Hi! As nobody would have guessed, the Uzbek Javokhir Sindarov will be playing Indian World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju in a match for the World Champion title. The silly guesswork can begin. However, we did get something nice today in the form o...
Hi! Today has been a strange day. It started with oversleeping and almost being late for my offline activities. Bit of an occupational hazard of being me, but I can live with it, and hardly anyone seems to mind more than I do. I didn't skip my m...
Hi! It's a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I've always found soap series to be awful. The reason for this is that they often don't know when to stop, and keep introducing new characters and plot twists to milk out the format for ages and age...
Hi! With the publication of the monthly results, the April month has officially ended in TBA. Since two of the main bloggers participated in the contest, it wouldn't make sense for either of them to publish the results, and so I did. In pre...
Hi! Since this day-after has been mostly slurped up by my judging duties for TBA, there's not much that I have to share here. However, there are a few things that I find useful to point out. The pain of judging It goes without sayi...
Hi! This is a small in-between post because I'm in the middle of judging the April blogs in TBA. As such, I have limited time, and I'm behind on my usual writing already. To be fair, I've let it come to that point a little bit, but I'll be ab...
Hi! For my day-to-day activities I usually have to perform a lot of calls. Not all of them are equally fun, though, and a lot of how I feel about it depends on the person I'm talking to, and how I'm doing overall. There are days when I'm eage...
Hi! A few days ago, I was wondering what would happen if I decided to just vanish off the face of the earth for a year. Putting my entire social life on hold and only working on my own improvement and the real obligations that I have. And the...
Hi! Crowning off a fun day, I broke my personal blitz record. It now sits at 2608, so I effectively one-upped myself. Much as I hate it when people one-up others, I love doing it to my own ratings. I'm nowhere near where I want to peak, but I...
Hi! Here is a bit of thought that I had during the night. Micro-charity Many people who came out of their schools in the 1960s saw the world for the first time and realised that something is wrong over here on Planet Earth. A very sma...
Hi! Yesterday I paid a visit to one of my relatives. It's been a bit of time since I'd previously seen him, as he's living in another city. But it's always good to reacquaint with him. If you've followed anything from the World Championships ...
Hi! At the start of writing this post, I had hoped that I'd be able to complete my personal series about the Keres English here. However, given how much ground I still have to cover, that's not going to happen. And so I'd have to cut this wor...
Hi! It's always fun to find some sort of poetic justification for your way of life, and I believe that I've just thought of something that actually resonates with the way I see things. The c-pawn You can see the chess-board as a city....
Hi! First of all, there is great news: a new masterpiece has been released today! Something that we've all been eagerly anticipating for a very long time! Especially me, since I'm a great fan of good work and I'm finally able to enjoy the produc...
Hi! As someone who loves to play and analyse chess, Vote Chess is a very nice front to do it with a group of other people. In itself, Vote Chess is a great front for learning, an idea on which I hope to expand in one of my future posts. If I ...
Hi! It's been a fair bit since I've started writing my Dailies. Initially I had some time starting up, but just before the year 2025 hit, I managed to get into a rhythm of really writing daily. Since 30 December 2024, I've had a consistent st...
Hi! So far, 2026 appears to be a year of new records: Sindarov breezing through the Candidates with an unprecedented +6 score, Erdogmus clapping Topalov 5-1 (!!) and about to become the youngest player in history to break 2700. And third, and mo...
Hi! In writing yesterday's post, I found that I had more things to discuss. And so this post will cover a topic that is connected with yesterday's. Initially I wanted to write this one, but then I started on the intro for the other one, which...
Hi! In 1545, painter Jacopo da Pontormo was commissioned to paint the frescoes of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, and he wanted to make these paintings his ultimate masterpiece. Motivated by his desire to outperform Michelangelo, he op...
Hi! After a brief German intermezzo, let's get back on track with the study of the Keres variation. The Keres English—Part III In the previous installment, I've looked at the lines in which black decided to defend the e5-pawn...
Hi! German is an easy language, despite what people on this reddit say. Let me share a few words that show why German is an easy language. A lot of the words literally describe what it means. German for beginners AnzugA "Zug" is ...
Hi! After yesterday's draw by Sindarov to secure the first place in the Candidates and become the challenger for Gukesh, the Uzbek youngster took a quick and rather bloodless draw against Wei Yi, with a draw by threefold repetition on move 32...
Hi! First of all: congratulations to Javokhir Sindarov for winning the Candidates with a round to spare! I know that you're highly unlikely to read this, but in case you do: best of luck against Gukesh Dommaraju! The Keres English&mdas...
Hi! The website has made a new effort to create an even more user-friendly interface that lets its users customise their own profiles. So far I'm mildly in favour of this, because it allows me to pin some features to the sidebar immediately. Thi...
Hi! Ever since my alarm went off this morning, I've opened 20 different applications on my phone. I was surprised by this, because I expected it to be much less. Like, what did I use? Social apps, sure, that's...well... Does chess.com count as a...
