Leo, how on earth are you so good at Chess?

[Value]

Did you even train a lot to reach 1600 at Fischer Random? Were you born with a talent for Chess?

[The Crocodile]

My problem with Fischer Random is that it's just not random at all. If it was random the piece placement would be totally random, and the piece selection would be totally random. So you might have to try to win with multiple enemy queens starting near your king or kings.

[Leo Gura]

I'm not good.

I didn't train. The only chess I played was in teenage years.

I only started playing Fischer Random a month ago.

But I do like watching chess videos of classical games for fun.

Keep in mind I don't post my losing games. I only post my most interesting victories.

I am not too talented at it. My calculation ability is quite slow and rusty. My memory for chess is very poor. But I am pretty good at seeing large patterns. I can be clever.

Edited Friday at 07:18 PM by Leo Gura

[Terell Kirby]

Side note- I’d like to compliment you on your music playlists posted on the blog. It’s fire 🔥 @Leo Gura

[The Crocodile]

2 minutes ago, Terell Kirby said:

Side note- I’d like to compliment you on your music playlists posted on the blog. It’s fire 🔥 @Leo Gura

Leo can't have that music taste for the same reason men can't cry.

If he tried playing that in combat everybody would get killed.

[Dodo]

I need to play against you Leo, I am 1200 rated rapid on Chesscom, didn't know you play as well

[Value]

@Leo Gura Well. In daily life (not online) I win literally every chess game against anyone and my Chess.com rating is around 1400. It is not normal to have 1600 rating after a month of playing- Maybe you are highly focused when you play? I only play Chess online to distract myself and always listen to something in the background lol.

Edited Friday at 07:50 PM by Value

[Value]

Btw check the stats, 1600 should be top percentile on chess.com

[Dodo]

I've played against the GOAT in the past and its on youtube   Ignore the Wimpy bit  

 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Value said:

@Leo Gura Well. In daily life (not online) I win literally every chess game against anyone and my Chess.com rating is around 1400. It is not normal to have 1600 rating after a month of playing- Maybe you are highly focused when you play? I only play Chess online to distract myself and always listen to something in the background lol.

I don't know what is normal.

Keep in mind I don't have an official rating. All I can tell you is I can beat a 1600-rated bot more than 50% of the time if I focus. And I am improving.

I have to really focus to win. If I slack off I make bad blunders. I don't play rapid games as I would be really bad at that. My games usually last 1-2hrs.

After all my consciousness work, learning anything is a lot easier for me. I sorta grok how a whole system functions. The downside is that few things are worth learning, my motivation to learn anything thoroughly is very low since I don't see meaning in it.

Edited Friday at 09:32 PM by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

Once I train up some more I could play some matches against you guys.

[Value]

@Leo Gura Thinking about it, even just having a great ability to focus might explain a lot of it, your consciousness work should have helped a lot with that. Apparently one of the things that make Magnus Carlsen great is his amazing natural ability to focus for long periods of time - he could easily sit and focus for 8hours straight even as a kid. 

Like you I'm much better at slower games rather than quick ones. 

And... sign me up for a chess game any time.

[Daniel Balan]

Hi Leo! I encourage you to watch Daniel Naroditsky speed run videos! He is 100% the best teacher when it comes to chess! It is classical chess but it is gold! He is my favorite teacher when it comes to chess. He is the Leo of chess for me!

 

Edited Friday at 09:07 PM by Daniel Balan

[integral]

The chest 960 rating pool is not the same as the 3 minute or 5 minute competitive pool.

1600 chess 960 pool = 1200-1300 chess 3 min pool.

Also slow games have inflated ratings not because there's more skill level involved but because the rating pool automatically gives people an extra 400 points, based on the economy of it ( there is less competition).

On chess.com a rating of 1200 Blitz is the equivalent of a 1600 15+ min standard.

---

If Leo dedicated all this time and energy to do this for a year he could easily reach 2,000 and up. 

The rest of you guys are stuck in not knowing how to learn effectively. You have not mastered the art of learning and so you're not making any progress in chess when most of the progress you need to make to escape the 1400 rating is extremely easy. But because you don't know how to improve you're stuck at that plateau.

Edited Friday at 09:11 PM by integral

[integral]

@Daniel Balan what is your rating and how do you know he's a good teacher if you didn't reach the top levels yet? The problem with every single teacher including Hikaru is that they're telling you what calculations they're doing. When that's the easiest part. The reason no one's progressing is because you think it's all about calculation when it's not. It's all about effective training strategies. How are you going to train in a very specific way to improve? Especially when you're stuck at the same rating for years.

That being said Daniel is pretty good 😁

Edited Friday at 09:15 PM by integral

[Leo Gura]

44 minutes ago, Value said:

@Leo Gura Thinking about it, even just having a great ability to focus might explain a lot of it, your consciousness work should have helped a lot with that. Apparently one of the things that make Magnus Carlsen great is his amazing natural ability to focus for long periods of time - he could easily sit and focus for 8hours straight even as a kid.

My focus is not great. My mind is not good at doing long calculations. But I can be fully immersed in a game of chess for 2hrs.

Magnus is a genetic freak. His memory is insanely exceptional. No normal human has that kind of memory.

Basically all the chess GMs have insane genetic memory because you could not be in the top 100 without it.

Chess is a good example of how much genetics matter. You will never be a super-GM through hard work alone. You need worldclass memory and visualization ability. Not all brains are wired for that. The reason Magnus is the GOAT is because he is a genetic freak whose freakishness is perfectly suited for chess. That's why no one can reach his level no matter how hard or long they study. The only one who will best him is an even bigger freak.

Edited Friday at 09:26 PM by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

@Daniel Balan

I watch a lot of Hikaru, Agadmator, and Gotham.

Agadmator does my fave classical chess analysis. Hikaru and Gotham are more for fun.

Edited Friday at 09:35 PM by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

26 minutes ago, integral said:

Especially when you're stuck at the same rating for years.

Eventually your rating will max out based on your memory, visualization ability, and calculation ability.

But of course training can go a long way.

Edited Friday at 09:34 PM by Leo Gura

[RightHand]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Eventually your rating will max out based on your memory, visualization ability, and calculation ability.

But of course training can go a long way.

So you would say that a guy like Magnus is a genetic freak?

 

Nevermind I didn't read the post above, lol.

Edited Friday at 09:41 PM by RightHand

[integral]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Eventually your rating will max out based on your memory, visualization ability, and calculation ability.

That can very well be true but I know that none of these guys put the work in to reach their full potential. They're a long way from maxing out.

Most of the time when people hit a plateau it's because they're just repeating the same bad habits and patterns over and over again without making effective corrections to their own thinking process. It's like playing the same song over and over again on the piano because it's easy and fun, but you never improve that way. They have to progressively challenge themselves. (I know you know this I'm just repeating)

I stop playing chess 15 years ago but my Peak rating was 2350, and the reason I stopped improving was was because I could not put the time and energy to focus on the boring stuff. Which was endgames and openings. I found openings to be a complete waste of my time to memorize, and against the love I had for chess, and end games are also relatively boring and require a lot of memorization.

I don't think I maxed out my memorization, visualization, calculation ability, because there was always an area of weakness that I could have focused on especially when most of my games were losses in the opening. So there was plenty of room to improve.

It's very unclear, Magnus says he doesn't do heavy calculation, he only does it to double check but most of the time his intuition is right.

Hikaru is heavily calculation based thinking process while Magnus is more of intuitive based.

Edited Friday at 09:46 PM by integral