Skadoosh Limitless journal (chess)

Journals - Major Programs
#61

This entire day is Limitless manifesting itself hard, lol.

It’s been 16 days of playing Chess and I have 44 games in total. Today is the first time that I’ve felt some type of way about my performance in a game. I’m feeling a strong urge to analyze it in Stockfish 17. This interface is very easy to use, it downloads all my games from chess.com.

Now I’m analyzing the crap out of this game I lost today:

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My aim with this, is to really dial in on my mistakes, blunders, inaccuracies, and so forth. Making sure that I really drill into my mind the principles, strategies, and tactics I’m overlooking or not privy to.

If Stockfish 17 tells me that I made a bad move, then I really need to understand why. I also need to avoid bad moves. First thing I notice is that b4 isn’t necessarily a bad move. This is what my subconscious gut instinct told me. The bad move was bringing it to d6. I can vaguely see why. I can also see why h5 was a bad move. I should have defended the pawn on d5. Rb8 is what really screwed me over. Massive blunder. The game was still competitive until that move.

A lot of takeaways here. I feel like this was a really constructive analysis.

I need to play tighter, and for better positions.

3 Likes
#62

queen b7**, I also need to better learn the board layout and move recording, lol.

#63

All his videos are very instructional. Teaches you principles, how to think, how to calculate, some openings, and is level dependent, he’s more beginner friendly when facing low elo opponents and goes into a lot of depth facing higher ones. You’re generally supposed to watch the speedruns in order

2 Likes
#64

I cranked out 3 games today and went 2-1.

These games were terrible, lol.

First game, I made the worst castle ever and brutally lost.

Second game, opponent blundered his Rook. I didn’t close that out efficiently at all.

Third game was awkward… I was managing it somehow until I gave up the game with the biggest blunder ever. The opponent missed mate in 1, and then I won.

I didn’t really want to play chess today, but I forced myself to do it anyways. I have insane amount of limiting beliefs and processing going on related to chess at the moment.

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#65

Just curious will you try mind’s eye for this chess experiment?

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#66

Where do you guys recommend learning youtube or otherwise?
I know the absolute basics, and that’s it

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#67

If you know only the absolute basics, don’t even start off learning anything. Just play a bunch of games to make a bunch of mistakes. You’ll blunder 1000’s of times and start double checking your moves before you make them.

Until you do that, strategy is completely irrelevant. The ONLY goal at first should be stop blundering/losing pieces completely for free.

2 Likes
#68

Thanks playing bots online a couple of times
I just have no idea or strategy, not even sure where to begin
I can see this being a fantastic exercise in developing visualization skills as well as well as certain forms of intelligence.

Is it better to play people? I feel like they’ll smoke me online, so want to start with easy bots

I can see myself getting obsessed with this so want to be careful lol

1 Like
#69

just play real people. Chess.com will rank you accordingly to ELO, so you won’t actually get smoked. You will, for the first 10 games. Then Chess.com will find out your ranking and all the opponents you play will be evenly matched, so you’l win/lose approximately 50%… if you win more than that, your ranking will go up, till they find the new spot to keep you at the 50/50 win/loss ratio…

@Skadoosh 's goal of climbing to 2000 ELO from 1000 ELO basically means he’s looking to win 70% of his games up until the point where he wins 50% of games against 2000 ELO rated opponents.

2 Likes
#70

Your advice above was great, focusing on not blundering.
I can feel my mind working and seeing differently
honestly felt like a dumbaxx in the beginning lol
But I guess the ability to discern,see, read situations, and execute comes with time and practice.
It’s less ‘innate’ than I thought

1 Like
#71

Watching these videos also would help @Azriel

2 Likes
#72

Maybe at some point. I don’t know, lol.

#73

I played 1 game today, and oh my god. What a game. What just happened, rofl. This is my greatest game ever in chess so far.

1)

My knight is on f5. I really didn’t like that he can just go Ne4 and take my free pawn. If he goes Ne4 and I take with my bishop… he gets a free Rook and I just lose. I just felt like I was backed up against a wall here. The best move was Kc1 to protect my Rook, which I missed.

