Chess

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
why is there only one? is the hardware very expensive
I think protein folding, along with processing radio telescope signals for SETI, is one of those things that people volunteer to help out with at home. So that while your PC is not in use, or you're only doing non-intensive things with it (not gaming, making music etc.) its spare run time is being used for calculations.
 
Apparently The Queen's Gambit has led to a 1000000% surge in sales of chess sets and chess books.

Anyone else see it? It was OK, as these things go.
i was buying a set the other day and 80% of the big good value ones were marked 'sold out due to queen's gambit'. FTQ!
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I do have a funny story (well, it amused me) about chess which I thought I'd told here, but seems I haven't (apologies if it is somewhere and I missed it), so I will tell it if anyone is interested.
Basically I've got a mate that I met when we both worked in a call centre, we had a mutual interest in records and music and stuff and we DJ-d together a few times. We also both liked gambling and we often used to do little bets for records, like the loser had to buy the winner a record of his (the winner's) choice up to a value of twenty quid say. And then sometimes we would double or quits and it could mount up.
At one point we both had office jobs in different companies and we hated them and we spent all our time on the internet avoiding work as much as possible and I got a message from Olaf saying "I've never played chess before, now is the time to learn". He'd found some website where you could simply play someone else and so we played on that. Now I wouldn't claim to be good but I'd played a fair bit when I was younger, chess club etc for the geeks after school and so on. Obviously, the first game he very quickly lost - he was sending me hilarious race-baiting messages like "brother on the run from whitey" as I chased his king round the board - cos he was playing with the black pieces and he himself is black (mixed race whatever).
So we played a few games I won them all without having to try of course. After a while though he says "I've got the hang of this, it's not too hard, I reckon I can beat you soon". Which I thought was quite a strong claim given the circumstances. In the end he suggested that we play ten games and if he won one of them then he would win the bet. At the moment our account together stood with him owing me £100 worth of records so he suggested a double or quits - so to me I was thinking that this would be easy money and I could pick up some tasty bits with two hundred quid so... why not? Only thing was it would take ages to play the ten games cos we were obviously gonna do it when we were at work and some days one person might be too busy to make more than a couple of moves, or even too busy to play at all, so there would be a delay on collecting my prize - but whatever, I was greedy I wanted some rare electronic Italian libraries or something and I wanted the satisfaction of Olaf buying them for me.
So yeah we played ten times, over the next six months or whatever. Only a few moves a day but he was weak and it didn't take that many moves to beat him - well, that was the case at first anyhow, but he did get better. I could see he was really trying, really keen to get somewhere, concentrating really hard so that quickly he stopped making utterly amateurish mistakes that everyone makes at first, just leaving pieces unguarded to be taken for free and so on. He was really determined to improve and each game he WAS better than the last.
Well anyway, long story short(ish) - and I'm sure that anyone not as trusting as me can see where it's going - by like game seven it was getting a little bit ticklish. I was still on top but things were lasting longer, I couldn't afford to make any mistakes, I had to fully concentrate. Game nine was a bit too close for comfort. But I still won and I just needed the final one to get my hands on that lovely money. I knew it would be a bit trickier than I had anticipated at the start but I thought I would still win.... obviously though, I didn't, the fucking arsehole got me on that last game and smugly accepted the writing off of the hundred he owed me. Crowed about it a bit for, you know, the next two years or whatever, told everyone there if we happened to meet up, that kind of thing.
And then, one day, literally years later, he admitted what should have been obvious I guess, but which I didn't think he was enough of a devious cunt to do, but basically he'd entirely cheated from day one. He had just put my moves into a chess program and then played the computer's response against me. The sneakiness - which I'd greatly underestimated - was in the way that he had played the first game on level 1, the second game on level 2 or 3 or whatever, and so on, so that it showed a natural progression of small incremental improvement from game to game. Apart from in the last game where, not wishing to take chances, he's bumped it up to level ten billion or whatever that could beat Magnus Carlsen.
My error was in never having thought that someone would be prepared to pretend to play chess for months on end simply to fool me. You know, the fact that he had approached me, seeming so genuine and saying that he wanted to learn, and yet he didn't even play one of his own moves over the months and months while the bet was in progress, he probably never even looked at the positions or tried to figure out why the computer was doing what it was doing. The whole thing was an elaborate sham (and scam) to get out of buying me some records and, fair enough, I fell for it hook line and sinker, cos a) I didn't realise the depths to which he was capable of sinking and b) the skill with which he maintained the deception for so long, pretending to be angry at each defeat yet enthused with his growing ability - plus the constant barrage of jokes about the whites bullying blacks and so on which were, I guess, a deliberate part of his strategy of distraction.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I was thinking just this morning that I should prompt you to tell that story. What makes it even better is that Olaf is a really nice guy, comes across as quite earnest, I think, and Is generally the last person you'd suspect of such a low-down, dirty trick.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I was thinking just this morning that I should prompt you to tell that story. What makes it even better is that Olaf is a really nice guy, comes across as quite earnest, I think, and Is generally the last person you'd suspect of such a low-down, dirty trick.
I've got to disagree with you there mate, he's a sneaky bast, he might come across as earnest but that's not really how I think of him. That's what makes that one so frustrating, I was on my guard, I knew he was exactly the kind of person to try something like that, especially if records are involved - I just underestimated his will power and ability to play such a looooong game.
I mean, when it was July 7th and all those bombs went off in London on the underground etc, one of them even blew up a bus that was on a route I often took to work and back. Anyway I'd just got into work and my desk phone rang and it was Olaf and he said something like "Rich, obviously I don't want to think about this or tempt fate or anything, but, if the worst should happen and you blown up and killed on the way home, can I have first dibs on your records?".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Ha, well I guess you know him much better than I do. But I did say "comes across as" earnest, and I suppose if you really are a sneaky bastard, it's better to be able to disguise it a bit, rather than being the sort of person that makes people think "I couldn't trust this cunt any further than I could throw him" the first time they meet you.

