FM CheckRaiseMate's Blog
Working on Play
Can you teach yourself to have more fun playing chess?
Annual Review
What I did in 2022 and what I'm planning for 2023
My New AI Chess Coach
ChatGPT can plausibly answer nearly any question. Can it annotate a chess game?
The Engine Is An Oracle
Using the engine effectively isn't easy, but it's well worth learning
How Elo Ratings Actually Work
The history, mechanics, and issues of the chess rating system
Entropy in the Opening
Using information theory to quantify the surprise value of chess openings
The Value of Surprise
Going against the grain can be a great strategy or a disastrous mistake
Magnus Dominates Titled Tuesday
How the world champion consistently crushes lesser grandmasters
Serve and Volley
Roger Federer's strategy for dealing with getting older
The Risks of Over-Optimizing
Why sometimes less structure is better
The Four Stages of Competence
How to master chess ideas intuitively
The Strange Power of Doing Nothing
Sometimes the best plan is no plan at all
Play the Odds
What seven years of professional poker taught me about chess
Stop Cheating on Your Training
Common habits that drain the value from your study time and how to avoid them
How to Build an Opening Repertoire
Take advantage of principles from machine learning and design thinking
The Problem With Memorization
Starting the game with perfect computer moves seems like it should help you win. Why doesn't it?
oh no my metagame
Measuring Eric Rosen's impact on the popularity of the Stafford Gambit
Puzzles vs. Games
These positions are easy puzzles but almost no one got them right in a real game