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The stuff I’d talk about if you got me away from a desk: chess, the games I watch, and what’s on the shelf.

The rating journey

rapid · chess.com

2004

peak: 2126

Live from the Chess.com API and labeled with its pool; one number should mean one thing. Every hundred points past 2000 is bought with a different currency.

Games worth replaying

The Opera Game

The Game of the Century

Puzzle of the week

What I watch

Rainbow Six Siege

The most strategically deep FPS on the circuit

Siege is the closest an FPS gets to chess. Information is the real resource, every gadget is a tempo trade, and most rounds are decided in the planning phase. The maps are destructible, so the position itself changes mid-round. You're reasoning about a board that deforms.

No two rounds play the same, and a well-timed piece of utility flips a round harder than a flick. M80's run and Jume's Lesion and Grim are what got me watching.

Watching: M80 · Jume · Interro

Chess Competitions

Classical, streamers, and the spectator era

Chess became a spectator sport fast, and the broadcast finally caught up. Eval bars turned calculation into something an audience can feel. The format that grabbed me is classical. Bullet is trash to watch, too fast and too sloppy, all reflexes and no narrative. Classical lets you sit inside a player's thought process for an hour. That's where the beauty is.

I follow Vincent Keymer for the pure competitive standard, and Levy Rozman because titled streamers brought a whole generation into the game without dumbing it down.

Following: Classical tournaments · Vincent Keymer · Levy Rozman