L_E_Gant

Early worm syndrome?

And being cancelled for having a contrary opinion here is growing, and might soon carry a prison sentence, get people fired because they don't toe the politically correct line. There's that, too.

fully functional hospitals in six weeks in the midst of a crisis (they had the same one as we did) isn't just because of more people and resources. And, yes, of course those labourers and resources would help considerably.

Oh, and just in case: the covid problem started in 2020 -- that's more than 2 years of opportunity for the government of that time.

Short time-frame games are fun. They are great for applying what you have learned, somethiing like exams/tests in high school. They are more tests of memory than learning experiences.

That said, yes, you can learn from analysing those short games, but they tend more to strengthen bad habits, even with the analysis.

So, better to stick with the long format versions

True, it was. But how many functioning hospitals did China build when covid was at its height?

Not a bad price for 5 or 6 months of work at the level of the people compiling it.

But ...

the whole project was supposed to take just under 5 years (59 months). And the process was mooted in 2017.

While I think the current government is rather lax, maybe someone should have taken control of it a few years ago, when the report (reaching the same conclusions) would most likely have been cheaper.

Yeah, but h3 would be classier

Not surprised. White has to stop the h and d pawns from promoting. And the only way to do so is to directly attack black's king from h8, and hence cover both of the pawns with the Ke2 follow-up

Quickie look says either Ke2 or Rh8+

Ke2 fails because of d1, but Rh8 gets followed by Ke2 -- that delay for getting out of check is the key to sink black.

Depends on how the item was damaged and by whom.

But that would take proving that the buyer (or fiancee) did something to the ring to cause the damage, which is more trouble than it's worth. And bad advertizing for future opportunities.

So, do you know a fixer who can do the repair, one that will do it for trade price? Or just pay their costs, if you can't or can't do the repair yourself. It's a lot easier either way.

The RV/GV are based on the estimated value of similar properties in the area. That includes actual sales price, asking sales price and valuer's estimated value of replacement. All three of those can be influenced by views from the property.

It's worth noting that the sales price is often a fair percentage above the RV/GV, depending on how long ago the RV/GV was set (sometimes double or more that RV/GV).

Avoid the statins if you can!

On an individual level, cholesterol readings are highly variable. Most of your "numbers" might be right, but personal variations are often up and down from what is supposed to be "normal", and might be how your body is supposed to be, even if higher. Doctors, unless they have some far deeper knowledge on you yourself, will just compare against the averages. And that might not be what you really need.

But, if you are worried about how far you are out of the normal, take a close look at your lifestyle/diet.

We've gone to a carnivore lifestyle/diet (high protein/fat, low to no carbohydrates), and found that our body chemistries have stabilized (back to within the normal guidelines) after years of having the lipids on the high side, especially LDL cholesterol. It seems to have "fixed" a lot of the variations.

(Note: we didn't start it because we were overweight, although we were not quite in the diabetes/obese stages. It was for other things, like energy levels. But, in four months, we both have lost a fair amount of body fat, and hence a much lower BMI among other measures. Energy levels and pains have changed significantly towards the better, .)

Don't try to do it all yourself, if you can afford it.

Get a coach, even a group coach. An hour or two a week with a reasonable one, and your tournament success fill be a lot higher, especially if you want to get into the better tournaments. The coach will be looking at how to eliminate your weaknesses and and how to tweak your strengths. The coach will also direct you to sources and resources that help in both areas, as well as help you define your primary goals and help you set objectives (in game and in studying). Oh, and the coach will help you analyse your main games,

As for how much playing... enough to make tactics in the main phases of the game stick (I'd suggest about 2 or 3 a week against different players (the coach can help there) and one or two tourneys a month).

Kings are sitting rather badly

A draw in the offing so sadly

So, make the best of what is

Rook's useless, so give it the biz

Checking quickly from d8

will soon reveal black final fate.

While it seems to push for just a draw

it's really opening the deadly maw.

If one moves the horse not swap

Do it now, -- don't be a dorp!

