Yeh, just not exactly feeling this game at the moment. I just wish i could play mid and end games with people non stop and forget about openings that i never seem to be able to remember or learn enough lines of to be able to play at any reasonable pace. Yet I know I'll be back. Eventually. I play some other esports (welll,,, isn't it? lol_) and feel like sticking to those til i get too blind to play them any more.

For me you can't beat the conversations (audio) you have with new interesting friends. I g younger people are less likely to be married etc so there is less issue with people being allowed ( i k, ridik, right??? ) to talk to me with actual audio so yeh it's really nice away from here to have the voice chats i've always wanted almost needed. especially in these crazy times.

also, us older people are so set in our ways so i can light commy fires down low.

XDDD

take care all friends sorry we rarely got to talk with actual audio. shame on you lol. don't let anyone tell you how to live your life. that's an order!

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Peace and strength to all Ukrainians at the moment. We grieve for you.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. by Dylan Thomas. [1914-1953]

Dylan Thomas also wrote: 'I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression'.

Won One? Won two! Oh! TooT to you! *enjoys the silliness of the numbers in the date right about now and spreads punny number magic to all communicative chess players*

Was proud of this move, even though I think it's only cause of the weakness of me and players around my rating that I got away with it. Had a lot of skewers and threatening knight forks lately which has been fun.

So, with these here notes you maybe about to try to peruse, they have become a bit of a historical blog of my time on chess.com. I think it's good to keep, possibly not in public but oh well, bit of humor in the noob aspects and real feeling. Apologies in advance! While the cloud storage seems vast and free, why not store here!

June 13th. Never again am I going in a no vacation tournament. I will find it hard to join any tournament for a long time. I had to choose silly ones to make up for getting a high time out ratio that started over xmas. And worsened during easter. Still impacting me now. Boo hiss sucks! Back to being rated 100+ points lower than I should be. You join up to a couple, and then WHOOF they have 8 simultaneous games or something, always on the same fricken day, blehhhhhhh. WHY haven't we got calendars built into our interface showing when tourneys are likely to start, and how many games we will probably have in them, on the go, at once??? How hard would that be to make compared to make and maintain compared to a CHESS PLAYING PROGRAM.

Grrr. Life happens, is hectic, and yeh we can't always jump on on busy days for an hour or something. That's REAL LIFE.

Last week of May 21: Very pleased with my last two losses, even though I timed out in them. #1 I was definitely going to win in both games. That is my story and I am sticking to it xD I was really enjoying them and am very pleased with the analysis except for the usual stupid auto generated trite comment in the second to last game which btw is completely contrary to the line graph indicating that white (me) was winning by 1.85 or something. Chess.com should sort that out I'd like to be able to turn those silly comments off. Anyway my play seems to be improving to the point where I should trust some of my ideas a bit more, even in opening phase. This should mean I finally have some more confidence to play live chess here.

#2 I am having to accept that I have pretty poor time management with my chess daily games. I haven't been that well lately and this difficulty concentrating in later parts of the day makes me realize that improved fitness will help me and my chess a great deal. One of the women who has won the NZ national women's chess champs, born in Russia, said to me once that physical fitness was so important in chess and I am starting to see how it might improve extended brain function. Am going to join the local sports facility and start making this a real priority, healthy eating alone simply isn't enough. Obvious but oh well. Chess is simply too important xD This will also help my play over the board in the evenings I expect. Oh well am going to find out and give it a red hot nudge, Nigel!

This hardly ever happens, eh:

Shame I have to have another turn, really! Would have been nice to make no move and keep the possibility alive that I'm not a complete chess fool. Oh well, life goes on regardless xD

EASTER : gutted that I timed out in my last 3 games. Please if you are admins, DO NOT MAKE DAILY 1 DAY NO VACATION TOURNAMENTS IF YOU CARE ABOUT NOOBS THAT NEED A LOT OF TIME FOR ANALYSIS. Now I won't be able to join heaps of matches as these non vacation tournaments have screwed my account over the Easter Holiday and NYE period.