2

I felt like this guy was better than me. He made fast moves and was winning. At this point, he was up a whole 2 minutes on me. I could feel the stress, and pressure. I’m thinking “my first game today, I’m going to get smoked”. It feels awkward to have my rook on d2. The game just isn’t going well for me.

I went Ne7 with the intention of check, and then going Nd5 to block his rook. This is actually a huge mistake because he can go f5 (I looked at the engine line and it’s nasty). Luckily, he didn’t go f5 and instead went c6 to threaten my knight. I went Nc3, and now I’m defending the pawn. It all just magically worked out somehow, lol.

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4

The thing is, I’m still losing and he’s up 2 minutes. He went h4, and I finally found Kc1.

At this point in the game, I’m thinking to myself “there is no fucking way I’m going to lose”. My brain went into overdrive and I’ve never been that focused in a chess game before. I was seeing every square that he could potentially bring his knights to, and quick calculating in my head. I was very sharp all of a sudden, kind of like how when your coffee kicks in. After trading rooks, he made a massive blunder by going Nf2.

5

Only because I was so dialed in (having only 2:30 on the clock was equivalent to coffee, lol), I was able to find the best move in this position which is Ke3. Ke3 traps his knight, leaving it nowhere to run. After that, it was smooth sailing and I won the game.

Now I’m currently at my highest rating in Rapid so far, which is 1090.

I’m proud of myself for making a comeback like that, lol.

#74

Something bizarre happened during this game. Some type of “shift” or mental rewiring. I’m done with chess for today, yet my mode of thought is still in that “chess calculation” mode that got activated near the end.

If I play another game right now, my calculation is going to be sharp to where I’m easily assessing every move that each of their pieces can make. I’m usually very lazy about this in games, which is why I miss things. Right now, it’s very dialed in and my brain is just in a “hypercalculative” mode.

If I still have this tomorrow, that’s going to be extremely interesting.

I’m also on a 3 game winning-streak in Rapid. If I win my next game… I’m going to be shocked.

2 Likes
#75

Good results!!

Had you played chess before this period? Or you began from the ground?

:+1:

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#76

I use to play over 2 years ago on lichess.org, and my highest rating on there was 1100-1200 in Blitz (the only format I used to play). That’s the only chess experience I have prior to starting this journal, lol.

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#77

Unbelievable.

2 Likes
#78

Immaculate

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#79

Donkey!

image

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#80

Holy shit is all I can say. I played a game today, and I’ve never been sharper. I’m in rare form.

I was so shocked at my own play, that I got distracted and made a mistake.

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We play the opening, and I noticed that I’m extremely calculative. My calculation was the best it’s ever been today, and so was my ability to avoid blunders.

We end up with this:

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I start calculating like a mad man in this position. My brain went berserk. I ended up making a bunch of trades that I felt like would destroy his pawn structures. It ended up looking like this.

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At this point, I was a little startled. His side of the board is a complete mess, lol. I was thinking “holy shit, what did I just do”. “I really just calculated this all and made it look like this”. The difference in how his side looked versus mine, was shocking.

I immediately went Qf6 to threaten his weak pawns on f3 and c3. I was seeing almost everything today, it was surreal.

4

They castle, and I immediately see that getting my bishop to b7 as fast as possible would be extremely dangerous for them. This is my “great move” according to game review. I decide to go ahead and do that.

5

At this point, I’m very comfortable. It just looks really bad for the opponent lol. I go bishop f3, and fork him. I take his Rook. Then I start pushing my pawn on the e file. I’m closing out the game, and I’m stunned that I’m actually winning. I’m surprised that I’m playing really well, lol. I get a little excited at that fact… and I end up blundering my Rook for free, roflmao. It didn’t matter though because I was winning so strongly.

Anyways, I’m now at my highest rating 1105. I’m on a 4 game winning streak.

I was genuinely expecting to get matched against a higher rated “raid boss” player to destroy my winning streak. I’m really satisfied today, on all levels.