That's pretty funny about him trying to write himself into your will in the middle of a terrorism panic.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Also he liked to find out what records I was trying to buy on ebay and then he would bid on them just to push the price up and make it more expensive for me the prick. He's a real trouble-maker.
It did make me laugh that one day someone pointed out that he looked a little like Will Ferrel in Elf, so we photoshopped it so it said Olaf instead and he got really shitty about that.
 

muser

Well-known member
I had a vaguely similar thing happen with a mate I was playing with except it was more humiliating because he just got better than me.

I was fairly new and had set a target to hit 1500 and he got motivated to start learning chess after he played me a few times (and got crushed) and then decided he was going to set a target of getting above my rating before I left the country.

Slowly as he approached my rating he would beat me more often. I managed to get over 1500 and he didn't get past me in time but not long after I left all my chess powers dissapated . I was a good leader, gave him helpful advice never gloated when I beat him and he had the cheek to go way ahead and become unbeatable. My passion for chess destroyed. I'm still considering spending some months trying to go deep into theory and learn openings and stuff and take back my rightful place.

I also never play rated classical anymore because I'm too scared to go down below 1500, ridiculous really!
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Why were you mates with this bloke? Sounds like a tosser.
I am representing him slightly unfairly by picking his worst moments.
The chess thing - as you can probably tell - I did feel a grudging admiration for, the thing about inheriting my records I found funny straight away, but as more news filtered in and it became clear how bad it was he phoned back to apologise. And with the records on ebay I think he thought there would be more bids and it wouldn't alter the final price and he did pay me the difference.
Now I feel bad for making him sound like a cunt when I do really like the guy and I still consider him a friend even though we live in different countries and I haven't seen him for years, we still do chat.
I just took issue with what Ollie said about him being all innocent when he does have this sense of humour that kinda causes trouble and I thought of that as one of his, I dunno, defining characteristics. But over all he has supported me in everything I do, he taught me a lot about music and he's always been generous over the years with his time and even with money and stuff when I've been down on my luck or whatever.
I should be more careful what I say really cos dissensus is a world on its own.... but at the same time it does overlap with the real world cos there are three or four people commenting regularly that I know pretty well in real life (and a few more that I've met once or twice) and so when I refer to a story that relates to someone in real life it may quite likely be a simplistic, almost caricatured way of describing them which is fine if it stays on dssensus, but when it can bleed into real life via the people I know then that's not good enough and it's not fair.
I do feel very bad about this now. Aagggh. Sorry.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I had a vaguely similar thing happen with a mate I was playing with except it was more humiliating because he just got better than me.

