Duckfest recommends Harry Mack

Introducing Harry Mack

Harry Mack is a freestyle rapper from Los Angeles, California. (You should read that again confidently and with more emphasis, like “Los Angeles, California”). To those unfamiliar with freestyle rap, it’s a subgenre of rap that is centered around improvised lyrics rather than memorized lyrics.  Another term for freestyle rap could be Fisher random rap or rap960. 

On his YouTube channel, with currently over 2.5 million subscribers, he shares videos where he freestyles in settings that show off his skills in random situations. The two main series are

• Guerrilla Bars, where he approaches random strangers on the street and performs spontaneous freestyles in front of small live audiences.
• Omegle Bars, where he uses the chatting platform Omegle to connect to strangers from all over the world and performs tailor made one-on-one performances for individual people or groups.

His deliberate choice to use these two YouTube series as his platform leads to a more impactful performance. Instead of appreciating his art as a standalone product, we get to watch as he delivers his act onto an unsuspecting audience. Seeing how his words have impact adds another layer of enjoyment and connection. His freestyles skills are second to none, based on skills alone, but what attracts millions of people to watch his content is the way he applies that ability to connect with people with engaging and personal rap verses.

Part 1: Harry Mack and Chess

There is a parallel universe where Harry Mack is the chess world champion. 

If he had made different choices in life he could have been a great chess player, perhaps even world champion. All the ingredients are there. There must be another universe where he is World Chess Champion. After seeing him play chess in Pogchamps 4, however, we can safely assume that won't happen in this universe. 

All the ingredients

His ability to generate lyrics on the fly is astonishing. That skill alone is enough to consider him a world class rapper. On top of that he is also a musician himself. As a jazz drummer, he has full mastery of beats, rhythm, melody and flow.  Yet, there is more.

What sets him apart is that he does more than just create rhymes. His freestyles are coherent little stories that connect with his audience. While one part of his brain is produces his rhymes in real-time, another part of his brain is already thinking ahead.  It's this combination that makes him, in my humble opinion, the best freestyler in the world. 

In chess, this combination of skills would be equally powerful. Imagine having these skill as a chess player

• Top-tier tactical abilities. The skill to generate ideas on the fly and being able to instantly evaluate which ideas to use allows, is the skill to find good solutions in any situation. 
• Top speed. Fast processing of information. The ability to execute tactical ideas faster than almost any other human would make you a strong contender for speed chess.
• Pattern recognition. The fundamental ability required to make fast decisions in complex situations.
• Adaptiveness. The ability to switch gears depending on who you have in front of you can be a powerful weapon.
• Versatility. A player that has access to a wide repertoire of style and lines has an advantage over players with a smaller fixed repertoire.
• Vision. It's vital for players to be perceptive of their surroundings.
• Positional awareness and piece coordination. The ability to connect your moves to your previous ones and the ones you have planned for the future. 
• Strategy. The ability to work on an overarching plan. To think ahead while the best possible moves in the short term.
• Creativity. On top of all these other skills, the ability to keep producing moves that stun your audience. 

In summary, Harry Mack has all the required abilities to be the best player the world has ever seen. At least, that’s what I thought before I saw him play in Pogchamps.

Pogchamps

With a new edition of Pogchamps underway, I'll take you through Harry Mack's games in the previous edition. It's a chess blog after all. If you're just here for the music recommendations, just scroll down to find them.

Up to this moment, Harry had never dedicated himself to chess and he barely knew how to play at all.  Which was bad enough to qualify for Pogchamps.

A player's success in such a tournament will be determined by multiple factors, like the ability to handle stress, opening preparation, playing faster than your opponent and even a bit of luck. One of the most relevant factor is probably experience and based on that, Harry winning chances weren't good. According to his chess.com profile he had played only 19 games before participating in this tournament.

Match 1 vs Sapnap

Rewatching the footage was funny. Commentators Danny Rench and Alexandra Botez were obviously on a positivity mission. Their feedback was supportive throughout the match and they worked really hard to give a positive spin to every move that was played. But the players made their goal of constant positivity into quite a challenge. Objectively, the games were very bad. According to the post-game analysis Harry Mack’s Elo was estimated to be 100 in the first game, and 200 in the second game. Which is to be expected for anyone with less than 20 games of experience. But it wasn’t a total walkover, on several moments he had the better position.

Match 2 vs JustaMinx

These were great games. They were absolute trash in terms of chess quality, but in terms of excitement they were absolute top quality. In this matchup he had winning chances as both players were rated somewhere between 200 and 250 Elo. However, in the first game it became obvious she was the better player. She was in a better position for most of the game and it looked like she was heading towards victory. She was a Knight up in the endgame and had a time advantage. Lucky for him, she went for a perpetual check instead. Given how the game went, a draw was a very nice result.

In the second game his prospects to win the match started looking very good. After she blundered a piece on move 10, he was the one with the better position. His composure remained calm as he steadily improved his position. His opponent on the other hand started losing grip on herself just as much as she lost control of the game. 

Move 30.

Harry had a chance to mate in two moves.

I’m not making it into a puzzle, because there are two moves that lead to mate in 2. Can you find them?

Move 31.

He had another chance to mate in 2. Can you find it?

Move 36.

He had another chance to checkmate. Can you find it?

Move 40.

