Tomorrow is the big day when I will play in the Chesspunks Champs Tournament Finals in the open section. In the Quarterfinals I will play Kamryn Hellman, who picked up chess about two years ago and has made very fast improvements. If you want to follow my games there will be live coverage of the tournament on www.twitch.tv/chess at 12:00 EST / 18:00 CET. The tournament will be commentated by no other than GM Daniel King and Geert van der Velde (CEO of Chessable).
I really hope to play well and advance to the semifinals, so if you have time to follow do tune in.
Mate in Two - Fast and the Furious Test
Some of you took the speed test earlier this week to see how fast chess players can solve a relatively easy mate-in-two puzzle.
25 people took the test and it seems like you either failed early or failed at the end.
In the questionnaire, I asked about chess.com blitz level, and if we look at the average level people failed at by chess rating we see that if you are 2200+ you only need around 0.5 seconds to spot a mate-in-two! If you are under 1200 you will need around 10 seconds. The 1800-2200 group needs around 2 seconds on average.
This was a small sample size, so do not draw too many conclusions based on this. However, I hope you find that it is a little extra piece of insight into chess visualization and how chess players think (or react). It might also be nice to know at what levels your skill should be if you are aiming at the higher rating levels.
Finally, I will just mention that I’m working hard together with FM
As a big fan of both you and Nate’s work, can’t wait to hear about the community!
Thank you, Evan! Happy to hear that :)