It's been a while since I played chess. I managed to qualify for the UK national championship first round from my school when I was 11 years old. I fancied my chances after wiping the floor with the schmucks in my school.
How quickly that changed when I was at the Nationals... I got destroyed in the 8 games played haha! Some seriously talented people there, using the text book manoeuvres, probably had me beaten before I even sat down at the table... Bubble burst, never played since 🤣
That does look like a lovely chess set though. Better than cheap plastic ones I learned the game with!
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National championship! Very cool. Playing someone who knows the opening tricks can be frustrating. Its sometimes worth loosing a piece just to get out of book (I do this unwillingly hahaha). Something seemingly unrelated comes to mind: I think this Elon Musk's goal when he tweets taking Tesla private ('funding secured') knowing that funding is not secured. He takes the speculators out of book, killing the short positions and the speculative long positions. Then he pays a fine ($20 M personal + $20 M for Tesla) but, perhaps, getting rid of some of the speculators is worth it.
That's a good tactic. If I get round to blowing the dust off my Chess board wisdom, it will be worth giving that a go but that was 20 years ago now. As long as games aren't over in 10 moves I'll count that as a victory haha!
Seems Elon Musk is playing a different game of chess altogether there! Very smart man, if you can afford the hit of 20M, life's good right?! Guess what he's doing is the equivalent of "staking" where the long term investment will pay off for all parties rather than those who were on the fence.
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