Meta

Nearing 2000 on Chess.com – 5 things to improve performance

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After months / years of flating in the same range, I recently hit my stride in my chess playing and ramping up to 2000 in Rapid and Blitz time controls. The top <1% of players on the chess.com platform.

While my rapid time contol has always been fairly good, my blitz playing has not. The recent upswing is due in no small part to simply paying more attention. Some quick notes, which I believe translate to other domains of real-time performance, such as tennis and music performance.

1. Be dynamically good. This is my biggest breakthrough. The human animal cannot and does not remain at a static fixed constant level of performance. It’s impossible simply to try to set the bar high and not deviate from that bar. Do not try to be statically good. The better approach is to push on both your strengths and diminish your weaknesses pro-actively in real-time as you are experiencing it. Do not wait for things to happen. Anticipate by looking ahead with the mind’s eye, speedily covering/recovering from mistakes, being tenacious and trying to turn the small advantages in your favor.

2. Approach. Do not enter the arena with the wrong mind-set. I used to play when doing all sorts of other activities, and my brain was on auto-pilot. That is the wrong mind-set for this activity. Warm up, enter the right mentality, perform, cool down and analyze.

3. Analyze. Analyze and prioritize for the long-term. (I’m still not doing this in chess properly, but need to do this to get to the next level). Fix the gaping weaknesses, one by one.

4. Embrace the struggle which may be long and do not opt for ‘easy’ attempts and ‘cheapshots’, if it means exposing yourself to a potential loss. They rarely work the higher you go.

5. Specifically for chess, I have started moving almost immediately on known positions (especially in the opening) and banking the time to analyze things when the game is at a crossroads in critical positions.

Hope that helps your game!

 

Dark Matter / Dark Energy / White Holes / Multiple Universes

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Currently obsessed about black holes, quantum gravitation, hawking radiation, information loss, where does it all go (it apparently leaves our universe, or is it holographically preserved at the boundary). A large sink hole for energy/matter. Obsessed *In the camp of leaky dimensions, where deep in the funnel / singularity, connected somehow to dark energy, by … Read more

Deep Springs College

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Deep Springs College This educational institution is one of the only ones that really make sense to me. It only has about 30 students, admitting 10-15 each year. It’s a full scholarship school like Cooper Union. It’s 40 miles from the nearest town. Students spend a portion of their time operating a ranch which sustains … Read more

The philosophy of Boethius

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Have just discovered the philosopher Boethius. Spending the night reading about him with many insights and revelations there. 🎓 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius

Catharsis in Art and its similarity to heat transfer

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I’m amazed at how humans know when something is heartfelt/emotional and how others remarkably respond to it. When a person speaks sincerely, through whatever mechanism, we tend to understand that person all the more through an emotional lens versus, just an intellectual one. I suspect part of the reason it is so fun to watch … Read more

UltraMeta: Life Affirmation

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This is an extremely ‘meta’ post about life and happiness. But with that said, perhaps a hard won truth. Without being too ‘abstract’ about it: Above the basics needed, the expression of courage is what brings happiness to life. It is why having kids, or giving to charity, climbing everest or making something beautiful is … Read more

Bright Lights Big City – New York

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My answers are usually quite – shall we say realistic – when people ask me what it is like to live in NY. It’s tough here, but the quality which I realize and now appreciate more. True of all big cities and all wide open places, is the ability to create your own reality and … Read more

Living to Eat : Eating the Living

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Isn’t it strange that we need to consume life in order to live…. Even the strictest vegans will need to eat things once alive to gain their energy. The simplest grains, beans and vegatables were all once alive. You can survive only for so long with eating rocks, mineral salts and solar power (like trees … Read more

La vie des Autres..

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…If you had a parent living in a house, who locked their children up in the basement, provided no school, no health, no care, no nursing, allowing a dank basement as the only place to be, living in derelict conditions. Almost all of society would condemn this as unfit parenting and yet it is what … Read more

Van Gogh’s Variations

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For anyone that knows me, they know that I am a huge van gogh fan. I learned something about van gogh today which was very moving. His variations seem never to be shown together, ever, one beside the other. Just like all his series: the sunflowers, potato eaters, violets, fields, shoes, etc. all seem to … Read more

Law of Usability

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If any technology is to be used by the general population. It can’t be more complex than an ATM.

Art and Sport: The Transcendental Problem Solving State

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Quick Thought. Art and Sport. (wondering this while watching Australian Open) The fascination people have with both art and sport, at a higher level may be really the same thing (for instance how in physics, light and radio waves, or the weak and the strong nuclear force unite etc etc). It can be said, they … Read more

Using vectors to measure organization’s efficacy

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Why are some organizations efficient and others not? It occurred that possibly the best way of analyzing and finding inefficiencies in an organization is to use vectors. Like electricity, macro-economics and swimming, aggregate/net action is really the most important thing. Measurement of energy versus application is easily seen with vector relationships. If bureacracy brings you … Read more