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Just reviewed this loss. (Did not look at every move). The highest rated player was under 1700. Discussions were almost nonexistent. Did we just lose to an engine?

Vikings were in North America long before Columbus: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/vikings-north-america-date-newfoundland

For my taste,Pop music is very good these days and has been for two or three years. Many of my favorite artists are British - Adele, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles and others. I like the American bands One Republic, Maroon 5, and Imagine Dragons. Comments ?

This past Christmas my pal Brandon gave me an Alexa smart speaker as a Christmas gift. It is super cool. I mostly play music with mine, So do any of your ladies or gentlemen have a smart speaker? If yes, do you like it and what do you do with it?

Got a game you want to talk about or show off? Let's see it.

The airport about 30 minutes from my home has been approved as a landing spot for some space flights. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/new-faa-spacecraft-license-lands-excitement-in-huntsville/ar-AAXpN0h?cvid=6a4f579ae13944f9986f4268394eb106

Io is a strange place - and very far away. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/io-jupiter-moon-lava-frost-mystery-lumps-dunes

I have sometimes been surprised when I go from our Vote Chess game to Master Database, then I want to look at a position from there. But I turn into a cheater (and have to kick myself and resign all my positions) when I open the Analysis board and load the position. Here is how to avoid it, while still using Analysis to look at the Master Games Database positions. https://www.chess.com/analysis -> ⚙ -> Chess Engine -> Engine Off 1) https://www.chess.com/analysis 2) On a8 there is and off the board there is ⚙ (Settings). (Maybe Black has captured a gear!) 3) Click the gear and it says Chess Engine and you pick Engine Off After that we can happily use /analysis, if we want to, without cheating.

The Netflix production of The Queen's Gambit has drawn some attention to the Walter Tevis novel on which it is based. But I'm not sure how much awareness there is of a great work of fiction focussed on chess: Stefan Zweig's novella Chess ( the title has been translated in a few different ways). It is intense, throught-provoking and disturbing. Well worth devoting the few hours it takes to read it.

I've just solved a puzzle on the tactics trainer. The puzzle rating was 2166. It took me 5 minutes to solve; so I scored (only) 5 points. There were about 6 moves. I saw the solution quite quickly, but wasn't entirely sure if I had a response to a defending move, and there was one other reasonable looking way of thinking about the puzzle. Most of my time was spent checking each stage of my solution, with some devoted to a quick check of the alternative to make sure it didn't work. The actual target time for the puzzle was about 40 seconds. However, the pass rate was 49 per cent. It did make me wonder whether these target times (which strike me as very ambitious for the average club player) are encouraging many people to adopt the wrong approach and bad habits to tactical problems, both as puzzles and in real games: going for speed (and the high points you get if you solve it quickly) rather than thoroughness. I tend to think that, if I had such a position in a real game, I'd probably spend even longer over it (it was a mate in six). (apologies - I can't edit the typo in the title of this post)

I do a lot of nature photography, as well as canoeing, and hiking, and birdwatching. I am not an expert birder. In my area there are some expeert birders. It is amazing how much they can tell you about an ordinary looking bird you might see outside your window. I consider myself more of a naturalist. I know some about birds, but also know quite a bit about trees, fish, mammals and reptiles in my area. But get this: During a recent photography workshop I met a man who spots an insect and can often tell you the name of the insect and if it is male or female!! To me that is amazing that he can tell a male bug from a female bug. Now I see an area of study where I need to spend some time.....

Queen's Gambit https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10048342/ I can summarize a little bit. It is based on a novel. The main character is orphaned and at the orphanage she finds a chess teacher. She does a lot of things a natural chess champion might do. She uses few words, she figures out patterns very fast, she imagines chess positions when she is supposed to be sleeping, she's very competitive and eager to learn, she seeks out competition and more chess information wherever she goes I can't say much about the intellectual content of it. It is set back in the 1950s. I often feel like I should pause the video to write down the position and see if the movie is realistic. It has real tournaments mentioned and depicted like Las Vegas I think was US Open, and there's a US Championship, and they go to one east coast city I think Boston? on a plane - it's a very well done movie for chess nostalgia from some time before I was born. I am finding it very enticing to watch. It has 7 episodes and I am not sure what the length is, maybe an hour, or 1.5 hours. I can see it on Netflix. I need to tell batgirl about it who writes the historical chess articles here on chess.com but I suppose I will not be first to tell her.