When bughouse isn't really bughouse:

fortuitous game xD Luckily you can't smell blood over the net

YAY update : ANAYLYSIS WORKING AGAIN ty ty ty ty ty

So, my chess playing might have to go to other sites. I have so many issues here now with analysis (won't save or adjust) and opening explorer (gone completely). I fear until I get a completely new reinstall I have to use these resources elsewhere and even then it might not work have complained pretty hard in threads i made about it but sounds god awful to have to keep repeating my issues to support... so I might be just here for the socials pretty soon, all the pieces of paper and one sided games due to me not being able to see the book is uncool.

At first I thought it was just me and to do with me being on a Linux OS but others have had similar problems even on windows 10.

why should i have to be on two different sites at once just to play with the same cond. as others...

bit sad...

oh well. rant ovah

2020 PS thanks very much to everyone involved and Shaun on chess.com for gifting me this year long diamond membership! I really appreciate it and am glad that it all worked out, the issue that I was complaining / campaigning about.

A while ago:

...the vote chess, is so intense, it's like Platoon. we are playing one of the best teams and our team is very good too. I feel like the others will do something wild and crazy out of the sicilian but I'm too paranoid to mention it. I think. Heads down, guns cocked, eyes up...

I'm just trying to get my head back really. I feel like I'm in some kind of semi lockdown stasis. I might go and hug some goats at the farm. xCCC

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I still think this site is too controlled by auto bots and similar judgemental things that completely backfire in live chess so I rarely play live chess here any more. Am happy to play elsewhere though. Just with mates on here for now.

Don't let them declare you a second class citizen when you know you haven't done anything wrong.

***~~#$%&%$#~~***

Am a wahine in Aotearoa-New Zealand.

I tried playing chess for the first time since I was about 7 in December 2018 and have become completely absorbed by it. EDIT: WELL - I spend up to a few hours a day on it, unless there are friend's or favourite acquaintences' games to watch happening on line : ) I have some learning issues that seem to hinder some progress but I don't mind, I think my goal with chess is to always love it. PS If you have bright kids and you don't at least get them to think about how to play chess before the age of 10 or so, what was the point of having kids ? / Chess is SO HARD to learn at my age, whether or not you have a brain / memory injury. I can't remember if I do or not. Apparently learning chess early on changes and vastly increases the pathways and neural responses in your brain.

I guess you could call this next position an example of : Queens pawn, Krause Variation um black probably shouldn't try THAT again xD

Another more stupid game that I OBviously did not win after getting used for canon fodder but then I won his Queen by ab-pinning it xD : but was very exciting turn around for a moment. A Stylish attack under pressure, then pin and recheck point, Queen trade at least. xD

New favourite game: xD

https://www.chess.com/daily/game/231112722 contains my first brilliant move !!!

doesn't seem that brilliant eh lol, seems wise. Funny looking back on this now, 2 years later! Am glad I have improved A LITTLE BIT.

Also, if you follow on from there, it calls my complex (for me) sac operation a blunder, which seems weird since I end up an extra +1 on material, perhaps it didn't notice I was going to get his B no matter what, so I would be an extra +3 as well, so isn't that what you are supposed to do, sac even pieces when you are ahead? A HAHAHahhh - NEEEEEEEB

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ @@ smh

I discovered chess in December 2018 and completely fell in love with the game.

