On “The Secret of Chess”

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Lyudmil_Tsvetkov
FrancisCominelli wrote:
It is worth noting that 2100 FIDE roughly translates to 2200 USCF, which. Is National Master. So if he lived in America he could indeed call himself a master. It's also quite plausible that if he's been playing and studying regularly for the past 12 years that he's 2300+ strength by now. To become a GM is requires something special, however. Not just knowledge but a strong sense of competitiveness to win, and resiliency when things don't go your way.

Precisely, Francis, precisely.

My Bulgarian rating is over 2200.

The only year when I devoted more time to chess, I became candidate master in less than a couple of monhts.

I simply have not competed sufficiently.

 

Lyudmil_Tsvetkov
FrancisCominelli wrote:
So it is very hard for someone who hasn't played a tournament in 12 years to start again. Even if he has the chess skills, he will not be used to the tournament atmosphere and will take time to get mentally acclimated.

You are speaking my mind.

I even don't know if they are conducting those tournaments any more, do they?

FrancisCominelli
Here in America there are lots of weekend tournaments, if one lives near a city it isn't hard to find an event to play in every month. Nearly all of them are only uscf rated however. I can only think of a few FIDE rated tournaments, and those usually are quite expensive to play in.
stewardjandstewardj
FrancisCominelli wrote:
Resiliency is very important. The ability to keep fighting and making opponents play accurately will save a lot of games in which psychologically weaker players will just kind of give up. You need to be mentally strong to be a top competitor in any game, be it chess, golf, basketball, etc.

I see what you're saying now

stewardjandstewardj
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
FrancisCominelli wrote:
So it is very hard for someone who hasn't played a tournament in 12 years to start again. Even if he has the chess skills, he will not be used to the tournament atmosphere and will take time to get mentally acclimated.

You are speaking my mind.

I even don't know if they are conducting those tournaments any more, do they?

Yes, it might take a while to get used to the tournament atmosphere, especially if you're talking about the first tournament.

But what tournaments are you talking about?

GWTR
FrancisCominelli wrote:
Resiliency is very important. The ability to keep fighting and making opponents play accurately will save a lot of games in which psychologically weaker players will just kind of give up. You need to be mentally strong to be a top competitor in any game, be it chess, golf, basketball, etc.

Competitor - yes.  However you could be the best golfer in the world and not compete.  Of course there are other sports where this could not be shown.

 

 

chesster3145
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
stewardjandstewardj wrote:

Both reviews you have given, from Smurden and from Welling, both say that the book has lots of modern ideas/positions. They also say that your English is bad in the book. Regardless of whether you are legit or not, I urge you to try and focus more on your use of English in the next book you are writing.

As of being legit, you seem to make very good books for the rating you have. However, both reviewers ALSO never say you could have beat StockFish. They say that you use chess engines. I'm not sure what they mean, but they never even once hint that you are better at chess than StockFish, nor that you are even GM quality.

While your claims are not proven to be legit yet, nor your claims about your book, your book itself seems to be pretty legit. Welling is surprised that even though you have a low rating of a "candidate master", you have proven that you are much more knowledgeable at chess than a CM.

Lyudmil, the world, including me, wants more proof than your books. You have studied plenty of chess, but unless you play chess games, you can not do anything with this other than write more books. You must play rated games and/or an official game against chess engines no one has beaten before if you want to prove how amazingly good you are at chess; I still remain unconvinced you beat SF.

I would dispute whether Lyudmil is actually as knowledgable about chess as he says he is. Again, most of the positions he’s posted on the site feature main ideas that are either well-known or ideas any imaginative 1500 could find. This includes the Qf6+ sacrifice, and most of his terms are either well-known by other names or intuitively understood by chess players in general.

You understand too many things intuitively.

Could you also understand, intuitively, that your intuition might be sucking?

