What it's really like being a female chess player.

"Unfortunately I think some men"

He just pulled a not all men! Don't try to get that crap past me, I'm too smart.

I love to think about seemingly random things in many different ways... then I like to think about how I thought about them (examine for bias for example) etc. It seems you do too, so I like you for that.

But I still lol :)

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Anyway, for example, recently I was looking at a square grid. If you connect a square to any other square across a line (4 possible ways), but you aren't allowed to cross any points (not the diagonals) then you can visit every square on the grid.

If you cross at the points (still 4 possible ways) you can only visit half the squares.

Ok, but why. How to generalize this? How would this be intuitive for a blind person for example?

I reasoned that traveling through the corners is always equal to making two moves through the lines. So moving through diagonals is like counting 2, 4, 6, 8... which is also why we get the 1/2 result.

Totally random meaningless crap. But I'll sit and think, sometimes for long periods about stuff like this.

Also, more on topic, things like social equality, or religion, etc.

The weird thing about diagonals is that I didn't always used to think of it as a mix of horizontal and vertical distance until I took physics in high school. Like, I just thought of it as one of the lines you can draw... you can draw a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. The diagonal line looks different from the other two, but I never really thought about why. It's not really its own direction, it's just a combination of vertical and horizontal distance; in other words, it can be described purely in those terms. Hadn't thought about it that way previously. It didn't make me any better at drawing diagonal lines, but it made my knowledge feel more sincere and deeper. I think because of displacement or something, it's often faster to get somewhere by walking diagonally rather than vertically, then changing direction. Because you're covering both directions at the same time. Maybe I'm remembering wrong though.

So yeah, I find ways to break down almost anything.

It's like disliking someone because they enjoy vanilla and you like chocolate.

Someone liking something is nothing to be upset about. If a man likes the look of a woman he's never met, that's completely legitimate, and a very positive thing.

Now, how people treat other people is a different matter. If you treat a person like an object that's obviously very rude.

"It's like disliking someone because they enjoy vanilla and you like chocolate."

That's my go-to analogy, I must admit :)

Yeah, it's interesting :)

I hadn't thought about them as a combination until I was looking at king and pawn endgames trying to find a faster route.

I'd forgotten about it while looking at the grid though. So when I thought of the equivalence (two orthogonal moves = 1 diagonal move) it felt novel, which is fun.

Ah, yeah. A tip is that oftentimes in endgames, a diagonal king move can give you the best of both worlds. It might observe certain side squares you want, but it can simultaneously move upwards, so if your king needs to be on the 8th rank or something, it achieves that goal no more slowly than moving vertically.

But the interesting thing is that, before I realized this, I would be tempted to move vertically in such a situation, where I knew I wanted my king up. I think because it just feels like it makes the most sense -- we want to go up, so, we associate that with the king move, up. But in this case, that association makes us worse at chess, because diagonal moves, where we don't have that association, are nonetheless just as effective for that purpose (and might have additional side benefits). So you have to look out for when your brain is trying to make an association, because sometimes, it's just for it to feel nice and fuzzy inside, not because it's actually rational. It's a big cause of mistakes in chess! Just ask yourself, is my brain taking a weird shortcut, before making a move.

"ask is my brain taking a weird shortcut, before making a move"

I'll try that, neat.

I do notice that in lower rated players (and I'm sure higher rated players notice it in my play) when a move is made because it looks nice. Not because it makes the most sense.

An easy example may be after playing g3, a lower rated player probably would never even consider putting the bishop on e2 (instead of g2).

So like for example, a big mistake I would commonly make is when a move like Qh5 (you know, attacking move and all that), is actually done just to fork a piece and pawn or something. Because, when you think about the consequences of your opponent playing Qh5, you think, is there really an attack there? You might conclude that there is not one, and that Qh5 isn't good. The problem with this reasoning is that, Qh5 might be good for a completely different reason -- it might not attack the king well at all, but it might just modestly win material. Your brain wants to make the association Qh5=attack, but that can be dangerous if that's all you think the move can do.