As a result of trying to defend the Chess Mine's record to @petitbonom after a challenge was denied, I have analysed all of the Chess Mine's games using @MGleason's tool for the purpose of identifying suspect players. I wish I had done this earlier - the results are starkly indicative of substantial use of engines over the entire 85 games. I'm not going to stay in the group, and have explained why in their forum. Here are my posts there: Elroch wrote: Recently, I heard about the Chess Mine having a challenge declined on the basis that they had strong suspicions that this team's moves were influenced by engine output. I defended this claim based on the statistically inadequate evidence provided, and this led to me to analyse this group's games in the same way as I have many times for daily chess players (several of whom have been then booted for fair play violations after chess.com did much more thorough analysis. So, what does an analysis of the entire play of this group say? Here is the summary output of @MGleason's program for identifying suspect players for reporting, using a well-known chess engine with a modest amount of time to calculate. It is very important to note that only unclear positions after the opening are included in these analyses. Also that the T1-T2-T3 stats are only for a smaller number of positions where there are enough moves that have computer evaluations within a small difference of each other for there to a close choice. There are multiple moves with less than half a pawn difference (can be a lot less) according to the engine. The Chess Mine, 85 games UNDECIDED POSITIONSPositions: 884T1: 279/488; 57.17% (std error 2.24)T2: 248/288; 86.11% (std error 2.04)T3: 210/232; 90.52% (std error 1.92)=0 CP loss: 685/884; 77.49% (std error 1.40)>0 CP loss: 199/884; 22.51% (std error 1.40)>10 CP loss: 88/884; 9.95% (std error 1.01)>25 CP loss: 25/884; 2.83% (std error 0.56)>50 CP loss: 3/884; 0.34% (std error 0.20)>100 CP loss: 0/884; 0.00% (std error 0.00)>200 CP loss: 0/884; 0.00% (std error 0.00)>500 CP loss: 0/884; 0.00% (std error 0.00)CP loss mean 2.92, std deviation 8.29 LOSING POSITIONSPositions: 0 For comparison, here is the analysis of 94 recent standard time control games by a guy called Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen, Magnus, 94 games UNDECIDED POSITIONSPositions: 1513T1: 608/1212; 50.17% (std error 1.44)T2: 722/1046; 69.02% (std error 1.43)T3: 769/949; 81.03% (std error 1.27)=0 CP loss: 1053/1513; 69.60% (std error 1.18)>0 CP loss: 460/1513; 30.40% (std error 1.18)>10 CP loss: 269/1513; 17.78% (std error 0.98)>25 CP loss: 126/1513; 8.33% (std error 0.71)>50 CP loss: 37/1513; 2.45% (std error 0.40)>100 CP loss: 5/1513; 0.33% (std error 0.15)>200 CP loss: 1/1513; 0.07% (std error 0.07)>500 CP loss: 1/1513; 0.07% (std error 0.07)CP loss mean 6.65, std deviation 21.56 LOSING POSITIONSPositions: 20T1: 5/10; 50.00% (std error 15.81)T2: 5/9; 55.56% (std error 16.56)T3: 8/8; 100.00% (std error 0.00)=0 CP loss: 11/20; 55.00% (std error 11.12)>0 CP loss: 9/20; 45.00% (std error 11.12)>10 CP loss: 7/20; 35.00% (std error 10.67)>25 CP loss: 5/20; 25.00% (std error 9.68)>50 CP loss: 4/20; 20.00% (std error 8.94)>100 CP loss: 3/20; 15.00% (std error 7.98)>200 CP loss: 2/20; 10.00% (std error 6.71)>500 CP loss: 0/20; 0.00% (std error 0.00)CP loss mean 47.80, std deviation 99.01 Elroch wrote: What do these stats (and their comparison) say? Well, bottom line is that the play of this group has been a _lot_ closer to that of a pure engine in unclear positions than that of the world champion. Note that the same is also true of benchmarks based on world correspondence chess champions before the engine era, which are not more engine-like than Carlsen at OTB chess. For examples, in unclear positions, the computer evaluation of this group's move was less than 0.03 pawns different to the engine choice. This is extraordinarily small. No human dataset comes close to this. The idea that any humans can detect positional differences twice as accurately according to an engine as the world champion is kind of ridiculous. The team's move matches one of the top two engine choices when there are three within 0.5 pawns over 86% of the time, while Carlsen manages nearly 70% of the time. The move chosen has exactly the same evaluation as that of the engine choice 77% of the time, while Carlsen manages this 69% of the time. Bottom line - I can't escape the conclusion that there is very high confidence in the fact that the past results of this group have been heavily influenced by engine assistance and because of that can be assumed to be to a large extent due to that engine assistance. It is possible that this is a past problem, but it just isn't enough for me. I'm not interested in being part of a group with this history and I am sorry not to have done this analysis earlier, ideally before I considered joining in the first place. I would point out that in principle it is possible for anyone on chess.com to check each of the moves which contribute to the relevant statistics to see who influenced the choice of that move, and thereby get a pretty clear idea which players have been the cause of the illicit assistance.