 

Can you understand, intuitively, that sometimes intuition is enough? You don’t need a pseudo-intellectual term for the f7-pawn in your Qf6+ example: you can simply be happy that the f6-square and f7-pawn are weak forever.

stewardjandstewardj
chesster3145 wrote:
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
stewardjandstewardj wrote:

Both reviews you have given, from Smurden and from Welling, both say that the book has lots of modern ideas/positions. They also say that your English is bad in the book. Regardless of whether you are legit or not, I urge you to try and focus more on your use of English in the next book you are writing.

As of being legit, you seem to make very good books for the rating you have. However, both reviewers ALSO never say you could have beat StockFish. They say that you use chess engines. I'm not sure what they mean, but they never even once hint that you are better at chess than StockFish, nor that you are even GM quality.

While your claims are not proven to be legit yet, nor your claims about your book, your book itself seems to be pretty legit. Welling is surprised that even though you have a low rating of a "candidate master", you have proven that you are much more knowledgeable at chess than a CM.

Lyudmil, the world, including me, wants more proof than your books. You have studied plenty of chess, but unless you play chess games, you can not do anything with this other than write more books. You must play rated games and/or an official game against chess engines no one has beaten before if you want to prove how amazingly good you are at chess; I still remain unconvinced you beat SF.

I would dispute whether Lyudmil is actually as knowledgable about chess as he says he is. Again, most of the positions he’s posted on the site feature main ideas that are either well-known or ideas any imaginative 1500 could find. This includes the Qf6+ sacrifice, and most of his terms are either well-known by other names or intuitively understood by chess players in general.

You understand too many things intuitively.

Could you also understand, intuitively, that your intuition might be sucking?

 

Can you understand, intuitively, that sometimes intuition is enough? You don’t need a pseudo-intellectual term for the f7-pawn in your Qf6+ example: you can simply be happy that the f6-square and f7-pawn are weak forever.

He seriously created a name for the f7 pawn? That is definitely pseudo-intellectual. Now that I know of the crazy names you are making, that list you were mentioning about is not so credential to me. You are just trying to make your list bigger. Some of the new terms in your list are legit, but I don't know how many I want to believe are legit

chesster3145
stewardjandstewardj wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
stewardjandstewardj wrote:

Both reviews you have given, from Smurden and from Welling, both say that the book has lots of modern ideas/positions. They also say that your English is bad in the book. Regardless of whether you are legit or not, I urge you to try and focus more on your use of English in the next book you are writing.

As of being legit, you seem to make very good books for the rating you have. However, both reviewers ALSO never say you could have beat StockFish. They say that you use chess engines. I'm not sure what they mean, but they never even once hint that you are better at chess than StockFish, nor that you are even GM quality.

While your claims are not proven to be legit yet, nor your claims about your book, your book itself seems to be pretty legit. Welling is surprised that even though you have a low rating of a "candidate master", you have proven that you are much more knowledgeable at chess than a CM.

Lyudmil, the world, including me, wants more proof than your books. You have studied plenty of chess, but unless you play chess games, you can not do anything with this other than write more books. You must play rated games and/or an official game against chess engines no one has beaten before if you want to prove how amazingly good you are at chess; I still remain unconvinced you beat SF.

I would dispute whether Lyudmil is actually as knowledgable about chess as he says he is. Again, most of the positions he’s posted on the site feature main ideas that are either well-known or ideas any imaginative 1500 could find. This includes the Qf6+ sacrifice, and most of his terms are either well-known by other names or intuitively understood by chess players in general.

You understand too many things intuitively.

Could you also understand, intuitively, that your intuition might be sucking?

 

Can you understand, intuitively, that sometimes intuition is enough? You don’t need a pseudo-intellectual term for the f7-pawn in your Qf6+ example: you can simply be happy that the f6-square and f7-pawn are weak forever.

He seriously created a name for the f7 pawn? That is definitely pseudo-intellectual. Now that I know of the crazy names you are making, that list you were mentioning about is not so credential to me. You are just trying to make your list bigger. Some of the new terms in your list are legit, but I don't know how many I want to believe are legit

Yup. f7 is a “doubly backward shelter pawn” and f6 is a “doubly defended outpost”.

