Hacker News Books

Chess books, maybe. Chess sets? I'm sure most people playing chess on lichess are aware of chess sets and could get a hold of one without an ad.

"Chess and Programming - You have to be smart enough to understand it and dumb enough to think it matters."

I will. After I finish my current art work. It is titled "Chess Grandmaster on the A4."

I really like Chess Score Pad for iOS, but it's not approved for tournament use.

I like ChessNoteR almost as much, and it's USCF-approved. Not FIDE-approved yet, but they're working on it.

https://www.chessnoter.com

I have to parrot what others say about playing slower chess. I was around 900 when I started on chess.com and peaked around 1600. I did regress though as I lost the obsession.

This is what I did over many years:

- Playing alot of slow chess. This allows you to explore and learn from the exploration, but also gives you a small amount of pressure.

- Studying openings with mobile apps

- Consuming everything chess through books, apps, and videos. I loved watching analysis of the masters.

- Focusing on tactics over strategy. I learned from a really good chess player that strategy is more of an experts tool. I was never going to be an expert.

- Chess puzzles. This helps with pattern recognition, especially in blitz.

Neither... Chess is not a game of skill. Nor is it a game of chance. Chess is a game of memorization-- Memorize all the opening books, all solved end-games, and every famous historical game ever played, and you too can be a great chess player!

David Sirlin has a chess variant called "Chess 2: The Sequel" that uses a three-pronged solution to chess's problem of over-reliance on memorization:

(1) Pick 1-of-6 opening armies: This deals with the problem of memorized opening books.

(2) Mid-line invasion: You win if your King crosses the mid-line of the board. This new victory condition deals with the problem of memorized end-games.

(3) Dueling: Instead of simply capturing a piece, players use a double-blind bidding mechanic with a scarce resource called "stones" to decide the victor. This makes a good memory even less advantageous.

Sirlin's website is here: http://www.sirlingames.com/products/chess-2-print-and-play

Exactly. Chess and (less so) GO are all about reading. If you study, you can learn all the tactics. The problem is never missing a single piece and its relevance across the whole game. That is something computers don't fail at, they never misread. I've wondered if Lee Sedol could beat AlphaZero if he was given AZ's top 50 potential moves on each of his turns.

Digital Minimalism was probably my least favorite Cal Newport book, not for the subject matter but because of the reliance on third party stories. I like to hear peoples’ stories first hand.

Even though I ended up being a partially failed case for using this book, I still got value from it. I mostly did the thirty day digital detox but ended up going back almost to my old routine. The difference is that I have perhaps reduced wasted time on my devices by about 1/3. I am more aware of how much time I am spending, while I am spending it reading Twitter, HN, or playing Chess or Go when I have short periods of non-busy time. I am considering removing Chess and Go apps from all my devices.

If you are going to read just one Cal Newport book, I recommend choosing Deep Work.