It's been a while (78 goddamn days...) but I. AM. BACK.
#chess #grind #life
...and yes, the graph looks like a BTC/USD chart. Related?!
JB
At peace with life at 66°N. Writes shit, edits books, hikes to the top of snow-capped mountains — usually barefoot.
Filtering by: chess · clear filter
Hit my highest ever rating on chess.com today.
It's a long, never-ending story of improvements, practizing openings and learning from past mistakes. Very life-like (psst
)
But improving in chess is also about learning to see patterns, calculating variations, but above all recognizing your own behavior -- mindset and physical relaxation even more so than brainpower or opening knowledge (at my paltry level, anyway)
While chess is an open info, objective game it's so unbelievably spiritual and psychological as well: I play better when I'm calm, life is in order, and there are no immediate distractions. If I'm annoyed, haven't moved my body, worry about money or work, or there's something else bidding for my attention, I play noticeably worse.
I play better in the morning and afternoon than in the evening. I play better when I take my time and carefully analyze the position (which means occasionally losing on time) than when I try to rush my opponent's clock by playing fast. I play better in 5min games than in 3min games.
The stats and the undeniable trend is what most fascinates me. For an average of about 13 games a day over the last year, the pattern has been the same: improvements followed by steep collapse before slowly and carefully getting back better and stronger. Anti-fragility etc
Final fascinating observation: Look at the bottom numbers for how unbelievably small the edge is. I win about 48% of games and lose 46%. And that small, invisible difference is what propels me upward. Nothing feels more soul-crushing than when I'm on that downward trajectory, losing hundreds of points in a few days. But it's just small margins shifting -- shooting me in one direction or another. Over time they correct themselves, law of large numbers in operation.
Important to remember: small margins, small improvements -- even in a noisy and volatile environment -- repeated day in and day out, create progress.
Peace out.
#chesstr #chess #bitcoin #chesslife #64squares #selfimprovement #reflections
Still think intellectual property right is a thing? Think again.
My latest for Mises:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/absurdity-intellectual-property-laws
"Property rights aspire toward social harmony in that they prescribe who gets to use which thing at what time for which purpose. Intellectual property doesn’t have that physical limitation, and social harmony is maximized by removing (unfair and immoral) protections to property over nonscarce and immaterial things."
...
"Now, the words I string together in a certain order don’t have economic value; as the joke goes, the high school student pats her dictionary before an essay deadline and says reassuringly to herself, 'All the words are in here. I just need to find the right combination.' Nobody owns the words listed in the dictionary pages, and once assembled, anyone can recreate them — speak them, sing them, recite them at a wedding, or publish them (online or in physical form).
Take another illustration of open information, where the order itself is crucial and copyrighting impossible: the game of chess. You can’t patent or copyright a chess opening, even if the system or series of moves was invented (well, discovered!) by a specific player and popularized to the point that their name was attached to the moves. Don’t chess players deserve compensation for their hard, innovative work and for furthering the game by making a unique and specific series of impressive moves? No. The reason is that rent extraction isn’t feasible for things that are nonrivalrous. Magnus Carlsen, probably the best player of all time, doesn’t receive compensation when anyone else plays the Carlsen Variation of the Sicilian Defense. (Neither does the island of Sicily.)
Chess openings exist in the ether, in human minds, available for anyone to play. Nobody (bar authoritarians) can physically exclude you from moving pieces on a board in a certain order in a game in which you and your opponent subject yourselves to specific rules. If you’ve found an opening improvement that gives you a unique advantage, it was there in the open for anyone to find. You found it in information space, among the tens of duodecillion (1040) possible chess positions.
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky found the words for his novels in language space, another information space composed of somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 headwords; he used publicly available information in a specific order to assemble “Crime and Punishment,” which anyone in principle could have found. That’s why we socially add his name to the title of the book but don’t (and shouldn’t) reward him or his descendants financially for his find. If authors or musicians can monetize their nonrivalrous creation in other, roundabout, and economically fair ways, kudos to them!"
#econstr #intellectualproperty #econdebates #austrianeconomics #literature #chess #info #words #chessopening #plebchain
It's been a long goddamn journey here: ups and downs, milestones and shortcomings.
After watching and enjoying (online) chess for 2+ years, I finally started playing maybe a year ago. Studied some openings, watched some instructional videos, did a lot of chess puzzles. Little by little. Now and again I would play and for the last six months I have averaged maybe 10-15 games a day.
Life on the 64 squares is so astonishing, so reminiscent of the real world out there, so connected to the ethereal ideas of #bitcoin (shout-out,
) and #spirituality. Your play echoes your state of mind, where your focus is, what's troubling you in life:
- If I'm worried or upset, my attention is worse and I make more mistakes.
- If I'm tired or hungry or antsy from not having moved the body enough or slept properly, I play worse and make more mistakes.
- If something is distracting me, like a person or a movie or the household chores, I miss things and make more mistakes.
A lot of lessons there about splitting attention and the importance of deep work.
The anger that's unleashed when I mess up (note: not when I get outplayed, that's mostly just beautiful) or overlook obvious moves that I could have/should have seen is unlike anything else I've ever experienced. I don't really get mad, but fucking up my chess games makes me bang the table, uncontrollably stamp the floor and throw things across the room. Again, I believe it echoes life in the guttural frustration you might feel when you stray from a path you know is good for you, when you know deep down that you CAN do better.
Chess doesn't bullshit you, and doesn't care about your rationalizations, excuses or fancy explanations. The information is right there, on the board, objectively displayed for everyone to see (and your opponent to take advantage of). It resembles truth in some cosmic sense, again not unlike Bitcoin.
What's so fascinating about this is that across various time periods (30 days, 90 days, 1 year), I win about 50% of my games and lose about 45% (5% drawn). Small, small improvements/alpha/efforts -- imperceptible in the short run -- when repeated day in and day out eventually show amazing results.
Keep at it. If you're straying from the path -- regroup, refocus, and do it again. The sun will rise and we will try again. Consistency beats anything else.
Gradually, then suddenly. In bitcoin, in life, in fitness and health -- and also, in chess.
psst,
-- thanks for being part of my journey.
Peace.
#chess #chesstr #nostr #plebchain #coffeechain #serenity #milestones #diligence #keepatit #achievements #chesschain #64squares