PM me if anyone wants to learn about trying linux or making your browser set up tight to protect your personal data. Also love learning new languages so if you teach me bits of yours I can help you learn kiwi or a more formal English. For instance, try to never begin sentences with "Also" as it is a focusing adjunct (does not stand alone) and I probably should rephrase that previous back end : a more formal style of English. Us Kiwis are so slack xD but we have US, UK, and Aussie television mainly, so we have kind of become abreast of many styles of vernacular. IE: we can understand all English speaking people which is funny as most can barely understand our accent and slang! Still true!) Mind you so many privacy focused companies I support (and am controlled/monitored by - thanks NZ and other govts) have had hacking attacks lately, I wonder how much of a geek do you really have to be to keep on top of all the backing up and possible data breaches? If the utter geek heads I know in Germany and The Netherlands are not always on top of it there is not much hope for those of us that are not uber cyber geeks. I guess some facts are still true - back up EVERYTHING try and store it in two different locations. This includes important emails / email addies. Understand that old hard drives (that's all non SD ones, who knows maybe them as well) and even flash (USB Pen) drives DO HAVE MOVING PARTS, and WILL FAIL EVENTUALLY. You have to keep cycling your important back ups / photos etc forever really. If you are using HD drives make sure you at least have S.M.A.R.T. warning system turned on so you get a heads up when yours is about to fail. Ask the geek you trust about that one. Has saved all of my data / photos / music once. There's no down side to doing that.

Granite is supposed to be about the hardest rock you can get on earth I believe, that can feasibly be turned into chess boards. very pleased with this acrylic rubbed in the etchings effect, and still for all intents and purposes is perfectly flat. Could be cut a teensy bit deeper I suppose but other techniques will pop up. it's nice having the sheen difference as well as colour, as you can really sink into the game more like an ocean. The other piece I will try and make the squares take up the entire 16 inch slab. My brass set obviously needs the extra board space, 2 inches per square is looking mighty fine in my mind.

May all lost souls eventually find their way home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This was all made when I was happy on the site ^^^ then all this

happened:

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5 Feb 2020

GM_Magnus_Kingdom gifted me diamond membership, even after I asked him not to. What can you do!

4 Jan '20

so for the second time in two days, i am muted and then unmuted on chess.com. no one was asked by me to remove the mutes. THIS WAS NOT WHEN EVERYONE WAS GETTING MUTED AT THE START OF FEBRUARY, IT WAS JUST ME AS FAR AS I COULD TELL.

what the heck is going on.

AFTERWARDS I FOUND OUT THAT ONE OF THE STAFF HAD APPLIED the LIVE RESTRICTION MANUALLY BUT THAT WAS ALL I COULD ASCERTAIN. ACCOUNTABILITY / EXACT REASONS WOULD BE PREFERABLE NE PAS

so yeh be warned apparently they can "call you unsportsmanlike for your general behaviour in forums" etc.

It's in one of the chess.com threads I started if you look.

Don't look though. It's boring and sad I just think if everyone was honest about how they feel about all this auto bot mute stuff etc then this site would be so much better.

But they won't discuss things with angry people and I did get pretty angry!

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wow, am unable to comment with this account as of yesterday lol... That includes, I can't even respond in messages to friends. I see all my posts in all threads I've ever done seem to have been deleted.

i guess it's from swearing in my pms to friends, coupled with my distaste for That Button.

this site is so insane, i really can't keep up with it. If i don't respond to you, please send me your email addy.

oh well, peace and love, look forwards to truly free chess in a more free world ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's rude though to only share those lessons from Simon here if people pay 200$ per year. Uncool. We should all get one complete lesson from him for free, that would be much better business generator for all involved, rather than just cut out during one video. Don't do that to people that have paid you nearly 100$ per year, thanks.

You could have also warned us platinum people at the start that the video would cut out just as we were really learning something. Don't waste paying customers' time.

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Other things that probably need explanation: In New Zealand we have some spelling oddities, as do all countries right - so Offence is always spelt thus in NZ, as is Defence. In all definitions that I can think of. You might ask, why wouldn't I just make myself look slightly less of an idiot and spell it the American way. Well, it's because I want to support the young NZ people that I meet on here, and not give them bad habits unless it is changed officially here.xD=S^

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It's a shame we can't see a chart anywhere of how many pending games we have signed up for.

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wollyhood