4 ms·

This is going to sound really egotistical, but honestly I don’t remember much about becoming a master as I was 10 at the time. What I do remember is playing a s

This is going to sound really egotistical, but honestly I don’t remember much about becoming a master as I was 10 at the time. What I do remember is playing a shitload of games, rated games most weekends. And analyzing my losses with a soviet chess coach to identify and work on my blind spots. Rinse and repeat. Playing experience way more valuable than book learning. I’ve been working on some training software and will hopefully be releasing a beta version on HN this summer, pending wrangling a bit of funding and/or a few devs willing to work for equity/glory. I recommend checking out the mighty hippo’s Wikipedia page for some decent commentary and sample games.

new4thaccount 7y ago
It doesn't sound egotistical. It just seems like you had good parents and you put in a lot of hard work around a difficult subject and it paid off. I wish I had put in more time as a kid for chess and that there was more STEM materials for computing and robotics. The 90's was a wasteland between the time of the BBC Micro/Commodore era and what we now have today with the Raspberry Pi and the maker movement. Windows 95 just wasn't very good for a kid with no idea where to start. Is chess training software not a saturated market? I'm not super familiar with this to be honest.
- mindgam3 7y ago
  Haha, no, like most scholastic chess champions I had a super dysfunctional home environment. One parent definitely supported/pushed my chess, and I give credit there where it’s due, but I could only apply the label “good” to either of my parents with some major qualifiers. Never too late to start training! Neuroplasticity is a thing. Chess training software is super not saturated. The dominant program, ChessBase, basically hasn’t changed in 20 years. Still no Mac version or decent web version if I’m not mistaken. There’s a lot of cool things happening in live play and steaming right now with LiChess, which is phenomenal, and chess.com is starting to up its game as well. But serious training software is stuck in the 90s, hence opportunity. Not that there’s any money in chess, but that’s another topic.
  - new4thaccount 7y ago
    Well I hope everything is going well for you now in life! I didn't mean to imply your past was ideal and am sorry if it came out that way. Thanks for the background on chess training programs. I had a friend with Houdini or some other engine maybe 10 years ago and it had a pretty extensive training mode or so I thought. It was fully 3D and could explain every move and suggest better ones...etc. Houdini is pretty expensive iirc (edit: just looked it up and it is ~$100 range), so maybe something more reasonable would satisfy a need? Also, I suppose the training mode was not as fully featured as real training software? I can't tell if this is the same "chessbase" thing you're talking about.
andy_ppp 7y ago
I’m up for helping, I have a load of ideas in this area...
- mindgam3 7y ago
  Awesome! I just emailed you.

new4thaccount 7y ago

It doesn't sound egotistical. It just seems like you had good parents and you put in a lot of hard work around a difficult subject and it paid off. I wish I had put in more time as a kid for chess and that there was more STEM materials for computing and robotics. The 90's was a wasteland between the time of the BBC Micro/Commodore era and what we now have today with the Raspberry Pi and the maker movement. Windows 95 just wasn't very good for a kid with no idea where to start. Is chess training software not a saturated market? I'm not super familiar with this to be honest.

mindgam3 7y ago
Haha, no, like most scholastic chess champions I had a super dysfunctional home environment. One parent definitely supported/pushed my chess, and I give credit there where it’s due, but I could only apply the label “good” to either of my parents with some major qualifiers. Never too late to start training! Neuroplasticity is a thing. Chess training software is super not saturated. The dominant program, ChessBase, basically hasn’t changed in 20 years. Still no Mac version or decent web version if I’m not mistaken. There’s a lot of cool things happening in live play and steaming right now with LiChess, which is phenomenal, and chess.com is starting to up its game as well. But serious training software is stuck in the 90s, hence opportunity. Not that there’s any money in chess, but that’s another topic.
- new4thaccount 7y ago
  Well I hope everything is going well for you now in life! I didn't mean to imply your past was ideal and am sorry if it came out that way. Thanks for the background on chess training programs. I had a friend with Houdini or some other engine maybe 10 years ago and it had a pretty extensive training mode or so I thought. It was fully 3D and could explain every move and suggest better ones...etc. Houdini is pretty expensive iirc (edit: just looked it up and it is ~$100 range), so maybe something more reasonable would satisfy a need? Also, I suppose the training mode was not as fully featured as real training software? I can't tell if this is the same "chessbase" thing you're talking about.

andy_ppp 7y ago

I’m up for helping, I have a load of ideas in this area...

mindgam3 7y ago
Awesome! I just emailed you.