Why do some people show "International" as their flag? What harm would it do to tell what country you are from? That's weird to me...

At the end of this enjoyable video I realised I have something in common with Carlsen. I too lost to David Howell when he was a junior. My blitz loss was at a barbeque around the Hastings Congress and I had had a couple of lagers, so at least I have an excuse.

i have a problem where no phrase to indicate the seems to fit right. Maybe it is better in another language, like Russian, because i remember i heard about a Russian novel where the same person might be called many different ways as someone else's father or son or boss etc. Anyway here is the problem with every English name for them: a) chess piece: too much like a mere object without life in it b) chess men: too conservative, not progressive enough c) Chess Men: undervalues the recent decision of new york times to capitalize the B in Black as referring to people of particular family and ancestral background in USA d) chess beings: maybe, but seems too literally alive and capable of motion e) chess spirits: definitely too tangible f) chess avatars: maybe but seems too much latin; want something more earthy g) chess plants: too green f) chess mushrooms: too soft

In Google Translate I got slightly different results when the characters were all strung together. Grouping the characters is important. The most atomic sensible reading seems to be like this: 林峰 Lin Feng (a person?)国际 International 象棋 Chess图书馆 Library之 of友俱 Friends乐部 Club The reason I say it is most sensible is that when it is all strung together it translates this way 林峰国际象棋图书馆之友俱乐部 Friends of Lam Fung Chess Library Club But I guess Google then may have translated Lin Feng International as Lam Fung. So that much is very confusing! If it is broken this way, it's not as sensible: 林峰国 Lin Fengguo 际 Occasion 象棋图书馆之友俱乐部 Friends of Chess Library Club I should have said at first, if they are all broken apart, then it translates as Forest peak country Occasion Like chess Figure book Pavilion Of Friend all fun unit So the happiest part to me is that a library is a book pavilion and a club is a fun unit And the trickiest problem to solve: whether Google Translate might be incorrect about some of it. The correct translation is made clearer easily by reading their web page! which I sometimes omit to do. It's great to play against a team in Shanghai. What country is known as Forest Peak Country in Chinese? But that turns out to be the wrong question, unless there is some coincidence or other mistranslation going on.

Albert Camus says at the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide”. What do YOU do, think, hang on to in your darkest hour? Why do we continue living when everything is seemingly going down into the abyss? Let's try a less direct scenario: You are passing somebody who's about to do the jump; what do you tell them? How would YOU go about saving their lives?

I just have a link to this and I think it will keep me from posting too many lame jokes here https://www.chess.com/forum/view/fun-with-chess/humoristic-funny-chess-pics-images-caricatures-etc