Game 11 started less than an hour ago and is already looking drawish. Magnus seems to be aiming for the tiebreak which will likely favor him.
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Best posts made by KaLeu
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RE: Chess news
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RE: The new forum has been a lot of work and it's not done yet
Kudos to both of you for all your hard work and dedication over many years.
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RE: Japanese 3rd Wave at Pearl Harbor
@abworsham4 said in Japanese 3rd Wave at Pearl Harbor:
Question: How much of the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility was in use on December 7, 1941?
Nothing. According to https://www.asce.org/about-civil-engineering/history-and-heritage/historic-landmarks/red-hill-underground-fuel-storage-facility :
Work on the first tank was completed in September 1942
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RE: Chess news
I think of myself as a retired chess player, though I occasionally consider un-retiring myself. At my best, some 25 years ago, I was a pretty strong player, and I’m still rated at well over 2300 on FIDE’s rating list, FIDE being the world chess federation. That rating no longer reflects my current playing strength of course. There are several reasons for me not to play anymore. Time constraints, other interests – but also, annoyance at my own game and performance. To reach my former level would require a massive time investment. It’s a difficult game.
But playing in a chess tournament can be a very rewarding experience. The chess crowd is very diverse and you’ll meet people from all walks of life. I fondly remember tournaments I played during summer holidays long ago, with a group of friends from my chess club, visiting great cities like London or Berlin, and having a very good time overall. So by all means, go for it!
How to improve in chess? Well, it requires some work. Just playing will probably also help, but don’t expect miracles if you don’t study the game. I’ve known chess players who never improved even after decades of play. Not a big deal of course as long as they’re having fun, but some are more ambitious. It’s tempting to study opening books, but I’d recommend tactics, endgame, strategy. There are plenty of good books on tactics, but the easy way is just to try and solve online chess puzzles. Chess is a game of pattern recognition, and the more pattern’s you’ve seen the better player you’ll be.
As for playing - try to play strong opponents. Losing may not be much fun, but it won’t kill you and it will make you stronger. Some people think that it’s more ‘fun’ to just play against equally strong opponents, but they typically won’t get past that specific level. Which is not a big deal if that level suits you just fine! But the prime reason I once hit 2300 was that I had a group of friends at roughly that same level - some a bit better, some a bit worse, but we improved a lot by fighting each other over the chess board.And DoManMacgee does offer some good advice here too: your overall physical condition is something to be aware of, and it’s a key factor for today’s world class players. Though I must admit that in the old days, my own ‘preparation’ didn’t necessarily exclude a night of beer swilling and blitz games……
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RE: The new forum has been a lot of work and it's not done yet
@Panther said in The new forum has been a lot of work and it's not done yet:
@KaLeu Please perform a hard refresh (reload) with your browser the next time you set yourself to “online” and try again, then.
Thanks, that worked. After I did a Ctrl-F5, I could indeed set it and it now remains at ‘Online’, even after logging out and in. Problem solved!
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RE: Japanese 3rd Wave at Pearl Harbor
There certainly were. The link I gave before, quotes Admiral Chester Nimitz: “We had about 4.5 million barrels of oil out there and all of it was vulnerable to .50-caliber bullets. Had the Japanese destroyed the oil, it would have prolonged the war another two years…”.
It’s also not too difficult to find a picture of those facilities, which indeed look like very tempting targets:I suppose AB Worsham asked about the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility because if a lot of fuel would have already been stored there at the time of the attack, any third Japanese wave would have been unable to destroy that fuel.
When reading up on this, I came across the name of a very interesting fellow: Captain Mitsuo Fuchida. He was the leader of the first wave, and his accounts of what did or did not happen have been highly influential in (re-)writing history. Here are a few more links:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2016/december/commander-fuchidas-decision
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=nwc-review
And while I didn’t read all of that, it seems that no third wave was launched against the oil containers because (a) the Japanese didn’t think of them as very important, and (b) no third wave had ever been planned to begin with. It was only when Fuchida was questioned by what must have been some amazed American interrogators after the war, that he began to realize that the celebrated Japanese victory had actually not nearly been as devastating as it could have been, and that his own role in the whole affair was not nearly as glorious as he would have liked it to be. So he began to change his story in later years, and the whole affair of him and other Japanese officers urging Admiral Nagumo to launch a third wave, was really Fuchida’s fabrication and never actually happened that way.