CheesyPuns

quadrupedally defended backwards maker octopus blocking a doubly backwards pawn? 

Destroyer942
I'll bet Tsvetkov can't beat Stockfish in an open position.
stewardjandstewardj
chesster3145 wrote:
stewardjandstewardj wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
stewardjandstewardj wrote:

Both reviews you have given, from Smurden and from Welling, both say that the book has lots of modern ideas/positions. They also say that your English is bad in the book. Regardless of whether you are legit or not, I urge you to try and focus more on your use of English in the next book you are writing.

As of being legit, you seem to make very good books for the rating you have. However, both reviewers ALSO never say you could have beat StockFish. They say that you use chess engines. I'm not sure what they mean, but they never even once hint that you are better at chess than StockFish, nor that you are even GM quality.

While your claims are not proven to be legit yet, nor your claims about your book, your book itself seems to be pretty legit. Welling is surprised that even though you have a low rating of a "candidate master", you have proven that you are much more knowledgeable at chess than a CM.

Lyudmil, the world, including me, wants more proof than your books. You have studied plenty of chess, but unless you play chess games, you can not do anything with this other than write more books. You must play rated games and/or an official game against chess engines no one has beaten before if you want to prove how amazingly good you are at chess; I still remain unconvinced you beat SF.

I would dispute whether Lyudmil is actually as knowledgable about chess as he says he is. Again, most of the positions he’s posted on the site feature main ideas that are either well-known or ideas any imaginative 1500 could find. This includes the Qf6+ sacrifice, and most of his terms are either well-known by other names or intuitively understood by chess players in general.

You understand too many things intuitively.

Could you also understand, intuitively, that your intuition might be sucking?

 

Can you understand, intuitively, that sometimes intuition is enough? You don’t need a pseudo-intellectual term for the f7-pawn in your Qf6+ example: you can simply be happy that the f6-square and f7-pawn are weak forever.

He seriously created a name for the f7 pawn? That is definitely pseudo-intellectual. Now that I know of the crazy names you are making, that list you were mentioning about is not so credential to me. You are just trying to make your list bigger. Some of the new terms in your list are legit, but I don't know how many I want to believe are legit

Yup. f7 is a “doubly backward shelter pawn” and f6 is a “doubly defended outpost”.

if you are going to give the f6 and f7 pawn a name, might as well give ALL OF THE PAWNS names lol

chesster3145

He gave the f6-square a name in his initial example with 1. Qf6+ in the “Stockfish is blind” thread.

hitthepin
Wait what did he call it?
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov
FrancisCominelli wrote:
Here in America there are lots of weekend tournaments, if one lives near a city it isn't hard to find an event to play in every month. Nearly all of them are only uscf rated however. I can only think of a few FIDE rated tournaments, and those usually are quite expensive to play in.

Same in Bulgaria.

I mean, there should be less tournaments, but FIDE-rated few and far between.

 

 

Lyudmil_Tsvetkov

The review on Amazon still has not appeared, but here it is available on the Chess.com blog of Gerard Welling: https://www.chess.com/blog/Swordfish55/review-the-secret-of-chess

Lyudmil_Tsvetkov
stewardjandstewardj wrote:
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
FrancisCominelli wrote:
So it is very hard for someone who hasn't played a tournament in 12 years to start again. Even if he has the chess skills, he will not be used to the tournament atmosphere and will take time to get mentally acclimated.

You are speaking my mind.

I even don't know if they are conducting those tournaments any more, do they?

Yes, it might take a while to get used to the tournament atmosphere, especially if you're talking about the first tournament.

But what tournaments are you talking about?

Normal ones.

 

Lyudmil_Tsvetkov
chesster3145 wrote:
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
stewardjandstewardj wrote:

Both reviews you have given, from Smurden and from Welling, both say that the book has lots of modern ideas/positions. They also say that your English is bad in the book. Regardless of whether you are legit or not, I urge you to try and focus more on your use of English in the next book you are writing.