I was fairly new and had set a target to hit 1500 and he got motivated to start learning chess after he played me a few times (and got crushed) and then decided he was going to set a target of getting above my rating before I left the country.

Slowly as he approached my rating he would beat me more often. I managed to get over 1500 and he didn't get past me in time but not long after I left all my chess powers dissapated. I was a good leader, gave him helpful advice never gloated when I beat him and he had the cheek to go way ahead and become unbeatable. My passion for chess destroyed. I'm still considering spending some months trying to go deep into theory and learn openings and stuff and take back my rightful place.

I also never play rated classical anymore because I'm too scared to go down below 1500, ridiculous really!

I don't know how the ratings work. What does it mean to be 1500 or more? Am I right in saying that there is a number you have to reach to become a grand master, and if so what is that number?

I was a good leader, gave him helpful advice never gloated when I beat him and he had the cheek to go way ahead and become unbeatable
That does sound like really bad manners on is part. Really not how it's supposed to go. But I would like to ask, how did he behave when he surpassed you? Did he gloat? Or did he deliberately not gloat? Which would be equally hard to take in its way I think, depending on what kind of person you are.
 

muser

Well-known member
I don't know how the ratings work. What does it mean to be 1500 or more? Am I right in saying that there is a number you have to reach to become a grand master, and if so what is that number?

I don't know how the ratings work. What does it mean to be 1500 or more? Am I right in saying that there is a number you have to reach to become a grand master, and if so what is that number?


That does sound like really bad manners on is part. Really not how it's supposed to go. But I would like to ask, how did he behave when he surpassed you? Did he gloat? Or did he deliberately not gloat? Which would be equally hard to take in its way I think, depending on what kind of person you are.

Yep it was very bad form he should have kept in his place, to be honest he definitely would have gloated but I had already left the country and stopped using the app for a bit before it became totally clear how much better he had gotten.

They use some maths magic to calculate your rating based on who you beat, if you beat someone much higher than you then you get more points and if you beat someone less than you get less points and the it works the same but inverted with how many points you lose.

1500 isn't anything special it's what you start with when you first sign up so it's calculated as the average I guess. GM is 2500 but I think anything over 2000 and your a pretty serious player.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I should be more careful what I say really cos dissensus is a world on its own.... but at the same time it does overlap with the real world
Another example of that; I met this girl here in Lisbon and in fact now have
become really quite friendly with her and her boyfriend. But last year I was just starting to get to know the two of them, and it was her birthday and she was having a picnic thing in the park. I went along, didn't know anyone there except for her, but people were arriving in dribs and drabs, and then this one guy arrived and straight away he seemed to seek me out, said "So you're Richard?" and I confirmed that and the he said "You dj with the name Idle Rich right?" and I said yeah, and then he said "You're the guy from dissensus right?" which was a very big surprise to me of course.
And there's not much more to it, but basically he lurks on dissensus and he was really super keen to talk to me about it, ask me all sorts of questions - does Mixed Biscuits really believe the stuff he says, why will Luka pretend he likes Marvel, how did Mr Tea get so smart - but mainly about K-punk of course. I've met a few people here in Lisbon with very strong interest in KP in fact. But this was the first (anywhere) to be so interested in dissensus and, as a result, to be interested in me! Very strange experience.
And of course it was just a reminder to all that when I'm typing this it could be read by anyone out there in the world who takes an interest.
 

woops

is not like other people
then this one guy arrived and straight away he seemed to seek me out, said "So you're Edward?" and I confirmed that and then he said "You're the guy @version from dissensus right?" which was a very big surprise to me of course, and I immediately slipped him a slow-acting but deadly poison and left and packed a suitcase and left my residence for parts unknown, setting fire to the place as I did so.
 
[QUOTE="IdleRich, post:]
And there's not much more to it, but basically he lurks on dissensus and he was really super keen to talk to me about it, ask me all sorts of questions - does Mixed Biscuits really believe the stuff he says, why will Luka pretend he likes Marvel, how did Mr Tea get so smart - but mainly about K-punk of course. I've met a few people here in Lisbon with very strong interest in KP in fact. But this was the first (anywhere) to be so interested in dissensus and, as a result, to be interested in me! Very strange experience.
And of course it was just a reminder to all that when I'm typing this it could be read by anyone out there in the world who takes an interest.
[/QUOTE]

quite scary really. We lapse into thinking we’re talking to the same dozen people
 
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