Chess
I am not a titled player and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I'm a club-level player who got interested in chess less as a sport than as a measurable thinking problem — a game where you can watch your own judgement improve, and occasionally watch it fail in ways you can name.
Most chess writing online is either opening theory for people who already know what they're doing, or motivational advice with nothing underneath it. What I'm interested in sits between those: what the game actually measures, why improvement stalls where it does, and which practice is worth your evenings. If you've ever plateaued and not known which part of your play to blame, that's the question this section keeps circling.
Essays
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Chess IQ · the pillar piece
Chess IQ: what it actually measures.
Chess IQ isn't your Elo and isn't your general IQ. Pulling apart the four abilities underneath it — pattern recognition, calculation, board vision, time sense — and what actually trains each one.
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Improvement · an argument
Openings are the slowest way to get better.
Opening study feels productive because it's measurable. It also front-loads the phase of the game where you're least likely to be beaten, and trains recall instead of judgement.
Where I play
Mostly short games, because the thing I'm trying to accumulate is decisions — and short formats give you far more of them per hour than classical does. Zapp Chess is where most of that happens: games finish in under three minutes, there's no opening theory to grind through, and matchmaking adapts as you play so you stay against opponents at roughly your level. Free, and no signup, which removes the last excuse not to play a quick one.
More essays as I write them. If you want to argue with any of this, I'm on instagram.