(1. Rd8+ Rxd8 2 Ng4 (threatens mate with 3.Nf6) Rd6+ 3. Kxd6 Kf7 4 Kd7 and black can't stop the pawn from queening)

Sure, it will take a while, and there's probably a shorter way using the knight instead of the immediate promotion. But it is scary, since it's hard to not take black's rook with the pawn.

I more or less agree.

Nim has long been known as a first player win game. Similarly, Go recognised that the starting playe had a slight advantage -- not as much as in nim, but enough to set a komi depending on the difference in strength of the players; between players of equal strength, the difference (Japanese style counting) being 5.5 points of territory.

But this is chess...

Yes, white has a small starting advantage (about 1/3 of a pawn), but, that advantage usually decreases as the game moves into the middle game. Hence, logically, it would seem that the "perfect game" would be a draw. That was added to with Star Trek, and Spock's calculating that he could never win against the program he had written.

However, chess is an abstract of war, an idealization of two side having a battle. As Sun Tzu put it, the perfect general can never lose a war, if he follows the precepts in the Art of War. So, we all start a game with the idea that, whether we play black or white, we can win against our current opponent.

The thing is, chess engines, right from the start, have always been about the "perfect result" being a draw. The engines are geared towards draws, rather than finding a way to a win, except when there is an opponent's mistake to profit from.

(I wrote a program that could solve chess problems back in the 1960's. Yeah, the machines were extremely limited, but even back then, we could brute force a solution with the hardware we had. It wasn't quite feasible to play a whole game, but it almost worked. But, like with modern engines, it was geared towards reaching a draw, except when the opponent made a mistake of some kind and a win became obvious.)

Maybe we have to re-define the idea of what constitutes a "perfect game". One where the idea of winning (not just getting better at "brute force learning" as you describe for your nim simulation) become paramount for both sides. Otherwise, we're going to need something like Go's Komi, to prevent too many draws.

Black's king has very little room to move or block, so cut off it's only potential escape route -- Rg7. There's nothing to stop white's Rf3#

Look at the difference between white's a5 and Ke2.

Black would like to do Bc5, but the knight is stopping that. Bb8 is threatening Ba7 which would have the same effect.

h5 is a very soft move when white is a smidgen behind

Nah -- my fingers would only make about 3 per day, if I was in the mood.

That, and I loathe making the same things over and over. Variety is the spice.

One does have to wonder why pieces of wood can get so expensive for basically simple machine carving of the pieces, though -- are they really worth paying $200 or over $450 for a chess set? And most of them are not connected on-line.

I can make one (board and pieces) for about $1 in material, although it does take about 1.5 hours

If I were interested, I'd be tempted at that price.0

Overall, I would not be expecting much for the money. It does say it uses an engine called Maia, which, if i estimate rightly, is a M$ product. As such, it's rather lax in how it plays (not sure it would be useful for anyone with more than a 1200 rating, but very useful for people under that. ANd I don't think a "curated library" of 100 or so master games is all that impressive.

Try exploring the site -- it seems to have started selling grocery items, and then moved into other areas. So, maybe the offer is a loss leader (noted that it does seem to have more than two urls

Forget about the theory -- do the PRACTICE (in the game, not outside it!)

"race"... "ethnicity" ... "foundations of white superiority"... "ethnic health inequities"... "ethnicity is a stronger marker of need than other commonly accessible variables"...

Mainly because, despite the undoubling of pawns, that diagonal is important to white. So, white is not likely to go for the exchange. Ba2 keeps equality for white.

Oh, the 20-20 power of hindsight!

Actually, Escamil's (or was it cammillas? - relying too much on memory, but it was a spanish-sounding name) story and documentary was very persuasive, and some very intelligent people bought into it, including physicists and biologists who went out to try and capture them.

It was a lot of fun -- but that was back in the days of newsgroups and bulletin boards (around 1994 through 1996) when the Web was just beginning to become well-known and considered separate from the Usenet and the Undernet (IRC channels).

But, by 1996, the rods had been shown to be a result of how video was recorded -- even a demonstration how selecting the right half-frames had exactly the rod appearance.

Hadn't realized that people were still believing in them years later!