"Oh my God, I can’t watch this. I can’t watch this!"             

      - Daniel Naroditsky

The most fascinating position. Whatever she plays, Harry will still have multiple ways to force a checkmate in 5 or 6 moves. And if he doesn’t find the checkmate he still has 13 points of material advantage. 

Can you guess how she, in this completely lost and unwinnable position, was able to win the game in just two moves? 

Match 3 vs BoxBox

His third match was vs Boxbox, rated almost 1,000 points higher than he was. As expected our 200 rated hero was completely outmatched.

Against the odds Harry was the first to get a better position when an overconfident Boxbox blundered an exchange and a pawn. Listening to Boxbox’s thought process after that move it was obvious he was miles ahead of Harry Mack. As it turned out he hardly had to press to get back in the game, as five moves later he was offered a free Rook out of the blue.
The second game was a complete walkover. Boxbox was simply treating the game as a puzzle exercise, trying to find cool ways to checkmate his opponent.

BTW, it appears BoxBox3 is still playing.

Match 4 vs MrBeast

In their first game mrBeast was up a minor piece as early as move 9. They traded off pieces and the material advantage became more relevant as more pieces left the board. Instead of going for the fastest checkmate mrBeast decided to ‘play it safe’ by grabbing all of the black pieces.
He completed his objective on move 45, black had only his King left, and at that point he could no longer lose the game. Not by checkmate, nor could he lose on time any longer.

The easiest way to win the game would be to walk the b-pawn to promotion, but that’s hardly the only way. MrBeast chose to walk three pawns to the other side, not ideal but it should still be winning. There’s still no way to mess this up, right?

He played the strategy of boring me to death.           

- MrBeast

Even though I have seen it happen, I still have no idea how that game could have ended up in a stalemate. But it did. And for the second time this tournament Harry was handed a draw on a platter.

The second game was very typical of the way mrBeast plays. What I found remarkable throughout the tournament is his firm belief that he can win. He knows he isn’t a good chess player and he doesn’t have time to learn to play chess either. Being as result-driven as he is, he goes for the path that can generate the best results in the shortest amount of time: cheesy opening tactics.

With only two pieces developed, he immediately goes for a sort of reversed Fried Liver on the queenside. There are several ways to defend against this attack, but they aren’t too obvious. Against a 300-rated player, attacks like this can be deceptively powerful. Indeed, just six moves later mrBeast was up a full Rook and a pawn. As a sidenote, Anna Rudolf noticed on move 9, after Nxc2+, that Harry Mack was desperately trying to castle out of the check. This serves as a clear reminder of how new Harry was to the game.

A 16-minute freestyle about chess

It wasn't on the chess boards were H-Mack deliver his best results, it was in between the games. During the breaks and after his matches he performed freestyles for the viewers and his fellow streamers. One of the highlights was his 16 minute non-stop freestyle.

Chess Commentating

Just like fish should be evaluated by their ability to swim, not their ability to climb trees, a freestyle rapper should be evaluated by his ability to freestyle chess games, not his ability to play them. This one is just amazing, taken from Eric Rosen’s channel.

Part 2: The best of Harry Mack

If you like what you see here, you should check out his other content. All of it. Everything he produces is engaging, entertaining and very impressive. He has so much talent, almost everything he does is captivating and skillfully done. 

Selecting my favorite tracks wasn’t easy. He has so many good freestyles that are worth sharing, it’s impossible to choose. For the purpose of this article I’m limiting myself to picking just a few highlights, but I could share many more if there is more demand. 

To structure my recommendations, I’m going to pick one track for each of these categories

• My personal favorite
• An impressive display of freestyle skills
• A hard hitting hiphop track
• A lovely display of his ability to connect

"Are you like a lyrical genius?!"

It’s impossible for me to pick a favorite Harry Mack video, because I have at least 10 that I consider my favorites. But, if I have to choose just one, the first one in Omegle Bars 40 would be my pick. 

It’s a perfect combination of freestyle skills, beats and flow, and a good connection with his audience. That last part is what I like best about him and why I watch all his content. In this video he performs an amazing freestyle, packed with references, and it brings me joy to see every word land and blow them away.

And the final line is just chef’s kiss.

"I’m about to rock the venue, son"

It’s not easy to pick which video is the best one to illustrate how insanely skilled he is, but this one should work. He is performing with the talented and very entertaining Marcus Veltri in a collaboration that turned out to be fantastic. They run into a fan of both of them and he actually challenges Harry Mack, to make a freestyle using the words interstellar, library and continuum. The result is impressive.

"I’m not a normal ocean wave, I’m a f-ing tsunami"

On a foundation of delicious fat beats, H-Mack delivers bars that are smoother and juicier than I’ve heard in years. The lyrics are cool and the delivery is absolutely spectacular. For most rappers this would have been the most brutal track they ever released, but not for Harry Mack. For him, creating bangers like this is just another Friday.

"Your love is the thing"

This one is a classic. To experience the emotional rollercoaster in full you should watch this video starting at 13:05, here I’ll just start the video at the climax of part , at 17:43, and show you how Harry Mack adapts to the circumstances. His ability to connect to people is what makes him such a wonderful performer.

Thank you all for reading

Make sure to check his YouTube channel. Let me know if you have more suggestions or if you want to hear more suggestions.