jonbbbb

Hi everyone, I wanted to give you all a quick channel update, but instead gave you a bit of a longer channel update!

Whenever a piece becomes undefended because of a pawn push, you have to look for tactics. In this case, the undefended knight was also pinnable, so of course we pin. Still, it's easy to get distracted by a wild goose chase in chess, so I took my time calculating. Let's see if it pays off. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

In this game I go for the Greek Gift even though Black has a knight guarding the h7 pawn... will it work?? Then we'll look at the Game Review and think about the resulting position. It's way more complicated than I can really understand, unfortunately, so leave a comment if you get it! I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

This game started off very promising for my opponent. He played conservatively, seemingly waiting for me to make a mistake. In my mind that' the most effective counter to the London. However, another thing I've come to realize is that when you make up an opening, even playing fairly conservatively, there can be crazy tactics available. Unfortunately, I didn't find any of them haha. We'll see a couple of them in the Game Review. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

There should be a name for this since it happens so often, similar to the Greek Gift or something. At my level of chess it tends to throw off your opponent, so it's a nice trick to keep in mind! The other theme of this game is that White exposed his king by chasing away my bishop, which led to some fun tactics and calculation. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

I remember someone in the comments letting me know that e6-b6 is a response to the London System that @GothamChess recommends. Well, it happened again today. As usual, when I haven't studied something, my natural instincts are... hmm... not the greatest haha. We get a game full of missed tactics and I hope you can catch some of them (particularly for my opponent, who was beating me for a while). But it all comes down to a daring attack that starts with giving up my rook. Will it work? Try to calculate it all out! I'll tell you right now, in my calculation I missed two important defensive moves that Black could play, and my opponent did in fact play one of them. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

Even though I had a fantastic puzzle session this morning, when I played a couple of blitz games for warmup something seemed... off. I tried again later, and you'll see the results! No rapid today for sure haha. We'll see a Blackmar-Diemer, a Four Knights Italian, and a London vs Modern. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

Yesterday was a bad day for chess, today is a good day! Let's see what happens when things go right in the London. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

I'm on a big losing streak today, but at least this game had a good endgame haha. I don't know if I've ever played a queen and pawn endgame, but my opponent really knew what to do. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

Finally! A game I'm prepared for haha. In this game against the Modern Defense, we play the double battery pattern and get a very good position. As usual there's some calculation to do as soon as we're out of prep, but because our position is so good, the calculation is pretty easy! I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

Actually it's two tactics, but only one of them is winning to me. The other one I don't really understand. This was a pretty fun game, also nice and short. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the chessboard. Lots of calculation in this game and I'm pretty happy with how I played! Then we get into a complicated endgame with knight vs bishop. I hope you enjoy and I'll see you next time.

You're about to find out lol. I checked my openings page and I've only seen the Scotch Gambit 8 times including today. Probably not worth studying in depth since it's still quite rare! I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

Dealing with pawn storms is always very complicated for me, and it shows in how much more time I used than my opponent in this game. But eventually it seems like the pawn storm creates too many weaknesses and if you're patient you can find a way to take advantage of them. I missed some very nifty tactics though. See if you can spot the best move after move 5 when my opponent gives me a check. Hint: use forcing moves so that he doesn't have time to defend the knight fork. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

This Scotch Game business is getting pretty crazy. They are fun games full of tactical opportunities, but generally a bit too sharp for my level of chess (for me and my opponents, most of the time). However, in this game we get a pretty good finish! I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

Whew, it's a rough day for chess for me so I decided to stick to blitz haha. We have a lovely London System game with the Greek Gift motif, and then a not so lovely Four Knights game where.. well.. mistakes were made. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

I feel like I've been seeing the Scotch Game quite a bit recently. If it continues I'll have to do some studying because I often end up with a disadvantage out of the opening, like in this one where I lose a pawn and my opponent's bishop is super annoying. However, let's see if we can turn it around by focusing on tactics! I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

This was a very challenging game for me, with an ending I didn't see coming haha. I was winning, but my opponent's endgame skills were way way beyond mine. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

This is my followup to the cheating investigation that I began in my last video. I used Chat GPT to help write a Python program to analyze the games of several top chess speedrunners and compile some statistics about cheaters in various ELO ranges: 0-500: 2.99% cheaters 500-1000: 2.71% cheaters 1000-1500: 4.05% cheaters 1500+: 3.99% cheaters I was pretty surprised by these numbers as they far exceed chess.com's official statement of around 0.2% of players cheating. I was also surprised that I ended up not being very bothered by the numbers, which I'll discuss a little in the video. This was a fun project. I got to know Chat GPT a little bit and found some interesting information about cheaters on chess.com. The whole process, from checking out the API to compiling the statistics only took about 1.5 hours! Coming up with an intro and editing the video took longer than the actual project haha. Anyway, let me know what you think! Are these numbers as surprising to you as they are to me? Is there something wrong with them? I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time with a regular chess video.

What do you all think about the prevalence of cheating on chess.com? My curiosity has been piqued recently so I thought I'd explore it a little bit! Definitely a different kind of video but I hope you enjoy it anyway. If you have any background in statistics, please leave a comment with your criticism of my take! Or what tests to perform to get better data and reach a conclusion! Links I mentioned in the video: @blazemarc8585 video about how he got away with cheating for months: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLLRB8bnxR8 @g0atmoth video about Escape from Tarkov cheaters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LfGcDB7Ek @DanielNaroditskyGM recently used speedrun account: https://www.chess.com/member/frankfurtairport @chessbrah speedrun accounts: https://www.chess.com/member/kayenveebe and https://www.chess.com/member/sterkurstrakur

This was a pretty good game with a few lessons (for me anyway) that came out of it. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

It's not just the Italian Game where you have to worry about c3. It's in the Bishop's Opening as well, and as usual it derails all of my plans haha. This game was a struggle and I was slightly losing for most of it. In middle games I just don't really know what to do against solid play. I feel like it's one of the things I need to work on to get to the "next level" in chess, like 1400-1500 or so. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

Well that was an odd game. I got into a pretty tricky situation and my calculation failed me. See if you can do better. The first one is my plan for getting out of the pin (you'll see what I mean). Can you find the flaw? I really should have seen this one, and I'm sure you will find it! The second one is a little tricker... an innocent pawn push to dislodge the queen and once again get out of the pin... but the lines that arise from it (in Game Review) are way more complicated than I ever expected. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

Playing some blitz chess!

Another fun one... we go into the Four Knights Scotch game and I remembered a few book moves! My opponent's first mistake comes on move 9 when he delays castling. There's only one good move for Black in response -- can you find it? I thought about it for a while, so don't feel like you need to pause. On move 10 my opponent makes another mistake castling long. See how quickly you can spot the problem. I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.