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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 19th, 2023

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  • If you want to get into openings I recommend getting a set of openings for yourself for white and black.

    White: 1. d4 and then London System is easy to play and works most times to get a good setup. Super easy way to have you prepared almost 50% of the time. I personally don’t play it though, I’m an 1. e4 player.

    Black:

    Don’t start with Sicialian. It’s good but it’ll take a long time to learn enough lines to handle whatever the opponent throws at you since they almost decide which variation you play.

    Against 1. d4… King’s Indian defence allows you a straight forward path to casting and develop 2 pieces. Then strike in the center. For a more spicy option there’s the Benoni which has traps for people who blindly go London System.

    Against 1. e4… French defence is pretty straight forward since you end up doing the same stuff every game. Attack the pawn on d4. You could also go for 1. … e5 but since it’s the most common move you can get opening knowledge advantage way faster by playing French or Scandinavian. You’ll have to know both if you decide to play 1. e4 at some point and play Italian or Ruy Lopez which IMO are more fun to play.

    After learning the main move order for the first 4 or 5 moves then watch some videos on each of your defence. Remote chess academy is a very fun channel on YouTube for learning openings.

    Good at tactics?

    Try some gambits. You sacrifice a pawn and come out guns blazing. If people don’t know the gambit you’re playing they’ll have to spend a lot of time calculating. You force them to thread the needle or at the minimum lose a piece.

    If you want to know how it looks like check out some games with Paul Morphy. He’s winning against players that would 2200+ FIDE rating with the King’s gambit. That opening develops wicked fast but has the King naked.






  • I stick to few sources that generally cover major without the doom and gloom. Generally YouTube channels are pretty good imo.

    • TLDR News (UK, EU and Global) is a great series of channels for that.

    • Caspian report on YouTube for some geopolitics/strategic outlook.

    • Real life lore for couple of deep dives on non-current issues.

    • Money and Macro for macro economic news.

    • Just have a think for climate science and energy transition news.

    • “Good news” is just nice feelgood news.

    Traditional media for closely following elections when they come out such as exit polls.

    For the Gaza issue I did break the cycle and check on Al Jazeera which is the best for middle East news.





  • Yeah, it took a plague, real shit winter, famine, mass migration invasions and many civil wars. US has a long way to go to reach that point.

    Historians might look at this point in time and say “Trump’s second presidency severely weakened the dollar. This had the knock on effects to make borrowing more expensive which made it harder to maintain their public expenses. Their issue was that the army always eats first, the people get the rest. No bread and games was ultimately the downfall.”