Still not sure how good this reasoning is, but like your Qh5 example, I reasoned that sometimes moves like this are played not because it necessarily increases the mobility of the piece that's been moved, but because it's useful to get them out of the way of the other pieces. More often something like Bb5 or Bg5 when you have no intention of capturing, the pin on the knight isn't very meaningful, and you don't expect the player to kick with the rook pawn... so what reason is left? It was in the way on any other square heh.

"not because it necessarily increases the mobility of the piece that's been moved, but because it's useful to get them out of the way of the other pieces."

Yes! I personally got a kick out of this realization for some reason, haha. Like one time, I was analyzing a game where I got crushed by a gambit, and there was basically no defense, except one little thing... the computer recommended ...Bd6-e7, and it had nothing to do with the threat at hand. The point? It's just so that it's not on d6 :) Then my queen on d8 would be open, and sometimes it would be hitting the pawn on d4 with check, and then the queen would get into the defense from d4 and defend the otherwise decisive threat. That made an impression on me, haha.

That's one of the less obvious reasons why a bad bishop is bad -- yeah, it's not doing anything, but because of this, it's also just taking up space. Say you have a typical opening position, with a black pawn on e6, typical bad bishop on c8. If the bishop stays on c8, the rook is blocked. But if it moves to d7, the d file is blocked, and now a knight can't move to d7. So freeing up a bad bishop doesn't just make itself better, it frees everyone else up.

So chess is a team. A piece is doing something useful if it helps whatever the other pieces are trying to do. Usually that means the piece is literally attacking something, but sometimes it just means that it's not blocking any other pieces :)

Being sensitive to pieces blocking other pieces is one of my recent revelations (so to speak). The new thing I play with on my mind that alters my play until it becomes an unconscious habit.

It's somewhat counter intuitive. Because as a beginner, if a piece defends another piece, that's a plus. But now for me, if that defense isn't useful, it's a definite handicap.

That's another interesting process. How it becomes unconscious.

I was recently playing a warm up game with a 1700 player before round 1. You know, just a casual game. So I say out loud "ok, so which bishop should I give you?" And he immediately said "probably the bad bishop." And it took me a little bit to realize which bishop that was haha. Because my "bad" bishop was actually doing good work. But for him, probably that was something that was still on his conscious mind... I'm guessing.

Gotta love the good bad bishops. And how the magical game of chess defies contradictions.

It's true that players at any level can be distracted. The difficulty is, the better the player, the more objective their judgement and calculation is.

But yes, the practical aspect of chess is quite large, even for the pros.

Eh, it's always a mix.

We make some judgements, then we do a few short calculations or imagine future positions, then alter the judgements, which alter the next set of calculations, etc.

Even in blitz, if I see a poorly placed knight on d2, but an amazing outpost on d5, as black I'm already worried about things like Nb1-c3-d5. Then calculation can show my opponent either does or doesn't have time for that.

I prefer "framework" to "biases" hehe. But I think that's fair.

We have to assume something!

I mean, even in daily life. Our minds are very limited. We assume lots of stuff even when accomplishing basic tasks or interactions. 

Maybe nit-picking, but I don't like that sort of stuff. Using "man" as if it were a title you had to earn.

Men are (or should be) honorable, outgoing, determined, self sacrificing etc? That's just silly to me. Individuals are themselves. A man, no, people. People can be weak, people can be shy, can be cowardly, selfish, etc.

Actually engines do all of that too, and for the same reasons.

They reject bad moves, and focus on what they value as good moves. They limit the scope for the sake of efficiency. Because millions per second is hardly a scratch to 10^50 (or similarly enormous numbers).

For example:
One billion moves per second reaches 10^50 in 3.171x10^33 years... which is older than the universe.

You take this pretty seriously. Which is different from me, who immediately assumed the OP was a man, trolling.

That said, while I more or less agree, anonymity isn't all bad. The good side is you get to hear people's unfiltered opinions.

Whenever I see online "you'd never say that to my face!" I think, but if not for this chat you might never know what most people are thinking about you, without saying it ;)

And as far as relationships, frank conversation often forms the basis for a strong one.

Oh no feminism invading chess? thats not good :P any female that isnt mentally capped by the default genders can go as high as she wants to, but it wont happen if she simply plays in female only tournaments, since I believe greg shahade or someone else said this, doing so only makes you the best female player but not the best player.