As of being legit, you seem to make very good books for the rating you have. However, both reviewers ALSO never say you could have beat StockFish. They say that you use chess engines. I'm not sure what they mean, but they never even once hint that you are better at chess than StockFish, nor that you are even GM quality.

While your claims are not proven to be legit yet, nor your claims about your book, your book itself seems to be pretty legit. Welling is surprised that even though you have a low rating of a "candidate master", you have proven that you are much more knowledgeable at chess than a CM.

Lyudmil, the world, including me, wants more proof than your books. You have studied plenty of chess, but unless you play chess games, you can not do anything with this other than write more books. You must play rated games and/or an official game against chess engines no one has beaten before if you want to prove how amazingly good you are at chess; I still remain unconvinced you beat SF.

I would dispute whether Lyudmil is actually as knowledgable about chess as he says he is. Again, most of the positions he’s posted on the site feature main ideas that are either well-known or ideas any imaginative 1500 could find. This includes the Qf6+ sacrifice, and most of his terms are either well-known by other names or intuitively understood by chess players in general.

You understand too many things intuitively.

Could you also understand, intuitively, that your intuition might be sucking?

 

Can you understand, intuitively, that sometimes intuition is enough? You don’t need a pseudo-intellectual term for the f7-pawn in your Qf6+ example: you can simply be happy that the f6-square and f7-pawn are weak forever.

With my pattern recognition I am beating SF.

With your some 1600 players.

There is a BIG distinction, don't you really see it?

chesster3145
hitthepin wrote:
Wait what did he call it?

The f7-pawn was a "doubly backward shelter pawn" and the f6-square was a "doubly defended rook outpost".

Lyudmil_Tsvetkov
stewardjandstewardj wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
Lyudmil_Tsvetkov wrote:
chesster3145 wrote:
stewardjandstewardj wrote:

Both reviews you have given, from Smurden and from Welling, both say that the book has lots of modern ideas/positions. They also say that your English is bad in the book. Regardless of whether you are legit or not, I urge you to try and focus more on your use of English in the next book you are writing.

As of being legit, you seem to make very good books for the rating you have. However, both reviewers ALSO never say you could have beat StockFish. They say that you use chess engines. I'm not sure what they mean, but they never even once hint that you are better at chess than StockFish, nor that you are even GM quality.

While your claims are not proven to be legit yet, nor your claims about your book, your book itself seems to be pretty legit. Welling is surprised that even though you have a low rating of a "candidate master", you have proven that you are much more knowledgeable at chess than a CM.

Lyudmil, the world, including me, wants more proof than your books. You have studied plenty of chess, but unless you play chess games, you can not do anything with this other than write more books. You must play rated games and/or an official game against chess engines no one has beaten before if you want to prove how amazingly good you are at chess; I still remain unconvinced you beat SF.

I would dispute whether Lyudmil is actually as knowledgable about chess as he says he is. Again, most of the positions he’s posted on the site feature main ideas that are either well-known or ideas any imaginative 1500 could find. This includes the Qf6+ sacrifice, and most of his terms are either well-known by other names or intuitively understood by chess players in general.

You understand too many things intuitively.

Could you also understand, intuitively, that your intuition might be sucking?

 

Can you understand, intuitively, that sometimes intuition is enough? You don’t need a pseudo-intellectual term for the f7-pawn in your Qf6+ example: you can simply be happy that the f6-square and f7-pawn are weak forever.

He seriously created a name for the f7 pawn? That is definitely pseudo-intellectual. Now that I know of the crazy names you are making, that list you were mentioning about is not so credential to me. You are just trying to make your list bigger. Some of the new terms in your list are legit, but I don't know how many I want to believe are legit

I don't care at all.

Let me repost what strong players say: https://www.chess.com/blog/Swordfish55/review-the-secret-of-chess