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RE: 💭 Discussion: 20th Anniversary Give Away
If I win, I’m donating my prize to Gargantua.
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RE: Hunting Hitler - spoiler alert!
@ladymccormick Generally speaking, I wouldn’t recommend using speculative forum posts as source material for a university thesis. Anyway, for some more details, see: https://coolinterestingstuff.com/did-hitler-escape-to-spain
But I don’t really believe it, as I already explained in my 2016 reply to this topic (see above). -
RE: On this day during W.W. 2
@midnight_reaper Thanks, I was not aware of that.
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RE: Biggest crime against ship preservation
@superbattleshipyamato said in Biggest crime against ship preservation:
And which ship from world history?
From history - the Royal Charles. This English ship was captured by the Dutch in 1667, but it turned out to be unsuitable for the shallow Dutch coastal waters and was then turned into a tourist attraction. The English were far from happy about that situation, and the Dutch decided to scrap the ship after all in response to their complaints, keeping only a small part. But since the nations would soon be at war again anyway, they might just as well have kept the whole ship.
Whether it would have survived the centuries is quite another matter, but how cool would it have been to have an original 1655 ship of the line today! -
RE: Who would win?
@superbattleshipyamato said in Who would win?:
Oh, I see what you mean. You meant that the Iowa would sink the Kongos before they ever got into 10 kilometre range. My mistake.
True enough, but your original premise was, that they would start at 10 km distance, so whether or not they could have reached that position is outside of that premise. You didn’t state their exact position, but let’s say that Iowa is in the center and the Kongo’s are approaching from all four directions.
Now, 10 km is just not very far for those big guns, so it stands to reason that they would start firing at each other right away, and it also stands to reason that they would typically hit their target. But let’s say that due to superior fire control, Iowa always hits, whereas the Kongo’s are 50% effective (I actually think they’d do better than that, at that range and closing in). The Kongo’s have 8 14" guns, Iowa has 9 16" guns.Salvo 1: Iowa kills one Kongo but gets hit by 16 shells.
Salvo 2: Iowa kills one Kongo but gets hit by 12 shells.
Salvo 3: Iowa kills one Kongo but gets hit by 8 shells.
Salvo 4: Iowa kills one Kongo but gets hit by 4 shells.I know that I’m adding a lot of assumptions here, but my vote goes to the Kongo’s. The first Japanese salvo alone, would just be too much to take.
And of course, all of this is quite unrealistic and would never have happened this way.
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RE: Who would win?
@witt said in Who would win?:
@kaleu how have you been? Been a while .
Thanks! I’ve been reading the forums but haven’t been too active.
Happy New Year!
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RE: Which Aircraft Carrier is this
Sorry to hear about your dad, ABW. I remember going through some of my family pictures after my mom passed away and kicking myself for not having asked her more about some of those.
Anyway, after some searching, I’m thinking that the ship in your picture could be USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). That ship was launched at New York on 26 September 1943 and Commissioned on 15 November. So what we could be seeing in the October picture, with cranes on either side of the ship, could be the New York Shipbuilding Corporation being busy finishing the ship.
In the left part of your picture, in the background, there appears to be a large and long building with structures on its roof. Here’s a picture of USS Kitty Hawk in 1960:
Now maybe, but this is just speculation, the building in the background of that picture is the same building as the one in yours, taken from a different angle. Rather a wild guess of mine and other details may not match, but things would also have changed at the wharf between 1943 and 1960.
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RE: On this day during W.W. 2
@barnee said in On this day during W.W. 2:
Rich and powerful is who he blames. A communist maybe ? Roosevelt was a socialist, so whatever.
I take it that you’re not a big fan of either communism or socialism. But they’re not the same, and Roosevelt was neither. As for Zangara? Just another guy who blamed his own misfortunes on others. Ironically, as a bricklayer he would probably have had excellent opportunities in the late 1930s had he chosen a better path in life.