hours to shave off one or two frames off the world record of the very first level of Goldeneye. And as a YouTuber, he has covered the Pogchamps scandal as well, and with quite an accurate depiction of facts.
So, although I don't really like the hasty way, I do like it when things are quick. But usually only when there's a long and slow process that precedes it. In fact, the advice I tend to give if people want to become better at quick chess is to get better at slow chess. That sounds paradoxical, but will make a lot of sense once I explain properly what I mean by that.
Today's chess
Speaking of quick: today I have one flex and one exercise for you. The exercise came from the rapid game that I played. I'll share the answer tomorrow. The flex is this:
Alright, let's get on to the exercise. It's a calculation exercise for the endgame.
I was playing white in the above position. Black, in severe time-trouble, had just played the shocking move 55...Be5. What will be the result? Please support your answer.
Tomorrow I'll present the full analysis of the game, with everything that comes with it.
