Not the topic of this thread, but the new app is in development. There’s a Lichess team for beta testers.

How much does that cost?

Most people I know hate it, but I absolutely love the feeling of a fly crawling on my arms or legs. It gives me this wonderful comfortable tingling sensation and I can’t get enough of it.

There’s no Offerspill here. This championship only features national federations, so Carlsen is playing for the Norwegian team together with other Norwegian players. And they’re very unlikely to win after one draw and one loss in the first two rounds.

…aaaand big upset already in the first round with Denmark (20th seed) beating Azerbaijan! Radjabov, Mamedov and Abasov all went into quick draws (maybe thinking that Mamedyarov was about to win). But Mamedyarov misplayed his attack and went on to lose vs. Mads Andersen.

My bad, next time I’ll provide a link right away. Here you go: https://lichess.org/analysis/4B3/8/6N1/5p2/1r4p1/6pk/7b/4K2Q_w_-_-_0_1?color=white

In what position? After 1. Bc6 Rb1+ 2. Ke2 Rb2+ 3. Kd3 Black doesn’t have anything but spite checks. And if …g2, White can now safely go Qc1 with quick checkmate to follow via Qh6+ (since g2 is covered by the bishop).

Unfortunately no. After 1. Ke2 g2 2. Qe1 Black has a simple way to win the queen, and after 2. Qc1 Black can at at the very least promote the pawn and there will never be a checkmate for White.

Perfect, you found it!

Nicely done! You solved the main (study) line. There’s other lines where Black actually holds out longer, but they’re much simpler to calculate.

Right, but what about 1. Bc6 Rb1+ 2. Kd2 Rxh1?

Good start. You don’t have to calculate all the way to mate in that line, White gets an overwhelming advantage.

But more interestingly: What do you do after Bc6 Rb1+?

An interesting read, no doubt, but I still disagree with

Is this something we actually have to worry about?

Maybe.

The “threat” here would entail no negative emotions, no human (or other) suffering, just… nothing. Plus, it sounds like if the universe were indeed unstable/meta-stable, there’s nothing we could change about it anyway. So of all the things I can worry about, I feel this deserves the least amount of worry.

I get almost all literature for my papers from libgen and scihub. I even have access to a lot or journals through my uni’s VPN, but it’s just much simpler and quicker to use the open seas.

My justification is that a) scientific journal publishers are evil and a scourge on humankind, and b) on average, I only need like 1% of the info in such literature, so I would never buy it anyway, which means that me pirating it doesn’t affect sales in any way.

More fallout from the recent #metoo scandals in chess.

Yes. (I’m a protestant Christian.)

I mean I live in Berlin…

I sing in an amateur choir led by a professional singer, and his voice is the purest, warmest, cleanest sound you can imagine. I melt every time he sings a solo or demonstrates part of a song to us.

A rook vs bishop ending is usually a draw (with few exceptions). It’s not the solution here. For some hints, you can read some of my comments below.

Nothing wrong with that. :)